Christmas Cards

Since I had the day off today, I was fortunate enough to spend it with my rapidly growing older son. I am also fortunate to have an almost-teenager who actually still likes spending time with his old man. He also does a great job holding a conversation while we are together (which is a rarity in kids his age). 

After spending about 30 minutes at Game Stop, doing things he enjoyed doing, he humored his old-man and we visited a local antique store that also happens to have a decent selection of cards. There is a good mix of some new product, junk wax, and vintage cards. A few dealers are significantly over-priced, but sometimes you can get fortunate to find a booth sale and get things for 30 to 50% off...

I was hoping to pick-up some Cubs or Ryne Sandberg's from the 25 cent boxes; however, we ran into a major headache. The basketball, football, hockey and baseball cards quarter box area looked like a bomb went off in it. There was no rhyme or reason to any of the cards, and since I didn't quite have 4 hours to look through them, we settled on a few packs of 1992 Stadium Club and one Target blaster box of 2019 Diamond Kings.

I never actually bought Stadium Club when I was a kid. It came out right about the time for when my baseball playing life was over, and basketball/track took over as the sports of choice. Plus, I needed gas money instead of baseball card money! This set is a monster at 900 cards over 3 Series, and I almost got a headache trying to figure out the "variation" letters on the back of these as I entered them into TCDb. 

Here are some of the better-player and better-looking cards from the 4 packs. I got a whopping 2 Cubbies out of this, and a few Expos. 

The Bagwell is his rookie card, which graded can carry some value. The wrong Bobby Witt Jr card compared to what collectors these days want! I also like the Tony Gwynn, but wonder why he wasn't shown swinging away? I do like the looks of these cards in that they take up the whole card, which I think was pretty unusual at the time. 

The blaster box produced some pretty good results, especially for only $15...Even though I don't get too excited about Panini/Donruss without MLB logos, I do like the selection of old-time players. DKs are actually how my son learned about guys like Ty Cobb, Joe Jackson, Ted Williams, etc.

Only one Cub in this group of cards, however it just happened to be a Ryne Sandberg short print that I didn't have yet. So that is a major win in my book. I do like the inserts that DK puts in and have always like the looks of the DK205 inserts. Any Mike Trouts are always good adds. 

I also like the framed cards, although I will swear to my grave that there is no way these frames are "blue"! My good story on those was back in 2019 when I did receive a blaster for my birthday, I pulled an Anthony Rizzo frame. When I looked it up image my shock when I discovered black frames were 1/1s! I thought it a bit unusual to get one from a blaster, and then discovered these were considered "blue"!

Overall, today was a great day and while we had some fun getting some old and new cards, I'll treasure the time spent having lunch and bonding with my son way more than the cards that we picked up...