Card Show Cheapness, or an Embarrassing Pudge

I've been to two card shows fairly recently. Well, not that recently. I've just been behind in my posting. And I have treasures to share. The first one was in South Haven, which is a small tourist town on Lake Michigan. My wife and I often go there to swim, but this trip had a much more important purpose. They had a signing at this one with retired Tigers player Charlie Maxwell. I was too cheap to pay $10 for an auto from him, but I do wish I would have chatted with him, since I'm pretty sure he would have crossed paths with the epic Coot. Oh well. No Maxwell chatting, but I did pick up a few decent cards.


I always spend a good deal of time digging through the dime and quarter boxes, and I'm always looking for and have trouble passing up Ripken cards for the player collection. Here's one of the Ripkens I got in mostly quarter boxes, since Ripken is too sophisticated to slum in the dime boxes:

This is one of those pop-up cards from the mid '80s. I've been debating whether I should pop this Ripken up or not. Perhaps I'll wait to find a double. I was surprised to find this one in an elongated top loader, which I didn't even know they made. Otherwise, I'd have no way to store this towering card. I do love how the elongated card features the dome of the stadium.

Next up is just some base 1994 Upper Deck. How great of a shot is this? Ripken is doling some sort of Superman ninja kick to a Red Soxer. Or maybe he just posed like this, balancing on the sliding dude's raised arm. This has to be one of the best photos from this set.


I also picked up one of the worst photos from this set:

Oh, the early '90s was an embarrassing era, and Pudge exemplifies just about everything I want to forget about this time period: gold chain, gold watch, over-sized shades, too-tight Guess jeans an AC Slater look set with the backdrop of the beach. This looks almost like it should have been one of those black and white glamour photos from the 1991 Score Dream Team subset. Perhaps Pudge would like to forget this card, but at least it's now in my collection, yanked out of a nickel box.

I also picked up my first cards of some of the more-promising members of the rookie crop this year:

Smoak and Hosmer were part of a 3 for a dollar deal. I'm not a big fan of this set, but I was glad to pick up my first cards of these guys.

I also snagged these:

Jeter and I-Rod kind-of-rookie cards. Hard to pass up for a quarter. And this is what happens when one is roaming the cheap-o boxes aimlessly.

With all my aimless cheap-o box wanderings, I did find this card in a 3 for a dollar box. I really liked the 2005 Topps Heritage set, and I like Vlad, and I like numbered cards. But this one is certainly up for trade, if someone likes numbered Vlad Heritage more.