BDay dollar boxing

My daughters were out school shopping with their aunt yesterday and I'd planned to stay home and do some boring paperwork .. but I received an early birthday card from my brother in law. He's a wealthy SOB and I just saw that his company's stock did very well last week.. so I wasn't surprised at the amount of cash included in the very thoughtful card his wife picked out. And so I decided to take a trip to a card shop about 15 minutes away. 

This was my first ever visit to Card Cave Central in Union, NJ. Before I even walked through the door I noted how lousy the location was. This place is next to a dog groomer, with a tiny driveway that can only fit one car at a time. So if someone is pulling out of the Puppy Love Spa, you can't pull in to the Card Cave. Not a huge problem, except that this building happens to be right at the fork road split of a very busy intersection. It was an adventure... for my Uber driver. I'd actually tried to ride my bike there but Google maps sent me way out of the way of the familiar and I basically ended up getting lost in my own hometown. 

Once inside the shop, I was immediately greeted by two card tables, a shelf of old packs, and rows and rows of dollar boxes. I perused the nostalgia packs - more on those later - and went to work on the dollar boxes. Had I known this shop (or any shop) would have so many singles to go through, I'd have given myself more time. I only had two hours, and wasted one riding my bike in circles. 

There was no overarching sign that these were dollar boxes, but every top loader was marked with a price of between $1 and $5 (the occasional card was priced 50 cents - and one or two were not priced at all) I had more money than time and the old game plan of set filling had gone out the window. 

After about 45 minutes of picking up baseball and football boxes, bringing them to the table, and rifling through as quickly as possible I'd accumulated an ecclectic stack. Then I realized I hadn't seen the rest of the shop! 

To the left of the photo where a disheveled old man sat and griped about immigrants while opening a box of Allen & Ginter the shop put on his tab I saw some hangers of 2025 and 2026 Topps baseball cards above some rack packs and jumbos of 1987, 1988, and 1989 Topps. If they had any 1986 I would have grabbed them. 

Following the narrow walkway to the back of the store, I realized two things. The store is about 50% TCG - lots of non-sports cards encased and displayed. There were also boxes of loose Pokemon cards for 50 cents off to the right of my pic. And I'd wasted way too much time at the dollar boxes.

With about 15 minutes left I found another table at the back of the shop. There were dozens of monster boxes stacked on top of each other bursting with loose cards. Separated by sport and nothing else. No sleeves, no prices, no indication of set or year. I could have spent all day on those. Alas.

All in all I did not pick up a single set filler or sealed product - unless you count one $20 mystery pack. Card Cave's mystery packs are a lot different from J B's in CT. For one, they're more expensive. For two, they're one-sport only. Both advertise a guaranteed auto (at least I think JB's did?)  These guys put fewer cards in their packs and .. I will reveal my results at the end. 

When I got home I slid all of the cards out of their crusty old holders and scanned them by the price I paid. 

$5 cards 

There were exactly two two-row hockey boxes to look through and 80% of the cards were IP autographs of former Devils players. I managed to find some decent hits including relics of two defensemen with Devils ties. Larry Robinson is argubaly the second-greatest defenseman of all time. Jay Bouwmeester was a very highly touted prospect when this RC was released. He ended up having a long and productive career, but didn't quite become a star. Lyle Odelein was an enforcer, and a popular one at that. My wife used to excitedly shriek "Odie!" whenever she saw him. 

$4 cards

I'm pretty sure this Barry Sanders Topps Fire is a base card but I don't mind. Staying in Motown, the Brendan Shanahan Heritage is a Chrome parallel #d/667. Two 1990s refractors round this out. I am now hoarding all 1999 Finest Refractors, including this Austin Kearns and a Robert Brooks I have incoming from TCDB. Robert Smith was toting the rock for the Vikings just as I was immersing myself in the music of that other Robert Smith. 

It warms my heart that current artists love The Cure - particularly Olivia Rodrigo, who has not only sang with Robert but released a single called The Cure.. which actually kinda sounds like The Cure. 😁

Anyway.. back to cards.

No, Sombr...I said back to cards

The majority of my pickups were $1 to $3 each. Here are the $3 cards:

Yes, I picked up a vintage non-sports pack. My inner child would have wept if I didn't bring home Alf.  Dennis, shout at me if you need this Griese/Terrell card. I had to take it home just in case.

I swear I'm not a fan of Tampa teams - I just happen to like their colors and players. The Bowman Youk is a RC I was shocked I didn't have. Another SP Authentic Future Watch on-card AU rookie? Yes please. Robert Nilsson didnt do much in his brief career; I remember him mostly for being traded to Edmonton in the Ryan Smyth deal. The Lanny McDonald is a second-year Topps card and the Ripken pink prizm crystal shard thing is also for Dennis. But the highlight here is that '71 Ted Williams. It's in really good shape, typical corner wear but no creases! I was over the moon when I saw that one. 

$3 football cards here including a Packer hit and a couple of SN'd cards. Joe Flacco is numbered to 299, while the disco Dawson Knox is numbered to 25. My buddy Baseball Brittie would tell me to flip that one. Perhaps I will, once football season is well underway.

$2 cards here including a refractor for my Mikaela Shiffrin collection (I also picked up an Amber Glenn and Isabeau Levito for my daughter - to pair with her Ilya Malinin and Alysa Liu cards.) The Trevor Letowski relic was rattling around in a top loader that was wayy too big; I almost didn't buy it but there didn't seem to be any damage. Gotta grab a piece of that kachina jersey when I can. Also the red Devers on the bottom right is numbered to 75. And an unlicensed base card of Raffy was the same price. So random. 

$2 football

I mainly focused on football for this trip, because I recently made room in my boxes by splitting a PC binder into two smaller binders (I'll explain in a future post). I had a feeling that Sterling Sharpe looked familiar; turns out I already had the Trophy collection parallel (and the base). Couldn't risk leaving it there and didn't have time to check my collection on TCDB. "Tuddys" is a dumb word, but I loved watching Aaron and AJ. I'm not a Texans fan but General Mills does have some sharp looking cards. The CJ Stroud is a Clearly Donruss. No sure if those are parallels or a separate base set. 

On to the dollar cards. Very random mix here; I did not have time for any basketball boxes but some stragglers made their way into other sports and Van Vleet made his way into the stack. There's also a Sunset parallel of the newest New Jersey Devil and a base version of the Shiffrin above. Why did I pick up a duplicate Dickerson league leader card for a dollar? Because it was the only card of a PC player I saw in the dollar boxes. I was hoping for Marinos and McCaffreys and Cunninghams (not Sophie) and all I got was endless rows of Derek Carr. Sigh...

Also, the Hasek Premier Pad Men is a neat one - but not as cool as the Holoview of Niklas Sundstrom. A '90s hologram die cut insert I'd never seen before, for a buck? Even if it's a Ranger, it's an easy 'yes'. Fuji, do you need this Rickey team leader? It's in really nice shape. Bit off-center though. 

$1 football here. Mostly Packers, with a pair of Chiefs and a Saint mixed in. I know Donte Stallworth was lousy on the field (I once heard him referred to as "Stink-worth" which was kinder than what I would have expected considering how easy it would be to add the suffix -less to his name) and off the field but I'm a sucker for all 2002 Topps Pristine singles.  The Leo Chenal RC is a Red Lazer parallel #d/150. Sticking with our theme of football players with lead singer names, we have Mr. Brightside rounding out the group. 

Last but not least, sone more dollar cards and a few that I managed to find while zooming through the loose boxes at the back. I'm kicking myself for not having more time since there were more PC player finds here - Marino, King Henry, KB... and a Verlander for Dennis. Now I know for next time.

Finally, let's crack open that football mystery pack. Was it worth the $20? You decide:

Hmmm... that Sehorn hit would be more appealing to me if it were licensed. Same for the Kyren Williams auto and the Anthony Munoz green parallel #d/99. I think the only card I would have purchased on my own would be the Tet McMillan Chrome RC - though this particular Tet is off-center. 

I might buy a baseball mystery pack next time I'm there, but I've got a bad feeling I'll end up with some unlicensed autos there, too. 

Everything here totaled about $167, leaving me with about $33 in birthday money. I'd actually pre-spent it on an item that cost right around $30. You'll see that post on my actual birthday. 

Thanks for reading!



~

Spring Things

I haven't had the creativity to post anything here, but I am working on updating and remastering some old posts and new wantlists. I'm also making TCDB trades. Soooo many trades...

Our family has no plans for Memorial Day weekend (cause my "America first" in-laws will be in the UK lol) so I should be able to post the full Top Ten by position project during the three-day weekend. 

In the Meantime here are some things I did this spring that I wanted to blog about but just couldn't find the time to make each topic its own post:

I visited my mom in CT for a few days. The girls and I took a tip up to the WestFarms Mall in Hartford and I found an awesome card shop in Milford:

This place is a hundred times better than my LCS down the street. There were dozens of boxes with single cards to look through. I found 50-60 set fillers for various 2025 baseball sets including a Heritage SP and when I brought them to the counter the guy charged me $4 for the stack. Awesome. 

I also grabbed some random football cause I didn't have a lot of time to go through other boxes. But if you're a hardcore player collector looking for some obscure safety or lineman drafted in the early '00s .. JB probably has their card buried in these boxes. Really wish I had more time to explore those.

Around the perimeter of the store I found racks of blaster boxes and single packs from junk wax era sets to recent Prizm football and Upper Deck hockey issues. 2022-23 UD Extended fat packs for $2 each? I'll take all of 'em please and thank you. 

My eyes lit up when I saw the shelf with Topps baseball factory sets. I have 1988, 1990, 1991, and 1993 but it never made sense for me to buy 1989 or 1992 as the shipping cost was prohibitive. Grabbing these off the shelf for $15 each though? Heck yeah. Only issue was that when I got them home I noticed the 1989 set (my least favorite ever) was bursting out on one end. So I opened it and saw that all the cards were curled. Serves me right for buying a set I loathe. I've actually managed to trade about half on TCDB already. 

Next to the cash register there was a drum full of store-made mystery packs in manilla envelopes, roughly 30 cards each with at least one auto for $15. I grabbed two. I'll show those off one day if I remember. Solid value there. 

Also picked up two graded cards and a pack-box of Ultimate Collection hockey that was far worse than I could have expected. I knew there was no way that I'd get 100% of the value back but I was hoping for a nice patch card or something, even if it wasn't a great player. LOLno. I got a one-color relic of Justin Sourdif, a fake relic thing of William Karlsson (I like the player, but for that price, this better be a real hit) and an autograph of Jonathan Marchessault. $10 card probably. Absolutey set $150 on fire. Never doing that again.

BUT it was not the store's fault. There were four boxes behind the counter and the guy let me pick a number between 1 and 4. I picked 3. Do not pick 3. Ever. Now, do I think the other boxes were hiding a Connor Bedard patch auto? No. But I could have at least pulled a real relic hit of a star player. Maybe. 

Despite this I loved this store and plan to go back in the summer when I visit my mom again. 

I bought my youngest daughter tickets to Stars on Ice for her birthday. She's a huge fan of golden boy Ilia Malinin:

This is the only photo I took; the rest were video.

He did four solo performances including a fun one where he skates to Eminem's "Lose Yourself" while wearing a black hoodie and stonewashed jeans. Quite a character. 

The US team has a ton of personality, including fan favorite and Olympic champion Alyssa Liu:

And my girl Amber Glenn, who my daughter calls "bird lady" because she looks like a bird I guess? 

For the old heads, Jersey Girl Isabeau Levito is a more traditional skater - very elegant and lovely to watch, but not a lot of spice. 

I was wondering if there would be a unique or special moment for Isabeau since this is her home ice and all - but the only thing that might have been a nod to that was at the end - when Amber carried Izzy off the ice on her shoulders. Wish I had a picture of that lol. 

We got two seats tickets in a suite - which I would never be able to afford for a Devils game. From the Prudential Center website it looked like there would be food and drinks available to everyone, but that must only be during hockey season. Huge bummer there. Also our tickets were standing room only but a nice rich lady informed us that she wasn't using all of her seats and we got to sit in two front row seats. I'm still team Eat The Rich but I also refuse to judge all members of a group by the actions of a few. Thank you rich lady :)

My finances were kinda tapped out after the CT trip and Stars On Ice but then I got an email from American Airlines warning me that my wife's points were about to expire. I am deathly afraid of flying and D will obviously not be using them, so I converted them to a $75 eBay gift card. 

After a few days of shopping I had my eye on this card:

The seller has this on an auction with a starting bid of $60 or best offer. So I offered $75 and .. they did not respond. The auction was nearing an end without any bidders so I bid my $75 and.. it sold for $77. Two bidders used auction snipe tools in the last five seconds. I hate auctions. 

Instead I bought a card for my '80s/'90s legends project that I wouldn't have spent my own money on - but since it's "free" I figured why not?

Have you ever come across cards whose real value doesn't match your own personal value? Like you see something nice and think to yourself if that was $50 I'd buy it - but I'm not touching it at $75. It happens to me all the time.  

For example: I'd buy every single one of these 2025-26 Ultra hockey inserts that recreate 1993 Flair baseball:

If they were $1-3 each. Unfortunately they are numbered to 93 and if you're not picky about the player you can maybe get one for $5. I'm not paying $6 for this Sam Reinhart - but Victor Hedman? Sure. 

I'll have to see if JB's has any of these Flair '93s next time I'm in town to visit mom.

Have you been to any good card shops lately? If so, what did you purchase?

Thanks for reading!





~

The LCS Diaries - First Trip

A popular card shop, Attack of the Baseball Cards, recently relocated to my town/neighborhood/block. The "soft open" was Friday, 11/11. I get out of work at 4:30 p.m. on Fridays - which is when the shop closed. Couldn't make it yesterday, as I had to go to a birthday party. Today was my first visit.

It had been more than a decade since I'd shopped in a baseball card store. The closest one to me moved a half hour farther away, in a smaller store, and closed shortly after. 

I was very excited and anxious about when this shop would open, when I would be able to get there, and how I would adhere to a reasonable budget after so much time away. Would I feel like the proverbial kid in a candy store? Well... kinda.

As I approached the shop, a car pulled up and parked in front. A mom and her young son entered in front of me. Two or three other customers were already inside. I turned and noticed the kid walked right past everyone and tossed his coat behind the counter. Apparently he works there.

The store is smaller than it looks in pictures. I was following the move on social media and didn't realize how much of the empty space would be swallowed up by showcases and shelves. 

Lots of great singles were displayed in the three showcases. Mostly higher-end vintage in the first two. The third had current baseball singles and relics, with a heavy emphasis on Yankees and Mets. One customer inquired about the 1993 SP Derek Jeter RC. Steve the shop owner asked for $600. I have no idea if that's a fair price or not, I haven't looked in a Beckett for years and my BGS 9 copy of the DJ RC cost me just over $500.  

The rows of white boxes you see behind the glass are full of vintage baseball and football singles, from the late 1950s to early 1980s. I would love to spend an afternoon sorting through all of them but I'm not working on any vintage sets at the moment (except 1956 Topps of course). The Giants game had just kicked off and the store was crowded. Now that I know what's there I'll bring a wantlist on my next trip - hopefully on a quiet weekday.

If you're working on any vintage sets, let me know and I'll try to find a few singles for you in the future.

I was hoping to see more supplies, but there wasn't much room. I will need 9-pocket pages soon, but now I can ask my wife to get them for Christmas :) maybe some small storage boxes, too. 

A pile of 2022-23 Upper Deck hockey hobby boxes rested on the counter by the cash register. I wasn't even aware it was released; all my card buying nowadays is done on Sportlots and COMC. 

Btw, does anyone know what's up with COMC's Black Friday sale this year? I haven't seen an announcement and it's less than two weeks out.

This maiden voyage was sort of a scout mission, to see what the shop had in stock and plan accordingly. I was disappointed in the lack of a dollar box. Sifting through random hits would be a great way to find gifts for my team collector friends who aren't Yankees or Giants fans. This means I have to hope that COMC can ship my Xmas 'cards' in time to forward them before 12/24.

I didn't buy any singles this time, but I grabbed a few packs staying under budget to save for Black Friday:

Hobby packs! It's been sooo long since I've bought these. From about 2008 to 2016 I had every Upper Deck hockey set, complete with all the Young Guns. It got too hard to keep up with them. I don't even know which rookies are in '22-23 series 1 - aside from Seattle Kraken star Matty Beniers.

I also asked for two packs of 2022 Topps baseball series 2. This will likely be the last Topps set I put together since 2023 doesn't interest me, and who knows what Fanatics is going to come up with after that. Series 1 is complete, and I've got about 1/3 of series two. The shopkeep grabbed Update initially, which I'm sure he's selling a lot more of lately. But I'm not messing with Update.. yet.

These five packs totaled just over $32 after tax. I also got a free gift with purchase:

Oooh two top loaders! I've been needing some clean cases. And the cards are cool too, I guess. Anyone need a Joey Gallo RC?

All right let's rip open these hobby packs, shall we?

Pack 1 highlights:

Pack 2:

Yeah, that wasn't the best way to spend $10-12. Ugh. At least I got ...12 needs for the set build. 😒

Perhaps I'll have some puck luck, eh?

Pack 1:

These are sharp, one of the best UD flagship designs in a while. Makar is a stud and the Gibson is a nice card, but ePack has devalued Canvas commons to about 28 cents each.

Pack 2:

A Devil and a former Devil (Johnsson was waived/demoted before the season; Vanecek is NJ's current starter in net.) Defense Mechanism inserts are new, I think. Kylington is pronounced Shil-ling-ton, which will never make sense to me. 

One pack to go. Come on Young Guns....

Whammy. 😡

I am not going to miss this when I finally retire from the hobby. Here's what I could have purchased with that $32 and change:

Welp, I'm never going there again. 

 

(That's a lie, of course I am. I'm just going to avoid packs next time.)

Someone wake up COMC HQ so I don't spend another dime before their Black Friday sales. 

Thanks for reading!


~

In Local News...

 

"New" sports card shop opening two blocks from my house:

I have never lived so close to a card shop in my life. Figures it would happen after the increased prices and decreased quality turned me off of new products, likely for good. Hopefully they'll have some nice vintage singles and supplies. 

Pack Wars is going to be insane here; I have no idea where 20-30 cars are going to park. Not something I'll have to worry about though..

Jon, you were right 😜

~

Refreshed, Reorganized, Refocused

My wife asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday last Sunday. Naturally I told her that I wanted to find a card shop nearby and grab some grub - not necessarily in that order. And so, she took the girls and I to lunch at a diner on the way to a card shop that she researched and chose because it had great reviews. 

It was only open from 1pm-4pm on Sundays and we got into town right around 2pm but couldn't find the place from the street. Apparently the shop sits on the second floor of a yoga studio. We parked in the back..no one else was in the lot. We tried to open the door. Locked.

No problem..we'll walk around the front. Tried to open the front door. Locked. Walked around the back to our car. She called the shop. Got their voicemail. It's open from 1-4 on Sundays - except in July and August. 

You may be asking why I didn't go on Saturday? Well, Saturday was Di's niece's birthday - and the whole family spent the day at my brother in law's. Except me. I was supposed to go. I expected to go. But then I had a bit of a manic episode that started off as a panic attack and ended up feeling more like a complete mental breakdown as the weight of unrelated issues stacked up on top of me- including major changes at work, a lack of a reliable internet connection, my mother's failing health, etc. etc. ...and the fact that my 38th birthday was falling on the anniversary of Charlottesville.

The thought of spending a day with my utltra-conservative in-laws on this particular weekend was the back breaker. I couldn't do it. Thankfully, I didn't have to. I stayed home on Saturday, packed up the Sports Card Tour prizes, and began reorganizing my card collection for the ten millionth time. 

My wife had every intention of making my birthday enjoyable. So I tried not to complain when the card shop was closed. There was another one in the area-mostly a comic book shop, but the Facebook/Yelp reviews said they do have cards. Old dusty wax boxes and blasters. All of them overpriced - I think. It's been so long since I've set foot inside a card shop I don't know what the prices should be. I found one card I wanted, priced at $45:

In some of the Sports Card Tour stops I hinted at starting the 1986 Topps football set. I have no emotional connection to it; 1986 was the first year I started collecting baseball cards but the first football card I ever saw was from the 1985 set (Bob Baumhower, which was wedged in the backseat of my dad's station wagon) '86 is just a highly condition sensitive set loaded with hall of famers such as Rice, Steve Young, Reggie White, and so on.

About two years ago I nearly bought a PSA 9 Jerry Rice RC from 4 Sharp Corners for about ten times the price I paid for this copy ($429 I think?). The reason I considered it is because a dozen years ago I bid on a PSA 9 Robin Yount RC thinking I could get it for $300. I was outbid; it sold for about $315. Today Yount 9s sell for three times that. 

1986 Topps football cards might be even harder to find centered than 1975 Topps baseball (though I have absolutely no evidence to back this up.) And Rice is, without a doubt, the greatest wide receiver ever - and possibly the greatest football player in the Super Bowl era. 

This comic book shop might have overpriced their boxes, but I felt very comfortable paying under $50 for the Rice RC. And so now I am fully committed to completing the '86 set. I doubt anyone reading this would happen to have some singles lying around, but if you do have any 1986 Topps football for trade please let me know. I'm not going to be a stickler for condition-anything with decent centering and no creases will be accepted. 

I did get my birthday sports card fix - but not from a card shop. As I've mentioned before on this blog, my LCS is Target..which of course limits my choices. I can't purchase supplies or single cards, but I can grab $50 worth of fat packs and blasters when the sets appeal to me. 2018 flagship is a huge improvement over last year's design. I'm nowhere close to finishing this set (I've got about 100 cards of each series) so if you have any dupes to trade  I'll be happy to take any and all, regardless of card number. 

Target had four of those blister pack things with four packs plus one green parallel showing. I hate to be that guy, but the front facing pack had Dillon Maples and the one all the way at the back had Jackie Robinson. What would you do? Karma must have agreed with my choice because the retail hoard also yielded the "base" version of the Salute insert and a Jackie Legends Variation SP (plus a Clayton Kershaw rainbow parallel and a Zack Cozart parallel #d/50.)

I didn't just go for flagship, however. After reading dozens of positive reviews and blog posts about Big League Baseball I had to give it a try. So far I'm on the fence about adding it to the list of sets I'm building. It's a nice enough set for sure, and the price point is a plus. But I've got so many unfinished set projects already. Can I really start two more sets this year? 

Then again..after spending the past week reorganizing my collection I've actually got more room for set builds than anything else. My base card binders are filled to capacity. I could use some new binders but the only ones I see for sale have much smaller D-rings than my older binders. I'm still holding out hope that I can find the large ones if I can ever get myself to a real LCS.  

All of my team collections are in separate boxes. I've got some room to add more Packers cards, but the Red Sox and Devils boxes are stuffed. There's plenty of room in my star player boxes and a little bit of room in my 'hits' boxes. So I've decided that storage space will dictate my priorities for the rest of the year.

Even though it was against my better judgment, I requested shipping on the 41 cards I had in my COMC inventory. That will chip away at most of my sets - but it won't complete a single one. And so I've updated my wantlist a third time to try and cross off some set needs. Once I fix my home internet connection I'll join TCDB in the hopes of making more trades. 

Thanks for reading this. Hope you're all having a great weekend!

~