Back at the Mansfield Show: Card Show Recap #6

I was fortunate to be able to attend my 2nd Mansfield card show earlier today. It was their President's Day baseball card show and my first ever Monday show. I was expecting an experience similar to last time, but I was also more familiar with the show and had a list of 5 goals set out for myself, so I knew that this show would be able to run smoothly.

This will most likely end up being another baseball card show recap with 4 parts, because of how the Mansfield show is much larger than what I'm used to at a card show. There are around 90 vendor tables at the show, which is pretty big but not huge. It's also good preparation for future larger card shows that I might want to attend. 

The first thing I'll be showing off is something that I knew I wanted to look for today, even with this being a show that's larger than I'm used to. I found a vendor who I've bought from for years at the Woburn card show who has a reputation for having incredible dime card bins. He's known for having some high-end cards, Hall of Famers, new products, and even some numbered cards in his bins. Here's what I was able to find.

Of course, there were tons of oddball cards in the dime bins. These included a couple of Panini inserts, a Bowman 70th anniversary Greg Maddux, and a card from 2001 Upper Deck Decade. My dad chose the Leon Durham Rivalry insert from 2013 Panini Hometown Heroes. The idea behind the insert set is players that played for 2 teams that are rivals like Leon Durham did as he played for the Cardinals and the Cubs. 

There were other oddball cards as well that all had something in common. Cliff Floyd, Adam Dunn, Will Clark, and Monte Irvin are all players that I collect but are also all players that I haven't gotten new cards of in a while. Cards of these 4 players are pretty scarce, especially Cliff Floyd. It can be hard to find these players at the card show, which is the place I go to the most to acquire new cards. I don't know if this is the start of me finding these players at the show more, all I know is it's been a while since I added a Will Clark card to his player collection, so I'm very happy about that.

I also kept with the idea of collecting "retro" cards in the dime bins. It was recently brought to my attention in a recent post that I'm usually drawn towards retro cards, and I completely agree with that. Sets like Archives, Heritage, and Gypsy Queen along with other oddball retro cards like the Barry Larkin and Bob Gibson cards above remain some of my favorite cards and sets in my entire collection. I wasn't completely sure if the 2017 Topps Heritage Then & Now was a need for my Heritage set, and it ended up not being one of my needs. However, I still had another place for the card in my Fergie Jenkins player collection.

Like I said before, there are many recent sets in this vendor's bins that are very prominent. However, today there was no set more prominent than 2017 Bowman Chrome. I found many cards from this set that I needed for player collections, including my newest player collection, Christian Arroyo. I pulled an autograph of his last year in a blaster of Heritage High Number, and since he'll be playing for the Rays this season, I'll have a chance to see him more. I figured he was an easy choice for a new player collection.

The next 4 Bowman Chrome cards included a couple of World Series champs in Correa and Rizzo as well as 2 rival players, Goldschmidt and Arenado. I'm not a huge fan of the Bowman base set, but I really like the chrome cardstock Topps uses as well as the high-quality images on each and every single card with the Rizzo and Arenado being my 2 personal favorites.

Keeping with the theme of 2017 cards, I ended up finding 2 2017 Topps Five Tool insert cards that I need for my set. I didn't have my want list with me, so I decided to buy each card for a dime each and see which ones I needed. Turns out the Kyle Seager is actually a card I'm missing, but I have the Arenado card. On the bright side, I'll be able to put the Arenado in my player collection if I can't find someone to trade it to, so it's not too bad of a loss. 

Speaking of Topps Series 1 inserts, I was shocked to find inserts from 2018 Topps Series 1 available for a dime already. I saw a vendor who had Superstar Sensations and Salute inserts for $1 or more later in the show, so I was proud of myself for getting such a good deal. The Cespedes will go towards the Superstar Sensations insert set that I look to build, while the Dawson will go right into his player collection. 

Going into today, I had just 3 cards from 2017 Topps Bunt, Ryan Zimmerman, Ichiro, and Craig Kimbrel. I actually like the sophomore edition of the set a lot, and since there were players I collect available in the selection of Bunt that the dime bins had, I decided to pick up 4 new cards from the set, including 2 Orioles superstars, one of who (Machado) is going to be one of the biggest free-agents of next offseason.

It seemed like each and every part of the dime bin had a certain theme, whether it be the player, set, or overall theme. This next part of the bin combined 2 different themes into 1, Joey Votto and chrome cards. Votto was surprisingly ranked as the #4 player in baseball by MLB just a few days ago after coming off one of his best seasons in years. Votto may be 34 years old, but the 5-time All-Star proved that age is not a factor in his performance after playing in all 162 games last season.

Next, I stumbled upon 4 Allen & Ginter cards that didn't just have a brand name in common, but all featured star players wearing retro-style jerseys. Even Altuve, the sole modern player in this lot is wearing a somewhat retro style Astros jersey that isn't like their regular road uniform. The other 3 players are all wearing obvious retro 60's/70's jerseys.

Stadium Club has never been a set I've bought much of in terms of retail or hobby packs, but I have collected a lot of the set at the card show. How else would I be able to have a John Smoltz Stadium Club card from 2016 and 2017?

But, no matter what I found in the dime bins to start off the show, it always came back to the retro-style cards with old-time players. This start to the card show along with my recent post has truly helped me discover that the types of cards I enjoy the most are retro cards. That probably explains why I hadn't bought many packs of Stadium Club. It's because I prefer retro sets like Archives, Allen & Ginter, Heritage, and Gypsy Queen to most of the overly-modern sets produced nowadays.