target

Target and Meijer run

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My wife and I had some errands to run so we stopped by Target and Meijer. Target has a much better baseball card selection than Meijer. I hadn’t bought any Bowman cards for awhile and they had some small packs so I got some of those. I also grabbed some Stadium Club as I wanted something different. Kris Bryant (on the box) kept staring at me, so I picked up a 2017 Topps series 1 hanger pack. (because I don’t have enough Series 1 stuff this year!) My wife picked out the Donruss football cards, but she gave them all to me after pillaging the Colts players. 🙂

2017 Bowman Baseball (4)
2017 Stadium Club Baseball (2)
2017 Topps Baseball Series 1 Hanger (1)
2017 Donruss Football (5)

In the Bowman packs, I landed a Tomoyuki Sugano /499 refractor card.

In the Stadium Club, I found an Anthony Rizzo card with an awesome picture of him standing on the wall to make the catch at Wrigley Field!

As for the Topps Series 1 cards, the only thing I really liked was the Toronto Blue Jays team card. Why a team card? Because this one was blue (well they are the Blue Jays) and has a serial # of 21/50! I’ve never found a blue card like this before so that’s really neat.

As for the 2017 Donruss football cards, it was a mixed bag. I landed my first Mitchell Trubisky card in the form of a Gridiron King which looks pretty snazzy. Not shown is a few other Bears players including a Walter Payton card. There were a lot of duplicates in the packs we picked up, so that was disappointing.

I found a Tony Romo card which didn’t excite me that much until I flipped it over and noticed a mention about my alma mater (Eastern Illinois University) on it.

I attended Eastern Illinois University during the same time that Romo was there in 2000/2001. While visiting the campus on September 11, 2010, I snapped a picture of the retired #17 Romo jersey next to the retired #18 jersey of Saints head coach Sean Payton.

FYI: Did you know that Patriots backup / future quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo played college football at Eastern Illinois University? I’d love to get some of his cards, especially ones showing him in an EIU jersey. 🙂

National Baseball Card Day

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So today, August 12, 2017, was proclaimed national baseball card day by Topps. We don’t have any local card shops in town so I wasn’t planning on being able to participate in this event. I did contact a local card shop in Normal, IL to inquire about this event, but unfortunately they were not participating. I didn’t discover until the event was over that there were several places I could have visited to get free cards.

We were out of town for most of the day and decided to hit Target in Normal, IL on the way home. I was hoping to find more Topps Chrome or at least some 72 card hanging packs, but they didn’t have any. I haven’t been very impressed with Topps Series 2 so far, so we got 4 packs of Topps Series 1. (maybe another Judge RC?)

Clayton Kershaw showed up with a base as well as a Then and Now Bowman card which is pretty neat. I also got the Don Mattingly and George Brett Rediscover Topps cards. The Jeff Robinson 1987 card has the Rediscover Topps stamped on the card.

The only gold card I found was Brian McCann. Then there are the rookie cards including: Alex Bregman, Yoan Moncada, Andrew Benintendi and there he is, Aaron Judge.

Cubs were plentiful in these packs. For some reason I really like the Cubs team card and World Series highlights card. The W flag in the background of the team card along with the fans makes it a great picture! The Kris Bryant Then and Now Bowman card is nice.

So no local card shop visits today, but still was happy to pick up some cards at Target. Supposedly there was a hobby shop in Champaign that had them, but I have yet to confirm. (they were on the Topps list anyway!)

For more info on the event, check out the Topps website:

https://www.topps.com/blog/in-stadium-giveaway-dates-for-national-baseball-card-day/