A Blogger Walks Into A Card Store....

I am prepping for school to start back up in the next two weeks which is always a little bit stressful, but I found a little bit of down town this week to stop by Big D's Card Shop in Raleigh.  I will have another post about my favorite local card shop again at some point tomorrow.  My post this evening is going to focus a bunch of cards that the owner of Big D's, Jimmy, has found and set aside for me over the past month or so.  

Three of the cards I picked up today are really nice autographs from one of my favorite former Durham Bulls Evan Longoria.  Each card is a pretty low print run and not the easiest of finds.  Let's start with a Topps Unique autograph.  

I do not recall ever seeing this card before Jimmy showed it to me and I am a pretty big Longoria fan.    I also really like the Topps Unique set.  It's numbered to just 25 copies and there has not been a copy of this card sold on Ebay recently.  In fact, there is not one of COMC, Collector Revolution, or Amazon.  Nowhere.  I had to pick up this card.  With none around and a print run of just 25, it's likely not around because the other copies of this card are in collections and they are not going anywhere.  

Next up is a nice copy of a Tribute Longoria autograph which is just serial numbered to 20.  I have seen plenty of Longoria autographs from the Tribute sets, but I have never seen this gold card.  I love the gold color, the two bat pieces, and the Longo autograph.  Next...

The highest numbered card here, but still just 99 copies and a rookie card to boot.  This is the blue edition of the Rays third baseman's rookie card.  The scan is a little blurry and scratchy because it's in a screw down holder.  This might be my favorite card out of the lot.  Yes, I know Longoria is wearing the old style Rays uniform, but I used to love these old Bowman's Best set.  This is a great card.  I might have to take it out of the screw down and rescan it.  

While I was at Big D's I also picked up a few other items.  I had two other cards that Jimmy had set aside for me at the store.  The first was a Matt Adams Jumbo Bat/Autograph card from the 2012 Topps Finest Set.  

I have a copy of this card, but it has a jersey relic instead of a bat relic.  I think I bought the jersey relic version of this card the first week the set was out and gave up on even looking for the bat relic or just did not look for it at all.  Either way, this card has found a happy home in my collection.  

Lastly, I picked up this nice in-person autograph of Cardinals prospect Stephen Piscotty.  He played here this week during the Triple A All-Star game.  The Durham Bulls had an autograph meet and greet on Tuesday, but I did not get to attend.  This Piscotty was in the shop and too hard for me to pass on.  Really cool picture and a nice autograph.  

Bonus items?  Yes.  

I picked up a card from a customer in the store.  Sent over a little bit of Paypal and landed this cool looking Longoria autograph.  You can't have too many.....

Jimmy also had a cool Jeremy Hellickson Durham Bulls program he had in the back of his shop.  Pretty sweet item.