A Great Way To Spend A Special Day

The last half of my summer vacation was spent hanging out in Grand Rapids, Michigan for my sister-in-law's wedding.  My wife was in the wedding, along with son and my daughter.  I was happy just being able to throw on a shirt and tie, and not have to rent a tux.  Most of my time was actually spent wrangling the flower girl.

With everyone running around for the eight hours before the wedding, I needed to find away to keep busy that did not involve getting the little one dirty.  No playgrounds, no parks, so we decided to check out the local card scene.

Grand Rapids has a nice card shop called All Star Sports.  It was easy to find for someone who is not from the city.

I spent a good amount of time just walking around when I first got into the store, which has a new owner, and a great staff.  They are clearly reworking parts of the store, but there are plenty of single cards, some old wax, current wax, memorabilia, and just about anything else that you would want to find in a sports card shop.  I think that the new owner has a good vision for the space too. 

I picked up a couple of modern singles for my collection, and if I had been better prepared for my visit, could have probably closed out finding all the single 2019 base cards of Cardinals, Durham Bulls, and former NC State players that I collect.  They also had some nice vintage singles that I flipped through, but at the moment I am looking for Durham Bulls players from the 1960s and earlier.  Not an easy find, but there were some sharp looking cards nonetheless.  

Since I have slowly drifted back into not having much of a card shop here in Raleigh, I decided to spend my time and money working on some 2019 Stadium Club.  The store owner Eric gave me a great price on the cards, and I sat in the store and opened the packs.  

Here is what I got out of two boxes.  

I am not sure of the exact breakdown of which autographs came together.  I do not really have any connection to Ryan O'Hearn other than he hit everywhere in the Minors, and had 1.2 WAR in 44 games last year with the Royals.  He's not having a great year, but he's on the Royals.  I am going to file this away for another day.  

Ray Black is a former Pitt Panther from way back when they first joined the ACC.  I know they have been somewhat of a train wreck in baseball since joining the conference, but they were actually decent when Black was there.  Three Major League players on the team with Black, Kevan Smith, and Matt Wotherspoon (not misspelled) from the Norfolk Tides.  He's beating the Durham Bulls as I type.  

Briceno played locally here a few years back for the Carolina Mudcats.  He's a defense first catcher, not much of a hitter.  None of that really matters though, this is an awesome card.  Pictures of walk off home runs always make for good baseball cards.  

Last up is my favorite Gwinnett Striper, pitcher Touki Toussaint.  He's good, but gets overlooked often because he's a young guy on the Braves.  One day the Braves will let Touki start, or they will trade him to a team that will start him. 

All the autographs are on card too.  

Here a few more of my highlights.  I did not finish sorting out my colored parallels of the base cards, but I know I have several reds, blacks, black and white, and sepia cards.  Mainly sticking with the insert cards for the moment.  

The bottom right Griffey card is serial numbered out of 99.  The rest are all non-serial numbered cards.  

Love that Snell card.  There is an autographed version of this card out there, but the copies are rather expensive at the moment.  Maybe at some point it will appear on a Blake Snell autograph post.  I wish.  

This is my bad scan for the week.  I love the Chrome cards, had to scan these even though I am trying to stick with inserts over parallels.  Might need to go find all of the Rays and Cardinals in this set.  

Good looking set of cards.  The Marp was my only Cardinals insert that I pulled out of my two boxes.  Some great young players in this insert.  

Love that Topps squeezed in a set for fast players.

So, overall......

I had a great time sitting in the store opening packs, and talking about cards.  All Star Sports Cards came highly recommended to me from one of my followers on Twitter, and I would completely agree that this is a great local card shop.  If you live in Western Michigan, or just pass through it, this is worth a stop.  I live 800 miles away, and would not hesitate to give them my business.

In the end.....

it was a great wedding, and a great way to spend my day.