The Retail Card Aisles of Northern Michigan - Part 1

I made the 15 hour-plus drive to northern Michigan last week with my wife and kids to visit the in-laws. Not the upper peninsula, but rather the top of the lower peninsula. It's a really quiet place in the winter as you can imagine. The peace and quiet was great with the way this school year has gone. There was nothing I had to do, and no place I had to go.  

My kids got outside to enjoy the snow....

There was really good food as always. My in-laws are some combination of French-Canadian and Polish decent. The traditional holiday food at their house is usually some combination of the two, so there are meat pies and pastries (French Canadian) and pirogies (Polish).  

Homemade, created with love, not out of a freezer box.  

Onto the cards.

The town has two big box retail stores. There is a Meijer and a Wal-Mart. Both stores somehow have an abundant selection of retail baseball cards. Living outside of Raleigh, I can count the number of times I have seen packs or boxes of baseball cards at a retail store during the past year and a half. It is a rarity. 

Meijer and Wal-Mart four hours north of Detroit? 

Some of the Meijer baseball card display is cut-off on the left-side, but you get the idea. The place is completely full on retail cards. Some of the displays within the section have not been touched. I asked about the cards that were being sold at Service Desk on Saturdays. The answer was a generic, "hockey cards".  I could see that.  

Wally World.  

Needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed the snow, good food, but also these two fine retail baseball card aisles in northern Michigan.  I made several visits to these two places during my week and a half in Michigan, so I am splitting the post into two halves with a breakdown of the different card products.  

First up, is some Topps Holiday, which I bought at Meijer. It's on the second shelf from the top in the right side. They were completely untouched. If I did not buy them, they would still be there right now. My wife was mildly amused with the purchase holiday themed baseball cards. 

I was trying to put the set together, which I am close to doing. Here are some of my highlights from my three boxes.....

We have got some ornament box toppers. These feel like they are a rip-off from old Pacific cards. Pacific used to release their base set around Christmas. I believe their final year or two there were Christmas ornaments in the packs. The Pacific ones had cooler shapes and they did not airbrush cheesy Santa hats on the players.

Snowmen relics.    

Love the Aaron Judge with the pinstripe running through the middle of the jersey swatch.  

I also got a few Santa hat and scarf variations.  

Obviously the Dylan Carlson card is a favorite here. Although, after pulling these cards I tried to pay attention to whether or not people still wear scarves. It snowed a few times while we were in Michigan and it was really cold. No, people no longer wear scarves.  

Favorite Cardinals cards. 

Tio Albert of the Dodgers has a different vibe than Anaheim Albert. Nice that Topps has made a few cards of him with the Dodgers. Hopefully this ages better than the Ken Griffey Jr. cards with the White Sox.  The Arenado card just seems to fit him a player. He makes a face like this seemingly once a week. Who knows when this picture was taken.  

Not a favorite Cardinals card, but it was weird to see Jon Lester with the birds on the bat.  

The Cardinals scotch taped together a rotation for the last two months of the season, which included Lester. He pitched well for them, but as a long-time Cub and member of a Red Sox team that beat the Cardinals in the World Series, it was weird to see this card.  

My favorite Durham Bulls player in the set is Jake Cronenworth.  

There is no card of Blake Snell wearing a Santa hat this year. I feel a little sad about that.  

That brings me to the second part of my post, which features cards from a few packs of Panini Chronicles. I picked these up at Wally World. I was sent there to buy a star tip for a frosting bag. These cards are better than fancy shaped frosting. Not a huge Panini cards fan, more a curiosity with this purchase. I had actually opened a pack of these a few weeks back. Some of the cards were interesting. Why not?  

There are 15 cards in a pack with a variety of different designs. I have no idea if these cards are all a single set or different sets packaged together.  

These are really thick cards with heavy card stock. Nice glossy finish too. I pulled two relics out of my three packs. Love the AJ Puk card. I saw him pitch with the College National Team at USA Baseball a few years back. Good college pitcher, hoping he can pull it together in the Majors.  

"OverDrive" sounds kind of dumb, but I like the overall design. Yes, I am ignoring the airbrushed logos. Both cards would be in the "shiny" category in terms of finish. I like the pink hues on the cards.  The Dalbec is some sort of parallel, but it's not serial numbered or anything.  

Next group of cards are all acetate.  

The white background is from the scanner. Are these from the same set or subset?  Why is Aaron Judge standing on some sort of island?  I like acetate cards, but I am not sure about these.  

Last cards for this post.  

These two cards have a similar finish as the Juan Soto and Bobby Dalbec, but without the stupid "OverDrive" wording over the card. I like the diamond design in the background. The Ke'Bryan Hayes is a parallel with more sparkle than the Acuna, but not serial numbered.  

Tomorrow, I will share out a few more cards that I picked up while visiting the retail card aisles of north Michigan.