The Old Mall Card Shop

I am approaching ten years now in this space. During that time, I have made several vague references to a "mall card shop" near my house that I never really visited. I am not going to name names for this post.  Maybe in a future post. Mall card shops are not really ideal, I do not want to spend a lot of time rehashing all the various reasons. 

The mall with the card shop was in the process of closing prior to the pandemic.  The anchor stores were closed and the mall was filled with all sorts of odd shops.  One of the local high schools had even landed a space in the mall for their robotics teams.  I am not sure exactly when the mall officially closed, but the most recent pictures I can find show it completely shuttered. 

 

I had actually been to the mall card shop several times while the remaining stores were in the process of holding clearance and closeout sales, but it was primarily for a few large card boxes. I discovered a sweet table of old wax boxes on the last trip. I ended up buying a box of 1995 Emotion cards, which was a fun product back in the day.  

At some point in the last year, the mall card shop reappeared within a five minute drive of my house in a new development.  I was curious about the store, but did not make a visit. I figured it was likely going to be similar to its identity as a mall card shop and it's in a little bit of an odd place. The only thing I knew that was on that same street was a trailer park.  

Well, I needed some card boxes a few weeks back, so I loaded the little man in the car and made a visit to the card store.  Not my picture, but it looks nice from the exterior.  Yes, the trailer park is still there, just to the left in this picture. 

I dare say, I was impressed with the store. They had a decent selection of single baseball cards and a lot of wax. The little man spent a good thirty minutes looking through the boxes trying to find some Nolan Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt cards. He ended up with a nice stack of cards. I also ended up buying a few inexpensive Jake Cronenworth cards, but I was just more impressed that the store had card supplies.

Enter this week. We have been in the process of replacing the floors in our house. Our furniture has been moved around. On Wednesday, the little man could not hang out in his room, because our contractor was working on our staircase. 

 

What to do?  

We made another trip to the former mall card shop. Again, I was impressed by the store. The little man was able to track down a few single cards from the Cardinals, Tigers, and Rays players he collects. Those are his three favorite teams. I also ended up with a bunch of single cards that I am posting now, but also ended up picking up some Topps Heritage Minors. That's for a different post.

Here was my haul. All of these cards averaged out to roughly a dollar per card minus the last card. 

I have not really done much with collecting Paul Goldschmidt cards since the Cardinals traded for him in 2019. He was a nice player on the Diamondbacks, but I was not a huge fan. I feel like I have come around a bit after this past year.  Good player, borderline Hall of Famer.  I will try harder on Goldschmidt in the coming year. 

Next up is a MacKenzie Gore. He's from North Carolina and I have a connection to him through work. Not the best year in 2021, but I still think he has a bright future. 

The late 90s Gold Label sets were much better, but still not bad cards.  Picked up a Pujols and Goldschmidt. Not sure if the Class 1, Class 2, and Class 3 cards are the same as the original sets.  Pujols is a Class 3 card, which is why I asked. I believe those were short-printed back in the day.

Next three are all of the newest Cardinal, Steven Matz. Just a bunch of Topps Chrome singles, nothing too fancy. 

 

 

The bottom 1984 style card from the 2019 Topps set is my favorite Matz card out of this group.  I need to go through my Mets and Blue Jays singles from the last few years and see what other Matz cards I have hanging around.   

The next three are cards are all NC State players.  First up is Russell Wilson and Trea Turner.

 

 

Nice to see Russell Wilson shown as a position player with a bat in his hands. There are several Panini cards floating around where he is shown as a pitcher.  Russ was actually a second baseman. Heard he also played for the football team.   

Two T.J. Warren cards.....

I am a team behind on T.J.. The last time I posted one of his cards he was still on the Phoenix Suns. That was two years ago. He's played well on the Pacers so far, although T.J. has still had problems staying on the court due to injuries. Last year, T.J only played four games. This season, he has already missed a game or two with a foot injury. Still my favorite former NC State basketball player.  

Last card for this post.  

An old Durham Bulls favorite, Anthony Banda.  

He was really good for the Bulls a few years back, but has had a few arm injuries and bounced around to the Giants, Mets, and Pirates.  The Pirates used him as a reliever during the second half of 2021 and he seemed to find his stuff again. 

I picked up two boxes of Topps Heritage Minors while I was there. Not very mall-like prices on the boxes, plus I love Minor League baseball cards. That post is for another day. 

Moving On

The labor situation in baseball has been depressing this week.  However, it is even more depressing locally when you consider that we are probably not going to get Minor League baseball this summer.  North Carolina does not have a Major League team, but we do have a whole bunch of Minor League teams, including several that are within an hour of my house. 

I am all about keeping people at home, and staying safe.  Still frustrating not to have baseball. 

This week was my first time off of work since January.  It was a weird school year working from home, but I have been on roughly the same year round school since 2006.  You really get used to the schedule.  Every year for the past fourteen years, I have worked the last week of January, all of February and March, and had a vacation sometime around the first week of April. 

I have been slowly recovering from the change in schedule.  I did not hand write any posts this week.  I turned my computer on, but I also managed to get outside and enjoy some fresh air.  I ended up putting in over 40 miles of walking around my little corner of central North Carolina. 

I also did a bunch of work with my cards this week.  I have really wanted to do a post about sorting cards and organizing for more than a month, and I am finally going to get to that this week.  Somewhere in there I also picked up a few new cards.  Seems to have slowed to a trickle in recent months.  I was excited to see someone on Twitter unloading a card of one of my favorite recent Durham Bulls players.  

I had to grab this one.  

This is from the Diamond Kings set in 2018.  That little logo in the top right corner did not immediately register with me when I first saw the card.  I guess Panini is trying to fancy things up. 

I went through an Anthony Banda phase two years ago.  The Rays got him in a trade for Steven Souza, and he spent part of 2018 pitching in Durham.  He did not pitch much last year, and ended up having Tommy John surgery.  Hard throwing left handed pitcher, misses a lot of bats.  Hopefully, whenever we get to watch live baseball again, I will get to see Banda pitching for the Rays. 

The serial number is hard to read, but it is 02/15.  Nice patch piece on the side too. 

Back of the card. 

Love the phrase "player-used material" in the small print underneath his height and weight.

The person who sold me the card also sent me some bonus cards of Banda and Paul Goldschmidt. 

It was nice to move on from the school year and spend a little more time with my baseball card this week.  The best part is that I have another month and a half off before I have to go back to work. 

Random Envelopes

I spent the end of last week wrangling 80 some fifth graders around Washington D.C..  It's a cool field trip for my students, but leaves me feeling zapped for a few days afterwards.  I still like going, Washington is a fun place to hang around. 

My mail from the first half of the week and end of last week has piled up, so I am condensing it into one short post.  Three envelopes with four cards.  

Envelope 1.  

I did a lot with Anthony Banda cards last year.  He started out the 2018 season with the Durham Bulls, pitched briefly for the Rays, and ended the year on the D.L. after going through Tommy John surgery.  This Triple Threads card was one I was missing.  For some reason, his cards alternate between him being on the Rays and Diamondbacks.  Don't know why, it's just the way Topps rolls.  

Envelope 2.  

The white mark on the left is on the protective sleeve.  Lucchesi went to Southeast Missouri, which is where I went for my undergraduate degree.  It's a teacher's college that is about half way between St. Louis and Memphis.  Not exactly a powerhouse for cranking out professional athletes.  Lucchesi is amongst a small number.   I have been collecting his cards informally since last fall.  I am not going after anything super rare, just some nice looking cards.  I liked this black bordered Heritage card.  Sharp.  

Which brings me to Envelope 3.  Related to envelope 2.  There are two cards.  

Who is Kelvin Anderson?  I actually had someone offer to send me some cards of him a month ago after I posted a Lucchesi card.  He is another professional athlete from Southeast Missouri.  We missed each other in school by a year, but he was a really good player on a really bad team.  I would be surprised if the Indians, now the Redhawks, won 10 games in the 4 years I was in college.  

"The Earthquake", he is from New Madrid like the fault line, had eight consecutive seasons with more than 1,000 yards rushing in the CFL.  Anderson also won the CFL Grey Cup twice.  Two years ago he was elected into the Canadian Football League Hall of Fame.  

Finally, this gem.  

What is this card company?  They make cards of players from Southeast Missouri in a Southeast Missouri uniform?  They are playing Austin Peay in this picture, which might be one of the few Ohio Valley schools that Southeast Missouri has been able to compete with over the years.  Not really a good thing. 

There are copies of this card for $1.50 on Ebay, and there are 7.750 copies.  Not very rare, nor really in demand for a guy in a Hall of Fame.  Still really cool to find out a little bit more about his cards. 

On a side note, the football team has been better of late.  They made the playoffs last year, and won a game in the first round.  They also played Kansas a few years back.....

and came within a touchdown of the Jayhawks.  I mean it's Kansas, but still.  

I Like Art Galleries

I am a really big fan of art galleries.  They are relaxing places.  They are quiet.  They are dark.  They are cold.  I usually have a favorite piece of art, or two at each of the museums that I frequent.  Sometimes, it's something that I have seen in an exhibit.  

Some of my favorites........

At the St. Louis Art Museum I like the Thomas Hart Benton painting "Cradling Wheat".  The shapes in his pictures are always interesting, lots of curved lines.  Always a lot of greens and browns.  Plus, he's a Missouri native and his paintings are plenty of other places around the state.  You can't run a history museum in Missouri if you do not have a Benton painting.  Not sure it's a law, but it feels that way.  

The Duke Nasher Art Museum has some Kehinde Wiley paintings.  When I worked in Durham, we used to take our students on field trips to this museum.  My students were convinced that this was supposed to be Big Boi from OutKast.   

Maybe.  

Could be.  

The North Carolina Art Museum is in Raleigh.  There are some nice permanent pieces there and the museum itself is nice to visit, but I really like the exhibits that go through that museum.  My favorite was a group of Monet paintings that came there about ten years ago.  Nice time....

Even if his paintings are repetitive.  Haystacks, water lilies, some rock formation in France.  It's all good.  

Baseball cards have art too.  Some of it is really good, some of it is not so good.  Picked up two new cards from Topps Gallery a week or two ago.  It has taken me a week or so to catch up on scanning new cards.  

In my opinion, this is a pretty nice art card.  

The paintings on the Gallery cards do not necessarily have to be perfect to win my praise, but the right details have to be there.  When I think of Anthony Banda, I think of sport goggles and tattoos.  The artist of the card got the style and brand of the goggles perfect and the tattoos are pretty close.  The tattoos on his glove arm are some combination of stars and maybe clouds?  There are for sure stars.  

I am not sure how many autographs of Banda I have picked up over the past year, but it is probably in double digits at this point.  I like this card without the autograph, I might have to go find a couple of the different colored versions of this one.  

Next, some art work that deserves a little bit of criticism.  Here is the card....

So, let's start off by stating something positive.  The Cardinals hat and uniform are pretty good.  Now, let's talk about Miles Mikolas.  When I think of Miles Mikolas, I think he has a lot of hair, sometimes he has facial hair, and he's a bit of a free spirit.  On this card, I think he looks like Tom Selleck in Mr. Baseball.  

I am almost sure that Miles Mikolas is a lot more of a free spirit than Tom Selleck.  Tom Selleck is well-groomed like that mustache on the Miles Mikolas card.  Wasn't Tom Selleck in the Army?  Precise hair, precise mustache.  Miles Mikolas has free flowing hair.  It would not have a definite stopping point like the picture.  I haven't brushed my hair in twenty years, I know when someone does not brush their hair.  Miles Mikolas does not brush his hair.   Let's look at how Miles Mikolas rolls.....

Miles Mikolas has a mustache?  Not after the game.  Is that a bolo tie?  Philip Rivers is jealous.  The hair is not neat and it's not brushed.  More hair not brushed.....

and finally, more fashion statement.....

Again, bolo tie, belt buckle, sunglasses, unbrushed hair.  

Free Miles.  

Vacation Day Mail

My work schedule used to have me work on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.  As a person who is employed as an upper elementary school teacher, it was really hard to be productive on this day.  Many students would miss school, and those that showed up were rightfully distracted.  Admittedly, as the adult in the room it was hard to work that Wednesday.

Fortunately, things have changed and all the feelings of Wednesday have now been shifted to Tuesdays.  Although, I feel a little bit more focused.  Especially since I have given up going anywhere on Thanksgiving.  It's my own five day vacation in the middle of the quarter.

I started my vacation by attending a basketball game last night.

My Wolfpack ended up winning pretty handily.  Today, I am onto other things that do not involve work.  A little time spent playing with the kids, a little cleaning before the in-laws get into town, and now I have moved onto working on some cards.

Usually when I get cards in the mail they actually sit on my desk for a few days before I actually get a chance to scan them,  write something about the cards, and post them.  Just the way things are, many other things come before write blog posts about baseball cards.  For today though, I am setting all the grown-up things aside.

Bloggers do mail day posts all the time.  I have not made one of these posts in literally three years.  I will take a break from teaching my son about Oregon Trail on Dos Box.

Let's do it.   Three packages.  First one.

Picked up a Topps Gold Label Anthony Banda autograph.  He's been my Durham Bulls player that I have spent the year collecting.  Topps put him in a Rays uniform for this card, which has been an on going back and forth this year with cards featuring him as a Diamondback.  Banda was traded to the Rays last spring, not sure why he is not a Ray on every card.  I have another Banda card on the way, released after this one, he's a Diamondback.  Quality.

Second package.  

There have not been a ton of Joey Lucchesi cards this year, probably because he plays for the Padres.  The rookie pitcher went to Southeast Missouri State, which is where I happened to go to college for my undergraduate degree.  It's a small teachers college about halfway between St. Louis and Memphis.  Needless to say, there have not been many alumni to reach the Major Leagues.  I have been following him for awhile, fun to see him finally get a few cards.

I cannot keep track of all the variations in this Topps products these days, but this is one of the Chrome Pack cards from this year's Update set.  Nice looking card.

Third package.  Two cards.  Same player.

More Lucchesi.   The top card is a pink refractor which are very common in the Topps Chrome Update product.  The bottom card is a gold refractor, which is serial numbered out of 50.  A little tougher find, but neither is very expensive.

That's it for the mail, unless someone is willing to pay my toll road bill from the state of North Carolina.

A Lazy Morning

It was a really busy week.  No time for baseball cards.  I slept in the last two days, my wife made a good breakfast, and I spent time time with the littles this morning.  I am sitting in my office watching episodes of Tiny Desk Concerts and looking at some the new cards that showed up in my mail recently.  

If only there were more time for baseball cards.  

There is always time for cards on a lazy morning.  

First up, I picked up another Anthony Banda card about two weeks back.  Weird thing is that I got it off of Ebay, half asleep, I did not realize that I bought it from my local card shop.  Probably could have saved myself a little shipping and them an EBay fee.  Not my finest moment.  

Banda has been my Durham Bulls player of choice this season.  He was not on the team long before the Rays called him up to the Majors, but tore up his elbow and ended up missing the rest of the season.  Last season, Anthony Banda pitched for the Diamondbacks and was traded to the Rays for Steven Souza.  A huge chunk of his Topps cards have still had him a Diamondbacks uni.  Better than some bad airbrushing.  

The coloring of the card feels really off.....

It's in the colorized movie neighborhood.  

I also added a few more Kellogg's cards from 1983 to help out with my set.  I will have more of these later in the week......

These were three that I needed for my set.  Love the Greg Minton card with the orange Giants jersey and cool mustache.  Moves me a little closer to finishing off my set.  No time for checklists this morning, but I am in good shape with finishing this off soon.  

I also got a big envelope of random cards.  A thank you for helping out another collector with some cards for a set.  It's hard to post all the cards from a big random envelope, but two stood out to me.  With the 1983 Kellogg's set being close to completion, both are candidates to be projects over the last two months of the year.  

There were actually four of these in the package, but I have enjoyed the 1983 Kellogg's set, so the 1982 version would probably be fun too.  I am actually a lot further along, starting point wise, then I would have imagined before I went to look.  The time spent looking is also part of the reason you're only getting two cards out of a big envelope.   Roughly 50% is already here.  

I don't love this scan, but these cards are hard.  

The last few Denny's sets were actually pretty nice.  This is from the 1997 set, which has a SportsFlix kind of design.  Not a very big set, not hard to find the cards, and most are inexpensive.  Again, this is a set that own a good chunk of already, might be fun to finish off.  

2018 Durham Bulls Team Set Part 1

There are thirty cards in this year's Durham Bulls team set, I am doing fifteen cards in today's post, another fifteen at some point over the weekend.  I scanned the cards in pairs, minus the fifteenth, which I will use to give a little better look at the design.....

Pretty solid design.  I like the use of team color's in the banner and name bar, but I also like that the borders of the card are white.  Feels like it has been awhile since the Bulls have had a set with a white border, I am sure I am forgetting something that happened recently.  

A little busy for my tastes, but at least it is a black and white design.  Color would be complete overload here.  You've got player name and position in the banner, biography box, vitals with the card number squeezed in on the side, three years of stats, and all the Bulls/MiLB legal/copyright stuff.  Let's a lot of stuff in a small space.

Oh, Adam Moore is a catcher.  Seems like a decent Triple A organizational depth kind of player.

Meet half of the team.

My favorite combination of players in this set.  Banda has been a favorite this year since coming over from the Diamondbacks in the Steven Souza trade and Adames has been in Durham for awhile now.  

I am guessing Adames is up for good and will likely never return to Durham outside of an injury rehab.  Banda had Tommy John, so he will definitely be back through town at some point next year.  Hard to believe the Rays are going to let a talented hard throwing left handed starter linger in Triple A too long though.  

Both of these guys were in the Majors for long runs this year.  Castillo is a nasty relief pitcher.  Just unfair.  Bauers was not as good as I thought he was going to be in the Majors, but he is still just 22.  He had some great moments at the dish this year.  

I would say both Bauers and Castillo are up for good in Tampa, but maybe Bauers gets sent back down with a slow start next year.  Could also see him getting moved to the outfield, there are other first baseman on the way.  

Coats and Field are both veteran players.  Field ended the year in the Twins system.  Coats played the whole year in Durham, but I had seen him a few times prior.....

with the White Sox Triple A team in Charlotte.  Coats has some decent upside for a guy in his late 20s.  I actually have a bunch of Field cards in old posts from when he was in college.  He was one of the first USA Baseball people I collected.  

Hazelbaker has been everywhere.  Once a Cardinal, played well with them.  Gibaut is a little under the radar.  He is a big guy who throws hard, made the Triple A All-Star game this year.  

He's a college guy, so he's already 25, but just a really good player.  I think he is up with the Rays next year and is a useful reliever for a long time.  

I had seen Micah Johnson a bunch of times with Charlotte.  Learned a lot about him this year, interesting guy off the field.  Really into art and has had his own shows.  Nice stuff if you follow him on social media.  Hu was on the Bulls last year.  

Mainly a control pitcher.  He has had some good moments with the Rays.  Kind of reminds me a lot of Matt Andriese for whatever reason.  

Two relief pitchers who have been up and down between Tampa and Durham.  

I like Kolarek better.  Lefty reliever with a funky motion.  All need pitchers like that.  

We are at the end.  My second favorite pairing.  McCarthy is a UVA grad.  I saw him a few years back at the ACC Baseball Tournament.  Nice player, not sure how he is going to fair in the Majors, but he played a great few games in the International League Championship.   All of the games were on the road in Scranton because of Hurricane Florence.  McCarthy is from Scranton.  

He is getting a Dundie for best player in a Triple A playoff series.  

Best Dundies ever.  

Lowe caught fire last year between A Ball and Double A and just kept hitting this year.  His line in Durham was pretty unreal and he ended up getting promoted up to Tampa.  He played in roughly 40-50 games with the Rays, played well, should keep an eye on him next year.  Extra base machine.