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. 

Same School, Same Card, But.....

It's story time y'all.

Once upon a time there was a quarterback at NC State who also played on the school's baseball team.  We will call him Russell.  Now, while he played both sports in college, most people knew him for his football talents.

Russell had some pretty good wheels and was a really accurate passer.  The NC State football team had some pretty good years with Russell under center.  Most importantly they did not lose to the dreaded light blue team from Chapel Hill.  Best play was the two yard Hail Mary in 2010.

As I mentioned before Russell also played baseball for three years while he was in Raleigh.  He was mainly an infielder, although he pitched a little here and there too.  His best year on the diamond came in 2010 when he hit .306/.439/.490 in 47 games.  ACC is no slouchy baseball league, so those are solid numbers.  

Russell was drafted in the summer of 2010, but returned to State to play football in the fall.  The spring of 2011 was spent with the Rockies who eventually sent him to play with the Asheville Tourists.  He had an alright summer, but quit the Rockies towards the end of the Minor League season.  

Big Russ picked up his telephone and called Tom O'Brien, the NC State football coach, but was told that the school had another quarterback who was ready to start.  Mike Glennon was tall and looked a little bit awkward at times, but he also had some really good moments playing at State.  My favorite....

Russell Wilson transferred to some B1G school and won some games there.  Since the whole relationship was Russell has been weird.  People in Raleigh really want to still love Russell.  He got invited back to the spring football game have his jersey retired by the school.....

and Russell has come up with clever ways at times to merge the two schools together.....

Whole Pack of Badgers is pretty good, but Russell hasn't really dropped the whole thing about not getting his quarterback job back at NC State.  For whatever reason Wisconsin invited him as a graduation speaker a year or so ago and Russ rehashed the whole story about NC State not giving him his starting job back after he quit the team. 

Boo Hoo.  

Which leads to a baseball card.  If you go and look at a list of current baseball players who went to school at NC State you'd end up with Carlos Rodon and Trea Turner as the two most recognizable names.  Pretty good talent there.  

In fact that team was good enough to make a trip to the College World Series in 2013.  It was a pretty cool thing to see as a Wolfpack fan.  

You know who wasn't on that team?  Russell.  Russell Wilson never made a College World Series appearance.  In fact, he was never even on the same team as Trea Turner or Carlos Rodon.  The best Major League player that State had while Russ played with in Raleigh was Jake Buchanan.  

Nothing wrong with Jake.  It's just that he's not Trea Turner, nor Carlos Rodon.  So, here is the card....

Okay.  First, I was in school while Russell Wilson was the quarterback at State.  I really liked watching him play football and have great memories of sitting in the student section watching him do his thing.  Probably my favorite game I saw him play in was his freshman year against Miami.  Really did a lot of damage with his feet.  Great game to watch.  

I also understand why State did not give him his scholarship back.  You quit a team, they moved on.  End of story.  Back to the card.  

I have been looking for a Russell Wilson autographed card for awhile now.  I have some non-autographed cards of him with in a Wolfpack uni......

The problem with the Russell Wilson baseball autographs has always been price.  There are always a bunch up on Ebay, but they are way too expensive for what I would spend on a Russell Wilson baseball card.  

That's $299.99.  I did not pay that much for my copy of this card, or anything close to that price.  This is not just one of those jacked up prices on Ebay either.  The Russell Wilson NC State autographs are always priced like this by almost everyone who sells one.  Luckily I was able to trade for a copy of this card.  Hurt a lot less.  

Overall, there is something a little odd about this baseball card.  I know that Panini put them together on a card because they went to the same school, but.....

• They never played together
• I am not sure you could really argue that Russell Wilson was ever a great baseball player 
• I am not sure that Russell Wilson wants to have much to do with NC State at the moment
• Russell Wilson was not really a pitcher 
• Carlos Rodon makes a lot more sense for this card..or give me Dan Plesac.  Someone.  Anyone.  

Football Players Playing Baseball Celebrating Shopping

A friend on Twitter pointed me in the direction of this card a few weeks ago which has been sitting in my held mail stack at my local post office.  As an alumni of NC State, I am always happy to pick up a few cards of some of the their former players.  Russell Wilson is more known for his time as the school's quarterback, he was also a pretty good baseball player.

Panini has made several Russell Wilson baseball cards, as a Wolfpacker, this year, but I have not had the chance to pick up many of them.  Obviously the autographs of Wilson are really pricey and probably are not going to happen.  Still, some of the base cards and inserts are pretty affordable.  I am not sure about the whole Black Friday patch on this card, but I will take it.

After a year and a half, a football card

I had the chance to pick up a really nice card the other day in the dime bin of a local card shop.  It was a surprising card to find there since much of the Raleigh-Durham sports market revolves around college sports and the athlete featured on today's card is one of the better local athletes that you can find.  Now, the title of my post would suggest that I was going through the football dime bin, but I was actually in the baseball bin.  The card is technically a baseball card, but it just has a football player on the front.

2010 Bowman Draft Green Russell Wilson 

This 2010 Bowman Draft Russell Wilson is the green parallel to the base card that he has in the set and is numbered out of /399.  I have a pretty good start to the Russell Wilson "card rainbow", but I guess I was maybe one of the few people that was excited to see him appear on a baseball card back in 2010 which made it fairly easy to pick up the parallels on the cheap.

Wilson's popularity has grown over the past few years since he has been drafted by the Seattle Seahawks and is now considered one of the up and coming college quarterbacks.  His NFL stardom has actually made the prices of his baseball cards skyrocket from cards that were worth a few cents to cards that are worth a few dollars.

Frankly, I was surprised that a Russell Wilson card was in the dime bin at a card shop in this area considering that Russell Wilson brought the area three years of great football.  I am a baseball person first, basketball second, and football third, but I still watch all the NC State games and loved when Wilson was making plays like this for the Wolfpack:

Plus it was against the Tar Heels.  GTHC.  Now, baseball complicated Wilson's football career at NC State since he was drafted by the Rockies as a baseball player after his junior year.  Wilson played two summers of professional baseball and returned to NC State to be blocked by Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Mike Glennon.  State released Wilson from his scholarship and he ended up at Wisconsin.  

Personally, I had no problem with Wilson trying his hand at baseball and also had no problem with NC State releasing Wilson from his scholarship given that they thought he had moved on to baseball.  State fans though are apparently, at least some that own card shops, are still seething over Wilson's final college season spent at Wisconsin.  For what it's worth Wilson has tried to smooth things over by saying "Pack of Badgers" when he is on Sunday Night or Monday Night Football giving credit to both Wisconsin and NC State.  

In the meantime, I did see Wilson play baseball and can say he was really raw.  He's a great athlete, but he also did not get a ton of playing time until later in the baseball season which seemed to hold him back.  His last minor league season was spent in Asheville, but I did not drive out to see him play, but ESPN did run a story about his baseball talents in January.  It's fun to think about what ifs, but will always really enjoy collecting Wilson's one baseball card which is a cheap and inexpensive cool card to add to your collection.