A truly wonderful thing happened in my home town a few years ago, and it is way past time for me to put up a post on this. I guess I didn't want to jinx anything but things are definitely looking great for Baseball Cards in my little ole home town of 8,000 souls. For the first time in my entire life, I have been enjoying the wonderfulness of having a Friendly Local Card Store!
As much reflection as image I guess, but an authentic picture. Let's see the inside...
Another exciting pic, I know. But I wanted to include the key feature there - tables and chairs. That is the one thing I always most want to see in a card store as then you know you can sit down and either shop cards, or enjoy opening your brand new cards.
Shop: Up North Collectors
Where: 339 River St. Manistee, MI
Website: https://upnorthcollectors.com/
Owner: Luke
Card Inventory: Just exactly perfect. The row of items on the back wall are all boxes for sale, those display cases are full of singles, and not seen in this photo is a set of shelving holding $1 boxes and team sorted $5-ish singles.
Collecting Supplies: Plentiful. Ultra•Pro for the win.
Space to Rip Your Purchases: As seen above.
Baseball Cards : other cards — about 30:70 I think. But that's - a good thing.
21st Century Survival Strategy: Basically, all of them. Luke and his father have a small but active breaking service with its own YouTube channel, are very active selling cards on eBay, and also now semi-routinely set up at card shows within moderate distances. Additionally Luke is clearly an expert not just at all varieties of sports cards, but is probably the most knowledgeable person I have ever met when it comes to gaming cards, about which I know absolutely nothing except one thing: they are a big business and running a Baseball Card store for me to enjoy immensely probably would be a lot more challenging without knowing gaming cards inside/out.
Cool Customer Service: Oh yes. Aside from routinely dispensing excellent, ethical advice while explaining cards to people all day, every day, Up North offers a wonderful service - submission of cards for grading. They get a bit of a bulk discount, passed along to you, and handle all the shipping & receiving for you - no Porch Pirates to worry about, everything insured, etc. This is a ginormous help compared to doing-it-yourself.
Memorable Quote #1: "Oh I hit my number at the casino last night, so I figured I would put it into cards for fun." — A couple months back I watched someone sequentially rip 3 full boxes of Topps Chrome Update, hoping for hits. It was pretty cool to see the whole product at once like that, and a lot of cards I would just never see in-person, otherwise.
Memorable Quote #2: "Damn, another Pitcher Auto." — Same guy as above who did indeed hit a relatively unknown Rookie Pitcher for every single autographed card he pulled.
Treasure Wistfully Not Obtained: Every time I am in this store I see something I would like to own. Today's visit showed me this card:
Which I just cribbed from COMC for you, and for me, to get a better view of it. This is a mini from inside a rip card in the "Topps Rip" product last year.
I quite like this design with a clear nod to Hokusai's immortal "Great Wave" print. Unfortunately because the vast majority of collectors care more about the value of x in the /x serial numbering of rare cards than any bit of imagery on a card, that serial number was stamped on the front of the card which really detracts from such a nice compact little bit of graphic-ness.
There are no less than 9 different versions of that little card, each with a different production quantity - but each and every one has that serial # stamped on the front. Except one version - the probably even more extra rare "Image Variation" version which swaps out the player photograph for a different tiny photo (exciting, woo) & then drops the serial numbering to make the "Variation" more mysterious. So maybe I can score a couple of those, some day, somewhere.
Treasures Obtained: This year has been wonderful visiting Up North Collectors. They have been increasing their presence at card shows and thus have built up an excellent set of dollar and 50-cent boxes. When I get a rare day off in my very own hometown I can stop by the shop in the morning, bring in an excellent cup of coffee from the coffee shop next door, and sit down with a four-row dollar box jam-packed with random fun. I seriously doubt I could shop for Baseball Cards in a more relaxing setting; certainly not at a card show with a cup of coffee at hand and no one else waiting to see the cards. It makes for an incredible hour+ solidly inside the world of Baseball Cards - real Baseball Cards, held in my hands, not stared at on a screen, with no worries about work or elderly family or the bottomless To Do list, just, Baseball Cards.
Some of the cards in the box I could possibly attain for less than one dollar, if I very carefully shopped for them - but some I definitely could not. But I don't care; they usually cost only 75¢ when the day's bill is read off at the cash register, and I want this store to be within just a few minutes drive away from me forever and ever, basically, so I shop there whenever I can, and probably have about 100 cards purchased this way already.
So I thought I would scan ten cards from today's Dollar Box morning, selected randomly, and share them with y'all; this will make for a nice set of blog posts in the weeks ahead because you don't know what's in those dollar boxes - & neither do I. Let's take a look:
I love Pink baseball cards. They pleasantly remind me of when pink Bubble Gum came with the cards. I wish the parallel in Topps Baseball had a higher print run than /50, but that will never change.
I used to quite like purchasing hangers of Topps Chrome with their bonus pack of 4 Pink cards, for just $12 or so. But that was olden times. These days, Chrome Pinks arrive just 2 per blaster and those blasters cost $40 where I live - & I only really want the Pink cards. Farewell, Topps Chrome.
So I might or might not put together a "set" of just 9 Pink cards each year; any more I am leaning towards "not." But I do think I will instead assemble an even easier collection: just one Pink card from Chrome every year. I already know that's what I am going to do with those goofy Sapphire versions of these very same cards. If that's what happens between me and 2023 Topps Chrome Pink, this will be the perfect card for the effort. Pink & Powder Blue - quite the combo. Show me another Baseball Card featuring Pink socks. I'll wait.
Deciding to collect any Baseball Cards I like, just 9 at a time, has really freed me to start some collections I would otherwise be far too afraid of. I would immensely enjoy completing a set of 1956 Topps, but that is simply never going to happen in my life unless maybe if I dropped all other hobbies, most particularly enjoying modern Baseball Cards as they appear, brand new, and that is simply never going to happen, either.
But I can certainly aspire to completing a purdy binder page of just 9 1956 Topps Baseball Cards, so I just bought my first one, for one whole dollar, sorta. Although, this is card #4 in the set, so we'll see what happens, later, when I win the Lottery.
For this card though, I was happy to learn about this player, who hit .299 in 1955 - very respectable. Additionally I learned that Paula was born in Havana and thus I began to wonder about the history of Cuban baseball players; I would not have guessed they started reaching the Bigs in the mid-1950s already. I was also happy to obtain an original Washington Nationals card.
This was a less triumphant purchase but will help fill a binder slot, for a while. For the most expensive RCs, I look for a reprint to keep with all the 59 At Bat RCs around them on the checklist. I think there are other reprint versions of this card, or the "Factory Set" version, or that 3rd version, that won't have TOPPS ROOKIE HISTORY stamped on the front for no real purpose - stamp up the reprints on the back, dummies. But for now this will help keep me from forgetting why there is an empty slot in the binder, which always makes me think I need to track down yet another one of those 59 AB RCs that I forgot about, instead of forgetting that superstars have Rookie Card cards, too.
I very casually collect Topps Rookie Cup cards. By casually I mean I almost never buy them, deliberately, but soon have to order a few from 2012. So I never really thought about collecting the inaugural run of them - until today. To start out at just a buck, sure, what the
2023's "Mr. Mysterious," as I think of him. After a rookie campaign so not memorable I first learned who this player was in the first week of October, it seemed like pitching very well in the playoffs was just another whatevs for this guy. So this card's 100% nonchalant expression seemed to fit him perfectly and you can probably guess about how many 1988/2023 Topps cards I am going to collect. I always like seeing what Topps has to do with the longest team name on designs that didn't originally contend with it.
A Bowman card? There is probably no other way I would ever obtain any more Bowman Baseball Cards than this. Maybe I would try a few more of them if I could still buy "packs" of them instead of $25 mini-boxes, but the days of basically cheap hanger packs are probably never going to return.
There is a pretty good chance this might be the only "Third Baseman" Baseball Card for Torkelson, so I thought it would be neat to see a reminder of that, many years from now. Torkelson has never played a single 1/3 of an Inning at Third Base in the Major Leagues, and never will. But the Tigers thought it could happen, & on Bowman Baseball Cards, things like this do happen.
My almost-but-not-quite thinking on 2023 Topps Baseball really made me appreciate 1983 Topps all the more, so I recently decided to collect the full run of them issued in 2018. This card would only cost me 20¢ on Sportlots, which is where I will head to finish the little (150 cards) project, someday. But not today.
The modern topps logo up there should make you realize as quickly as the perfect whiteness that this is just a simple re-print. Thankfully the only thing added to the front of this 2010 card is the word topps.
But that shoulder patch - that I had to have on a card.
Another day, another Mike Trout card. At least it's a basically brand new Mike Trout card where he doesn't look Un-happy. And there aren't too many Red, White, and Blue Mike Trout cards. So for a brief look at 1988, this will fit quite pleasingly.
More Bowman, what up? Riley Greene had one of the most disappointing Topps Baseball Rookie Cards I can recall in a minute - he looks like he just banged one straight into the ground in front of home plate and he is definitely going to be Out.
So I decided I needed many other Riley Greene Rookie Card cards to help wash the memory of that one right a ways away from me. With my recent success at creating a page of 9 different Jazz Chisholm RCs, I realized I could easily do the same for Riley. Thanks, Bowman.
So I had such a pleasant Baseball Card day (more treasures to share with you some other evening), I can't count right, tonight. This isn't just a card showing the poor little children how to fit their Hank Aaron puzzle pieces together - it is an actual die-cut puzzle at regulation Baseball Card size of 2.5" x 3.5" which is something I can't recall ever owning before. I know somewhere I have a Clemente card showing what the Donruss puzzle pieces are supposed to look like all assembled, but that one isn't an actual working puzzle. Though this one would probably take longer to take all apart than it would to put back together. This "card" might or might not fit into a little Hank Aaron project I have on my perpetually expanding Baseball Card horizon, we'll see. But for just a buck...
...Life is good when you have a good LCS like Up North Collectors.
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