CardConNW '18: Breakdown

A meeting of the baseball card minds, spearheaded by @breakdowncards netted some great items.

Back in March, Gavin of Baseball Card Breakdown arranged an in-person meeting between several local card bloggers, and I was a lucky enough to be on the invite list. In attendance were Rod from Padrographs, Ken of Cardboard Hogs, and special out-of-town guest star gcrl of cards as i see them, oh my o-pee-chee!, and namesake blog garvey cey russell lopes. Gavin was kind enough to schedule the meet-up at my favorite downtown taproom, which also happens to be a block from my work. I found that after a delicious beer or two, it was slightly less awkward to talk about sports cards in person with other people. Success!

Everyone brought cards for everyone, and this post will focus on the stuff that Gavin gave me. Carlos Martinez is the certified staff ace at this point, and any Stadium Club inserts seem to be a tad difficult to obtain. I still need a lot of the triumverate inserts from these recent sets, but this was nice to get.

I don't have a single Topps Silk Collection card in my set. Well, let's make that "didn't" in the past tense. I don't really quite understand what Topps was going for with these, as printing plate cards at least make sense because they're supposedly involved in the manufacturing process. Silk cards just seem weird and unncessary, but at the same time totally cool because I own one now. Ha!

Gavin is a big collector of the signature cards from the 2003 Topps Retired Signature Series set, so it makes sense that he has a surplus of the so-called base cards from the set. I just like the cards because they use one of my favorite modern Topps designs (2003 Topps) and incorporate past players.

The white borders replace the blue from the base set of the same year, but it's still very recognizable. It looks like Willie is doing some batting cage work perhaps.

This could possibly be a Christmas card. Red and green don't really mix all that well together in my eyes, except for a certain time of the year towards the end of the calendar.

More Wong, this time from last year's Topps Tier One set. I have never laid my eyes on any cards from this set before. It's pretty swanky.

Gavin is well versed in the custom card game, and he even worked up a special card for this special occasion. I need to figure out how to do this someday. It's an itch that I haven't even found a way to scratch yet.

4 of 4! Something, something, eBay joke! I do appreciate that Gavin apparently threw me a bone and mentioned Ozzie's eventual Cardinals stardom, even though I most certainly collect his cards from his formative Padres years.