Weekend card show - Syracuse Part 1

As I mentioned in my last post, I went to two card shows last weekend. 

Saturday saw me wake up early, and make the two hour drive to meet up with Night Owl. He was then kind enough to do the rest of the driving to the Syracuse card show.

I will say that it was better that the Syracuse show was on the Saturday as the weather was a lot better on Saturday. There was more snow on Sunday, and I probably wouldn't have made the drive then.

Before going into the show, Night Owl gave me a team bag of cards, and apologized that there were so few Browns cards in it.

There were four.

The first was a nice 1993 Topps Gold card of Touchdown Tommy. I already have a copy of this Tommy Vardell card in my collecction, but it was good to see the card again.

The next card was a Prospector Emerald insert card of Tim Couch from the 2000 SAGE HIT series. It is numbered out of 999 on the front.

I needed this card, and am more than happy to add another Tim Couch card to my collection.

The third Browns card was this Retrospective Jerseys card of Braylon Edwards from the 2006 Fleer Hot Prospects set.

I also needed this card.

The last of the four Browns cards was this Rated Rookies Autograph Bronze insert card of Rashard Higgins from the 2016 Donruss Optics set.

This card was another one that I needed in my collection. I'm not generally like the Sportscards From the Dollar Store blog in reviewing penmanship and autographs, but this one seems a little weak. I guess I can see that the first part of the scribble may be a R, but after that, let's just swirl the pen a bit?

It turns out that I needed three of the four Browns that Night Owl found for me. I'm very happy with that.

Along with those Browns, I was also given a number of Mets cards.

I know that Night Owl is working on his 2025 Topps Heritage set. He provided me with some Mets from it.

I really think that last year's team missed the energy that Jose Iglesias brought to the team in 2024, especially with his OMG song.

I've always liked Brandon Nimmo, and his style of game, and wish him well with the Rangers. I'm going to miss watching him regularly.

I was hoping that the Mets would re-sign Edwin Diaz. As much as my nerves may have been tested when he came into games, he usually came out of it with the save. He often came up with big strikeouts when he needed them. (Sometimes after allowing walks and stolen bases to make me nervous.)

As I'm typing this, I just heard that Pete Alonso  has signed with Baltimore. Wow!

I don't fully understand all the criticism towards Alonso's defense. His throwing was bad at times, and he may not have had the greatest range, but I saw him scoop a lot of poor throws up to save the defense. The fact that he was always in the lineup, and the runs he produced overcame those flaws.

I guess it is easy for me as a fan to be upset with Alonso, Diaz and Nimmo being gone from last year's team, but it isn't my money paying them. I just hope there is a plan to replace them.

I still like all three players and hope they have much individual success.

I liked seeing the two 2024 Topps Holiday cards in the bag, with the regular card and Christmas tree variation of Jeff McNeil. Cool!

And this photo definitely shows that the lighting in my room wasn't good when I was taking them.

I know that everyone thinks of Tom Glavine as a Mets pitcher since he did win his 300th game there. He had a solid five seasons with the team.

I'm not very familiar with Chuck Estrada, but did see that he pitched seven seasons in the Majors. His final season was 1967 with the Mets.

I had heard of Tommie Agee for being on the 1969 Miracle Mets, but I didn't know until a few years back that he hit the only home run to the upper deck in left field at Shea Stadium.

Here are a couple of numbered cards. I think Curtis Granderson was a favorite wherever he played, and this is a nice Gypsy Queen card to own.

I think that the Mets are going to try playing with a  bunch of their younger talent this year. Brett Baty has shown flashes of really good play with the Mets, and he will need to play consistently to help the team.

Again, the lighting in the room sure didn't help the top card look good in the photo that I took.

I loved watching R.A. Dickey pitch with those knuckleballs, and was happy to see him win 20 games and the Cy Young in 2012.

And I'll end the Mets cards with a Mike Piazza card.  That always puts me in a better mood.

As Night Owl mentioned in his show recap, upon entering the show, we saw tables being run by his former colleague's family. I spent some money there on Browns cards, which will be among the cards in the second part of my show recap. 

A little further down there was a table that had a lot of interesting Bills stuff. It caught my eye and I wandered over to it. When the dealer there saw my Browns jacket, he said he had something that I might be interested in just around the corner of his table. I was intrigued, so I moved over to take a look.

It was a custom art piece/print that a friend of his made. It sounds as though his friend has done athletes and musicians. Coming in a cheap frame with a $5.00 price tag, I was in.

And once again, I didn't really notice my shadow in the picture until I put it into the blog.

In my recent Detroit card show blog, I picked up the 1989 and 1990 Pro Set Final Update sets.

For the original cover price, I added the 1991 Pro Set Final Update set. Again, I probably have an open one somewhere.

The seller also had a number of 3 sheet team sets for the 1993 McDonalds Gameday cards.

I already have the Browns set, and they didn't have Bills or Raiders sets that would have been nice to pick up for friends, but they did have a Packers set that I will be giving to a friend as part of her Christmas present.

He also had another set of pages that I had never seen before.

For another $5 I picked up the six sheets that Fleer and Sports Cards Magazine put out in 2001, with six cards on each page.

The seller had a bunch of other interesting items that I didn't buy, but I really wanted to make sure I was getting some Browns cards at the show, and this was one of the first tables that I had visited.

I'll continue my show post later with a part two, mostly of Browns cards but with a few other different items that caught my eye.