A day on the town with Fuji!

First off, if anyone ever has a chance to hang out with Fuji and Mike, take them up on the offer!  Fuji and Mike are super chill, great to hang out with, and have really good insights and conversations on sports cards!  Fuji pinged me a few weeks ago and asked if I was interested in going to the Frank and Son Collectible Show east of Los Angeles.  Heck yeah I was...a quick check with my better half and I was committed.  Regrettably, I was unable to attend the Dodgers game with Fuji and Mike the night before, but hopefully my rain check will be good for a while.  As soon as I arrived at the show's parking lot, Fuji was already bearing gifts and he handed me these sweet Yuta Tabuse cards.  The first being a sweet 2004 Skybox Limited Edition #34/35 in PSA 9 (my scanner doesn't do this card justice).  This die-cut card is only the second graded card I own and a real stunner!  Plus he hooked me up with this 2004 UD SPx Auto'd Rookie Jersey of Tabuse #1809/1999.  Both of these fill huge holes in my collection.  Thanks Fuji!

Fuji also brought a brick of the Round Tripper Licorice....yum!  For those of you who haven't tried it, check it out.

Fuji also loaded me up with a bunch of cards in shoe boxes for me to look through and pick through before they ended up at a thrift shop.  I grabbed a few cards for my brother and me as well as a few cards for some fellow collectors before they ended up getting donated.

We entered and the experience was pretty amazing and hard to believe they have this show twice a week.  The show wasn't quite what we were expecting in terms of the number of sports card booths as they were swamped by the toys and collectibles arena, but I was able to walk away with these two non-sports cards for a buck.  The first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, and one of the most influential figures in military aviation, Gen Curtis LeMay.  I realized that I should have brought my NES game cartridge want list as I could have probably knocked off a few games as there were a good handful of vintage game booths.

We weren't at the show for more than an hour before we headed off to La Verne, CA to hit up a local show.  Fuji found a few goodies there and hooked me up with this 2018 Panini Status Yuta Watanabe rookie. Thanks again Fuji.

Seeing as how this was National Baseball Card Day we had to hit up one of the local participating dealers in the area and headed over to La Verne to A&N Collectibles to pick up our free pack of cards.  I'm keeping mine sealed, but Fuji surprised me again with a jumbo pack of Topps Chrome where I landed an on-card base auto Rookie Card of Jeffrey Springs from the Rangers.  I haven't heard of him, nor does it matter, this card will stay in my collection as a great memory piece of the day.

We still had a good portion of the day ahead of us so we ended up in downtown La Verne hitting up antique shops.  I snagged this really cool postcard set of US. Presidents.  They are hand-made with serigraph technology...which is very similar to silk screening.  Made by M.A. Sheehan from Topanga, CA, these date from the late 1940s to early 1950s since it still shows President Truman as the sitting president.  These are absolutely gorgeous both front and back.  A quick 10-minute search of the internet doesn't yield any examples of this set making me believe it is somewhat rare.  They are supposedly limited to 2000 sets and my set seems to be a mix of different sets as it has cards from set #19, #26, #27, and #303.  Would love to know if anyone has seen these before.

We ended the day with a quick trip to LaVerne Brewery where I grabbed a 4-pack of their Hazy IPA and Fuji threw in another 4-pack.  I wasn't counting, but let's consider ourselves even....as I mentioned before, Fuji's generosity is second to none!

 

I had a lonely drive home as Fuji continued to shoot photos my way of some potential new spots to explore in the future.  Thanks again Fuji and Mike for a great day....I realized we don't have any photos of all of us together.  Hopefully we can repeat this soon somewhere and grab that photo.