My wife went to Stonehenge ....

....and all I got were some lousy baseball cards. 

OK, so I got these at Target. But the rest is true. My wife is off on a two week trip to England and Scotland which means I can watch anything I want, eat anything I want and not make the bed.

That pic above is dawn on Sunday at Stonehedge. The pic below is a green Gypsy Queen card. I've been pretty 'meh' when it comes to GQ every year. But these green bordered ones are pretty nice.

I bought a three-pack hanger of these which had a coupon attached that entitled me to a free pack of Opening Day. I didn't get anything spectacular in these GQ packs.

I needed a card of Jim Johnson in a Braves uni for my fantasy BB binder. Here it is.

Brad Ziegler looks like Jimmy Buffett on the tail end of a five day bender.

I got an Oriole! Alert the media!

I also needed a card of Jays' stopper Roberto Osuna. The good news is I got one. The bad news is it was this one:

It's one of those phony-ass stupid fake misprint missing color plate things. C'mon man...this looks like one of the cards that a card shop I used to frequent in west Houston had in their window display for a decade and a half. I don't want a sun bleached card. I'm not putting this in my fantasy binder. #thanksObama

This next one is worse.

No name. I hate sets that don't have players names on the front. They made this another phony variation. Pfffffft. I don't want to turn the card over to find out who he is. 

Opening Day is fine and dandy if irrelevant to me. Having said that I liked quite a few of the cards. Francisco Lindor is always having a good time playing ball. I like this kid a lot.

A double Cutch hot pack. I got his regular and his shiny card both. He's not hitting his weight and I have him on BOTH of my teams. I'm keeping the faith though. Talent will out in the end.

Getting two Birds in one pack is unheard of!

I got a card of a sandwich.

And a card of whatever this is.

Another Indian showing emotion. Miller is excited, not doing some dopey choreographed preening. Good for him.

I needed this card weeks ago. So I bought one on eBay. Then I got one in my first pack of Opening Day. Then I got this one in this pack of Opening Day. Sigh.

While I was standing there in the card aisle at Target something possessed me to buy a pack of Bowman. I usually end up with Bowman cards thru COMC or eBay because I like to stash minor leaguers on my teams. Lots of times their only readily available card is a Bowman.

This is a shiny chromified card of a guy I don't know.

here are the cards of guys I've heard of.

And here is a shiny, reflective 2017 version of Bowman's 1951 Duke Snider card. I love the '51 Bowman set and Duke's card in it is pretty sweet. This is the best card I got in the whole stack!

As I walked out of Target I spotted a Dollar Tree store in the same center. And yes, I DID venture in to see what they had for a buck. I'll save that answer for another post.

A Battle of Wills

I needed a Derek Norris card for my Fantasy Baseball collection. Well, to be honest I wanted a 'Derek Norris as a Padre' card for my Fantasy Baseball collection. I had a Norris card but it was this one:

Wrong team, wrong year and you can't even see Norris' face.

Off On A Tangent Comment: Lots of folks love these kind of cards but I'd rather that a guy's base card at least show me the player in a way I'd recognize. But that's a debate for someone else's blog.

Back to the the Norris '15 Opening Day card. After my fantasy year was over I went through my binder. I looked for any card I could reasonably 'upgrade' from 'placeholder cards' (minor league card, wrong team, die-cut card, etc) to one with the guy's correct team.

I found the Padre Norris card with a "$1.15 BIN or Best Offer" price on eBay. I usually try to limit my fantasy cards to no more than a buck including postage but this was the cheapest one I saw. (Yes, cards are cheaper on COMC and SportsLots but with those I have to wait to buy enough to make the shipping worthwhile). Just for grins I offered the guy $1. He declined and counter-offered with $1.08 (LOL). So here we were, a dealer and I in a showdown over a crummy 2015 card and 7 or 8 cents at stake.

My online poker days are behind me so I just folded to his bluff and paid the $1.08.

I really like how bad ass Norris looks in this shot. Too bad he did nothing for my team in the week or so I had him.