A Current Twin and a Legend

There is a huge card show in St Paul this weekend. Today Kent Hrbek and Kody Clemens (among others) were signing autographs so I decided to go and get the items signed I had laying around for them. I showed up shortly before Kent was signing so I got in that line and waited. When I got to him, I gave him a couple Athlon’s Baseball magazines (1988 and 1992) that featured him on the cover. He signed those and then I had him sign a full ticket from his final MLB game. I asked him to inscribe “Final MLB Game” on it and he did and even added an ! to the end of it! I told him I had a debut ticket signed and now I have bookends of his career. I told him I gave him a debut ticket back at Twinsfest when it was at the Metrodome and he said he remembered that. I wished him good health and he looked at me and said “Thank you very much!” That made me happy since he had a stroke a year or so ago and it is cool to see him getting around so well.
I then walked around the show to kill time until Kody showed up. The Twins played a day game today and Kody was to arrive after the game. The show was massive… over 600 tables. And, walking around, it seemed like over half were Pokémon and the like cards. EVERYBODY had slabbed/graded cards too. I had four hours to kill so I walked around and around and around looking at everything. Prior to today I had only seen two 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle cards… one in the late 1980’s at a card show and one at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. Today I saw three! They were PSA 1 and 2 with one being sold for $100k and the “cheap” one at $46k. I passed on all three. I did find a couple guys selling baseball cards and one guy had a bargain bin. Since I had so much time to kill, I flipped through his box. I rarely do that at shows because at this point the cards I am looking for not to be found in bargain bins. It turned out to be worthwhile for me this time as I found a 1967 Topps high number card I needed. I also found a Bert Blyleven rookie card in decent shape as well as a Blyleven 1976 cloth issue card. I also picked up a 1967 Topps Tony Oliva in the box. All told the cards were $45. Big spender. There were transactions going down all over the show today in the $10k range and dropped a whopping $45 on cards.
About fifteen minutes before Kody was to start signing I went and got in line. Kody showed up like three minutes before he was to start so it was perfect timing. I got to him and put two tickets down for him to sign. He looked at them and said “What do we have here?!” all excited. I asked him to sign one ticket with “MLB Debut” and the other with “3 HR Game” which he also did. I had him use the house gold marker for the HR ticket since it was dark and I only had a blue Sharpie. I made an error hoping the show would have decent markers. It was a dried out gold pen which looks mediocre at best but it works. He then ripped through signing five cards. Those cards are:
2025 Topps #US208
2025 Topps Heritage #658
2026 Topps Heritage #321
and two Topps Now cards from the three home run game on 09.12.2025 #699 and #ODB19.
I then hit the exit and was home before Kody was to finish his signing shift. It was a nice, relaxing, fun day!