The state of adding new mini-collection cards

I like rummaging through loose cards in-person, where I like to lean on my esoteric mini-collection interests and at the very least, look for cards with unique images - at the moment, I don't really have a card shop or card show or even a swap meet / antique store to be able to actually dig through the fool's gold, where I find my 'gems' to build around my collecting topics subset narrative.

I miss stumbling upon boxes of cards at a show, finding out how much the cards are generally are [usually I'm looking for the quarter boxes] and figuring out where to start digging - there isn't the process of impulsively building a stash of cards and then sort of making decision on which cards are going to be taken off and which cards I going to be left off a vendor or dealer's common boxes.

I end up doing some 'research and development' online, where I read up on blogs or do random searches on eBay or COMC to see which cards I'd like to add to my collections - there isn't the instant gratification of having a card in hand, but I save the image of the card and/or list it on my wantlist.

Doing things on online might be easier and/or convenient, especially the hunt in-person might not be so fruitful and when I'm so far removed from picking up cards from places other than a big box store - I can take all the time in the world and treat online sources as my virtual card closet, where I have all these cards that I can look at and actually have shipped to me when I decide I want them.

After doing some ground work in discovering the following cards, I had them on a micro-mini wantlist and wanted to see if I can pick them up outright - the four cards cost me about $0.50 each with s/h added in and while I might pick up more cards at one time, I don’t want any one particular common card to be creeping up towards the dollar mark.

1988 Classic Eric Davis #213 - maybe the best ‘gum card’ I’ve seen.

When I can go through my mini-collection cards, I like seeing the different varieties of cards, how many different players are represented and if how many cards I end up of a player - I think I've mostly collected cards from Topps and the other major brands from the past 30 years, but at times there might be stragglers that may seem unfamiliar.

For a moment, seeing a card that is a different is neat - even if it is just a base card I shouldn't really dwell on.

1993 Bowman Edgar Martinez #515 - a Hall of Famer at work image, I presume this was during Mariners spring training in Peoria, Arizona.

1996 Donruss Glenallen Hill #75 - I saw this on a mail day blog post and had to add to my wantlist.

1996 Score Bip Roberts #38 - is this card of Roberts donning a sombrero sort of a cult classic? I felt like a big deal was made about this card at some point, but maybe it's just random card blog posts / Twitter posts of that drew my attention to this peculiar card.

Maybe 10 years ago, Bipping was a thing among notable card bloggers - where dupes of a particular card would be sent in trade packages as a friendly prank of sorts.