Card show pickups - the iffy guys

Digging through the quarter boxes at my local card show, maybe my brain is going in different directions as I try to go through assorted cards and find my share of keepers - I think I want to build on star power as well as flagging cards of players I like as well as collectors' favorites in general.

It happens occasionally where interests in players overlap, but I try not to be compelled to grab a little run of cards featuring players I might be only be lukewarm on - but other collectors have marked on their foreheads as personal favorites.

At times, I keep a mental notes on the players who may be a little more controversial and unsavory - I try to establish a demarcation points between the players whose cards I don't want to ever see myself making keepers out of and other players who might still be 'anti-fan favorites' in general, but who I might still collect for whatever reason.

Found separately in my rummages, it makes for a nice photo op to find a card for both Barry and Bobby Bonds - Barry Bonds maybe at the top of the 'iffy' guys list where his alleged PED usage made him Superman as a hitter.

Has his share of serious collectors, but his all-time villain status makes me a little self-conscious about 'carrying the water' for him on a casual scale, so to speak - still it's one of those things where I'll make keepers out of his random cheap-o cards if I don't have them.

I've never seen the Bobby Bonds card before and picked it up as an oddball - the elder Bonds' [R.I.P.] playing career and legacy doesn't quite register to me like his son does, but the one-time Angel had a significant MLB career.

Some of the current 'iffy' guys are Jose Altuve and Manny Machado - the interesting basic cheap-o inserts / parallels may be keepers as far as Altuve goes because past the Houston Astros' cheating scandal and the buzzer scandal, Altuve continues to put up batting numbers.

I can almost move on and just focus his consistency [though now as a 20-25 home run slugger as opposed to a high average guy collecting 200 hits or more year-to-year] - it might be fun to dwell on a guy that is still baseball good after all that he and his teammates put themselves through.

Machado has always put up numbers but had a reputation of being a less than stellar citizen - I don't think I've particularly thought he was a bad guy, but his San Diego Padres' cards don't do anything for me where for the most part, I've tended to ignore them.

More of the old school 1980s-1990s guys here - for the most part, it's more about the cards than the player where I find something that stands out.

I never liked Jason Giambi past his time with the Oakland Athletics - but an A's era numbered insert isn't too bad of a nostalgic pick up decades later.

I can care less about Alex Rodriguez today - but both loved and hated him when he was playing.

Albert Belle - he's a guy no one liked in MLB, but it might be a mission for me to collect random cards of his I might find where he put up the numbers.

Juan Gonzalez - I'm lukewarm on him, where he has been obscured by MLB history, but he put up monster numbers and it's fun thinking back to him being relevant.

Manny Ramirez - the shine wins out where I'm inclined to make keepers out of anything that pops.

Jeff Bagwell - I think he was similar to many of the guys he played with during The Steroid Era, especially when he was as big as a house compared to earlier points of his career.

However he is in the Hall of Fame after all, so any suspicion or uncertainty has been swept under the rug forever - where he ends up being 'iffy' is wondering whether I should make keepers of a run of cards I might find.

I collect him on the basis he is a decade stars guy for me so I'd like to add more randomness to my Bagwell pages - but do I need one, two or three more cards regardless?