This post's future is so bright, that... blah, blah, blah

So I'm still working through the card show stuff, and anybody who's seen these recaps before, shouldn't be too terribly surprised to find out that I came home with quite a few shiny cards. The scanner has effectively dullified (I know, not a word) many of them, but here they are nonetheless:

This guy seems to be having a pretty decent season. Not a ton of difference between these two, but one's a prism refractor, while the other just a plain old run of the mill refractor.

As far as post-2000 refractors go, the 2001-02 Topps Chromes are my favorite (especially the black ones). I think a couple of these might be duplicates, but I still haven't checked yet.

I think that the Gerald Wallace X-Fractor tried to break my scanner, this substitute picture didn't turn out too bad though.

As per usual, there were a few Lineage refractors to be had...

... as well as some Platinum Diamond Lineage. And speaking of Platinum Diamond...

... I was able to find a needed pair from the regular old Topps set too. I had to pay fifty cents for Ichiro, I think that he was worth it though.

I'm starting to find that it's very difficult for me to pass up cheap (50 cents each) copies of serial numbered 2015 Topps Tek football. Being able to get two of the #'d to /25 Eric Dickerson's was pretty cool, cool enough that I've decided to try find as many of the other 23 as I can. In fact I'm actually going to be doing this with a couple of other cards that I really like, but I'll save those for another blog post.

I took this picture while the Tek's were on the scanner, so it's kind of crappy, but you can still sort of see just how awesome the back of the Dickerson's are.

Just some more random refractors. This is was the first time that I had ever come across a refractor of Junior, pretty neat, although it would have been better if he was shown as a Mariner.

Nick will have to let me know if he want's the Red, it's an Artist's Proof, with a sort of holofoil look to it. Also if anybody wants the pink Cutch, just let me know. The Posey has an almost holographic background that is really impressive in person, I might have to try and find more of those Topps Shelf cards.

Some fun 5/$1 cards in this group. The three Collector's Edge Peyton's are of the Preview variety. I was pretty sure that somebody out there collects him, so I picked up an extra (as can clearly be seen) of his 2000 T3 card, don't be shy if you want it. The Favre is amazeballs in person, and even though you can't tell from the scan, Donovan is a refractor.

Even though I still can't remember what they're called, I was happy to find a few more of these whatchamacallits.

And finally, what card show recap about shiny cards would be complete without some Archives Reserve?

Usually my scanner does a pretty good job with these, but not this time (I think it might be getting ready to crap out), so I had to go the picture route, which didn't turn out too bad... I was able to catch a little bit of the rainbow.

It is going to be a sad day when I eventually complete these, as I just can't imagine not being able to look for them anymore.

Ended up with a couple of duplicates, the Doby is already spoken for, but if anybody wants the others, well, you know the drill.

Found a pair from the football side too. Even though I only bought from two different people at this particular show, I of course still walked around to see everyone else's offerings, while doing so, I spotted a Walter Payton from this set with a $5 price tag. Even though he was calling my name, five bucks was just too much, especially when I've yet to pay more than 50 cents for one of these (usually much less), so Sweetness did not end up coming home with me... maybe I'll find a cheaper copy next time.


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A short post about small cards

Before I decided to start collecting minis (A&G and Golden Age), I almost never came across them in person -- and since I made the decision to collect them, I hadn't come across a single one, at least not until this most recent show... where I ended up finding a whole dozen (crazy, I know)!

The number of minis that were bought may not be too impressive, but I thought that the subject matter of some of them was, so...

Young Jon was into all things paranormal/supernatural, he believed every non-fiction book, and never doubted any story that was featured on a television show (Sightings, Unsolved Mysteries, etc.). Old Jon is extremely cynical about such things, but he still likes these cards.

I'm guessing that the reason that I still have no idea what the whole "Ginter code" thing is all about, is because I'm so late to the A&G party, although if I'm being honest... I don't really care enough to try and go read about it.

This was the first time that I had seen on of the Seven Seas inserts, pretty nifty!

Finding out that there are cards of people like St. Germain only reaffirms my decision to start working on some of these sets.

2010 seems to have been a good year for A&G inserts.

All the cards in this post were 5/$1, except for this speckled Trout, in order to land him, I had to reach into my pocket and fish out two quarters.

I even found a needed Golden Age mini, which I believe is now officially the first one that I've ever found in the wild.

Hopefully no ones getting tired of these card show posts yet, because I still have a few more to go!


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Buybacks, buybacks, and more buybacks

My infatuation with buybacks has been waning for the last couple of months, I can't really explain why it has exactly, I just know that my interest level isn't anywhere near what it was two years ago when I started my frankenset.

With that in mind, it seems kind of ironic that I would now stumble upon a proverbial mother lode at the show two weeks ago.

I found the first couple in Jim's 5/$1 boxes, upon seeing me pull them out, Jim mentioned that he had added quite a few to his dime boxes. Eventually I got over to those dime boxes, and "quite a few" was right, all in all, I ended up with 158 of them.

I knew when I was adding all of these to my pile, that I would most likely not be keeping too many of them, but since a lot of other folks seem to be collecting buybacks now, I figured it wouldn't be too hard to find some interested parties. Initially I only had 3 or 4 other people in mind, but after showing the picture above on Twitter, a number of other people came forward and asked if I had any of this team or that team, for most part I did, so why not spread the wealth out a little more. Plus, as I was going through them a little more thoroughly, I noticed some that I thought might appeal to a few more people, so that ended up dividing the pile up even more. When all was said and done, 147 (I took out 11 for myself) buybacks have been split up and are (and will be) sent out to 18 different people... not too shabby for a days work!

Not wanting to show all of these, I thought instead I would just show the eleven that, for the moment, I am tentatively keeping -- tentatively being the key word.

For what it's worth, I can now say that I own a Roberto Clemente buyback!

A pair of Hall of Famer's.

Higuera was the last name of one of my first best friends in life, so I've always had a bit of a soft spot for Teddy's cards.

I was a big fan of Raul's when he was with Seattle, and I liked Jason when he was still with the Braves.

Remember when pulling a McGwire card was a big deal? Seems like a lifetime ago doesn't it?

With the stamp, it makes this card look like it says Rediscover dinals... which makes me laugh!

Among all the Topps Rediscover cards, I found three A&G buybacks as well. This one was the only one that I had planned on keeping.

To anyone who's getting some of this horde from me, stay tuned, as you might end up getting more in a couple of months should I decide that my interest in buybacks truly is no more [spoiler alert: I am really leaning in that direction].


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Cubs, trains, and other assorted vintage goodies

Two Saturday's ago was a card show day, and not to brag or anything, but I think I did pretty well.

Having not been to a show since March, I was really looking forward to this one. However, I wasn't looking forward to going and having considerably less money to spend than usual, thankfully though, I ended up selling a fairly rare record for a decent chunk of change about a week before the show... so I had plenty of paper folding money to play with. The only downside was that I probably should have been trying to save some of it for potential future wants, but no matter how old I get, I'm still like a small child when it comes to money, in that, if I have it, I spend it!

As per usual, I'll be spreading out the purchases across four or five posts, starting first with the vintage portion, as that always seems to be the most popular with readers.

My favorite seller (he's a lot of other people's favorite seller as well), Jim, was there with his usual array of insanely low priced items. This time though, he had a large selection of vintage cards, which isn't the norm for him, not surprisingly, going through those vintage cards was my first priority upon seeing them (I always go to his tables first).

Have you noticed how many people seem to be in a collecting funk as of late? I guess this is a good time to mention that you can add my name to that list as well. It sounds like a lot of folks are becoming disenfranchised over the ever increasing amount of new products flooding the market, and even though that's not what's causing my malaise, I can certainly understand why it would be having such a negative impact on so many people.

This post is already fixin' to be excruciatingly long (hopefully in a good way though), so I don't want to get too deep into this right now, but the short of it is, that I realized a couple of months ago that I just wasn't having very much fun collecting cards (or anything else for that matter) anymore.

Set collecting, vintage baseball set collecting, to be more specific, has been causing me a great deal of stress as of late, and collecting should never be stressful. I'll go into more detail in a future post, but for the moment, I can tell you that I have stopped working on a number of vintage sets (they've been removed from my want lists too).

For some time now, I've been thinking about starting a side collection of guys who played in the PCL, so now with a bunch cards from broken up sets sitting around doing nothing, I thought that this might be a good time to start putting together such a collection... apparently I was wrong! It only took a couple of days of trying to figure out who played where for me to get overwhelmed, so for the moment that idea is going to be shelved, and will likely revisited at the end of summer.

Some of you might be wondering why I even bothered going to the show then? And that would be an easy question to answer, I went because there's a number of sets that I still do enjoy collecting. There's also a number of sets that I have no illusions about ever being able to finish, but still enjoy getting cards from, case in point, the '49, '51, and '52 Bowman's that you've already seen.

I've been on a bit of a Bowman kick ever since I found that cheap '52 Bowman Casey Stengel back in March. And like I said, I know I'll never be able to finish these, but that's okay, I'm just having fun picking up cheap semi-decent condition examples when I can. I have a few currently sitting in my COMC account too, all though, with these old Bowman's, I've noticed that for me, it's much more fun to buy them at shows, than to buy them online. I don't know if that makes any sense or not, but hopefully somebody what I'm talking about.

This is only my third '55. I'd love to know the story behind Gene Baker's giant Band-Aid.

I have mixed feelings about this set, mainly because of the action shots. I mean, some are so cool, like with this Hank Sauer, while others are of guy's just standing there doing nothing, which is kind of the opposite of "action". Either way though, I had to have this one.

Hey, this guy was pretty good, wasn't he? I didn't realize how many vintage Ernie Banks' that I had until I started going through all of my recently stopped sets. Even though I've shown most of them on the blog at one time or another, I'm thinking that I might try to get all of 'em into one post coming up in the near future.

One thing that I'm definitely not giving up on, is the Post sets. Unbeknownst to me, and I'm pretty sure Jim too, the Frank Thomas is a short print, and one of the harder to find one's to boot. There seems to be no rhyme or reason with the Post short prints, at least in my mind, so I was kind of surprised to find this out after I got home that day.

Another thing that I've been thinking about doing is to start a few mini-collections, which is something that a lot of you do, but I've always been a set collector, so this is kind of new territory for me. Recently I was reading a book that had a chapter about the first live transatlantic television broadcast on July 23rd, 1962. As part of that broadcast, a 90 second clip of a Cubs-Phillies game was shown, so I thought it might be kind of fun to start a collection of the four player's who were featured in that clip -- George Altman, Calvin Koonce, Johnny Callison, and Tony Taylor.

This guy was pretty good too. My first vintage Lou Brock. It's off center, has some scratches in the middle, and a crease at the bottom... but I don't care, it's still a cool card!

As I mentioned, Jim doesn't usually have a lot of vintage, so I was pleasantly surprised to see all of it when I got there. When he does have it, they're usually just stacked up in top loaders in the middle of the table, between his dime boxes, 5/$1 boxes, etc.

None of them are priced, and if it was anybody but him, I wouldn't even bother -- but after buying stuff from him for over three years now, I know that once you ask him how much? He's not going to reach for a Beckett, or check anything on his phone -- he'll just look at everything, and give you a price, a price that is usually negotiable too. So what was the price that I was quoted for all of the above? $42... sold! Even though his prices are always low, I still expected the quote to be higher.

If anybody thinks that that price seems like a lot, well, you remember that Frank Thomas short print? It looks like that when it does come up on eBay, $40 or more, is not an uncommon selling price. I'm sort of feeling a bit guilty about that one, I might have to let him know about it the next time I see him, and give him a few extra bucks too. If it was someone else, I might not feel the same way about it, but it's Jim!

 

Behind his sports GU/auto's box, Jim usually has some non-sport relics/autos stacked up, this time being no exception, but he had also had a small stack of what were clearly tobacco cards back there as well. I might have missed them, had another dealer not come over and inquire about them. I guess that guy didn't think that he could flip them (even though I didn't hear a price being quoted), because he walked away, and then I pounced.

Jim knew that they were German tobacco cards, and that was about it, which was fine, because that's all I knew about 'em too.

Initially I was only interested in three of them, but when I asked for a price, Jim said "just the three?", to which I replied, "yeah, well... unless there's a discount for taking all of them". So he looked through the stack one more time, and said "how about four bucks?", which sounded like a really great deal for all sixteen of them, so I of course accepted.

I still haven't gotten around to trying to research this Schienen-Wunder set yet, but I will one of these days.

Jim had so much vintage this time, that some of it even made it's way into his dime boxes, namely a bunch of mid 70's basketball. Most of it was 1974-75 Topps, a set that I'm almost done with. Even though I figured that I wasn't going to need any of it, I still grabbed all of the nicer one's just in case any of them were in better shape than my copies.

On the following day when I was going through them, I was stunned to find that I actually needed two of them. With those removed from the checklist, I'm down to needing only seven.

I also found this 1972-73 Topps in his dime boxes as well. It's got a little bit of staining, but since I never come across vintage hockey cards, I thought it was still pretty cool. I thought it was kind of funny too, to see that COMC has this listed as the Stanley Cup's rookie card.

Moving on to a different seller, a guy named Tom, who was the only other person that I bought from that day. I've seen Tom set-up there a couple of times before (he's not a regular), but other than the exchanging of pleasantries, I had never really talked to him before. We ended up talking for about 20 minutes, which was kind of nice because my social anxiety usually prevents me from having such lengthy interactions. Although I think that my brain was too occupied with the ever increasing temperature inside the gym to notice that I was actually talking to someone. By 10am, the real feel outside was over 100 degrees, and I swear that it must have been like 90 inside, because I was getting a tad bit uncomfortable (understatement).

I don't know if the AC was having a problem or what, but it just kept getting hotter and hotter in there, and after having been there for three hours, I was now thinking that it might be a good time to leave. I probably didn't look through Tom's stuff as much as I should have, because he had a lot of good stuff, and a much larger spread than I've seen him have in the past. That being said, I still picked up quite a few neat things (more of which will be in subsequent posts).

Oh, and that '69 Lou Michaels up above, that was in a dime box, I was hoping that I would find more from that set, but the rest of that box was just mid 70's, aka stuff that I'm not collecting. I didn't look at my checklists at all, so I did end up with a few duplicates, Lou being one of them, so he's available if anyone's interested.

And one other thing to note, I ran out of usable sunlight on the day that I was doing these pictures, so the rest of the cards in this post were scanned. I only mention it because the scans look terrible to me.

The Hank Bauer was a buck, which didn't seem too bad considering that he's a high number. The Cepeda and Morgan were $2 each. All three of these are likely going to be part of some new mini-collections (I'm going all in on this approach to collecting).

All former PCL guys, and all were 20 cents each.

The condition of most of Tom's vintage cards was pretty amazing. These kind of got mixed up, so I can't remember which cards came from what box, but some were from the 5/$2 box, and then a couple were from the 5/$1 box -- not that it makes too much of a difference though, as they were really well priced either way.

The two 72's were in the 5/$1 box, I think I might already have both of them, but I still haven't double checked yet. Red was only a dime!

And finally, some more 72's from the 5/$1 box. Boog's a duplicate, so if anyone needs him, don't be shy about saying so.

Originally I had planned on doing three card show posts this week, but I've just been too tired to work on them, but I'll have one more on Saturday. And if I can be a little less rambly, maybe I can crank out the rest for next week, as I don't want to drag these out for too long.


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