Colossal card show recap: Part 2

Welcome back to the second installment of this three part series. Today's post will start with what I consider to be my best purchase from Saturday's show.

Seller #6:

There was a father/son duo with a two or three table spread in one corner of larger gym, who from a distance, appeared just to have pretty much all graded cards. And since graded cards aren't my thing, I was just going on walking by without stopping.

On the far right of their set-up, there were three boxes filled with what looked like all graded cards (I know, big surprise!), the boxes were marked $3, $5, and $10 respectively. I still wasn't interested, but as I got closer, I noticed Hank laying out on top one of the rows in the $5 box -- now my interest was piqued!

The bad news was, their was a guy looking through that $5 box, and with the way the card was just sitting on top, I figured he had just found it and laid it there while he continued to look. I decided that if there was a '64 Aaron in one of those boxes, it might be worth my time to stop and look through them, which I did, all the while thinking that if I would have just gotten there a minute or two earlier, Hank would have been mine (I think everyone that's ever been to a show knows that feeling).

I got through the boxes very quickly, as their were only a few non-graded items, which were all contemporary cards of kids I haven't heard of. As I was just about done, the guy who I thought was about to be Hank's new owner, was paying for his card... and his card wasn't Hank! I couldn't believe it, now it was just me standing there, and Hank just laying there. I started to wonder if it was even supposed to be in that box, or even worse -- somebody bought it somewhere else, brought it there, and accidently walked off without it.

Now that he was gone, and nobody was running over to claim their missing card, I was finally able to pick up the card and turn it over. I was expecting something to really be wrong with the back (like being skinned), but as you can see, while not in mint condition, it's not exactly disastrous either. Now that I had the card in hand, the only thing left for me to do, was find out it if it actually was going to be only $5. It might not be word for word, but the rest of the story played out like this:

Me: Get the guy's attention, and hand him the card without saying a word.
Dealer: "Yeahhhh, which box was this in?"
Me: "The $5 box"
Dealer: (Makes a hesitant sound that I don't know how to duplicate in written form) "Yeahhhh, somebody moved that there from somewhere else"
Me: (In my head "dammit, I knew it")
Dealer: After a few seconds that felt like an eternity "What the heck, let's do it, five bucks"
Me: "Really?"
Dealer: "Yeah, why not? (pause) It's a heckuva a deal"
Me: "Yes, it is. Thank you!" (I may have thanked him more than once)

So even though I still don't have a lot of cards from the '64 set, at least I can cross another big name off of the checklist. Oh, and if the dealer ever happens to see this post, thank you again!

As a quick aside, if anyone cares about the card that the guy who I thought was buying Hank got, it was '77 Topps Mark Fidrych PSA 8. Out of curiosity, I looked up what it goes for, and it would appear that for five bucks he got a pretty good deal.

Seller #7:

Back in March, at the last big show, there were two guys who's wares consisted mainly of $1 insert boxes. I had gotten a bunch of really great stuff out of their basketball boxes, which were packed to the gills with 90's inserts and parallels, and because of this, I was really hoping they would be back again. Well, they were, and even though they didn't has many boxes this time around, I still came away with some solid finds, including the 1997-98 Bowman's Best Atomic Refractors shown above and below.

I ended up getting 40 cards from their boxes, but due to so many of them not photographing/scanning well, I'm only showing 19 of them. By the by, how fantastic does that Eddie Jones look?

Another atomic refractor, this time from the Best Techniques insert set.

After the atomic refractors, these regular refractors (still from the same set) seem kind of bland. Some big names though.

Even though I usually love die-cut cards, these 1997-98 Topps Generations have never been one of my favorite insert sets. But, I needed both of them, and a buck apiece is a really good price on these.

I already had both of these 1998-99 Skybox Premium Soul of the Game's, but since this is an insert that just keeps getting more desirable as the years go on, it doesn't hurt to pick up a few cheap extras here and there.

I'm not quite as fond of the 1998-99 Topps Roundball Royalty's as I was almost twenty years ago when they first came out, but again, they were well priced and I needed 'em.

This Iverson 1996-97 EX2000 Star Date 2000 was a pretty good get too.

Now here's a pair of something's that I wouldn't usually care about, but for whatever reason, I ended up buying them. I had to wait until I got home to find out that they are from the 2005-06 Topps Pristine set.

I know these aren't part of the base set, but other than that I don't know anything about them. Being in sealed cases, it makes me think that they might have been like a one per box bonus in addition to the packs? Like I said, I don't know. I'll figure it out at some later date, for now I'll just clean off the old price tag sticky, and call it good.

I didn't expect to find any newer Prizm in the boxes, so I was kind of surprised to come across this lone 2013-14 Blue, White, and Red Wave. I sure would have liked to have found more of these, but one was better than nothing.

After I got done going through the basketball boxes, I moved on to the baseball, of which there was only one box of. Like 99% of it ended up being stuff from the last year or two, so that was a little disappointing, but I did manage to find this 2000 Pacific Paramount Fielder's choice. I had never seen one of these in person before, so it was pretty cool to finally get one. Granted, I would have liked to have found someone other than Sammy Sosa, but whaddya gonna do.

That's it for this installment, stay tuned for the final part, which might be up as early as tomorrow.


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