Cards from an unlikely source

In Monday's post I talked about my semi-recent trip to Knoxville, which saw me going to McKay's and Red Rhino Cash Advance. I covered McKay's on Monday, so today I'll be focusing on Red Rhino.

Red Rhino is an interesting place, as it's basically a pawn shop turned collectibles shop, with a heavy emphasis on comic books -- but they also have things like action figures, DVD's, etc.

I first visited the store last September, which you can read about here, and have been wanting to go back ever since, my attempts to do so just haven't been working out so well. That first trip yielded quite a few neat, and cheap, comics -- so I was hoping that a second visit might produce a similar haul, unfortunately for me... it didn't!

I don't know what the deal was, but it almost seemed like they hadn't gotten any more new (not "new" new, but old new) comics since the last time I was there, I mean don't get me wrong, they still had a huge selection, it just sort of felt like it was all of the same stuff that I had already gone through -- some of which appeared to be priced a little higher than last time as well.

I did actually find three comics that I was interested in, but all three were priced a little bit higher than I would've wanted to go, so they ended up staying behind.

After striking out with the comics, I moved over to the DVD's, those too didn't end up yielding anything of interest. Action figures - NO, CD's - NO, cards - Yes, wait... cards?

Yes, cards! I was so focused on hitting up those comic book boxes, that I didn't even notice the table that had been practically right in front of me when I walked in, the table that had about a dozen 3200 ct boxes piled up on it, and below it.

All but one of these boxes were full of the Magic the Gathering cards, which I unfortunately know very little about. It seems like if one were playing the odds, there was probably a good chance that there might've been something of note in one of those boxes, and at a dime a card, it would likely be worth it for those in the know to go through them.

Amongst all of those MTG boxes was one lone box that said "Sports cards $0.25 each", and even though this is a store that sells collectibles, I can't overstate enough how out of place this box of sports cards looked. The box itself was about 80% full, one row was made up of loose cards, and the rest of the cards were in toploaders.

I was feeling a little overwhelmed from McKay's and didn't know if I had it in me to look through all of these, but then I realized that I haven't had the opportunity to look through a box of cards like this since the card show back in February, so tired be damned, I started digging!

A couple of things became evident quite quickly: a) This contents of this box had to have been for sale at a card show/antique mall/flea market at some distant date (you'll see evidence of this once I get to the pictures). b) Most of the loose cards were baseball, while the bulk of toploadered cards were football. c) The loose were in abysmal condition, they had clearly suffered from much handling over the years.

Seeing what sad shape the loose cards were in, I went ahead and just focused on the toploaders, eventually finding 21 cards that ended up setting me back $5.25, which wasn't too bad. I was trying not to spend a lot of money, and I didn't, so it worked out pretty well.

Normally I'd save the best for last, but after such a lengthy intro, I figured that it might be a good idea to start strong. These were the only '79 Topps that the box had to offer, pretty solid trio though, especially the Oilers team card. The '79 set contains Earl Campbell's rookie card, and while this team card isn't THE rookie card, it still is a rookie card of sorts -- it also features Elvin Bethea as well, so that's kind of like a little extra added bonus.

I found three of these Junior Seau promos, thought they'd look neat going across one of my Chargers pages, so obviously I got all three of them. It wasn't until I got home and went to see what set they were from, that I discovered something was amiss...


Image pilfered from Google

... as apparently they're supposed to look like this. I tried to look around and see if mine were errors, but couldn't find anything. If they are errors, they must be fairly common if I could find three together. I suppose it's possible too that someone removed the gold from the card, but there doesn't appear to be any signs of that having happened, it just looks like the gold never got applied. If anybody has any insight, I'd be most curious to know what's what.

This is probably a good time to mention that there is a mix of scans and photographs in this post, and some of those photographs did not turn out so well. Bad photo aside, it's always nice to get some low serial numbered cards on the cheap...

... :)

I hate this insert set! I've never liked ESPN (ESPNclassic was alright in the beginning though), and I've never cared for their "personalities", so it should come as no surprise that a set that was ESPN based wouldn't be amongst my favorites -- but it's a Junior that I didn't have, so I went ahead and bit the bullet.

A few of these cards that I got would've been more at home in a dime box, but a few of them were also from sets that I don't see very often, and am not willing to pay a dollar or more for on COMC, so I didn't mind overpaying by fifteen cents on a few of them. There was an awful lot of Steve McNair cards in this box, which tells me that whatever venue the cards had been for sale at, had to be in Tennessee.

This '71 high number (#710) sure was out of place in this box, it's a little rough, but I figured that somebody might still want it (no strings attached), if that's you, don't be shy about saying so.

I wasn't necessarily in the market for a Chad Pennington rookie, I just thought that the presentation of this card was kind of funny, and grabbed it for the blog. This was pretty good evidence that where ever these were being sold, it had to have been quite awhile ago, because even with Beckett's stupid high prices, I can't imagine even them having this card listed for $8 anytime recently. I suspect too that this card had been it's toploader and team bag for quite some time, possibly since 2000-ish, let's just say that the team bag was kind of gross. And apparently the clearance price of $1.99 wasn't low enough to entice someone to buy poor Chad, but all is not lost, as some sucker did eventually come along and buy him for a quarter.

This was one of the few post-2000 cards that were in the box, at least it was shiny!

I really do like the '79 Topps that I led off the post with, but this insert from Score's 1993 Costacos Brothers set might be my favorite purchase of the day. I had never seen this set before, after taking a gander at the other cards, I think this might be the best looking card in the set, which does make the buy just a little bit better.

I missed out on so much by not collecting football during the mid to late 90's, one of the biggest being all things Collector's Edge.

Ultra produced some colorful inserts way back when, they're not usually worth much, but they are fun to collect.

I liked Mike Alstott as a player, and I like the fun-ness of this card. After I got home, I found out that it's a rookie card, it's also foil parallel(?), which you can see...

... a little bit better when the card is turned.

This was probably another one those cards that would be better suited for a dime box, but I just don't ever see Crown Royale singles, so a quarter didn't seem like too much to pay for it. Plus, even though it's a base card, it kind of looks like an insert, and it looks really good on my Jaguars page (I don't have a lot of Jaguars cards).

So, what do you think? Decent haul? Yes? No?

Considering that I didn't go there looking for cards, I think I did alright. That being said, it might be awhile before I go back to Red Rhino, I can't imagine that they'll be getting too many more cards, and if their inventory of comics hasn't changed in almost a year, I'm not gonna hold my breath thinking that they'll be getting a bunch of new stock anytime soon. I still had a decent time though, got a bunch of DVD's at McKay's, a small stack of cards at Red Rhino, and only spent $5.25 (plus gas) -- and more importantly, I got out and did something!


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.