Not bad for four bits

There was a time when I lived within thirty minutes of half a dozen (or more) antique malls, and with me being a fan of antique malls, this was a good thing. Nowadays I live within thirty minutes of just one, which has been a bit of an adjustment, but thankfully for me, and everyone else in the general vicinity, this particular antique mall just so happens to be really, really good. It also doesn't hurt that the fellow who owns it is a stand-up guy as well.

Despite it's goodness, I usually only go in there about once every three months or so, if only because it's a little out of the way. Because of this, and because I know that I'll want to have a sufficient amount of time blocked out to look through everything, I will normally go on a morning where I don't have anything else that needs to be done. I switched things up though a couple of Saturdays ago, when I realized that one of the errands I was running had put me within a mile or so of the mall, and decided to stop in for a quick impromptu visit.

It's not uncommon for me to spend two hours at this place on those days when I have nowhere else to be, but on this day, when I had more stops to make, and wanted to be home by lunch, I figured that at best I'd have 20 minutes to hit a couple of the better booths. In other words, it was gonna be like a real-life version of Supermarket Sweep, minus the screaming banshees.

Having now been going to this place for almost six years, I'm very familiar with which booths switch out their wares on a regular basis, and which ones don't. So my goal was to hit at least four of the better ones, aka the ones with ever changing inventory. This goal was not achieved, for on my way to my favorite booth, I was distracted by some shiny objects in a plastic tray that was sitting on top of the glass case...

As it turned out, those shiny objects were 1964 Topps Coins, with a few 71's mixed in as well. This was quite the surprise, for this booth has never had anything of interest to me before. I'm terrible about trying to estimate things, but I'd say that there were around 40 coins total, most of which unfortunately were in abysmal condition. That isn't that uncommon though, as folks didn't have fancy ways to store these back when they came out, so they were often just stored in a bag, or a sack some sort. After sometimes spending decades rubbing against each other, and more normal than not to find them with their finish worn off in places, or even altogether. Rust seems to be fairly common too, most likely from moisture in the air (humidity). 

Pete Ward is a Portland guy, well sort of, he moved there during childhood and went to high school there. He even came back to coach after his playing days had ended. This makes him collectible to me. I have most of his Topps run, but didn't have this coin. It's missing a bit of the finish around the rim, as well as a little on the back, but overall was one of the better conditioned coins.

Aside from home runs and on base percentage, Pete set career highs across the board in 1963. Had a pretty good year in '64 as well, then came the car accident and subsequently mistreated neck injury, followed by a back injury, both occurring in '65. He'd play for five more seasons, but never got back to his pre-injury level.

Saint Ron's finish is completely gone, but the coin doesn't look overly bad because of it.

Unlike Pete, Ron would top all but two of the career numbers that he had set in 1963, the 187 hits, and .313 batting average, would remain career highs for him. '63 also him selected to the first of what would become 9 All-Star appearances.

The prices on the coins were all over the place, most seemed a bit high to me, especially given their conditions. These two however, set me back a whopping 50¢ apiece. That I could dig!

The coin booth also had some cards for the first time as well (they're hot don't cha know), which I wasted too much time going through, and then only made it to two other booths before my self-allotted time ran out. I had a good time though, got a couple of neat things, and didn't have to break the bank to get them. This also marked the first time that I've seen any Topps Coins in the wild, other than at card shows, since I moved to TN... hopefully it won't be the last!

And finally, on a completely unrelated note: Ryan has started up a rather unique Blog Bat-Around, and is looking for participants. Given how many creative people populate the blogs, this could potentially turn into quite the thing, so if you haven't done so already, you might want to go see what's what while there's still time.

Life after lockdown

Sunday's post covered my last purchases before the world went dark, and now that someone's turned on a light again (at least here in TN), I thought I'd "show off" my latest purchases.

One of the places that I've missed going to the most during the quarantine, was the local antique mall. For being out in the middle of nowhere, this place never ceases to amaze me with how much good stuff the vendors have, the prices aren't always great, but at least there's usually plenty of neat things to look at.

I think at this point it's now been back open for about a week and a half, and I went last week, so you can see that wasted little time in going back. I could tell that a number of vendors have been in since the reopening to restock and/or switch items out items from their booths, and even though I was told that plenty of people had been there shopping since it's reopening, there still seemed to be no shortage of fun things to look through, and in my case... to buy!

I have to admit one thing though real quick, my reason for going so soon wasn't entirely for myself, no, you see I forgot all about the rapidly approaching Mother's Day, and didn't have anything on hand, so trying to find something for mom was the primary goal on this particular day.

My favorite booth was among the many that had obviously been restocked since the reopening. There were a number of freshly opened early 90's boxes to select packs from, one of them being 1990-91 Skybox, which was rather fortuitous, as I've had the want to open some packs from this particular product since reading Roy's pack break last week. The twelve packs of series 1 came from one of those newly opened boxes, while the three packs of series 2 came from a box of misc. loose packs. At $0.69 apiece, I know that I overpaid, but I don't see card shows coming back anytime soon, and I don't want to buy a ridiculous priced box off of eBay right now, so my options are sort of limited for the time being.

The singles boxes that are also in this booth, had not been restocked, but I looked through them for what was probably the 20th time anyway. I ended up grabbing two more of old #12 himself. Did I need two more derpy faced Jordan's? No, not really, but again, no shows, and I felt like buying a couple of cards. At 39¢ (don't ask me how they came up with that price) each, these were about 29¢ too much, but I think that's still much less than the current going rate for this card.

Moving on to a different booth now. I found a small stack of Crazy magazine, and this one caught my attention. It's got a little bit of wear, but the $1.50 price tag was good, so here it is. Crazy isn't something that you all that often, so for anyone not familiar with the magazine, it was published by Marvel, and ran from the early 70's to sometime in the early 80's. And as you can probably tell from the cover, it was another MAD, Cracked, etc. satire magazine, although some of the jokes are little more adult-oriented than those of other parody magazines from the time.

Bottle collecting has become really big for me in recent years, and even though I enjoy finding them out in the wild more than buying them, I will occasionally break down and buy something, especially if it's something that I know I have no chance of finding on my own... like this NuGrape bottle!

I guess there is a chance that I could find one of these, but the odds of the applied (painted) label not being worn or washed off, are pretty low, especially if I were to find one in the creek.

This bottle dates to '48, and other than the inside needing a cleaning, is in pretty good shape overall. It's interesting too that I normally can't take a decent bottle pic to save my life, but these came out okay, I might've finally found the right place in the house to take bottle pics -- if so, this could be bad news for anyone reading, as that might mean more future bottle posts!

That'll do it for my purchases this time, not shown are the items that I found for my mom, and yes, I was successful in that pursuit as well. Although I'm pretty sure that had I not found anything, the 30'x1'x1' drainage ditch that I spent Sunday digging out for my mom's new garden, probably would've made up for the lack of trinkets.

Since this post was so short (at least by my rambling standards), how about a bonus round?

My short term memory isn't what it used to be, and doesn't seem to be getting any better, so anytime I'm out and around lots of stuff (antique malls, card shows, etc.), I tend to take a lot of pictures, this is usually done for items that I want to look into more when I get home, but sometimes it'll also be just for things that I don't want to forget -- things for reference if you will. Anyway, I always end up taking a bunch of pics at this antique mall, but don't ever share them on here, as they're for personal use only, but again, short post! So I'm breaking tradition and sharing a pair today.

I really don't need an Electric Football, but this one sure was tempting! It has all of it's pieces, and looks to be in unplayed condition. After checking the eBay, the price seemed to be relatively reasonable too, but still, I don't need it (I'm trying to convince myself of this, more than I am you).

This glass motor oil bottle was a beauty, and the spout was absolutely gorgeous, but for being a generic bottle (brand/company bottles are much more desirable), it was very overpriced ($50). I'm pretty sure that they think that the Duraglas name on the bottom is the name of the brand, it isn't, it was a glass making process, and didn't start being used until 1940, so the sellers date of 1926 is a bit off as well. Even being generic, and likely from the late 40's to early 50's (which was the tail end of the glass motor oil bottle era), I still would've been all over it had the price been more reasonable, say in the $15 range.

Okay, that's a little better length-wise, but how about a second bonus round?

I snapped this picture at a red light on my to the antique mall. It's hard to tell because of the vehicle in front of me, but this was like a big double trailer, being pulled by a smaller semi (I'm sure that those have a name, but I don't know what it is), and had at least a dozen llamas in it. The guys and/or gals that I could see were absolutely adorable, and since llama moving isn't something that I see everyday, I had to try and get a picture.

Third bonus round? I'm kidding, I think I'm good for today, especially since tomorrow's post is going to be picture heavy (and of the card variety), so until then...


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

A postcard for your thoughts

Another weekend, another postcard post! If there are any postcard haters out there, don't fret, this isn't going to become a regular theme... at least not on a weekly basis that is.

In case anyone hasn't noticed, I've been posting a bit more than usual this past month, most of which has been sports card related -- in order for me to keep up this kind of pace, I need to throw in a few non-sports card posts here and there, hence another post about postcards (although it's just one this time).

Yesterday ended up being a "me" day, meaning that I had no plans, and could do ever whatever struck my fancy (within reason of course). Surprisingly, I actually had the urge to go somewhere, somewhere that would hopefully be fun. I don't like to waste my whole day gallivanting around, so when I do go out, it's always in the morning -- and even though I felt like going out, I still didn't feel like going very far, which did severely limit my options, but seeing as how I hadn't hit my favorite semi-local antique mall (the only good one in TN that I've found so far) in a while, I figured that would be good way to spend the morning.

As much as I like this antique mall (and the guy who owns it), I really only go for one particular booth, I've written about this booth before, but for anyone knew to the blog, it's got pretty much everything that I could possibly want in one single place: stamps, postcards, magazines, sports cards, trade cards, coins, toys (of the vintage variety), all kinds of old paper ephemera, and just a bunch of other random junk that your average modern person no longer cares about (aka my kind of stuff).

"My" booth was looking a little sparse this, which makes me think that some "new" stuff is going to be added soon (note to self: go back next week), that being said, I still spent over an hour looking through various boxes and binders, although I only ended up finding one thing of interest:

Before I go any further, I've got to admit something, and it's a little embarrassing... it took me about an hour of searching on the interweb last night to identify the location! I knew that I recognized the place, but my goldfish brain wouldn't let me recall the name. Thankfully I was at least able to still recognize Mt. Etna in the background, which of course narrowed it down to Sicily, but still, a whole hour of searching?

Anyways, what your looking is the ancient theatre of Taormina, built by the Romans - on the spot of an older theatre of Greek origin - sometime in the third century B.C. This particular theatre happens to be the second largest of it's kind in Sicily, with the Greek theatre further down the coast in Siracusa being the biggest.

As you can see from this modern picture (pilfered from Google btw), the theatre is still very much there, and is quite the tourist destination, with a panoramic view like that - Etna on the right, Ionian Sea on the left - it's not hard to see why.

Keeping with Greek tradition (the Romans would've used it for gladiatorial events), temporary stages are put together for modern performances -- most of the original seating is gone, but clearly that's been remedied as well.

I usually prefer cards that have been used, but I wasn't about to pass this one up just because of it's lack of postal history. I am far from an expert, but I'm thinking that this card dates to the 30's, and while not rare by any stretch of the imagination, I do believe that it was worth the four bits (fifty cents) that I paid for it.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.