Old cards from an old card show

Now that I'm caught up with all of the packages that I've recently received from fellow bloggers [note: I started to write this before getting a PWE from Fuji the other day], I thought it might be a good idea to catch up on/recap the acquisitions from the card show that I attended at the end of July.

After the show at the end of June, I didn't think that I would be going to another one until the big one in September, so this was kind of an impromptu show attendance for me, as I had only decided the day before that I wanted to go. As a quick aside, to anybody who's within a couple of hours drive to Nashville -- who are wondering if the big 200 table show on September 29th is worth driving to? -- Let me just say, Yes! It'll be worth the trip. There will probably be sellers from at least a dozen states set up, and attendees from even more, by all accounts, it's the closest thing to going to The National... without actually having to go to The National.

So anyway, even though the trip was hastily planned, thanks to some eBay sales, I at least had some money to spend, and for once... I actually didn't spend it all!

It should be no surprise that this first post will be nothing but vintage, especially since I always start out the series of card show recaps with the oldies.

The 59's that you're going to see were actually my last purchase from the day, all coming from a guy named Tom, who has quickly become my second favorite seller at these shows. He had five stacks of 59's (probably around 300 cards in total), after over a month now I can't remember how they were priced, but it was basically a "the more you buy, the more you save" kind of deal.

I really like the 1959 Topps set, and might try to build it someday, but for now I just picked up cards that will be going into some recently started mini-collections -- except the Sauer, he was free since he had a hole in the middle of his card.

The Warren Giles isn't going to be part of any collection, I've just really wanted that card for a long time now.

Even if I never get around to (or get the money to) working on the set, I'd at least like to get all of the "rising sun" cards. It was nice to be able to add a few more to that collection, especially when a few of those featured the likes of Larry Doby, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Eddie Mathews, and Ted Williams.

I already had these two, but mine were of a much lower grade.

I'd also like to complete The Sporting News subset... I think it's safe to say that I made some pretty good progress on that front.

I'll have to get another Johnny Callison at some point, because this one (as well as the Tony Taylor in the first picture) went into my Telstar collection.

Like I said, I don't remember exactly how much all of the 59's were, but I think they ended up averaging out to around 60-65 cents a card, which seemed like a pretty solid deal to me.

Don't worry baseball fans, there's more for you at the end of the post, but for now...

... take a look...

... at all...

... of these...

... 1980-81 Topps!

There's so many here that I couldn't even...

... stretch that sentence to cover them all.

These were my second to last purchase of the day, and they were also my favorite purchase of the day.

They came from an older dealer who I've bought from many a times in the past. He's had some really good dime boxes in the past, but this particular show's boxes might have been the best so far... yeah, these all came from a dime box!

I couldn't believe that they were still sitting in this box over three hours after the show had started, sometimes I really don't understand other collector's. Internally, I did happy dance when I came across this stack, as I just don't see cards from this set very often, and when I do, there usually priced at a lot more than a dime apiece.

Initially I just checked one or two for condition, upon seeing how nice they were, I just grabbed the whole stack. I went through them after I got home, obviously I was hoping for one of Bird/Magic RC combinations to be in there -- not surprisingly there wasn't, but there was still some decent names in there, guys that should be more of a household name than they are.

I found quite a few other things in those dime boxes, some of which will be seen in upcoming posts. This '72 Sawx team card was the only other thing of a vintage that I came across in there though.

Another Sawx team card, this time from 1961. I can't remember which seller this came from, or how much it was, but it's still a neat card... which technically speaking, could be considered a Ted Williams card.

The last couple of cards in this post were the biggies (money wise), and all came from my, and everybody else's, favorite dealer, Jim.

Usually Jim is set up right when the show opens, so by the time I get there (about an hour after the doors open), his stuff has already been picked over, not that that has stopped me from getting plenty of great cards from him over the last couple of years.

This time was a little different though, as he had gotten hung up in traffic, and didn't get to the show until about twenty minutes after I did. Probably annoying for him, but good for me, because I was actually gonna get to see his wares as they were being put out -- the first, and last time, that this will probably happen.

It was really interesting to see him arrive, and then see the throng of collectors surround him as he walked to his tables, it was kind of like a card show version of The Beatles entering the room. Most of those guys were practically frothing at the mouth in anticipation for him to put out his high end autograph/relic boxes, which were worked for me, as I was just hoping that he would have a few of his legendary dime boxes, as well as some vintage to look through.

By the time I walked over, he was just starting put stacks of vintage out, and nobody else seemed to care... at least for a minute or two.

There is another dealer at the show who buys a lot of Jim's vintage stuff, takes it back to his tables, and marks it up to absurd (at least in my mind) prices. I'm not particularly fond of this guy (he tried to collection shame me at one of the first shows I attended after moving here), but I'm going to try and not say anything to negative about him. As expected, it didn't take him long to show up, but by then I already had a stack, as I had zoomed through 200-300 cards in about 2 1/2 minutes.

My initial stack was made up of the above '71 Ryan and '68 Maris, as well as a 1969 Reggie Jackson rookie, a '54 Topps Warren Spahn, a '72 Mazeroski, a 1955 Topps All-American (I can't remember who), and some other card that I can't remember. Now I didn't think that I was actually going to be able to afford all of these, but I figured that wouldn't hurt to see what the price would be.

As expected, the price was up there, mostly because of the Reggie, which was probably in gradable condition. So after hearing the price, I started whittling down the stack, asking how much the total would be after each card had been removed.

The stack got down to three cards, and I found out that I could either get the 1972 Mazeroski (high number), or for just $5 more, I could get the Nolan Ryan and Roger Maris... this ended up not being a very difficult decision. The Ryan a fairly iconic card, and I've wanted Roger's sunset card for quite a while now, Maz just couldn't compete.

Also, am I wrong, or is '68 Topps the first year that you started seeing guy's wearing a batting glove? Roger Maris, Jimmie Hall, and Johnny Callison are all shown sporting a glove. There might be more, but I can't think of any off the top of my head. And I don't remember seeing anybody wearing one in a set prior to 1968.

I was interested in this card as well, because I bought the other two cards, this one was tossed in for free. It's creased up a bit, but it's my first Uecker, and it was free, so it's kind of hard to complain about the condition too much.

This was two shows in a row that I've been able to find some really neat vintage cards, for some really neat prices, fingers crossed for the show at the end of this month. And for anyone interested, I have three more posts coming up that'll be covering all of the non-vintage baseball, basketball, and football cards that were gotten at this show.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Colossal card show recap: Part 3

Welcome back, for the third, and final installment of this recap series.

Seller #8:

The way the two gym system was set up, you had to enter through the smaller one, go across the small alley/car lane, and in to the larger gym. They blocked off the lane in between the gyms, so that the dealers who usually park there, couldn't. It worked out pretty well that way, at least people didn't have to try and squeeze between cars as they walked form gym to gym. I mention this because when I arrived  at around 7am, about half the dealers in the smaller gym hadn't set up yet, so I did a quick walk through of the ones that had, and made my way to the much fuller large gym.

After about two hours in the larger gym, I decided to make a trip out to the car so that I could unburden myself a little bit (especially the comics from the first post), so I had walk back through the smaller gym to do so. By now all the dealers had probably been set up in the smaller gym for at least an hour, so when I came back from the car, it was time to see what this gym had to offer.

Walking in, at the first row of tables directly in front of you, was an older guy who hadn't been there during my original pass through. The first thing I saw was a 3200 ct box marked "50 cents each or 3/$1". There was a guy just finishing up with said box, and after I saw some of the cards in his stack, my inner self started dropping four letter words for not getting here sooner.

The box was only about half full at this point, and as I saddled up to it, the seller informed me that it had been picked over pretty good so far (more internal swearing). The box was full, or rather half full, of nothing but 60's baseball and football. And everything was in either top loaders or those soft flexible holders (don't know the name), so most of the stuff was in fairly decent shape.

There was quite a bit of '65 and '66 Topps baseball, neither of which I'm collecting, so I didn't end up getting as much as I thought I would. And of the stuff I'm collecting, there were a lot of thing I already have. That being said, I still found 30 cards, including the 67's above.

If you look closely, you can see that four of the 63's here have wax stains on the front. Which doesn't bother me anymore, especially after I learned last year of the method using pantyhose to remove front of the card stains. Everything's still in boxes right now, so I don't know where my pantyhose are (that sounds weird), but once I find them, these will clean up nice.

These were the only three 64's in the box.

One lone '71 as well.

I think these '67 Topps football were the best, and most surprising thing to come from the box, as this is a set that is never found in discount boxes (at least not by me). I suspect that there had been more, but by the time I got there, there was only four left, so I ended up with a pair of Oilers...

... and a pair of Patriots. Even though I don't have a lot from it, this set is probably tied with the '69 Topps as my favorite vintage football set. And speaking of 1969...

... I found some of those too!

It's been a while since I've been able to cross any numbers off this checklist.

After finishing up with the discount box and paying, the seller, having seen what I bought, let me know that he had some better cards from some of the same sets in a two-row shoebox that was marked "$2 each or 3/$5". After looking through it, I came away with four cards that he let me have for $6:

Some more 64's. At #521, Tom Satriano is a needed high number. And Boog... well, he's just Boog.

Another wax stained card that will look amazing once it's removed, this Dave Giusti rookie is also a high number, at #509.

I'm always surprised that I don't see more 1969 Topps at these shows, as it's not like it's a hard set to come by, but for whatever reason, I just don't come across it very often. At least I was able to add this cool home run leaders though.

I'm not usually a very talkative person, but I really enjoyed talking to this particular vendor (so much so, that I apparently forgot his name already). Normally when someone asks me what I collect, knowing that they are just going to try pawn off some overpriced item in one of their cases, I will give a non-specific answer along the lines of "well, you know, a little bit of this, a little bit of that". But when this guy asked, you could tell he was genuinely interested, so I didn't mind giving him some specifics. He thought it was funny to hear how many sets I'm trying to work on. And I couldn't help but think, that this guy is like the grandpa that just about everyone ever, wishes they could have. I certainly hope our paths will cross again.

Seller #9:

This was my second to last stop, and I was just about done for the day. My social anxiety was starting to kick in, as even though the show had been going for at least four hours by now, it seemed like the amount of people showing up was growing exponentially. This was another dealer I hadn't seen before, from what I could gather, he owns a card shop in Kentucky. He had two tables (I believe) of mostly vintage baseball and football. In retrospect I should have spent more time at his tables, but again, I was really wanting to leave at this point. So, I basically stopped long enough to look through one of those floppy binders (I don't know what you call the non-rigid ones) that had 4 or 5 pages of '62 Post. It wasn't the greatest selection ever, but I did find this needed Don Zimmer for a dollar, so that was pretty neat.

Seller #10:

Even though I was past the point of needing to leave, I decided to make one more sweep through the larger gym, which turned out to be a pretty good idea. There is a husband/wife (I'm assuming) combo who only set up at the big shows, they usually have a couple tables of nothing but vintage. And when I vintage, I mean like, just about anything you can think of... they probably have it. Glass cases loaded with stacks (and stacks) of high end stuff, and shelving units behind them, that must have at least 50 thick binders of cards separated by set. It's really quite something, I'm to gather that they set up at The National every year, so I would imagine to well there, you would need this kind of inventory.

Even though I have seen them there four or five times now, this was actually the first time I had ever stopped at their tables. There are usually so many people going through their stuff, that I, not wanting to try and squeeze in, just keep on going. When I had gone by earlier, it was crowded, but now there was actually some open space for me to finally see what all the hype was about.

I can honestly say that at this point in the show, I was very much overwhelmed by their selection, I just couldn't take it all in. Realizing this fact, I decided that would just ask to see one of the binder's, try and find something I need, and leave. Because it was already the closest one to me, I went with the '62 Post football binder, and even that ended up being too much for my sleep deprived/anxiety riddled brain. Did you know that there are multiple background color variations for almost every card in that set? Well, I didn't, and that binder was chock full of all those variations. I got a couple of pages in, found the Bart Starr for $4, and figured that was enough for one day... or so I thought.

As I was paying, the guy asked me (I'm assuming because the Starr is in somewhat of an off condition) if I was interested in "scratch and dent" stuff. I know he didn't mean it, but the way he said it sounded kind of like an insult, I brushed it off though and said "depends on how bad they are". I was then directed to box the size of a literal shoebox, with a couple of small stacks of marked down cards.

Sitting right on top was this 1939 Play Ball of John "Black Jack" Wilson, who just so happened to be a fellow Portland native.

Even though it's a little rough, for $3, I had to have it. I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that, other than being familiar with his name and that he was from Portland, I didn't know much about Jack Wilson. If anyone is interested, I found a really good article that the SABR.ORG people put together.

For two bucks apiece, I also ended up getting two 1950 Bowman's, which also happen to be my first cards from that set.

Both of these are pretty cool in their own way. The Earl Johnson, not only because of the PNW connection, but more importantly, because he was a celebrated WW2 veteran. As far as Al Papai goes, this was his one and only card, so it's always kind of neat to find those guys that only ever got one piece of cardboard.

At this point, there was another wave of people coming in, and it seemed to be getting very warm in there (it was 90 degrees outside) -- and the walls started feeling like they were closing in, so after paying, I made a beeline for the exit. I had spent four hours there, and in that kind of setting, with that many people, fours hours is just about my limit. Even though it started to get a bit rough towards the end, I'm still very glad that I went, as I was able pick up some really neat cards (and comics).

I know these past three posts have been pretty long(winded), so I really appreciate any of you out there, who actually took the time to read them all the way through.