Monday, February 11, 2019

Backlogged baseball

I used to be so good about showing off my card show spoils in a timely manner. When I first started the blog a couple of years ago I would have everything photographed and/or scanned within a day or two, the recap post(s) would then be up within another day or two - fast forward a few years, and now I feel like I've accomplished something if I'm able to get all of that done within the following 30 days.

No sense of accomplishment this time though, as I'm just now getting around to the goodies that were gotten at the last show that I went to, which only took place at the end of this past November! Yep, only 2 1/2 months ago, that might be a new record for me?

I hadn't originally planned on going to this particular show, but I had plenty of Secret Santa shopping to do, and this was going to be my best opportunity to find some stuff for Billy and Mark, stuff that hopefully wouldn't suck.

Since it's been a couple of months now, some of the details are a little fuzzy, but I do remember that the weather was supposed to be nice that day, so I was trying to get there and back as quick as I could, I hate wasting nice days away from home. Because of this, I ended up getting there about half an hour earlier than normal. Usually things are jumping at that these shows around the crack of the dawn, not this time though, in fact, there was only about half a dozen dealers set up when I got there, but things did get going pretty quick.

Everybody's favorite seller, Jim, wasn't even there yet, so I had to bide my time by going to one of the few guys who was set up, a guy I've never seen before, who had pretty expansive spread. Much of his offerings were of the football variety, which worked for me, since that's what I've been most interested in lately, at least cardwise. After going through all of his football cards (those will be in a separate post), I noticed that he had two 3200 ct baseball dime boxes, so I went to work on those.

The first row I started in on had around 100 Griffey's grouped together, a lot of it was stuff that I already had at one time in my original Junior collection, stuff I don't really want again (early 90's base), but there were a few things of interest. The Gallery PPI up in the right hand corner is one of those auction points cards:

I remember these from the 1999-00 basketball set, but I never knew that they did them on the baseball side too. The basketball points were literally just points cards, these are actual baseball cards, which are apparently collected as such. I already showed this card to somebody via the interwebs, who didn't hesitate to make me an offer for it, supposedly a 100 points Junior is somewhat desirable, who knew? I think this is pretty nifty card, so I didn't take the offer, tempting as it was.

Of the dozen or so Griffey's that I got, this 1999 Tek is probably the coolest. Looks like these tend to sell for a bit on COMC, so that's always fun to find something like that for just a dime.

Found a run of Ichiro cards as well. I already had a copy of both the Lineage refractor, and the green Bowman, but they're both pretty, so I certainly didn't mind getting another of each. Even at a dime, the gold Bowman probably should've been left behind... it's not a very interesting card.

Here's just some random shiny.

And here we have some random... random? The Thome Clippings card is kind of neat, I don't recall ever having seen one of those before. I have quite a few Triumvirate's on the basketball side, but this was my first baseball one.

I have wanted one of Dan(ny) Ainge's baseball rookies for a long time, I say that, but I've never actually took the time to look for one, so I guess you can say that I wanted one in spirit. This one's got a punky corner, but it'll do until I can find a better one.

I had just finished getting through the first row of this dime box when Jim finally got there, so with the prospect of being able to get in on his stuff right away (that never happens for me), I quickly settled up with this guy - with every intention of coming back and seeing what else his boxes had to offer (spoiler: I didn't) - and made my way over to Jim... just as he was putting out mucho stacks of vintage!

I got there just in time to secure a spot before the feeding frenzy officially began, because of this, I was even able to go through three whole stacks before anybody else, plucking out four cards along the way. The first of said four cards was this really fantastic '62 Al Kaline, numbers two and three were...

... these guys! As far as vintage all-star subsets go, '68 is probably my least favorite, too much wasted space for my liking - that being said, it's not very often that I come across an affordable vintage Aaron or Clemente, in this kind of condition.

At $5 apiece, these last three cards were my "big ticket" items from the show, although the fourth card I had picked up, a creased '64 Mantle, would've been a little more, but Jim and I were a bit off with what we thought it was worth (I was most certainly being too cheap in my assessment of the card's value), so I didn't end up getting that one, which is fine, as there's plenty more of them out there.

While making my way through what was left of the "good" stacks (HOFer's, high numbers, etc.), I overheard someone asking about a couple of unpriced stacks, as it turns out, those were the 25 cent piles, which were made up of mostly "commons". There wasn't much left for me to look through by the time I got to them, but I did find one biggie...

... ANOTHER 1961 BILLY MUFFETT! This pretty much made up for not being able to get the Mantle (I'm only half being facetious btw).

Jim didn't have any dime boxes this time, but he did have some 6/$1 boxes, and those rarely disappoint, so after the vintage had been gone through, I hit the bargain boxes:

Jim had an awful lot of these 2018 sepia refractors, had I known that I would be owing a couple of people return packages, I would've bought more than just these three.

I've been buying any, and all, cheap copies of the 2011 legends variants (in parallel form) that I happen to come across, the Koufax Cognac for 15 cents might just be the best deal that I've found on one so far.

Tim must've just hit a homer, good for him! Normally I'm not a big rookie guy, but even so, I'm not gonna pass up a cheap Freddie Freeman. The McGwire is a sample, so that's something?

The last of my baseball purchases from Jim's bargain boxes is kind of interesting, and I have no clue as to what it is. The front is done up to look like a '58 Hires Root Beer (even though Mantle didn't have a card in that set), and the back...

... well, I don't what the back is supposed to look like, but it's certainly not a Hires back. I don't think it's a Broder, feels much different than those usually do, so I guess if anybody know what's going on here, please let me know.

By this time, it was getting kind of late, but since I hadn't found anything for one of the two people that I had to find Secret Santa gifts for, I decided to hit up one more table, and I'm glad I did, because not only did I find enough SS stuff, but I also found...

... a couple of much needed Golden Age inserts in a dime box! Unfortunately, that's all I found in these particular dime boxes, but just finding these four cards alone made the dig worth it.

I was now done for the day, there was still plenty of tables that I didn't even walk by, but I didn't care, it was time to go... so I went!

There was plenty of basketball and football cards gotten as well, especially football, so you can expect to see those coming soon to a computer (or phone) screen near you.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

20 comments:

  1. "Punky corner". I might have to use that expression sometime. Also, great information on the back of that Mickey Mantle card. Some modern-day players should pay attention to what the Mick has said there.

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    1. Listening to The Mick's philosophy on hitting could be beneficial to a lot of today's players, would they actually take the time to listen though... probably not!

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  2. Dang! That is a great show haul. I'm always a fan of Ichiro from his Seattle days. Thanks for sharing.

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    1. Was there anybody who didn't like Ichiro during his original run in Seattle?

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  3. Great Kaline and those 69's are gorgeous!

    The Upper Deck Future Heroes Griffey Jr... I remember a group of my friends and myself gathered around after one of my friends pulled that out of a pack. I think we all spent the rest of the day offering trades for it, only to get turned down.

    Nice haul!

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    1. Thanks for sharing your story. I didn't have any friends that collected cards after about the age of 10, which means that I don't have any stories like that of my own, so I have to live vicariously through the stories of others.

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  4. The Mantle came from Baseball Card Magazine.

    https://www.tradingcarddb.com/ViewCard.cfm/sid/108837/cid/7531218/1988-Baseball-Cards-Magazine-Repli-cards-1-Mickey-Mantle

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    1. Trevor, you are my hero (at least for today), thank you so much for the identification!

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  5. Any Golden Age in a dime box is a good time in my book.

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    1. Most definitely! Now if it would just happen a little more frequently...

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  6. Awesome haul. That Mantle is really neat.

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    1. It is, and it's even better now that I know where it's from :)

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  7. Lol. I was starting to feel guilty about blogging about the card show I attended three weekends ago. Feeling a little better about it now. You picked up some really cool stuff. That Thome Clippings card is neat. Never understood why they weren't more popular with collectors. I mean... it literally contains a piece of history. Super cool.

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    1. Yeah, three weeks is nothing, call me when it takes you three months to get to it :)

      I don't know why they weren't more popular either, it certainly was a unique concept. Maybe folks just weren't ready for something like that yet?

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  8. Nice haul for sure. The Hudson card is a fun one. Those '68 cards are cool as well. All great cards and it's always fun at card shows.

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    1. Who knew that the Tim Hudson card was so popular (it got some attention on Twitter as well)?

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  9. I love GOLDEN AGE! more all the time, thanks to you! BTW, how'd you get that shiny Posey to scan so beautifully? Nice job!

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    1. How did I get the Posey to scan so well? Dumb luck, as always!

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