Doling out for Doby

Even though I spent over four hours at the big card show back in September, I could probably count on one hand the amount of minutes that I spent looking at vintage stuff. There were a number of reasons why this was, but I think the primary reason was that there was just too darn much of it!

It may be a bit of an exaggeration, but it sure seemed like just about every other one of the 180+ tables had at least one box of discounted vintage. And those boxes ranged from your average two-row shoebox all the way up to fruit boxes full of off-condition cards that were just strewn about, sometimes in toploaders, and sometimes just in penny sleeves.

I'm sure that a few people reading are probably thinking to themselves that there's no such thing as too much vintage when it comes to card shows, and that's cool, but for me it truly was too much.

I've mentioned this before, but ever since I stopped working on all of the various sets that I was building, I've been somewhat rudderless when it comes to cards, especially those of the vintage variety. This is part of the reason that I decided to start the Reggie Roby collection, which has been fun, fun even to start a bunch of other player collections. These new collections are made up  primarily of guys who played during the 60's and 70's, all of whom have much smaller checklists than Reggie, so this should give me some more focus, and a reason to start looking through the discount vintage boxes again. I also have a large vintage baseball project that I've been thinking about starting for years, but I know it's going to be a lot of work to get started, which is why I keep putting it off -- but if I ever do get it up and running, I'll really have a reason to scour those vintage baseball boxes.

Back to September though, I didn't have these player collections going yet, and obviously the big project hasn't bee started, and I'm no longer working on any vintage sets, so there just wasn't much reason for me to spend a lot of time digging through mountains of old cards. I did however spend a few moments at a couple of tables looking for some cheap '61 Billy Muffett's (to no avail), and I did stop at a table that had a monster box of vintage football, but there were no prices and the dealer was deep in conversation with someone who was set up next to him, so I just walked away. But other than that, the only vintage cards I really saw (and bought) were the one's that came out of the bargain boxes from the last two posts, oh, and there was...

... this bitchin' 1955 Larry Doby Red Man!

It was only after I had paid the fellow for all of the stuff that's been in the last two posts, that I noticed the cards that were laid out on the table in between his bargain boxes. I find myself not even looking cards that are in glass cases, or in this case, laid out in toploaders, very often anymore, because I just assume that there going to be out of my range, so why bother looking? This time though, I did, and when I did I found myself being drawn to the trio of Red Men that were laid out, Larry in particular.

I picked him up and asked how much he was (expecting the worse of course)? Five bucks was the answer I got, I definitely wasn't expecting that! I noticed a faint crease going across the back horizontally, and the guy noticed me looking at it too, so I when I looked back over at him he held up four fingers, and I said four dollars? He nodded yes, and that was that. And as for that faint crease, it truly is just that, it's so faint that it doesn't even go all the way through the cardboard, meaning that there's no sign of it from the front.

This is only my second Red Man, and is far nicer than my other one (Carl Erskine). It's still got the tab, and it's just a great looking card of Larry during his last year in Cleveland. And in case anyone cares, the other two on the table were Carl Erskine and Warren Spahn. In retrospect, I should've inquired into the price of the Erskine, as it was much nicer than mine, and I probably should've tried to do some haggling on the Spahn -- but oh well, I got the one that I wanted the most, so that's all that really matters.

At $4, this was my largest single purchase of the day, and looking back, I still can't believe that I was able to get him so cheap!

Even though I'm getting a little tired of doing them, I've still got one more card show post to do, and then I probably won't have another one until February. I thought I was gonna have to go to one next weekend to do my Secret Santa shopping, but I found some pretty cool stuff elsewhere, and no longer need to go to the show... so I ain't gonna!


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.