I'd buy that for a dollar!

Today is a card show day, and not just any old card show day, no, it's one of the twice a year super mega 200+ table Nashville card show (aka the baby National) days... and I'm not there!

I mentioned in the last post that I had been looking forward to this one for months, since September to be more specific, only to find out a couple of weeks ago that all of this waiting had been for naught.

I had originally planned on starting this post off with a bit of a rant, but after thinking about it, I realized that a). The last thing the internet needs is yet another person ranting about something, and b). The rant would be completely irrelevant to anyone not attending the show, which is probably everyone reading this, so why bother?

So instead of ranting, I'll just say that a few changes have been made to how the big shows are being run going forward, including the addition of an admission fee, and I'm not happy with these changes, so I decided not to attend -- which wasn't an easy decision by the way, as these big shows started almost right after I moved here, and I had attended every single one up until today's.

If the changes to the show weren't enough to keep me away, the weather probably would've been. We've had what I'm hoping is the last of the winter weather over the past few days; cold, snow, icy roads, etc. Things are supposed to be getting better tomorrow, but until then, I wasn't too keen on being out on the road at 4:30am, and possibly hitting some spots of black ice. I'm at about 1,900 above sea level, so things are much worse weather wise here than they are down in Nashville, but it does take a bit to start getting to those lower elevations. And not to toot my own horn, I'm a pretty solid driver, especially when doing so under less than ideal road conditions, but it's everybody else that I sometimes worry about.

I think that just about covers everything, so instead of going to the show today, I'm hoping to get outside for a bit this afternoon, and then tonight I'm going to sit down and open up the cheap box of 1991 Upper Deck football that I got the other day. Oh, and I've got this here post to finish up as well! I figured that since I won't be having a bunch of stuff from today's show to blog about, I might as well as get to the last of the cards from September's super mega show (my last super mega show?).

And since I know there's a lot of baseball only people out there, I'll warn you in advance that there is no baseball in today's post, but there was a reason for that, one which I will try to cover at the end of the post.

I actually started this post back in October, but quickly realized that it might be a while before I finished it, so I made a few notes in the draft so that I wouldn't forget some of the details -- and I'm very grateful to my past self for doing so, because I had indeed forgotten most of the details.

Everything you see here today came from the last table that I stopped at that day, and even though the dealer had decent sized spread, I still probably would've missed it had I not done one last walk through. I was pretty tired by the time I stopped here, and seeing how many monster boxes this guy had (at least 30), I did initially think about just walking by, but there was a sign that said everything was a buck - a dollar table if you will - and with as many boxes as there were, I couldn't help but at least look through one to see if there were any deals to be had. Everything was separated by sport, and I just started looking in the basketball box that was closest to me. The above 1993-94 Scoring Kings was the first card in the first row of that first box that I looked in, and after finding it, I knew I was going to be stuck going through as many of those boxes as I could.

As cool as it was to find that Nique, I couldn't figure out how it was still there, I mean the show had been open for over four hours by the time I hit this table? I would end up having this same thought many times over the course of the next hour or so.

One doesn't find a lot of Jordan inserts in the cheap boxes anymore, so this one was definitely a surprise. I thought for sure that once I got home I'd find a hidden crease through it, or some other similar issue, but it ended up being completely fine (all of these were photographed, hence the weird glare spots and wonky angles).

I think I got to these boxes just at the right time too, because a guy showed up just after I found the MJ, and asked the dealer if there were any Jordan's in the boxes? The dealer said that there were, and the guy then proceeded to go through all of the basketball and pulled out all of the MJ base cards, most of which I had already passed on.

Spectralight's are another thing that I'm not accustomed to finding at shows, in fact I don't think that I had ever found a single one at show before. I thought just finding one of the Reign Man was cool, but a few cards further I hit a run of them...

These don't photograph well, and they scan even worse, so for those who aren't familiar with this parallel (for you baseball fans, think Cyber Stats), so I tried, and failed, to give you a better angle.

Had they been cheaper, I probably would've gotten them all, but since they were $1 each, I just went with guys I collect... and Dee Brown, who I will always be very fond of! I ended up leaving behind a bunch of guys like Greg Anthony and Billy Owens, but I was, and still am, pretty happy with what I got.

Of everything in this post, this is probably the only card that I overpaid for, but I don't think by much. There were a few other Dr. J parallels from this set, but the pink was the only one that I really wanted at the time.

I almost got a Barkley Generations as well, but part of the bottom had been peeled up (probably from getting hooked on a toploader), so back into the box he went.

Most of my regular readers probably already know that I'm not big on rookie cards, but for a dollar I wasn't about to pass up one of Timmy D! It wasn't until I got home that I noticed it was a Minted in Springfield parallel, which of course was even better than the base rookie.

Despite what you've seen here, probably 95% or more of the basketball boxes were made up of low end 90's inserts (dime box material), newer low end parallels (dime box material), and 90's base cards (nickel box material). The base was all very sharp though, so I'm thinking that he was hoping that the graders might be all over those -- they didn't seem to be while I was there.

After looking through the basketball, I really wanted to call it a day, but I had to give the football boxes a chance as well, although I knew that I wouldn't be going through them all, as there had to be at least double the amount of the basketball.

The first card from the first box was this '68 Joe Namath. He's got some wrinkles, and some spray paint(?), but it's still a playing days Namath, my first playing days Namath. Despite it's problems, I still really like it, although I wish I knew the story behind the paint.

Looking at it again now after almost five months has passed, I'm not as fond of this one as I was at the time, but that happens sometimes, it's definitely not the end of the world.

Not being alive at the time, I still find it weird to see, or even think of, O.J. as a Niner.

I always say that I don't much care for rookies, and yet this is now the second one in this post. I've never owned a Bo football rookie before, and sure it's got a few surface scratches, but it's still a Bo rookie, and even in this condition it's got be worth a buck, right?

I had only gotten through a couple of the football boxes when a guy showed up with his, I wanna say 5 or 6 year old son. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, but this kid was a little bundle of energy - as most young boys are - darting to and fro, and clearly wanting to be anywhere but there. Dad clearly wanted him to start collecting football cards though, so he reigned him and was trying to get the kid to pick out some cards that he liked. The kid obliged, sort of, he just walked over to the boxes and started pulling out random cards and saying things like "Ummmm... this one?", to which the dad would reply "The BENGALS?!?!". Then the kid would put the card back and try again, which was met with "The COWBOYS?!?!". It became apparent pretty quick that not only did dad want his son to be a football card collector, but he also wanted him to only collect whoever dad's team was, and was starting to get agitated over the fact that junior had clearly forgotten who dad's team was. After listening to a few minutes of this, I was ready to explode on dad. I could tell that this a$$hole was the same sort that most likely makes his kid watch all of "his" team's games, and probably tells him when to cheer and boo as well... and I f*cking loathe those kind of guys! I know that parents don't like to be told how to raise their kids, especially by those of us without kids, but it was around 90 degrees that day, and that kid shouldn't have been at that show -- he should've been out at on a shaded playground somewhere, and been allowed to just go crazy for a couple of hours... as all kids should be allowed to do on nice summer days.

Since I'm not one to make a scene, at least not at this point in my life, I decided to just forgo the rest of the football boxes, as well as the unseen baseball boxes, and pay for my stuff and leave -- which I did.

So even though I didn't get through all of these boxes, I still found a couple of neat things, and those coupled with the rest of the stuff that I came home with, made for a solid day's work. I have no idea when I'll be going to another show, but I don't have any shortage of blog material, so missing today's show really won't have much of an effect on me in the long run.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.