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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
