Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Card Show Bounty


It's difficult enough these days to find places around here that sell baseball cards that aren't big box stores, so a few months ago I was pleased to discover that there is a monthly card show that is held in a cheesy shopping mall just outside of the city. Last time I was pretty successful at finding some bargain Cardinals to add to my collection, but I spent a great deal more time window shopping and being amazed at silly things like out of package Starting Lineup figures than I did actually digging through boxes and piles of cards. I picked up far too many cards to give equal time to here, so I'll just go over the highlights.

Football cards: I did not own a Duce Staley card, but now I'm glad that I do. I also got a shiny Randall Cunningham card, a couple of Eagles I've never heard of from 1978 and 3 cards of Oregon Ducks pictured in their college uniforms but with NFL logos that I'm saving for a later post.

Clyde Drexler cards: Blazers cards usually come at a premium around here, but I was able to grab 5 Drexler insert cards from the 1993-94 Fleer basketball set for $2. Inserted into wax packs that year were cards from a 12-card set dedicated to Drexler and his career highlights up until that point. I already had a few in my collection before I stopped collecting and had noticed them recently while flipping through my Blazers binder. I picked up card #5 and #7 at first, but then I noticed #13, #14 and #15 sitting in a snapcase all by themselves. This set is numbered to 12, right? I had no idea where these extra cards might have been inserted into, but it turns out that you could send away a bunch of pack wrappers and a nominal sum of money to receive cards #13-15 along with a free NBA Inside Stuff magazine. Unfortunately, it turns out there's also a card #16 out there, which you could only get if you actually decided to subscribe to said magazine. I could be chasing this set for awhile. Beckett's site actually proved to be useful for once in finding out this information.

Mysterious Ozzie Smith card: This is one of just two Ozzie's that I picked up, and I have no idea what it is. It has a 1995 copyright on the back and was made by Topps. I can't find a card number on it. It is super-gold on the front and super-glossy on the back, and embossed, of course. Oh well... whatever it is, I didn't have it.


Vintage Cardinals cards: Okay, basically anything pre-1980 is vintage to me. I got a nice, slightly beat up 1972 Topps Ted Simmons and an even more beat up 1971 Topps Joe Torre (and others) League Leaders card. For less than a buck, I'll buy just about anything Cardinals-related like these.

2008 Topps Heritage inserts: At 3-for-a-buck, these were hard to pass up, even though two of them are decidedly non-sports. Maybe... just maybe... I'll actually decide to collect the entire Heritage set and the inserts. But I won't go for the Chrome ones or anything. I think collecting a "set" of anything with serial numbers is insane.

Albert Pujols cards: I picked up 9 Pujols cards I needed out of a 3-for-a-buck box at the same table as the Heritage cards above. This 2007 Bowman card looks particularly nice.

2008 Allen & Ginter US Flag cards: 4 more flags for me at 50 cents a pop.

2008 Allen & Ginter base cards: I picked up 38 cards I needed for the set for 0nly 10 cents each. It could have been an even 40, but somehow I ended up with two Jermaine Dye cards and my Elijah Dukes card was somewhat mangled in transit to my home. I still need tons of these cards, though, especially SPs.



5 cent Cardinals cards!: I ended up with nearly 40 of these. The 5 cent box at one dealer's table ended up consuming by far the most time of what I had allotted for this day. To just highlight a few here, I found Cardinals cards with Jim Edmonds and Brett Tomko wearing retro uniforms that I'd never actually seen the team wear before. And there was an Edmonds faux-ticket card that is from the same set as a fascinating card I got from Dinged Corners a couple of months back. And then there was Larry Walker, looking more like a coach here than a player. Walker has been around the team as a coach/hitting guru the past couple of springs, so it would be nice to see him end up with a regular position one of these days should he choose it.

5 cent Blazers cards: I got a small handful of these, and this Gary Trent card is by far the most ridiculous of the batch. Basically, Trent is/was a ridiculous person, so the card design is very appropriate. Oddly enough, this is some rookie insert card, so it might have actually been sought after at one time.


Relic/Jersey cards: The guy with the 5 cent cards also had an entire box full of cheap game-used/autographed cards, which is something I had been looking for. I wanted to get a cheap card like this for someone I had traded with before, and I also hoped to find some interesting Cardinals stuff. They were all priced at $3 or 4 for $10, so I managed to pick out 4 cards. The first is the Taguchi card shown at the very top of this post. It was from So's rookie year, and I actually saw his first ever major league game in person, so he's a player that always sticks out in my mind. The card is also serial numbered (227/250) so at least in my mind it makes it a little nicer than some of the stuff you see in the regular Topps base sets that I end up buying these days. I also got a Tyler Greene autograph card, which I probably would have left had I not heard the news that he had been added to the 40-man roster just a few days ago. It's actually the first certified autograph that I've ever purchased. Finally, there's a Rolen jersey card (38/50) that unfortunately has a pretty chipped edge on the back of the card. I still felt like buying it.

Wax: When I decided to take off, I realized that I had not bought any packs. There was a box of 1998 Bowman for $15 that I had my eye on, but the guy left before I finally decided to cave in and buy it. I really had no idea who was in the set, but thought it might be fun to open anyway. I ended up grabbing 5 packs of 1984 Topps on the way out, priced at $1 a piece from the guy who had all the nickel cards and auto/game-used stuff. I plan on posting one of the packs on A Pack A Day and the rest will appear here at some point.

6 comments :

  1. where is this monthly card show? Jantzen Beach?

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  2. I suppose the only good thing about living away from the town where your team plays is that your the only one that wants their cards. makes for good hunting in the nickel and dime bins.

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  3. oh and I wonder if that is the only batting leaders card with 2 catchers on it.

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  4. I love reading card show posts. Looks like you picked up a bunch of good stuff cheaply. And I'm jealous that there are monthly card shows where you live.

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  5. Yeah, this is the Jantzen Beach show. Really, it's not that amazing, but it makes for good bargain hunting.

    Now I just need to find someone to pick up a bunch of Blazers cards for me at a card show in, say, Minnesota.

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  6. Neat connection with So Taguchi; personal memories of players make their cards extremely fun to collect. And that 1971 Topps card is wonderful. The photo editor's assignment must have been: find three players that are looking in anything but the same direction.

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