Small Card Show Recap - June

Whoops, forgot to publish!

Right before my trip, I took in the newfound monthly card show at my local Best Western hotel. Well, at least I thought it was monthly as I’ve been in April, May and now June. But the next one won’t be until September. I think it may have something to do with the big CSA show in the area in July and then the National. Or I could just be making that up, who knows?

Anyway, I wanted to save my money for the trip and debated even going. But I was out and about running errands so I decided to pop on by. The last two times I went, I found some great stuff and didn’t break the bank.

Huh. I just went to find links for the write ups but could only find the three parts I did for May (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3). I must have missed posting the April finds. Well, that’s a post for another day.

As I started to say, the last two times, I found some great stuff. The guy from April wasn’t there in May and neither of the guys from April or May were there in June. This show was on a Sunday and I think the last two had been on a Saturday so that may have had something to do with it.

I took some time to do my cursory walk around before making any purchases and came across a table that had some pretty unorganized boxes. The dealer said he got in big on the Strasburg and Harper hype a few years ago buying all kinds of sets and boxes. He was keeping those players but got this table on a whim to try to sell off the non-Nationals cards to clear up space and try to make a little of his money back. He didn’t really know what he had and didn’t really seem to have any kind of set pricing structure. But he was organizing as he was going and said if I was going to be around, he’d pull any Cubs for me as he went. Sounded good.

He also had binders that were all grouped together with star players that he was selling by the page. One binder was made up of $1 pages, essentially a slightly more expensive dime box but you had to buy all nine cards. I think he also had $2, $3 and $5 pages. With my strict budget before the trip, I refrained from those even though there were a couple of cards I’d have probably bought individually. If he’s back in September, I may take another look through his stuff.

When I came back about a half hour later, he had a stack of 15 cards for me. Mostly parallels that I was pretty sure I didn’t have. I mentioned he didn’t seem to have any set pricing structure aside from his by-the-page binders so I immediately felt bad for making him pick out cards that I wasn’t going to be able to buy. None of them were numbered but I thought for sure he’d want at least a buck for each of them. Turns out, my five spot was good enough for all 15 cards.

Everything he picked out was from the “Bryce Harper” year in 2012 so I was priced out of most of the Chrome and Bowman stuff back then. Fast forward a couple of years, the Cubs still stink and I’m at an out of market card show. Works for me.

Among them were a bunch of International parallels out of Bowman. Maybe I should have saved these flag cards for a Fourth of July post!

Paul Hoilman, Richard Jones, Jeimer Candelario

Matthew Szczur, Dillon Maples

Geovany Soto, Starlin Castro

A trio of Topps Chrome Orange Refractors

And a trio of Bowman Chrome Green Refractors

The final two cards were Triple Threads cards of Andre Dawson and Ryne Sandberg that I apparently already had. Those odd 1%-er brands like Triple Threads, Tier One and Museum are hard to keep track of for me. I just always figure I haven’t picked them up yet.

Speaking of Sandberg, in between my trips to that table, I stumbled across another table that had a whole row in a monster box of just his cards. For the most part I rely on the ol’ “if I‘ve seen it, I have it” rule of thumb because back in the day, I bought anything and everything Sandberg related. So usually, when I go through a stack like that, the only cards I don’t have are newer, ridiculously low-numbered/high priced parallels, relics or autographs. And that was true with some of the cards I needed from that box. But I guess with a stack that big, the odds were in my favor of finding something.

First up is this Leaf promo(?) card that was exclusive to the 2010 National Sports Collectors Convention. Sandberg batting without a helmet? This has to be from when he won the 1990 All-Star Game Home Run Derby.

Next was a Post card. I thought I had the run of these cereal box inserts but this bilingual popup version looked familiar but not enough to pass on it for just a quarter. One of these days I’ll dig my Sandbergs out and actually make a firm list.

And finally my most expensive card of the day at a whopping half dollar. Well, it was marked a dollar and the other two Sandbergs were a quarter but the guy gave me the three of them for a buck. So fifty cents it is. Or I bought it and got the other two free. Whatever.

The Cubs team set from the 1990 Topps TV set has been out of my price range for a while but the 66-card set is my Boys of Zimmer dream set. There’s also a 66-card All-Star set that includes four Cubs (Sandberg, Mark Grace, Mitch Williams and manager Don Zimmer shares a card with Giants manager Roger Craig). The Sandberg above is the All-Star card and usually goes for a couple bucks. I had never seen one in person and didn’t want to double my costs with shipping so I’m glad this has a new home.

Not a bad haul for $6, even if you count the two duplicates I accidentally picked up.

Small Card Show Recap - Part Three

Appetizer on Wednesday

Main Course on Thursday

And today I have some dessert.

No, not the Wrigley Field cake kind of dessert.

I've mostly avoided vintage when I go to shows because it tends to eat up the budget pretty quickly. Usually I’m all for quality over quantity, so as irrational as it may be, the length of my post-card show euphoria tends to be directly proportionate to how fat my latest stack of cardboard is. After a couple of good deals that netted me that hefty stack already and some money still burning a hole in my pocket, I stopped at one last table on my way out the door and picked up a few new-to-me cards.

I don’t know if these cards are, as the joke goes, older than your mom but I can say for sure that they are older than my mom.

The year these cards came out…

Sports Illustrated released its first issue.

Roger Bannister became the first person to run a mile in less than 4 minutes.

Two of the NL West teams were still in New York. The other three weren’t born yet.

The Cubs were only 46 years removed from their last World Championship and 9 years from their last attempt. (Those totals now stand at 105 and 68 years respectively.) Despite currently having a positive run differential (+4) and a winning Pythagorean W-L record according to Baseball-reference.com, the Cubs sit at 11 games below .500 and look to continue the streak this year.

But on a much happier note, these four cards, all 1954 Bowman, now represent the oldest cards in my collection.

They are in surprisingly great shape. There’s a small crease in the lower right corner of the Bill Serena that shows up in the scan if you squint but you can’t see it on the front in person. You can feel it on the back but it’s still barely noticeable. The edges on all are pretty nice and the corners have minimal wear.

The seller had a $12 price tag on each one that was crossed out and marked down to $5. I’m guessing that was his way of showing he was selling them below book value. I picked out these four Cubs but had my eye on two others to be sent out into the blogosphere if negotiations went my way. After the dust settled on a little back and forth, we compromised on a 6/$20 deal.

The previous record holders for oldest card(s) in my collection that were just bested by four years were this pair of 1958 Topps cards.

Turk is stunned by the dethroning!

Small Card Show Recap - Part Two

If yesterday's Mike Fontenot relic was the appetizer from my local card show loot, today's cards are definitely the main course. The meat and potatoes.

This year, I've been so focused on figuring out what I have and trying to fill in gaps in older sets that I've virtually ignored most 2014 releases thus far. So I was very appreciative when I came across a table that had several monster boxes full of cards from the past couple of years. The pricing strategy was pretty simple. Unsleeved cards were a dime, penny sleeves were fifty cents (or 3/$1), top loaders were a buck and "hits" were priced as marked.

The unsleeved cards were sorted by set, but not detail sorted by number or team so it took a while to go through them to cherry pick the Cubs. It was like the dealer broke some boxes, pulled out some cards to penny sleeve or top load and threw the rest of the packs in the box. But not having seen a lot of the cards from other teams beforehand made it much more interesting to go through. I ended up with almost 50 of these.

This post was going to be so scan heavy that I relegated my 2014 base card pickups to the tab above that shows all of my 2014 Cubs cards. You've probably seen most of them already through Wrigley Wax's team set breakdowns anyway. I was able to complete team sets for Opening Day, Donruss, Bowman, Gypsy Queen and Heritage (aside from the Rizzo SP) for just dimes per card.

Ok, enough words. More pictures. Just because I'm not showing base, doesn't mean I won't show parallels!

How about some Gold?

Some Target reds.

Let's switch over to Donruss for a Career Statline and a Season Statline parallel.

The Anthony Rizzo is numbered out of 39 for his career home run total and the Travis Wood is out of 311.

I didn't find the base SP of Anthony Rizzo from Heritage, but I did come across a Chrome Refractor version #/565.

And I'll wrap up 2014 with a pair of Gypsy Queen minis.

All of the base cards (not shown here, but in the tab) were dime box pick ups. The parallels/minis above were all penny sleeved.

This particular dealer also had some 2013 boxes I wanted to look through, but I'm pretty good on the base team sets from last year and I wasn't as confident in my mental checklist for parallels as I was for my 2014s. That didn't stop me from picking up some cards I was absolutely positively sure I didn't already have.

Like these Chrome Refractors. Its hard to tell from the scan, but the Fujikawa is purple, not blue. I couldn't even tell you if chrome has a blue parallel.

And these black bordered Heritage Minors cards.

Those four cards above were all in penny sleeves but I also found some unprotected dime box cards from 2013. There were some logoless-yet-still-intriguing Hometown Heroes.

And a quartet of Panini Cooperstown.

These last two sets weren't a priority for me but now that I've started, I might as well find a checklist and try to get the rest of the "Cubs" from the sets.

At this point I was getting a crick in my neck and it was time to track down my son (who was looking through the football dime boxes I mentioned yesterday).

The grand total for this table was 78 cards for a nice round $10. I managed to avoid the $1 top loaders and hits but I'm sure I'll be back at this guy's table next month. Some of the cards I did pick up might not have been worth the 3/$1 tag individually but taken as a whole stack, mix in a little steeper bulk discount and subtract shipping charges I would have paid to buy them slightly cheaper online, I think I got away with larceny.

I hit one more table on my way out the door but that's a tale for tomorrow.

Small Card Show Recap - Part One

I recently found a new card show in the ballroom of a local Best Western. While its not real big, it is fairly regular, coming around every month. I've now been three of the last four months and haven't had a problem dropping $20-40. There are probably only about ten dealers spread out over twenty-ish tables but they manage to cover most if not all of the collector niches. 

The title I used is kind of a misnomer because I'm only going to show one card today. I probably should have gone with my underused "Hump Day Hits" but I wanted to tease the show and how many of you would have clicked to just see a Mike Fontenot relic? As usual, this is merely a ploy to buy some time to get some scanning and cropping done.

The Mike Fontenot card above came out of 2010 Topps Series 2 and is from the Peak Performance series. While I was digging through the boxes that led me to tomorrow's post, my son was at another table looking through football boxes. He had pulled out a nice stack of dime box Patriots cards and was finishing up a $2 multi-sport "hits" box when I checked in with him. He had set aside 6-7 Cubs cards from the box but the Fontenot was the only one I didn't already have.

The dealer eyeballed the stack with the Fontenot card included and quoted us $5. I knew there were more than 50 cards in the Patriots stack so I think we were getting the "kid collector" discount. Or its tough to unload Patriots cards in Redskins territory. While I needed the Fontenot card for the collection, the greatest thing about it is that it essentially ended up being free!

Tomorrow, I'll be back with the meat of my card show pickups and Friday I'll wrap it up with the "big money" cards.