card show flip or flop?

as luck would have it, i was out of town for a work meeting one friday morning earlier in the fall, and that meeting locale was just down the road from the location of a mall card show that was running from friday through sunday. i headed out after my meeting ended, even though my experience has shown that friday mall shows are not the best. unfortunately, this one didn't do anything to change that opinion. 

between dealers setting up and the relatively large number of tables only carrying jerseys or photos, there weren't too many card boxes to look through.  i did find one dealer who had a 4/$1 box, and i started digging without much hope. i had thrown 10 or so cards aside before the dealer approached me with an empty 550-count box and told me that i could fill the box for $40. now that the bargain box was a 7-cent/card box, i started pulling cards with a bit more fervor.

i knew that i would not be able to fill the box with just cards for my collection, so i kept an eye out for cards that i could add to the few trade packages i was (and still am) putting together. i also tried to identify cards that i thought i could flip. i mentioned in a recent post that i have a bad habit of doing this when going through bargain boxes. sometimes it works out and i make some of my money back, and sometimes i misjudge the marketplace and wind up with cards in my collection that don't really fit.

anyway, i wound up filling the box and gave the guy $40.  when i got home, i went through the cards that i had selected and found that i needed 43 of them.  here are the keepers:  

a 1971 topps don sutton coin was probably the highlight here, and i am always amazed at how many mike piazza cards i don't already have.

in addition to the 22 dodgers, i can put the 1997 upper deck collector's choice all-star connection mike piazza card in my dodger stadium mini-collection thanks to the camera day photo on the back.  i found five new double play cards, and two new tatooine cards, including another piazza dupe. i also found one card for a set i am working on (that would be the 2000 pacific kings of the diamond set), plus 12 cards to add to my vladimir guerrero collection.

i also found about four dozen cards that were for trade packages.  that would mean that i had over 400 cards to try to sell. long story short, i've already made back that $40 payment after selling only 14 cards (with more in the pipeline), thanks mainly to a couple of pacific gold crown and leaf clean up crew cards.  sure, it's taken a fair amount of time to scan and list and mail the cards, but i've been selling cards for a long time now, and it's time i would have spent doing that anyway.

of course, i've already reinvested the proceeds in other cardboard, so i'm not really coming out ahead. still, for me, looking for cards for others and/or bargains to flip is part of the fun of the card show experience.