card show scrounging

i am not currently working on any vintage sets, and i feed my primary player collection through online purchases, so i often find myself unsure about heading out to the card shows. once in awhile, i decide to go and look for cheap inserts and parallels and maybe find some new product singles for my dodger collection. such was the case last weekend when i went to the monthly card show. i already shared my meetup with brian, so this post will focus on the rest of my time spent there.

"bargain" boxes were not hard to find, but i only found three dealers with dime boxes. the first ones i saw didn't interest me. it was a monster box of base rookies for a dime each. it looked like a lot of recent bowman, and some guy came and bought the box for $115 about 15 minutes in to the show. one of the dime box sellers had the equivalent of four four-row monster boxes with baseball cards. the other had a couple of similarly sized monster boxes, but i think just one of baseball. he's a seller i've bought from before, so i expected to find these boxes. the other bargain boxes i expected to find just weren't there, even though the sellers who had previously offered them were. one of the sellers who has always had 5/$1 boxes (and gave great deals when it came time to pay) had dollar boxes only. the times they are a-changin;. 

i picked through almost all of the second guy's boxes and found some good and interesting stuff. in all, i picked 230-ish dime cards and one $2 card. he asked for $22.

perhaps the most interesting card i found was this one:

no, i did not purchase a t206 drum ty cobb card, but rather a standard sized card from a 2021 heritage auction promotional set.

the best bargains i found were this 2015 topps andrew mccutchen photo variation

and this 2014 topps jose fernandez future stars variation

both are worth more than a dime, for sure.

there were oddball items for my dodger collection - a 1986 jiffy pop disc of fernando valenzuela

and a 1995 king b disc of raul mondei

plus some oddball items that most definitely don't fir in my dodger collection.  such as, a pack of 1981 topps coca-cola royals cards

with willie mays aikens peeking through the back

and a unstuck 1987 topps coca-cola tigers panel with dwight lowry showing

i couldn't tell who else is featured, but the checklist

on tcdb tells me that chet lemon and dan petry reside inside the four panel item.

i found a couple of 1994 o-pee-chee all-star cards, including barry bonds

there were redemption type cards that could be used to obtain some jumbo cards. just fill out the back

and send 5 cards with 20 bucks. i wonder how many of the 5,000 sets were actually redeemed.

here's a 1995 topps stadium club ring leaders phone card

it commemorates the 1993 all-star garme and is worth 3 points

tcdb tells me this is the silver version, although the ring looks gold to me.

how about a 2004 topps mcgruff the crime dog insert?

this is a five or six card set, with carlos delgado being the card you are most likely to find in a dime box.

i did find a few more cards for my collection, including this 1998 pinnacle hideo nomo card

it is the "home stats" version

which i was blissfully unaware of until i entered my dodger collection on tcdb. i have a full team set if you put the regular, home stats, and away stats versions together, but i don't have a complete set of any one of those three variations. nomo is one of the cards i have a full stat version of, so now just need the away stat variation. fun.

there were a few topps giveaway code cards, and i was hoping to find two of these roy campanella cards

that's because both the angels, in order and i have it listed on our want lists. unfortunately, this was the only one. still i did pick up a couple of cards for tom.

in the "patience pays off" department, i had held off placing a sportlots order that included this next card on the off chance that i would find it at the show. it's one of kirk gibson's 1989 upper deck cards

that i already have in various collections and mini-collections. i wanted another one for the "names/numbers on the back" mini-collection and this guy's dime boxes came through. i hit a vein of 1989 upper deck and was able to pull one of nick's dime box dozen cards as well.

speaking of mini-collections, my double play collection grew with a rey sanchez 1995 score gold rush card

and a 1998 upper deck special fx craig biggio card

that features a different image of this dp turn on the back

my lurker collection had this 2004 upper deck jorge posada card 

added to it, thanks to derek jeter there in the foreground. jason giambi on his own wouldn't have prompted me to buy the card.

i picked up this 1982 topps keith hernandez card

for the aforementioned "names/numbers on the back" collection. hernandez is not my favorite player, but this is the perfect sort of card for that collection.

finally, i was able to add four cards to the dodger stadium mini-collection - a 1991 pacific nolan ryan express card

a 1994 select fred mcgriff card,

a 2003 fleer ultra matt clement gold medallion edition parallel

with kevin brown and shawn green murals in the background, and 1 1995 pinnacle artist's proof parallel of milt thompson dunking a beach ball over the center field fence.

such a classic card!

i mentioned up above that i added a $2 card to my stack. it was this 1996 leaf signature series extended autograph card of wayne kirby

who is shown as an indian but listed as a dodger. this completes the seven card team set in the extended series of autographs, and i have eight of the nine dodger autos from the regular issue. time to track down that raul mondesi card, i guess!

as i am sure you have experienced, pulling so many cards as a show poses an issue. the seller took my stack after awhile and put it behind his station. it made sense, but didn't really afford me the opportunity to cull any cards from what i had set aside. in the early goings, i had pulled a stack of 1976 sspc cards, and wound up bringing them home. i thought there was someone in the blogosphere working on this set but i don't recall who it was - let me know in the comments if you or someone you know could use some cards from the set!

the most interesting card i pulled is ike hampton's.

he's shown in his tidewater tides uniform from his time in the mets' system. the card is actually a california angels card, however.

by this time, it was plenty stuffy and warm inside the old bloomington armory. there were a couple of people crowding in who looked a bit like sonny seibert here

sweaty and a bit disheveled. they brought with them the dreaded smells of card shows - something different than the "batting odor" that ken griffey jr is experiencing on this 1992 upper deck comic ball 3 card

or maybe not, as his reaction is similar to what mine was. it was time for me to move on, so i handed over the $22 and went to find brian.

after visiting with brian, i saw the third dime box guy. he always has a couple of dime boxes under his main table which is packed with slabbed and toploaded cards of all sorts. it's kind of a mess, but there are usually some decent cards in those dime boxes. that was the case this time for sure. i wound up pulling 90 cards for $9, and gave two of the cards (remember aristedes aquino?) to brian on the way out. here are some of the other 88 cards i kept.

six cody bellinger cards that i thought i needed

i was right about all of them except the prismic power insert.

2022 topps capstone max muncy red parallel

not sure who is buying and ripping this stuff but thanks for the work you do.

2022 panini donruss andy pages pink fireworks parallel

2020 topps stadium club chrome vladimir guerrero

2017 topps ben zobrist gold parallel

i also grabbed some cards just because they were different and/or shiny. it's fun to find a bunch of 582 montgomery cards in a dime box, like these from set #2

as well as black & white mini diamond refractors like this bunch

by this time, there was some drama unfolding with a kid, his metal mega hitz carrying case, and some cards that he had for some reason set down on the dealer's table so i settled up and headed out. i had considered stopping at the 50-cent vintage boxes brian had pointed out to me, but i kept walking.

there is a different show in the cities next weekend, but i will pass. the next club show is on february 17, so i will probably go in search of some 2024 topps series 1 stuff. stay tuned!