what can i get for 58 cents?

back in the late 80's, a friend of mine played boogie down productions' single "illegal business" in his car while we were driving around. that song sampled a line from a "fat albert" episode in which the titular character asks "what can we get for 63 cents?" now, i watched a fair amount of "fat albert" on saturday mornings and i assume my friend did, too, but he found the sample incredibly amusing. after that, pretty much whenever we were in a retail setting, you could bet that he was going to ask, "what can we get for 63 cents?" it was so prevalent that i also began to think about it, and i still do from time to time.

at the semi-annual card show in april, i found a seller who had at least a dozen monster boxes with a price list posted above them. the prices were a sliding scale - the more you buy the cheaper the price per card. pretty standard stuff. after a while, i knew i was going to be taking home a large number of cards and decided to cap myself at 200. the price for 200 cards was $120, which i recognized as 60 cents per card. so, guess what line popped into my head? well, it turned out that i picked out 205 cards but he kept the price at $120, and so here is (some of) what i got for 58.5 cents.

i'll kick things off with a 2021 topps chrome mookie betts image variation refractor short print

always pleased to add a card of mookie celebrating during the 2020 world series! in fact. there's another one among the parallels below

freddie freeman also showed up in parallel fashion

but most of the cards i chose were not dodgers.

there was some "fake" vintage from 2021 topps heritage by way of mini die-cuts

some real vintage by way of 1970 and 1971 fleer laughlin world series cards

and some "not quite" vintage from the early 1980's

the 1985 donruss dave winfield/don mattingly card was a hot commodity in my neighborhood back then. this is the first time i've seen the card at a show in probably at least 30 years.

the junk wax era was represented, too, with a 1987 donruss greg maddux rookie

there were parallels numbered on the fronts

and parallels numbered on the backs

and i had a lot of fun just digging through the variety. i found a vein of thicker cards that included some dodgers as well as a 2019 topps museum collection manny machado copper parallel

for my double play collection.

same goes for this 2022 panini donruss brandon crawford dominators card

and i think i will keep this 2021 topps allen & ginter chrome world's largest - pacific ocean mini card

because it shows the northern california coastline - i believe somewhere around santa rosa. it's not near where i grew up, nor is it big sur where i've spent a lot of time, but it's still the ragged edge of the western world.

i'm not going to show the other 163 cards i took, but i will show seven more that i found interesting for one reason or another.

1999 topps stadium club kerry wood video replay

taking the lenticular card to the next level

2002 fleer box score albert pujols

second year pujols cards are still fun to find

2011 topps heritage minors garin cecchini red tint

topps went overboard with the tinting while trying to create a homage to an original element of the 1962 set. not sure why they didn't stick with green.

1998 stadium sports publishing mickey mantle hologram promo

oddball mickey!

2022 panini prizm bryce harper stained glass

it doesn't scan the best, but it lights up in the sun.

2009 topps kazuo matsui missing foil

i had never seen one of these in person before

2021 topps now brennan davis

a ken griffey jr cameo?! a no-brainer for 58 cents!