closing out the card show haul with some nice scores

Ok, let's clear out the last few cards from my card show haul. (Still some trade bait unclaimed from yesterday's post.) While I've pretty much just randomly split the cards up into these past few posts, seem that I saved some of my best pickups for last.

Kicking off with the super shiny! Love those crazy Late Bloomer inserts from Bowman. Nice addition to my li'l Jim Thome PC.

The Josh Hader 2014 wave refractor (#'d 2/25) is probably my best pickup of the show. If you were compelled to buy a copy of this card online right now, well, the only one I can find for sale anywhere is on eBay for $119.95 or best offer. I'm sure the seller is reaching at that price, but still.. solid pickup for 20 cents! I did a double take when I flipped the card over and saw the serial number. If only it had been a Christmas Card, then I'd really have been knocked on my ass. I believe Hader is the Brewers' top starting pitching prospect now, coming over from Houston in the Carlos Gomez trade. He'll start the year in AAA, but will likely make his MLB debut later this season.

Nachos Grande got me hooked on those 3000 Club inserts.. couldn't pass up that Molitor. I'm trying to complete the Glow Stars subset from 93 UD Fun Pack, since I'd like to get every glow-in-the-dark baseball card ever available. Turns out I already have this one, so I guess it'll go to my McGwire PC instead of my sub-setbuild (I'm not a huge Big Mac fan, but I sorta collect any baseball player who's ever guessed on The Simpsons.)

Reggie was my #1 collecting guy as a kid. I've cooled on him since returning to the hobby, but I was enticed by awkward photos from his rookie days, plus a HOF plaque diecut #'d /1993 on the back.

Young Padres. Well, Mike Darr never got the chance to grow old, being killed in a car accident in 2002. He was drunk and not wearing a seat-belt that likely would have saved his life. Sad story.

Some Rangers I kinda collect.

Frank Thomas. That Pacific card definitely gets your attention. The Tools of the Trade (I almost typed Toots of the Trade.. LOL) is numbered /150. First-ballot HOFer #'d /150 for 20 cents?! Heck yeah, can't pass that up.

Carlos Beltran with special guest appearance by Pedro Martinez. I think it's /125.

And this might be a controversial statement, but I think Pete Rose, Jr belongs in the Hall. I think enough time has passed that we forgive him for his poor play in the major leagues.

lol, but no, I do love collecting Pete Rose, Jr cards for some reason. Maybe because when I was a kid and he was an upcoming prospect, it was so amazing to my little mind. "The second coming of Pete Rose?! Oh man, he's gonna kick ass!" But his career didn't quite turn out that way and I eventually realized children don't necessarily replicate their parents' success.

Some greats, with a Hank Aaron special from '74, plus a couple Archives reprints.

Bowman offshoots.

Miggy rookie and a couple early Nolan Arenado cards. I don't really collect Arenado, but he's pretty good, so couldn't pass these up.

A groovy Delgado.

Last one. St. Louis had high hopes for Alex Reyes to lift them back into contention in 2017, but he got struck with Tommy John disease and is out for the year. Still, I was surprised/excited to find this /199 green parallel of his 1st Bowman card in the cheap bins. According to COMC, it's a $10 card. Assuming he comes back strong in 2018, this could end up being a very sweet pickup for me.

That's it for the March card show haul. Pretty solid, I'd say! Thanks for checking it out with me. See you next time.

Trade Bait from the card show

Ok, my recent card show recap posts (pt 1, pt 2, pt 3) haven't exactly been lighting it up with the views and comments, but maybe these will be a bit more interesting to you guys, as all the cards in this here post are all available for trade. If you're a regular trade buddy of mine and something catches your eye, just give me a heads up and I'll set it aside for next time I send you cards. Or if we haven't traded before, maybe something here will spark a first trade. Check out my wantlist and get in touch.

Yankees. Minor league Bernie Williams. CC Sabathia farting out a complete game.

Twins, each #'d /150. It's probably time for Brian and I to swap again, but maybe there's another Twins collector out there who wants in on the action.

Rangers. Man, it seems I pick up a serial-numbered Mark Teixeira card at every show (I think this one is /500), though I don't want them and can never find a trader to take them. It's a sickness! Fergie is #'d /250.

Here's a Justin Upton xfractor and a Braves prospect.

2015 Bowman parallels. Chris Davis /499 and Johnny Cueo /250.

Team USA. Daz Cameron /99 and Carlos Rodon diecut /199.

Picked up this /399 Nomo with Night Owl in mind, but looks like he's already got it, so maybe another Dodger fan would want it.

Picked up these Kerry Wood cards with P-town Tom in mind, but looks like he's already got them, so maybe another Cubs fan would want them. (Did find him a couple other Woods he might need, though.)

More Cubs. Prior is /250.

Not Cubs cards, but Cubs fans might have interest in these RCs of future Cubs.

That's it. Not pictured are some Pirates for Matt and Braves for John.
So yeah, let me know if you're interested in trading. Thanks!

card show spelled backwards is wohs drac

Wohs Drac sounds pretty scary.. perhaps some sort of walrus/vampire hybrid.

I'd keep my distance from that. Anyways, let's sink our teeth into some more 20¢ cards I picked up at the recent card show.

A couple shiny Gavin Cecchini cards. He had a nice spring (.333) but due to the Mets' infield depth, will likely start the season back in AAA until an injury or something opens a spot for him in NY.

Moving onto shiny cards from Boston, here's a /250 blue shimmer mini of Gavin's brother Garin. He looks to play in the Royals' organization in 2017. The Bogaerts and Ortiz refractors are pretty nice.

Here are some non-shiny Red Sox, including a couple Starting Lineup cards and Ted Williams pogs. I was just a bit too old to get into the pogs craze of the early 90s, but this is still a neat oddity of when the two things intersected.

I haven't watched a UFC match in my life, but I'd been wanting to add a Ronda Rousey card or two to my collection because she's really attractive and a bad-ass. Her star definitely faded since getting her ass handed to her in her last couple fights, but we probably haven't heard the last of her.

Found three 2011 Chrome orange refractors for my 2011 parallel frankenset, all RCs funny enough. I didn't bother to consult my list, but luckily I needed all 3.

And a trio of Ginter X. Turns out I already had the Rizzo, so it's available if any of my Cubs trading buds wanna call dibs.

Some decent names from 2014 Bowman. I still kinda like AJ Reed, though he's looking like a AAAA slugger who rakes in the minors but struggles up top.

Here are a bunch of serial numbered Padres. Ok, maybe only one of these is actually a Padres card, but they're all "once a Padre..." guys to me. The Alomar is #'d /100 on the back.

Let's close out with another guy with San Diego ties, Stephen Strasburg. Here we've got a Bowman refractor and an oddball (2010 GTC). It's my first card featuring him from his San Diego State days, not counting a custom I made a while back, which I appreciate since I went there too.

That's enough for today. More soon. Thanks for reading.

more card show stuff

Ready for more cards I picked up over the weekend at the card show? Let's do it.

Finally got my first in-hand look at 2017 Heritage. If anyone's going after the Game insert set, this Hosmer's available for trade.

These are all from my 120 cards for $24 haul.

Some Bosox boppers. I don't know much about Andrew Benintendi other than his name is close to Nintendo, which is cool, and he's been getting a lot of hype out of New England lately, so I picked up a couple of his cards. Look at me prospecting!

Some young Padres I like. Seems like it's been a long time since a Padre made the Topps All-Star Rookie Team. What sucks is that Ryan Schimpf never got a true "RC" card. His only 2016 cards are Topps Now cards, which probably shouldn't really count.

More kids. I've got a sweet auto of that Gavin Lux card (plus a "Sign Here" oddity), but didn't have the base Bowman Chrome (and still need the base paper). Ian Happ has been having a phenomenal spring with the Cubs, though they don't really have a place for him at the moment so he'll likely start the year in AAA. I think Bo Bichette has been doing well too, but honestly I'm pretty sure this card only ended up in my stack because it was sticking to the Happ.

A trio of Wil Myers, including the first 2017 Donruss card in my collection.

Some 80s cards of all-time greats. I hadn't realized just how much nicer the 1987 Kmart cards are compared to the similar 1982 Kmart cards. Glossy fronts, bright backs.. must've been pretty fancy at the time. The sepia cards on the bottom are 1980 Cramer, an oddball set I wasn't familiar with, but liked enough to grab a couple big names, including star of yesterday's post, Hank Aaron.

Let's close out today with 3 cards from one of my favorite sets of the 80s, 1984 Donruss.

More stuff soon enough. Thanks for popping in.

Dropping the Hammer on my 1957 Topps setbuild

The other day I caught wind of a "flash coupon" from eBay that was $15 off any purchase of $X amount. With less than an hour left to take advantage, I searched around for a nice vintage card I needed that I could find priced low at or a little above that amount. I ended up with this bad boy..

Not just a big card for my '57 setbuild, but a damn fine Hank Aaron for my collection, now the earliest card of his I own. Plus 1957 was arguably his finest year, as he won his only MVP award and World Series.

It's an uncorrected error, with a reversed negative making Hank appear to be lefty. The backwards 4 in the jersey number is the other obvious sign that something's up with the photo.

If I'm going to spend significant money on a vintage card of big-name player, I like to go graded, simply because of all the counterfeits out there. Still irks me that counterfeiters can get away with selling fake cards simply by saying "it's a reprint that doesn't say it's a reprint." Yeah, that's pretty much the definition of counterfeit. But Topps is apparently fine with that behavior, and eBay doesn't care, so it's rampant on there. I'm sure many of those "reprints" end up being bought and then relisted with the new seller forgetting to mention the fact it's a reprint. I've ranted about this shit here before, but man, it really bugs me.

But yeah, anyways, I bought this PSA 4 Hank Aaron. With the $15 off coupon factored in, this is easily the cheapest of the completed listings for similar PSA 4 copies of this card, so I think it was a solid deal. I probably should have focused on big names I still need for 1965 Topps, but maybe I panicked a bit with the clock running and jumped to searching 1957 cards, even though I really shouldn't be focusing too much on that set yet. Oh well. Feels good to have both the Mantle and Aaron out of the way for my '57 set, even with a long road ahead of me there.

I picked up these 5 in my latest COMC order, searching by lowest price and seeing what was available in decent condition for a buck or less.

And Robert from $30 A Week Habit dropped a dozen '57s on me earlier this past week. Great looking cards! I definitely don't have many Brooklyn Dodgers in my collection.. in fact, I'm at a loss trying to think of any other vintage Brooklyn cards I've got, so Al Walker here might be the first.

And the other six. Very appreciated! With just a couple more cards, I'll crack 10% complete with 1957. (Wantlist here, in case anyone else can help.)

Robert also included a trio of needs for my 1965 Topps build. Now just a couple more cards away from being 75% complete! The 7th Series checklist is one of the very few variations in the set. Basically this version has room for 2 more rows on the bottom. There's a variation with slightly larger text that only has room for 1 more row on the bottom. Yeah, it's not the most exciting variation.

Big thanks for the cards, Robert! I've got a return for you packed up and ready to be dropped in Monday's mail.

And since this post has morphed into a trade recap, let's close with the other cards I received from the cardsphere this past week... which coincidentally also happen to be vintage cards sent by a guy named Robert...

Commishbob, the Five Tool Collector himself, read my recent post showing off my Hoyt Wilhelm collection and kindly volunteered to fill some open slots for me. Love 'em! Obviously the '63 is the star of the show here, as the other 2 feature generic blacked-out caps due to Hoyt bouncing around at the end of his career.

Thanks, Bob! I'm working on dropping a little return your way soon as well, even though you graciously said it wasn't necessary.

Card Show Vintage Blaster

Solid card show haul today. Biggest purchase was 120 cards from the 20¢ bins. Another was 7 cards for $5 (which were all #'d and/or auto'd football cards bought for trading buddies of mine), and then 20 $1 cards.. and it's this last purchase I'll be showing off here today. While some of the cards might not have been awesome deals (I sorta had to struggle to come up to an even 20, but the old guy seemed nice and I didn't want to make him make change), but still a nice showing of cards for the retail price of a blaster. The guy had a bunch of overproduction era stuff, but I did my best to sniff out the vintage.

Beat to hell or not, I don't think I could pass up a 1952 Topps card for a buck, so this creased Cliff Mapes was a no-brainer. Looking him up... His career wasn't super impressive, but he did get a couple rings as a backup outfielder on the Yankees. He's also known for being the last guy to wear Babe Ruth's number 3 before it was retired, plus he wore number 7 right before Mickey Mantle.

I actually already had these 5 cards. I think the Sparky is an upgrade over what I had in the PC (Love this card because it's the closest to a Padres card he ever got after being a coach with them in '69). The '71 Lou Brock is in pretty decent shape, and it's a semi high number, so generally not a cheap card, so I added it to my stack even though I've already got one in my set, plus I'm pretty sure another one in the Brock PC (this one might be an upgrade?), so I guess it's trade bait. The same could be said about the '71 Dick Allen, though it's in rough shape with a couple major creases. But yeah, I love that card, even with the photographer's knee in the shot. One of my prized possessions is the original match print photo for the back photo from Topps Vault. The Dwight Evans RC would have been a screaming deal for a buck but a kid named Russ wrote his name on the back. But hey, good enough to add to my Dewey PC. And the Davey Lopes RC looked too nice not to pass up.. might be an upgrade for my set.

A couple set needs. I had the Red Sox team card marked as "pending" on my list, but I didn't bother to check it until I got home. Oh well, if I end up with a dupe, I'm sure someone would give it a good home. The 1964 Leon Wagner isn't in great shape, but it's a tricky high number, so I figured it was worth the buck even with a crease that seems to be threatening Leon.

When I was finishing up my 1973 Topps set a couple years ago, these blue team checklists were deceptively tricky to complete and I had to settle for many of them marked up on the back. So when I saw all these unmarked beauties, I had to grab them up to upgrade.

The '68 Strikeout Leaders is cool in that it's all HOFers, though the surface is pretty worn. It'll go toward my Gaylord Perry PC if it's not already there (or if it is, then to the Fergie Jenkins PC). Tommy John is a guy I'm always on the cusp of collecting, but never really commit too. Looked like a nice '66, though.

This last card I don't care about at all, just threw it in for the case. I'll find something fancy to imprison in there.

So there you go, my "vintage blaster" from the card show.
More from my card show haul on the way soon.
Thanks for stopping by.