Adventures at the Card Show - Volume 2, Part 2: Digging the Mythical Nickel Box

In my last post, I focused on the small but awesome vintage haul I took away from the card show this past Sunday. Tonight, I'll focus on a few other singles and what I took away from the incredible nickel boxes I found.

First, I continue where I left off in the vintage post. I had found most of those in $0.50 boxes that one vendor had. Well, I picked a few non-vintage cards from those boxes too.

How could I possibly pass up a Koufax SP for two quarters. As you might imagine, I was filled to find two Pineda parallels, one liquorfractor RC and one rookie year gold. I happily took those home for a buck! Though his past few starts have been a bit rocky, so far he has been exactly what I had hoped for in spring training - healthy and solid.

In addressing my other set collecting goal, I was able to find a guy who had a good number of series two singles for $0.10 a piece. I pulled 68 base cards towards completing the set. He also had a small stack of series one and two inserts and said he'd let any of them go for a quarter. Among others, I pulled all but one card I need for the series two First Pitch set. Fluffy here is the only inclusion that I was really excited about in the set, but I still like the concept and need to finish it. Kevin Hart is the only one I still need.

Unfortunately, I was unable to find any Stadium Club singles at a reasonable price. I found an extremely small stack from one vendor, but he wanted $0.50-0.75/card and wasn't willing to budge. We're not even talking about a lot of the stars that I needed. I'm talking about the Mark Reynolds' and Carlos Ruiz's of the set. So, I took a pass on those. I was also unable to find the remaining Will Ferrell I needed or any of the Archives Game inserts. In fact, I only saw one or two of those at all. I've updated my set needs which can be seen here.

In my effort to reinforce some trade packages hat will be going out very soon, I found myself digging through a box of relics/autos that were marked $1 each or 7 for $5. I was able to find 7 that were worth picking up. Here is the lone one from that pick that will remain in my collection:

'Romo' was one of the greats! I loved watching the intensity he brought to the field. It's a shame, though not surprising, that he eventually admitted to PED use. He was still one of my favorite players to watching the late '90's. This was definitely worth the roughly $0.71. When you factor in what came next, it was another steal! While I was sifting through the relic/auto box, I happened to look over at an slightly older gentleman that was looking through boxes a few feet from me. Every once in a while he would say 'I found another _____dollars' worth. He'd hand over whatever total, out the cards away, and go right back to looking. Once I had finished picking out the 7 cards I ended up with from the box I was digging in, I decided to at least glance at the boxes the other guy had been checking out. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the labels on those boxes...here they were, in the wild...the mythical 'nickel boxes' that I had heard/read so much about within our community. I had never seen one of these at any show before.needless to say, I dug right in.

I'll start off by keeping in the football theme. John Mobley was another of my Bronco favorites. I used to love these Holoview inserts. Back in their day, they were pretty tough to get your hands on. For a nickel, I couldn't drop this one in my stack fast enough.

Mario Williams is one of the few non-Bronco players that I collect. I went to school at NC State, and it was pretty exciting that he was a first overall draft pick a few years after I graduated.

These are my first singles from this yaer's Diamond Kings set, two Yankees RC. Blake Snell was recently promoted to my beloved Durham Bulls and if he realizes his potential and continues the great season he is having, he may well become one of my favorites from the local team. I'm looking forward to getting to see him pitch at the DBAP really soon.

These boxes were as random as could be, but there were tons of hidden gems in them. This is from the time in the '90's when holograms were everywhere. It's quite an awesome salute to Rickey's stolen base record.

Here's more hologram-y goodness with that Eck up top. I'm still loving the Walk-Off Winners set from GQ this year. Oh, hey, have I mentioned how much I love Collector's Choice before? It's even better when you get Donnie Baseball signing autographs for fans at the stadium!

The boxes were chock full of 'oddball' issues, some of which I had never seen before. The Colla Collection Wade Boggs is one I never knew existed, but am very happy to have in my collection. I haven't officially added Bonds to my list of players I collect, but before all of his PED issues, I was quite an avid collector and fan of his. I'm still in the habit of picking up cards of his. I guess old habits die hard. Knowing my thought process, his name will probably show up on my player collection list. There's more Donnie Baseball goodness to round out this scan! Dang Fleer oddball sets of the '80's, how many are out there?

More former Durham Bulls. It's a shame that Moore is the only one still with the Rays. The Mattingly and Canseco come from a 1992 Fleer/Citgo/7-11 set. I had previously picked up a few of these from Listia. With the addition of these, I might try for the complete set of 24. Though you can't tell from the scan, that is a Select Nomo RC. I am slowly putting together a nice selection of his RC's. Back at the height of Nomo-Mania, I only had his Upper Deck issue.

This scan is representative of the randomness that I was able to dig out of the boxes. That is my first of the Bad News Bears subset from Golden Age. I've seen so many of you out in the blogging community post about that Griffey that I had to have it when it showed up during my search. The Big Unit is one of a handful of Black Golds that I was able to pick out.

I know I've shared a lot and rambled quite a bit, but this post doesn't even sort patch the surface of what I found. I grabbed around 40 Bowman Chrome prospects from this year's set, some of which will hopefully end up being autographed at various ballparks. All told, I grabbed somewhere around 120 cards from these boxes. I easily could have doubled or tripled that total if I had more time. I guess I can hope that this vendor might be at the next show in Raleigh(hoping to go when it's back in September).

Overall, my first show experience in over six months was a tremendous success and a whole lot of fun. While I wasn't successful in picking up the Mantle Game insert I needed, I did make significant progress on my 2015 series 2 set, picked up a few more towards the 1968 Gsme set, picked up the reinforcements for my trade packages that I wanted to, and I was able to meet fellow blogger William from Foul Bunt. Can't wait to see where my next Adventures at the Card Show will take me! Thanks for reading.