A Second Visit to My Not-So-Local Card Shop

A few months ago, my family and I were spending a week in Myrtle Beach and I found a pretty decent card shop on a rainy day. I didn't have much time to browse it, so I knew it would be on my agenda when we went back recently for another week. During my last trip to Baseball 17, I spent my limited time flipping through dollar boxes and glancing at the cards in the showcases. This time around, I knew that I wanted to spend a good bit of time checking out the quarter boxes.

I'll start off with vintage minis and some Hostess goodness. I only had a few of these 1975 Topps minis before flipping through those boxes so I figured for a combined fifty cents, I couldn't leave these behind. The Hostess Reuschel has some white spots and is pretty badly miscut, but it is a vintage Hostess card for only a quarter, so into the stack it went.

You know if I was gonna pick up the Reuschel in that condition that I was thrilled to see this Garvey looking as good as it does. It still has most of the dotted line and is pretty clean otherwise. From The snacks of Hostess, I'll go back to breakfast. How could I possibly leave this Kellogg's card of Cookie Rojas in a quarter box? Not only is the guy's name 'Cookie', but check out those specs! To top all, this one is crack free.

I was pleasantly surprised to find some singles from a set I've been actively working on and one that will soon be added to my needs list. In some ways, I've been working on the 2002 Topps Post set since it was available in cereal boxes 13 years ago. I vividly remember going up and down the cereal aisle trying to find boxes that had the baseball card promotion on them. I would eat one box as quick as I could so that I could go back to the store and grab another box or two. All told, I was able to cross off five more cards(though I only scanned 4) from my Wantlist on this set. I was happy to find a couple of the 1992 Fleer Performer series from Citgo/7-11. I was unaware of this set before unearthing a few lots of them on Listia. These two additions put me at set-half-done. Therefore, I'll be updating my set needs list by adding this one in the near future.

I had to pick up this 1992 UD Denny's hologram, if for not her reason than nostalgia. I remember when holograms were the peak of cardboard technology. I've wanted that Mattingly Studio Heritage Series for a while now, so I was thrilled to dig this copy out and put it in my stack. Yes, that is a football card. It's the only one I rescued from those boxes. Why? Well, that shows none other than Deion Sanders playing baseball for Florida State.

I love this El Duque 'aces' card. This Pineda 'Rated Rookie' was a total surprise to me. The posed shot does a good job hiding that would have been a lack of logos. That A&G Johnny Damon card was an awesome find. It's only the second card I have that highlights his incredible two stolen base on one pitch play in he 2009 World Sereis against the Phillies. Good stuff.

I've had really good luck finding great deals on some of the top Japanese baseball players in this shop. That streak continued during this second trip. That is an E-motion insert from Nomo's rookie year. I remember that card being incredibly hard to find in the midst of Nomo-mania. The Playball is one of the few Matsui RC's that I own. I am slowly building my collection of National Trading Card Day issues and was quite happy to see this Matsui from 2004.

I'm going to end with three really interesting oddball issue that I really had no idea existed. This Cal Ripken Movie Gallery coupon-card is great. Like the remaining two cards, there was absolutely no way that I was going to leave something like this behind. I like the 'Cal Ripken' logo on the back.

Next up is this incredible 'What If' card. Best was one of the top Minor League Baseball card companies in the late '90's/early 2000's. I didn't realize this promo existed. It's pretty awesome to see one of the most talented pitchers of that time frame in an 'alternate reality' card. It's even better that the team he is shown on is the Orlando Rays. Kerry Wood certainly had the potential to be one of the best pitcher's of all time if injuries hadn't derailed his promising career.

Last up is another promo card. This time, it's from a company that I had never heard of and it shows a great pic of Juan Marichal signing some autographs for the fans. For both this card and the Wood, they are numbered out of 5. I think I'm going to have to see if I can track down a few of the other promo cards from these respective sets because these have got me curious.

This was definitely a fun and productive trip to the card shop. I'm glad that I found this place to help me make the most of another rainy day at the beach. Man, I need to find a local shop that's this good. Thanks for reading.

A Trip to My Not-So-Local Card Shop

Last week, my family and I were on vacation on Myrtle Beach. It happened to be raining one of the days and we were driving around exploring(read: keeping the kids from going crazy in the hotel room). Just as we were headed back to the room to get lunch and let the girls nap, we passed by a card shop. Once we finished lunch and the girls were sound asleep, I drove back out to the shop. I mean, what better way to spend a rainy day at the beach?

Since it was raining and I had limited time to search the store, I didn't take any pics of my own, but here are a few that give a feel for the shop.

The storefront

The wall behind the main showcases

The boxes on the shelves differed a bit, but this is a pretty decent representation of the shop atmosphere. Given my time constraints, I did a quick lap around the shop to see where my time would be best spent. It turns out that this is one of the rare shops that has dollar and quarter boxes on display. I decided to focus on them for this first visit.

I hit the quarter boxes second and didn't spend much time there, but I'll start with a few I pulled from there.

3-D! A Yankee World Series hero and a former Durham Bull, both decked out in all of their lenticular glory. I'm such a sucker for these kind of cards.

This gem features two great Yankees and makes me aware of another great oddball set to chase after. I had no clue there were cards from Sunoco. Mattingly will make another appearance or two in my purchase stack.

This one bummed out the shop owner while I was paying. He told me he completely forgot that he had put Pineda on the quarter boxes last year. He had two of this one that I found, so I snagged them both. There were a few others that I won't show here, but a few of you out there will be seeing them pop up in your mailboxes in the near future.

Back in my past show going days, the dollar boxes were my thing as much as the dime boxes are Nick's thing so I was interested in checking out what I might find. These dollar boxes were sorted fairly well by sport and into star player sections. I dug right in and picked out a few hidden treasures.

I grabbed this five card sealed pack of Starline/Coca-Cola cards that had Donnie Baseball on the front. I'm certain that I'll open it soon.

I couldn't pass up the chance to pick up one of Nomo's best RC's for just a buck. I don't collect him, but owning this card takes me back to the time of Nomo-Mania.

The action shot

The posed, head shot

I was thrilled to find this 1985 Slurpee Disc from 7-11.

Here's the back

I LOVE these things! I'm sure the actual 'value' isn't much more than a dollar(or even a dollar), but I happily forked that over to be able to take this one home. I thought this would be the best item I found for my collection, but I was wrong.

A few stacks after finding Mattingly, I found this. It's  a bit mis-cut and has some rounded edges, but it's a 1976 Hostess Thurman Munson! Surely, this would be the best find of the day, right? Wrong again!

My jaw nearly dropped when I saw this, a BBM Ichiro from 1995! I don't know anything about these types of cards, so I'm not even sure if it's authentic. Truthfully, I don't care. Check out that young Ichiro!

Here's the back. I don't have many cards with other languages. I've got a handful of O-Pee-Chee, a slightly larger stack of Pacific, and one or two from Topps that have Japanese writing on the back. This one is by far my favorite. If anyone out there is more knowledgeable about BBM cards and can let me know if this is legit, that would be great.

Just as was the case with the quarter boxes, there are some dollar box finds that will shortly be making their way into mailboxes near you.

I didn't have high hopes for this shop away from home, but I was pleasantly surprised. We've already got another trip planned for Myrtle later this summer, so I'll be making at least one more stop into Baseball 17 for some more goodies! Thanks for reading.