Final Card Show Recap - All the Rest

Sorry for stretching the recap posts of my first card show of 2016 for almost two weeks. Unfortunately, I don't have the option of hitting up a show every weekend or even once a month so I've got to make it last on he rare occasions I am able to make it to one. One of the regular vendors I visit puts together his own home-made repacks. I've written about them multiple times before and as anyone who has read the content here should know, I am a sucker for these kind of things, he doesn't grow 'hits' into these repacks, but at roughly 59 cards per pack and a price tag of 3 for a dollar, you absolutely can't go wrong. This show was a rarity for me, as I only picked up 6 packs because he was running pretty low by the time I got to his table. He had mostly basketball with a few football and baseball packs mixed in. Apparently, I am not the only one of his regulars that loves those repacks.

I already posted the highlights of the football pack. Here are some of the highlights from the baseball counterparts.

I had to grab the pack that had the Bernie 'Electric Diamond' parallel as a face card. I remember busting a lot of 1994 Upper Deck when I was younger. Unlike many, I really liked the design of that set. I already had the Tino WS Highlight but I wasn't going to let the opportunity to show off a great moment in Yankees history slip by.

I always love getting new to me Conlon Collection singles and once or twice I have been lucky enough to pull a piece of vintage cardboard from one of these. It's never been a star, but it's still nice to find a '68 Topps in the randomness that usually falls out of these team bags.

It's was awesome to see a Bo Jackson that I hadn't seen before, but my favorite card of this group was definitely the 1989 World Series game 3 highlight. Back in those days I was quite the Oakland A's fan.

Wrapping up the repacks are two more of the 2013 Topps blue sparkle parallels. I found my first one of these in one of these repacks sometime late last year and I was thrilled to add two more at this show. At some point, I should really work on picking up some of the Yankees. Like so many of these kind of parallels, the scans don't do them justice. They're so much nicer in hand. I threw the Garza in here because I used to like him pretty well when he was still with Tampa and I really like the throwback jersey. Next up, the goods from the lone bunch of dime boxes I was able to find.

From one throwback to another. I hadn't seen that A-Rod before, but him rocking the Washington jersey and that Oakland throwback make for one heck of a dime spent! I grabbed another copy of the Ichiro United We Stand card because it was a condition upgrade from the one I had.

I'll take some 1994 Bowman's Best at a dime a pop as well, especially the Wagner RC and the rookie year Jorge!

I love El Duque and I couldn't leave this one behind, even is it plays tricks on the eyes. It's certainly one of the more odd inserts I've seen.

Things got a really odd after that...oddball that is! I'm pretty sure that I had the figure that went with that Canseco card many moons ago.

Probably my favorite card unearthed in the dime boxes was this rookie year Bo Jackson SportFlics! From there, I dug in some quarter boxes.

I was really happy to rescue those few Godzilla RCs and the Rated rookie of the new Yankees second baseman.

Moving up the ladder towards more expensive items, these were a buck a piece. I'd have gladly paid three dollars for the Mattingly Museum Collection so it was awesome to take all three of these home for  $3!

Here is the card that I bundled into the 1951 Topps Rizzuto purchase from the first recap post. All told it ended up costing just shy of $2. Not bad for my first Kemp RC. Lastly, is my second most expensive purchase of the day:

This one broke the bank at a whopping $2.50 since I grabbed one other card with it from a 2 for $5 box. The other card will be finding its way to a mailbox(perhaps near you) in the near future! I hope Cobb can make a successful return from surgery this season. Maybe I'll even get the good fortune to see a rehab start or two here in Durham! Thanks for hanging in through all four installments of the show recap. The next local show is a few months away so I promise this won't be a regular occurance.

Card Show Recap pt. 3 - The Non-Baseball Stuff

When I was preparing to go to the show last week, I set some unofficial goals and rules for myself. The goals were to stay focused(no frivolous spending) and finish the 1968 Game set. The big rule I attempted to put in place was to avoid buying Broncos. I figured a week removed from winning the 'Big Game' that prices would be unreasonably high. Well, how did I do? I did complete the 1968 Game set, but as you're about to see, I wasn't very focused and I couldn't resist a few Broncos purchases.

At least his trio came from one of the home made repacks that this one vendor always has. I only snagged this one football filled repack, but I'll show off contents from the other 5 baseball ones in another post. I already had the Ware, but the Elway and the DT were new to me.

Now for some Super shiny Broncos! It's hard to see in the scan, but the Certified Shane Ray is some sort of parallel limited to #/499. I was able to walk away with the base version as well which is #/999. I grabbed them both for less than a buck a piece. Same goes for the green refractor of Mr. MVP, Von Miller. A mere fifty cents allowed me to bring that beauty home. The Tek Shane Ray base auto was a different story. The vendor that was selling it had a $10 price tag on it. I had no intention of paying that so I left it in the stack I found it in. I spent a lot of time flipping through this guy's boxes and chatting with him. Turns out, we are members of the same Facebook collector's group that is based in the Triangle here in NC. I pulled a few other cards out and he have me his best price so I ended up throwing the Ray auto into the mix and the number he gave me was fair enough for me to walk away with it and the next two cards.

This is the part of the program where my staying focused went out the window. For the first time, I was able to go through a box of some singles from the relatively recent Panini Soccer product. He had a bunch of great hits and singles from the set, but most would have busted my budget in one stop so I just admired them from afar. I really liked this Robben/Van Persie insert. It's a great card of the Dutch 'Dynamic Duo'. I was happy to have this one in the package deal, but the next single is the one that made it worthwhile for me.

This awesome Tim Howard red Prizm looks much better in hand than in this scan. In addition, it is the National Team SP.

Apparently, the National Team SPs are designated by the little soccer ball in he upper left corner on the back. Oh, by the way, did I mention this was numbered 16/199? When all the conversation was finished and the deal was made, I ended up taking all three of those home for the $10 price tag that was on the Ray by itself. It may not have been the best deal I made all day, but I felt better about it once I learned that the vendor and I belonged to that same local collecting group. It was great to meet another one in person.

I'd like to say that I was able to reign the focus back in after this lapse, but it was not so.

 

I ended up pulling this A&G surfer girl relic out of a $2 box. It complements the relic of the other surfer from last year's Ginter that I had already traded for a few months back. It's even technically a two color swatch. My last unfocused purchase was the first hockey single I've picked up in over a decade.

I happened to slow down near a table that was covered in singles in top loaders. Before I could pick the pace back up, the vendor was launching into his spiel about all of the cards on the table being $1 even though most of them were worth at least $15-20. I planned to move on as soon as he stopped talking directly to me because I get really annoyed at vendors that overemphasize how good their deals  are. I'm much more interested in buying from folks that let the deals speak for themselves but are available for whatever questions you might have. Before he could finish his push, I caught a glimpse of this Scott Stevens relic out of the corner of my eye. It was in a giant screwdown case(for no good reason), but I couldn't pass up that sweet Devils swatch for just a buck.

So, I went 1/3 in adhering to my goals/rules for the show, but at least going off the intended oath didn't break my budget. It also let me bring these awesome cards home. Hey, batting .333 is pretty darn good anyway, right? Thanks for reading.

New Blogging Year = New Local Card Shop

As I was doing my research and reflection before writing my one year anniversary post the other day, I really wanted year two to be a little more 'adventurous'. I'm not really sure what I mean by that just yet, but as New Year's Day approaches, I'll probably sit and write a blog goals list for the year to better define it. I decided that an easy way to be 'more adventurous' in the short term was to finally explore a card shop that I hadn't visited yet. This particular shop is in Danville, VA and though I live in NC it only took me about a 30 minute drive to get there. It is actually the most local shop that I am aware of. I knew it existed because they participate in most of the card company promos like Topps' Spring Fever and Panini's multiple holiday promos. I made the drive yesterday just to see what I've been missing. Overall, I'm glad I did!

I forgot to snap a photo of the store front, but I found this image online. It is a really small shop and is primarily focused on comics, but the trip was certainly worth it and I'll definitely be returning on a semi-regular basis. As I walked in the front door, there was a small table that had a rather large plastic storage bin, not unlike this:

It was filled with store made repacks! For a collector like me, it was heaven. Team bag after team bag was lined up in there. All four major sports were represented as were golf, soccer, MMA, and there were even a few non-sport. I loved that there are two 'face' cards to help me pick which ones I want and that there was so much variety, but the best part was the price. There was a small sign next to it stating that they were a quarter a piece or 5 for a dollar. I didn't pay attention to how many cards were in each, but I started searching and quickly began pulling ones that I needed to take home. When all was said and done, this is the pile I had.

That's 16. All but one were baseball(there was one football for good measure). I also picked up four MMA packs that I'm not going to show off here. I picked all of the ones in the box that had Chrome showing in an effort to help fill in my remaining set needs and found a few others that had face cards that were too good to pass up.

As I searched the rest of the shop, there was a decent selection of open packs and boxes available in baseball, football, basketball, WWE, and some non-sport. The prices were in line with what you probably see at most shops these days. They also had a decent selection of supplies. Unlike most shops, they didn't have multiple display cases lined with singles, but they did have a few boxes to flip through that were sorted by team and somewhat alphabetical. I picked a few cards from these boxes to round out the day's purchase. Here are the highlights of the repacks.

These two made the Chrome packs worth it all on their own. The Bautista is the green refractor which is #/99 and the Konerko is the regular refractor of his farewell card. Beyond these, I found a few cards that are already set aside for trade partners and a prism refractor of MadBum too. Additionally, I found 15 cards to cross off my set checklist.

This Kiermaier 'Cracked Ice' card was on the face of one of the packs and I could not pass it by. I've said it before, but he was one of the most exciting players that I had the fortune to watch in Durham!

I picked up a prospect pack because the Adames and Garcia were the face cards and I thought they'd be good additions. Perhaps, if things work out, they'll one day look good with in person autos on them.

That wasn't all the prospect pack had to offer though. This trio was sandwiched in the middle. There were another two guys that I might potentially see come through Durham with the BoSox and Yankees Triple A teams and Kolek played in Greensboro(which is not too far a drive from me either) this past season. The design of these just seems to scream 'sign here"!

The best pack of the trip contained these two oddly sized and shaped cards from A&G. I am not exactly sure what these are(and haven't done the research to find out) but it's cool to add another Josh Hamilton even if I don't actively pursue that collection anymore. These were surrounded by the following cards which blew me away.

The Sano and the Vargas were the cards showing on this particular pack. How it was still sitting in the bin is beyond me. Honestly, it could have been almost anyone from Bowman Sterling and I would have picked it up just to add some more singles from that brand. As if the pack wasn't good enough, I found that sparkly, Bowman throwback insert of Kyle Schwarber tucked in there as well! All for the low, low price of twenty cents!

Here's the final lowdown on these repacks: they are AWESOME, and worth the drive alone. Each pack ended up containing 10 cards which essentially made this bin somewhat of a dime box! Heck, after all was said and done, I ended up adding 20 team bags to my supply reserves that will eventually make their way to many of your mailboxes. Add to that, I love the unknown/surprise aspect of the repack format and it made for a great new adventure!