Yet another card show ~ Yet another couple dupes!

Made the hour and a half drive to Ephrata, PA on Saturday to attend the once a year card show at the Rec Center there.  Found a listing for the show a couple years ago and I've made it an annual appointment.  Nice medium sized show of 40+ dealers in a gymnasium.  One quarter of the space is devoted to a live auction. 

Jim Palmer was signing...somewhere - I haven't partaken in the autograph at this venue, so I'm not sure where they do it.  Palmer was supposed to be there last year, but ran into family issues.  Brooks Robinson stepped up in his absence.  I've seen Palmer more than once, so my time was all at the tables getting these:

Got some good bargains on vintage ('74) football, a couple high number baseball that fit my sets, and spent some quality time at the quarter boxes.  Also stocked up on some 2017 inserts, and a few vintage baseball.

Found one dealer early on that had 70's football for 20¢ each for '73-'75, or 15¢ for '76-'78.  As you can see, I loaded up on my 1974 set.  Stars were penny sleeved and individually priced, so Charley and the unmarked checklist were a few bucks.  But almost every common I picked out was sweetly pristine, which is tough for this set since it had such centering issues.  Even got three unmarked team cards from '77 for 15¢.  Mark this show as a success already!

What started me with this guy was the two '72 and one '70 baseball at the near end of his table.  They were in with other commons and all of them were marked 25¢ each.  I think all the others were low number commons, but if you know these two sets, you'll realize the bargain - Dave Duncan up top is #678, and Rick Monday and the Gene Michael IA are #730 and 714 respectively.  Now they're not the prettiest specimens, but they fit right into my sets.  High numbers for a QUARTER?  Aw HELL YEAH!  Award that guy a second bonus point!

The bottom row in the wide shot (and the four lowest in the pic above) are all from the quarter boxes that I spent a couple hours at toward the latter half of the day.  Luckily, I had the one chair on the customer side of the table. 

As you can see, a lot of these were big names with big original price tags.  Cal Ripken tributes, those combo inserts from 2001 Topps (rats, only 16 more to find), Nolan Ryan from 1999 SI Greats (should have dug back for the other couple I found), and more.  A lot of work for eight bucks worth, but it was worth it.

As I was almost done for the day, I saw some high-end gamers and autos at the end of a row.  At this point, a lot of the dealers were packing up.  The guy told me he'd make me a great deal if I found anything I liked since it was so late in the show.  You can see that these would have originally been about $40 as marked.  He said $30, which was pretty good, but then quickly corrected himself "since I said I'd give you a great deal" to $25.  So I basically got the two autos and the refractory Bo (s/n to 49) for free.

But of course, I had a couple "Doh!" moments.

This show has a lot of Phillies cards and related things since it's in the heart of Pennsylvania.  It's where I picked up a couple of my oddball "Puddin' Head" Jones items.  On my list was still the 1954 Bowman.  So one of the first dealers I looked at had early 50's Bowman and Topps right at the beginning of his stock.  I grabbed the first stack from behind the 1954 divider and found Jones, but it was the '55 TV style....which I didn't actually recognize that much.  I said to myself, "Well the list shouldn't be lying to me, but.."  So I put it back and found the '54, which I was much more familiar with.  The price was fair, but since there are a lot of Phillie dealers, I decided to shop around.   At the end of the show, I ended up going back and snagging Willie, and the few '64s .  Got him home and the first thing I checked was whether I needed the '54 or the '55.  The good news is, there was a '55 in my stack.  (I keep his cards in a stack in the cabinet since they are all such diverse shapes and sizes)  The bad news is....

At least it was an upgrade....but my list lied to me (again)!

The worst gaffe, though is that when I was done (and exhausted from) my time at the quarter boxes, I went through the whole stack to check to see if I had pulled any twice or anything that I didn't really want.  I did put back a few that I didn't have lists on, but the rest looked fine. 

I got them home and was sorting them into stacks when I found this:

These are the only two purples I got.  Got two greens, and checked their names,but somehow missed that these were the same.  ironically, there were several vendors that had sections of rows with A-Rod, Jeter, Pujols, and Ripken etc.  At least these were only a quarter.

Check out the Ephrata show next year around this time if you're in the area.  I heard at least two dealers that said it's the only show they do all year.  I like it for the fact that it's completely different dealers than I know, but still within driving distance.