My hauls from the Pennsylvania and Michigan shops were nice, but here's what you've been waiting for - my first night's National loot. Not sure it'll be so much more spectacular than the other stuff, but you be the judge...
First off, for those that have never been, I tried to take a few pictures from near the middle of the show floor in an attempt to show the scale of the place. Not sure it worked. This spot was about a third of the way down the length of the floor, shot from the middle aisle.
The shot above is looking back at the first few aisles. The entrance is to the left at the far end. Remember, this is only a third of the length of the place!
This one is looking from side to side. I'm standing at aisle 500 of 1200 (5 of 12).
And this one is looking down the far end of the floor. The company areas are to the left side.
I took a quick video standing in the same spot and spinning around slowly to show the 360° view. Was thinking about walking the length of the floor with the camera. Probably should have.
On to the loot!
First stop was my buddy Dave Esright's table. He's always good for massively discounted vintage. Found a couple '50 Bowmans and '64 high numbers. Picked up two more '50s at some point - not sure where. The other '64s are high numbers as well. Those were found at a table near the front that had a few different years of high numbers all for two bucks apiece. Another seller had thousands of autographs sorted alphabetically. Luckily he had his whole inventory indexed in a printout, so you could see if he had a certain player without digging through half the box. Snagged the '78 Nellie Briles since he was one of the few player collections that I still lacked an auto from.
More PC guys - all O-Pee-Chee! Love the backs on the '69s - and another Briles. Always nice to knock out some of the older ones from up north.
One of Stuart's hometown vendors had a really nice display of hockey singles on one side, baseball in the middle, and football on the other side. Stocked up on my OPCs from 17-18 and some 18-19 Parkie. The guy behind the table was impressed with my persistence in picking out such a big pile of singles. My phone was about to die at the same time. Was thrilled to find singles of my favorite hockey set of all time - 2002-03 Pacific Private Stock. Will revisit this vendor again later.
That's it for Wednesday preview night. Stay tuned for my first full day's haul....
The day before we left for Chicago and the National Sports Collector's Convention, we went by All-Star Cards in Lansing. Owner Nate knows Stuart well, though he doesn't necessarily consider that a good thing.
"Nate's" has a large dime and quarter box section, which is what we primarily dug into. Found some interesting singles.
Starting in the football section, most of these are Redskins that didn't look familiar. On a few of them, I actually did look them up in my extensive catalog that I track my 'Skins (from 1948 to 2008 anyway.) Usually it's too cumbersome to do so, but wasn't so bad since they only showed up once in a while.
The Tarkenton in the top left corner is the first of the football version of the Hygrade set. More on those later. The blue bordered rookie Jag is the first one from the 34 that end the otherwise burgundy bordered set. He was cheap even though numbered out of 1500, so I picked him up. He may languish alone for a while since I don't care about rookies that much in sets like this.
On the baseball side, much more variety. A few Bo's, including two Broders and a Hometown Heroes. A regional Lou Piniella I hope I don't have. Some miscellaneous singles for various sets. I snagged the 2019 A&G Tatis just in case I don't pull him later when I get boxes. (Sneak preview ~ it's an extra!) A couple off the Baseball Immortals set. Some bonus '94 Pacific end-of-the-set cards that a lot of people need instead of the 3000 count box of singles I have. A few for the space binder including a pair of UD Anniversaries. The JuanGonz Ted Williams kills that insert set, as does the Collector's Choice Crash the Game silver.
The MusiCards are from two packs that I dug out of a bin of 25¢ packs of miscellaneous non sports. They are the coveted Series 2 packs, but didn't yield many actual Series 2 cards. Always nice to get Sheena Easton (again), and I might have needed one of the Randy Rhoades.
Special bonus on the first Bo card ~ it's a high number short print. Doesn't help my set build though. This one's going to the Bo player collection. Need another for the set.
I'll be getting to the National haul posts soon, I promise, but for now, I'm going in chronological order. In the last two weeks, my trading buddy Stuart and I traveled through eight states like I said. We bought cards in six of them. The same day we stopped by the Red Cedar Antiques store in Lansing, Michigan, we also went by Extra Innings to see the owner Rick. He's right off route 127 in Mason.
Rick had some nice football single stock, so I raided the 1995 Topps...
Also found some of the last '76 and '91 Topps, plus a 1995 SP need.
Then I moved on to hockey. Some decent names in 75-76 and a couple off the '81-82's.
And finally, he had pulled me some 2007 Heritage short prints too. Zim is a yellow name variation.
I got to pick from some exclusive stuff too, but you'll see those on another blog.
Since the end of last month, my friend Stuart and I have traveled through Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, and back again in search of those little slices of cardboard.
In the next couple weeks, I'll be showing all my purchases, trades, and freebies I've obtained along the way. I got a little bit of everything from the shops and the National convention. Here's a preview of the sheer volume of my acquisitions.
I'll open the A&G boxes later this week. The loose cards are from dealers in Maryland, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The bagged stuff is mostly my National haul, a trade with Mr. Haverkamp there, and one Michigan shop.
The white boxes are a mixture of shop hauls and freebies from Stuart. The '78 panels are from an antique place in Ohio.
After I photograph all the different groups by location, I'll stack it all up by sport, etc. and see how big the piles are.
And there are some stories to go with all this. Stay Tuned!
This is my first post composed entirely on my cell phone. I hope it looks OK, the formatting looks different (much larger main body text for one). And I usually resize photos before posting, but these are straight off my phone camera as are most of the rest, but completely unedited.
So anyway, I am now in Michigan (since Sunday), and tomorrow my friend Stuart and I set off for Chicago and the National.
Monday, we went to Red Cedar Antiques in the Lansing area. There is a card vendor there with a pretty decent selection. I found a couple oddball items.
The part of my [hoard] that gets the most new items is my baseball player collections. I'll likely return from Chicago with a ton of new oddball stuff. Got a couple on this first stop. Local (Michigan) favorite Steve Kemp appears to have actually signed this promo photo.
The flip side of the Foster disc reveals that this is not an Isaly's or Orbaker, but the less commonly seen (by me at least) Pepsi-Cola version.
I have aspired to find all the 80s Drake's sets in complete form. And cheap! So far I've only obtained the first one from 1981 until now. The 1984 batch was a fair five bucks.
We also stopped by our friend Rick's shop over in Mason. That haul I will post after the show is over. Unless I get sick of posting like this, then you'll have to wait until I get home and back to a normal screen and keyboard/mouse interface. My apologies for forgetting my dang laptop!
A quick post to show some loot before I embark on my journey to the National. My friend Stuart is down from Michigan and we hit a few of my local shops. I won't be able to post any more than these until I get back from what is going to be the MD, PA, and Michigan (via Chicago) tour.
I will be posting selfies so that those who are going to the National can recognize me and introduce themselves there.
Sorry about the lousy pictures, the lighting in here is really bad.
Some set hits - 2005 Donruss, a short print Heritage, A&G insert, Gold Rush Score, and four Upper Deck Predictors. The Clemens in the upper left corner is just the base from 2003 UD.
better view of the Prism
Molly '94 Pacific Prism (hobby), McGwire Ultra, Nolan Ryan high number Hometown Heroes, UD All-Star Classic insert, new Stadium Club insert (out of place in this group), and three Heritage Then & Nows.
Reflected out Mussina parallel, Frank Robinson vintagey oddball thingy, three new Stadium Club inserts, Fisk Lineage sparkly parallel, Torre/Stengel shiny parallel, Torre UD Anniversary, 5 Tool insert, and Big League sketch from this year.
I kept seeing these 2017 Update MVP inserts in the boxes at this shop, so I decided to see if I could find 'em all. They ranged from $2 down to a quarter, so it was worth it.
Some newer football inserts. Happy to get mushroom head Zeke for only $2. Those framed Gridiron Kings are just base cards, not parallels.
Player collection hits for Bo and Priest Holmes.
Nice '76 lot to get me closer to the set. A couple of other oddball hits, and a $5 Brett Favre In Action from 2009 Upper Deck Philadelphia. Those are so hard to find I bit the bullet and paid up for it.
Stay Tuned for National news, loot and much more. It'll just be sporadic until I get back on the 11th.
P-Town Tom hit me again with some hits to my (newly expanded) 1991 Topps error want list. Some of these are kinda obscure, so I'll show you the differences - the a and b versions.
#101 Ducey - (® far away from Blue Jays). This variation occurs several times in the set. The "circle-R" or registration mark, is printed high and tight against the last letter in the logo, or is mid-line and a little farther away.
Here it is again with #369 Searcy - this time it's the "TM" mark. There is no official listing for some of these, so it's hard to judge which one is A and B.
#374 Casain - (facial blemishes present & airbrushed). Mr Casian must have been right out of school, and apparently had some complexion issues that they cleaned up for him in the first card photo. The picture has the corrected card first.
#533 McDowell - (no period / spot after name). Couldn't find a scan on the internet for this one, so I had to make one. The little spot printed at the end of the name disappears in later versions. Would hesitate to call it a "period" since it doesn't sit on the line like a printed character, and the black stripe goes right through it. Interesting that there is what looks like a hair on the plate - a thin line through the team name and name stripe - that remains on both cards.
#573 Rich Rodriguez blue mark on shoulder - natural/blue glove laces. This one has a C version. There is a small blue print mark on the first one at his shoulder above the glove. Then the mark is gone, but the edges of the glove laces turn bright blue. The final variation corrects both.
#555 Ward - (gap in top black border). They've been doing this since 1973. Pro Set was the champs, though. Just a small gap in the very top black line right about the black splotch in the crowd.
#610 Galarragga - (white space between glove and border). Andres has a nice horizontal card in '91, but the overlapping photo gets a little messy until they clean it up. I added the green highlight.
#615 Blyleven - (MAJ LEA Totals fill space to border). Courtesy Junk Wax Gems. Most cards have the copyright line inside the border, but Bert's stats are so long, it got pushed outside.
#695 Seitzer - (green top border). There are a few of these in the '91 set too. I don't know if it's a color processing problem, or just a mistake by the guy behind the Photoshop controls. The scan makes it look dark grey, but the first one is a nice forest green on the top inside border stripe.
Thanks to Tom again, and I hear there are more coming! That guy is one of my best trading buddies.
Editor's Note: Home internet service is still down. I'm writing this at some friend's house while I dogsit. I reviewed my message from Verizon and it said I was set for NEXT Tuesday. F&*# me.
Building upon Chris' concept for his Favorite Things post, I've expanded the categories. One of the first things I think of about the 50's is the cars. And I've been meaning to post about my idle and buried comic collection too. Plus, if you've got movies, you might as well add TV shows too, right? All that, plus card sets and players by decade may make this way too long for a single post, so I may have to split it up. A lot of this stuff spans two halves of consecutive decades, so some things may seem a bit early or late.
Cars - I love 1950's Pontiacs. I want one. Started out liking Cadillacs of the same era. They just have the right look. Then I saw the Pontiacs - Silver Streaks, Cheiftains, Super Chiefs, and Star Chiefs. They're just the consummate Old Cars. The size, all the chrome, and the styling...
Card Set - Gotta be 1959 Topps. I like the '57s the more I get them, but '59 is an all time classic.
Music - Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra. My musical wheelhouse generally involves long hair and guitar solos, but as I've aged, I've developed an appreciation for some classics as well. I can't say I listen to these guys with any regularity, but if I'm with an older crowd, I have no problem with hearing stuff from these two. Timeless songs from the classiest gentlemen in history.
Baseball Players - Stan Musial and Charlie Keller. I don't collect Musial specifically (who could?) but he's the best player of the decade. My connection to Keller has been mentioned a few times here. Neat custom Musial I found on the interwebs - no artist named.
The remaining categories will expand in the later decades. Comics and TV weren't nearly what they turned into later.
Cars - Pontiac GTO, Jaguar XKE. Don't have a deep connection to either one, (never owned or driven either), but they look cool. GTO is the king of American muscle cars, and the Jag reminds me of one of my favorite 70's cars - just a lot more exotic and luxurious. Stay Tuned.
Card Set - This one's kind of a tough call. The 1960 set is nice (and I'm done with it), but the '64 set is growing on me more and more. It's a bit simpler, but I think that's why I like it.
Comics - Gold Key Disney and Sad Sack. I only own one comic that's older than the 60's, so this category starts here. Even with these titles, I'm not sure if I was reading original books, or reprints. Not that it mattered to me at the time. I didn't actually read anything until the early 70's anyway. I remember Archie comics at the same time, and I had a few, but wasn't into them as much. Lord knows I didn't relate to the dating and socializing in those stories.
Baseball Players - Willie Mays, Bob Gibson, Tom Cheney. I've got a lot of PCs that start in the 60's. But if you ask me who the best slugger/fielder and pitcher are for the 60's, it's gotta be Mays & Gibby. (I'm waffling between listing my favorites and who I think is the BEST player.) Cheney is one of those Joe Shlabotnik players that did something amazing and wasn't heard from much after that. He is a PC, and a relatively small one.
Movies - James Bond films with Sean Connery, Manchurian Candidate. Any of the Connery Bond films are classics. He's a man's man. And the original Manchurian Candidate stars Frank Sinatra in a really intense story.
Music - Motown. I'm sure there's some early rock that happens in the 60's, but Motown was the best of the decade to me. Again, it took me a few decades to develop an appreciation, and it's all secondary to hard rock overall, but I like a lot of the songs from these artists.
TV shows - Batman, Star Trek. Weekdays after school, there were a lot of animated shows, but one standout was the live action Adam West Batman show. I was the Caped Crusader for at least one Halloween back then. And of course, Star Trek (The Original Series) started in the late 60's as well.
Honorable mention to "The Tholian Web", one of the best episodes. And yes, I became a Trekker later in life. (Kinda obvious with the theme of this blog.) I've still got a couple uniforms hanging in my closet. TNG red shirt and Captain's tunic & jacket from season 5. And no, they don't fit any more.
Yep, looks like this will be at least a three-parter. The 70's and 80's are next.
