You know you are a little out of control as a team collector when...

A little while back I walked into my LCS and the owner greeted me with a "hey I was just thinking of you".  He knows my collecting interests well and this usually means a nice USC patch or auto card, a  unique Giants card or sometimes even a new 49ers card but this time he caught me from a different angle.

He had just pulled out 2 huge boxes of auto cards that were in penny sleeved and filed alphabetically by team.  I had never seen these boxes before, he had them stashed in the back, but he explained they were autos of lesser known players, usually prospects that didn't pan out, and that about once per year he goes through the boxes to see if someone was a late bloomer and needed to be promoted out of the "scrubs" box.  He said he noticed a few Giants when flipping through it and thought that I probably could use some of them in my collection.

There weren't any new products out I was interested so I figured what the heck and dove right into the box.  Here are the fruits of my labor:

As you can see, no star players and only a couple players that had more that a cup of tea. Reflecting back on the purchase I had to think, why did I really need these cards?  These aren't star players, as a matter of fact I don't even remember a couple of them really ever being prospects.  I don't have any memories tied to these players like I do when I look through my McCovey cards or my Henderson cards or even recall books I have read about players before my time.  The reason of course is that I am a team collector and if possible I will take and enjoy any Giants card that I don't already have in my collection.  Yes a little crazy and a little out of control but it is the truth.

In addition to these 29 Giants autographed cards I picked up a few cards from his newly placed quarter box:

 I found some more Giants I needed, that 8 person card in the top middle wasn't even on my checklist and I love finding cards that I had somehow missed.

 I picked up these randomly for possible trades or just because I thought they were cool.  I hadn't recalled seeing that awesome Griffey card with the monster bubble.  No wonder they called him the Kid.

 Scored some 72 and 73 cards for the set quest.  Was pretty happy to get each of these for a quarter especially the Rollie pre-handlebar mustache. 

I also picked up these 1971 Topps cards.  I am not actively collecting this set but I figured picking up some HOFers and a rookie cup card for a quarter each was a pretty good idea.  Personally I think this was a dollar very well spent.

And as I too often do, I did pick a quartet of cards that I already had so I add a couple Giants to the dup stack and a couple vintage card to the vintage stack.

Overall this was a pretty nice visit to the card shop and I think it was $50 very well spent.