I Found a Local Card Show!

A co-worker whose husband just got back to card collecting told me about a small local card show her husband stumbled across and I got a chance to attend a little while back.  This was my first card show since the National Card Convention in Anaheim, CA  way back in 2006, that's right over 12 years ago.  I was excited but guardedly as I didn't want to expect too much.

The show ended up having 12-15 sellers, most with more than one table.  There was quite a bit of local KC stuff - Royals and Chiefs - both cards and memorabilia.  One guy had tons of autographed 8X10s, balls and bats.  Another guy had primarily autographed jerseys.  One guy had quite a few unopened hobby boxes and blasters. The rest had cards.  There were a few dime, quarter and dollar boxes.  There were also a few binders with cards.  The rest were single in display cases and boxes.


I was really hoping to track down a ton of 1972 Topps high numbers on the cheap but that didn't come close to happening.  I did however have tons of fun and get some cards that fit nicely into my collection.

I will start by sharing some Giants I picked up in various dollar, quarter and dollar bins?

My favorites are here are the Vogelsong numbered rookie parallel /290 and the John McGraw Cooperstown card.  I remember when the Panini Cooperstown product came out they replaced a promised hit with these wood-like cards.  They weren't very popular and definitely not an equal swap but I was glad to pick up this one.

 More Giants, the purple Panda is pretty awesome.  It was also cool to get the Buster and Lincecum cards in their college unis. One of the Buster's is pretty thick.

A few more cheap Giants, pretty happy to track down the Herbel buy-back.

I also found a few Trojan cards as well.  Pretty cool to get premium Carson Palmer numbered base cards for a quarter.  Also nice to find a new Tony Boselli card, I have a pretty high percentage of his cards.

I also picked up some cards for my Reggie collection.  I think a couple ended up being dups but some nice looking cards of Mr. October.

I found some Rickey Henderson cards I needed and a Dave Winfield relic, all great pick ups!

There was a guy with a ton of relics and autos and I spent a while going through them.  They didn't have prices and I was a little worried despite his assurances that I would be happy with what he quoted me.  I pulled out quite a few cards and I don't recall the exact price but I didn't hesitate to pull the trigger.

The first 3 scans are the Giant I found:

Love the Cain gold Finest!

Two Matt Williams from two different products with the same photo.

There are basically For the F of it cards, I have thought about starting a Foster collection and Affetdt was a huge part of the Giants championship bullpens.

Another cards just for fun, I am not a Zito collector unless he is in a Giants uniform but these were nice and cheap.

My final pick ups were some cards for my 1960 Fleer set build.  The condition isn't amazing but I got a good deal and it is a 68 year old vintage set.

That's it for the card show haul, it was fun to be back at a show for the first time in over a decade.  I am seriously contemplating a trip to the National in Chicago this year.  Maybe I can track down some of the 1972s there.

If you are interested, jump into my contest on this post, giving a way a few different things:

https://arpsmith44.blogspot.com/2018/12/a-contest-and-new-player-collection.html

Trade Post - A Cracked Bat

I really can't tell you how long ago I got this great group of cards from Julie of A Cracked Bat fame.  We have exchanged packages back and forth and I am not sure this officially represents a trade but for tagging purposes, that's what I am calling it.

First up were some newer Giants:

This is a great assortment and I needed them all.  The purple background on the Bumgarner is pretty and I really like the Panik die cut - it was a card that I had never seen.  I am hoping that Panik continues the All Star play that was happening prior to his back injury during the second half of last year.  With the new Giants additions to the starting rotation, it seems like Chris Heston of no-hitter fame will be relegated to the bullpen unless some gets hurts.  The Giants rotation will be quite strong to go with a NL leading offense - watch out Dodgers.  The bottom 3 cards partner with Panik to form 3/4 of the Giants infield, Giants cards as Orange Refractors are awesome.

Julie also included a nice group of Barry Bonds cards.  I am a little sad to see him as hitting coach for the Marlins, it would be nice to see him at Spring Training this year in the Orange and Black.  Reminds me a little of Jack Clark becoming a Dodgers coach, he looked terrible in Dodger blue.

The Cepeda is a reprint but it was the last original back I needed for the Giants team set which is awesome. It did bring back some PTSC (Post Traumatic Set Collecting) as I made the idiotic decision to collect both the regular and original back versions in 2010.  As I recall this is a 157 card insert set over all 3 series and the original backs were inserted 1/hobby box.  I didn't keep track of how much I spent but I recall some of the Ryan, Mantle and Jeter cards being $5-10 each.  I need to focus on the awesome Will Clark and Matt Williams cards to distract me.  I also love getting oddball stuff with Giants logos like this Cracker Jack sticker and hologram!

Finally a great relic out of Topps Archives of the Kung Fu Panda.  I miss the personality and humor Sandoval brought to the Giants but last year Matt Duffy did more than replace Panda with his great rookie performance.  I am sad that because he plays the same position as Kris Bryant as he won't have a Rookie Cup on his Topps base card this year but I am hoping he doesn't have a sophomore slump.

Thanks Julie for a great group of cards!!!

LCS Contest Win - Dodgers Fans Will Enjoy This Post

One of my 2 LCS ran a contest recently and if you purchased 5 or more packs of 2014 Heritage you got an entry to win a couple cards.  The contest was to predict the exact number of runs scored by the Dodgers and Dback in their 2 game Australian season opening series.  I correctly picked 16 runs, the exact number the two teams scored.  For my prognostication skills I won these two cards:

 A 2011 Bowman Chrome Prospects Auto of Dodgers 2B Dee Gordon. I believe Dee is in a platoon at second for the Dodgers, he didn't play in game one but went 3-4 in game two.

The second card is this Jumbo Bat Relic of rehabbing star OF Matt Kemp.  Despite this cards Dodgerness, it is a nice looking card.

These cards could probably be pried away in a trade but the Kemp may be more challenging for me to part with.  Giants relics of similar quality would probably be the best way to part with these but I don't think I am too tough to trade with.

This post has way too much Dodgerness in it so I will leave you with the nice Auto of former Giant 3B and current Nats manager Matt Williams:

Mail Day - The Joys of Combined Shipping

I really like to take advantage of combined shipping on eBay. It is tough for me to pay $3 to ship one card but when you can get a decent stack for $3-5 it makes it much more palatable.  I ran across a single card I really wanted from a seller recently and did some searching in his inventory and picked up a pretty nice stack of cards.

 First up is this nice card featuring two HOF Giants, Johnny Mize and Mel Ott, although Mize is in a Yankee uniform.  This is from the Rival Factions insert set and is numbered 0309/1000.  This is kind of an interesting choice of players as Mize and Ott were teammates during the last couple years of Ott's career and Mize didn't play on the Yankees until after Ott was retired.  Regardless, I like the card and the Ott picture is pretty cool featuring the Giants across his chest.

 A couple of cards from my favorite Giants 3B of all time, Matt Williams.  Although the bottom card doesn't look it, these are both gold. I love the photography in the Collector's Choice set, for a low end set, Upper Deck sure did it right.  Williams is stretching out to snag a grounder and in the Flair insert he is honored for his Hot Glove.

Speaking of Collector's Choice and great photography, I was able to pick up 7 Gold Signature parallels from the 1996 set.  I was surprised to find these all with one seller as I thought the Gold Sigs were pretty tough pulls.  The photography on these is great, particularly the 4 horizontal cards. One day I am going to have to pull a bunch of Kirt Manwarings cards for a post, the man has some great looking cards - gotta love catchers.

 I also scored 3 Barry Bonds cards.  I am tempted to peel the Finest insert but the coating has been in place for 14 years so I am not sure I can actually pull the trigger. I am sure it would look much Finer in a peeled state.  The UD Ionix insert looks great in person and actually scanned better than I suspected. The final card is an SPx Radiance parallel from 1998.  I really like these cards but there are somewhat hard to come by.  This one is serial numbered to 1000. I knew these cards held high book values from my days of trading on the forums so I looked this one up - $50!  That is crazy for a card /1000.  I am happy to add it to my collection.

The final card is the only non-Giant and the card that started it all. I don't know if I had even seen this card but I needed it for my Rickey Henderson collection.  When marking it off my checklist I noticed that I only need 3 more cards of his that were released in 1993.  The only years I have all his cards are 1979 and 1980 where he had only 1 card in each year and 1983 - with 40 cards.  Adding those final 3 cards might be a fun side goal, there are a total of 51 of his cards in 1993.

I was pretty happy with this package, thank goodness for combined shipping to allow me to put together packages like this.