I wasn’t actually planning on heading to the monthly Southfork Hotel Show on Saturday. It’s college football season and during the season, I’m not seen as often at shows. My Mountaineers played at 2pm and since I’m on the DFW Mountaineers Board of Directors, I need to be at game watches.
Jason reminded me early in the week that I’d told him I would submit some cards to Beckett Grading (and pick them back up at the October show), so, I ended up going. I took his cards and my 1955 Topps All American Jim Thorpe and was on my way. After a quick stop at Triple Cards, I made it to the show.
After paying my admission and chatting briefly with Rich, I turned left into the side room and saw this.
This was just one table. There were a total of three tables with 1980s and 1990s wax, none that I recall being priced at more than $15. The selection was offered by one of the regular vendors, so I’m not sure if they picked up a collection recently or what. It was madness though.
I only picked up one box myself. The hockey they had wasn’t exciting to me at all. So, I broke down and bought a box of cards that I never could have afforded as a kid.
As you can tell, the box is busted on the side. It wasn’t that way when I picked it up (it happened in the trunk on the way home), but it was definitely rough. I’m not even sure if all the packs were in it but that’s of no concern to me. I was chatting with one of the sellers and mentioned how these were really expensive in 1991. I thought they retailed at $1.99 a pack and he said he thought they were $2.99 but neither of us seemed confident in our answers. Regardless, I know that they were out of my price range as a kid. I did have plenty of 1991 Donruss, Topps, Fleer and Score, though.
I got home, removed the box from the bag and that’s when I noticed it was busted. As I gathered all the packs up to place back in there, I noticed the back of one pack.
Mystery solved. All-in-all, I got a box for less than the price of two packs back in 1991.
I also picked these up from the seller for a buck apiece. They are just magnets and it was something different from prior shows. I was born in Birmingham and that’s why the Stallions one appealed to me. The Pirates was picked up for Jason and I don’t believe I need to explain why I got the WVU one.
I made my way on and stopped at the Beckett table to make my submission. As I was about to move on, I decided to make a purchase.
Last month I picked up the Vintage Almanac. While I’ve never cared much about graded cards, I’m becoming more interested because of the vintage aspect. I picked this up just as a reference guide. I don’t spend hours every evening on eBay, so I thought this would be a nice thing to have just to take a look. Also, I don’t completely understand how each “condition” corresponds to a grade and I want to expand my knowledge. They also had it $10 below listed price, so I was on board. Looking through it briefly, what I really like is that not only do they just list “book values,” but they also list auction prices for some high-grade cards.
I walked around the room and was about to leave, until a box caught my eye. The vendor was one that I don’t recall seeing before and he had a lot of 7/$1 boxes. One box was titled “football rookies,” so I had to take a look through and look for some Mountaineers. I pulled out the ones I found and a couple other cards, told the gentleman how many I had and he quoted me $7. I only had about 25 cards so that seemed high. I mentioned to him that I thought they were 7/$1 and he said “no, that was the rookie box.” As a tip to sellers: CLEARLY MARK YOUR PRICES. That box had no price on it, but it was next to the other boxes. What else was I to think?
I politely told him that I would pass since that’s what I thought the price was and there was no other price marked on the box. He ended up giving them to me for $3, and I think he realized where he erred. If I hadn’t ended up with these, it wouldn’t have been the end of the world. Glad I got them, though.
NOW I was ready to leave but as I walked from that last table, I noticed a dollar box of vintage. For a buck (or 12/$10) I was going to take a look and see if I could find any low condition cards for my 1955 Topps All American set. I ended up with 15 or 16 cards and decided to cut it down to 12. These are the beauties I ended up with.
I loved and collected Starting Lineups as a kid. I wish that I’d sold them off before the prices crapped out back whenever they did. Any time that I see some of these cards cheap, I pick them up.
The original card was recently our “Cool Card of the Day.” It’s nice to see that there are some cards from the junk wax era (here is another) that have still become cards that at least I consider iconic. Once I saw this card I remembered it from the 1993 Upper Deck set. I never had one and of course I loved Ken Griffey Jr. as a kid. There was no doubt that this was coming home with me.
Do I even have to explain why I picked this one up? That’s just cool.
This one I picked up for the announcer wing of my PC. I’m too young to remember him as a player, but his voice was one of my youth. I was a big NFL fan then and it just seemed like you heard him every week calling games. Maybe I’m wrong, but I feel like he was typically on the late afternoon NBC games.
I’m not one that focuses on what cards “book” for. I was shocked to see this in a dollar box, though. Recently I picked up a Ty Cobb that books $50 from this same set. Rich likes to take a look through my pick-ups as I leave shows and when he saw this one, I was surprised to find out it was only about a $5 card. No worries though. It’s not every day that I come across a legitimate vintage Tris Speaker card that I can afford. I’m not into baseball anymore, but I have a respect for the history of the game and the cards.
I had no idea what this was. I just thought it was cool and I picked it up for Jason. Was really surprised to find out that it “book” value is only $1.50 on it. There are four cards in this 33-card set that book over 50. It seems that with just a few exceptions, you needed to be a Yankee to get a lot of hobby love.
I actually had two of these already, but this was in pretty good shape for being card #1 in the set. I also love the Brownie logo.
I tweeted this out the night I picked it up and said something to the effect of “some people rescue dogs from shelters, I rescue well-loved cards.” It doesn’t matter what standard you use, the card is in horrible shape. Van Brocklin is a Hall of Famer, though. There’s also a thread on net54baseball.com about well-loved cards. I will probably share this one at some point.
I have no idea who this is. It was one of two 1949 Bowman cards in the box and it is now the oldest baseball piece I have in my PC. Believe it or not, this was the better condition of the two. It really pained me to pick up a Red Sox card, but sometimes we have to do what we have to do for the love of the hobby.
This isn’t the first card I’ve had of the Marlboro Man, but it’s the only one that I have now. Yes, you read that right. If you didn’t know, he was the Marlboro Man for roughly 20 years. While not a Pro Football Hall-of-Famer, he was a star in his day and when he retired, held many Giants passing records.
“Charlie is the best player who is not in the Pro Football Hall of Fame,” Wellington Mara, the Giants’ co-owner, has often said. “He has better numbers than some quarterbacks who are there.”
He’s in the College Football Hall of Fame and that’s more important anyway. Finally, I love that the card back is not scratched.
Unfortunately, this was the only card I found for my 1955 Topps All American set. Someone must have JUST beaten me to more of them, as I saw some sitting that I asked to see, but the vendor told me that one of the guys looking at the table had already picked it out. If only I hadn’t spent so much time on those 7/$1 cards, I might have ended up with more.
I’m glad it’s one that I needed. While not in great shape, it’s in better shape than some others that I have and have paid more for. Paying 84 cents for an $18 card that I need for a set is a win in my book. At the end of the day, this is my favorite pickup of the day.
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