Okay. Now I really do just need 1 more Topps Nolan Ryan card.

This past weekend was busy card-wise. On Friday I went to check out a bunch of cards from an Offer Up post. By the time I was able to get there on Friday night, someone had already been there and had taken some of the better stuff. Much of the collection was football, but I just focused on the baseball cards. 

Most of the cards left we from 1985 - 1991. There were a few boxes with cards from earlier, but the offer I made on the lot was not close enough to get the deal done. I did however negotiate a deal for part of the collection. For $50 I picked up 7 unopened boxes of Topps Bigs and some other small boxed sets as well as some other smaller hand collated sets, or at least I hope they are complete sets. There will be several upcoming posts about this lot.

Then on Saturday I went to a card show. At the same show in July I bought a 1970 Topps Nolan Ryan card for the Topps run I am working on. The dealer I bought it from was headed to the National, not as a dealer, but to pick up some inventory. I asked him to see if he could find me a well loved 1969 Topps Nolan Ryan while he was there. If you remember back to my post about that 1970 card, at the time I was thinking that all I needed was the 1969 and 1970 cards. Turns out I still needed 5 cards; 1969, 1972, 1977, 1978, and 1980.

Going to the show this past Saturday I was really hopeful that the dealer would have a 69 for me. When I got to the show I went right to his table and surveyed his boxes. He had a box of cards just in penny sleeves that were $2 each. There were other boxes of stuff that he had picked up at the National, but someone else was currently going through that box, so I just asked him if he had picked up a 1969 Topps Nolan Ryan card. He said that he hadn't, but another dealer (who was not set up at this show) who was at his table said, "There's a 69 Ryan in the case." and he pointed behind the table. Apparently they had just made a deal earlier that morning and a 69 Ryan was part of it. The dealer grabbed the case and found the Ryan and handed it to me. There was a $30 price tag on it. Even in rough shape, I wasn't expecting to get this card for $30, so I asked him the price. He told me $30 and I said, "I'll take it."

The guy actually collects Nolan Ryan as well and he had upgraded, so he had included this in the lot that he sold this dealer. We talked for a bit about Nolan and his cards. Kinda cool that it came from another collector doing the same thing as me.

You can see that it's in pretty rough shape, especially the corners, but I'm totally okay with it. Especially for $30. Maybe someday I'll upgrade this and pass it along to another collector at a good price.

Reading the back of this card, I thought maybe Topps left out a letter. I thought it was maybe supposed to say "unleashed" instead of "unleased", but I guess unleased is an actual word, even though as I type this, the word "unleased" is underlined, meaning that Blogger isn't familiar with this word either. 

This card has significant meaning to me. When I was growing up, I had two friends that were brothers. We were good friends. I'm still best friends with one of them. We all collected cards. Their dad had collected cards as a kid and he had this 1969 Topps Nolan Ryan card. He actually had two of them if I remember correctly. In the early 90's as a 10 year old, this card was ancient and seemed unattainable. 30 years later, it's mine.

With this card secured, I doubled down and scoured this dealers box for the 1972, 1977, 1978, and 1980 Nolan Ryan cards to complete his playing career run. No luck on the 1972, but I was able to grab the 77, 78, and 80 from this same seller.

So now I really am down to just needing 1 Nolan Ryan card.