2022 Card Shop Adventures #3: Burbank Sportscards

Earlier this week we made the trip out to Los Angeles. We arrived the night of the 4th of July. We got Dodgers tickets for the 5th and then tickets to Knott's Berry Farm on the 6th.

With nothing planned on the morning of the 5th, I took advantage of it being my birthday and finagled a trip to Burbank Sportscards. The wife and kids stayed at the hotel and relaxed and swam while I made the 30 minute trip to the famous card shop.

My first interaction with Burbank Sportscards came through eBay. I've bought multiple cards from them off eBay over the years. Their eBay page shows that they have sold 5.3 million items and they currently have almost 2.4 million items for sale. I know they also have a huge presence on Beckett Marketplace as well. From what I remember seeing from a few YouTube videos over the years, they had a small shop attached to a huge warehouse for a long time. In July of 2021 they opened a much larger shop. When I say much larger, I mean MUCH larger. It was by far the biggest card shop I have ever been to. They have a room inside the card shop that they call the fishbowl that is the same size as some other card shops that I've been to. 

In November 2021 they started a YouTube channel called Burbank Sportscards. Rob Veres runs the shop with his dad and son. Rob is affectionately know as the Card Father. Rob was there at the shop when I was there and he came over to talk to me unsolicited as I was going through dollar boxes. He was extremely friendly and personable. His dad, Stephen, was there as well working the cash register. We talked for a bit about Arizona because he had been in Arizona recently visiting his brother in Tucson.

I should have taken more pictures. It was a bit overwhelming. I was supposed to be there for 2 hours. I ended up being there for around 3 hours. Most of that time was spent looking through 3200 count dollar boxes. I think they had 6 boxes of random baseball cards and then another 10 or so boxes of baseball star players sorted alphabetically. I went through all the random boxes and then looked through a couple of the players. I was disappointed that they didn't have Paul Goldschmidt in the player section.

Here are some of the cards I grabbed from the dollar boxes.

They had several of these 1962 Bell Brand Dodgers cards sprinkled throughout the dollar boxes. This was the first one I saw and appeared to be in the best condition (it has some creases though that I didn't initially see). I thought since I was in the LA area and going to a Dodgers game later in the day, it was appropriate that I grabbed one of these cards.

This 2000 Pacific Revolution Ken Griffey Jr. card is numbered to 399.

A couple other numbered cards. I don't see these very often so I grabbed two of players that I like.

I thought this card was cool and with all the fireworks the previous day, I added this to my stack.

I thought this unused redemption card was pretty cool. I might send it to Juan Gonzalez to see if I can get it signed.

Speaking of autographs. I grabbed this Junior Spivey rookie auto. I already have it, but it was only a dollar.

I got a couple of Pacific cards that were embossed from different events. I haven't figured out what the embossing on the Nomar card is from yet.

The Eckersly card is embossed with a stamp form the 1997 Toronto Fall Expo.

There was a little bit of vintage sprinkled throughout the 3200 count boxes. I grabbed a few that I thought were in nice shape, including this one.

I grabbed a couple cards I hoped I needed for my 1984 Donruss set.

I also grabbed a few Donruss Diamond Kings numbered to 10,000.

Here are a couple of pictures I did take. They have entire showcases dedicated to a few players. Here is a picture of the one for Lebron. I'm not a huge collector of basketball cards at this time, although I've been buying more basketball lately), but this collection of Lebron James cards is impressive.

I also had to take a picture of this Griffey Game Jersey card. As a Griffey fan and a baseball card collector, this card is what I refer to as my White Whale. If I only had an extra $2500 I could have snagged it.

Okay, enough about what I didn't buy. Let's take a look at the two bigger cards that I did buy,

I bought this 1975 Topps mini Hank Aaron Highlights card. I son't consider the mini as part of his base Topps run because it wasn't part of the Topps base set, but I was still happy to add this to my collection.

But my big purchase of the trip was this 1980-81 Topps Larry Bird rookie card. This purchase came less than a week after purchasing the 1980-81 Topps Magic Johnson rookie card at a card show the previous Saturday.

This one is graded a PSA 6 and I got it for $5 less than I did the raw Magic Johnson card.

With the Magic and Bird rookies acquired for set number 2 I can will probably go after the other Bird and Magic cards from that set so I can complete at least the one set.

I had a great time at Burbank Sportscards and would love to go back, but I doubt it will be anytime soon. Anyone ever been to Burbank Sportscards? If so, let me know what your experience was.

Two out of three ain't bad! - 1980-81 Topps Magic Johnson RC

My last post was on me putting together the 1980-81 Topps Basketball set. I wrote and posted it on Friday. On Saturday, July 2nd I went to a card show in Phoenix. I hit up my favorite vintage dealer that was at the show. The same dealer that I bought all the pages of 1980-81 Topps Basketball from a few weeks back.

I looked for the remaining Hank Aaron cards I need, but he didn't have any of them. I also took a look at his vintage basketball cardsharping to find some of the cards I needed for the 1980-81 Topps set. He only had a couple of cards from that set. This was one of them.

The price tag, as you can see, says $120. I asked him what he could do. I was hoping he would be in the $80-100 range. He took the card from me and looked at it and say, "$75". I told him I'd take it. My birthday is actually today, so this was my birthday present from my Dad.

The card is off-centered, but otherwise appears to be in good shape. This is the Magic Johnson rookie card. Obviously it's not the Bird, Erving Magic card from the set, but two out of three ain't bad.

Card Show Pickup: 9 Pocket Pages of Vintage

Went to a card show this past weekend with my buddy Micah. Spent most of our time with one dealer that focuses on mainly vintage, but made a trip around the show and we picked up a couple of things from a few other dealers.

This post will focus on a purchase from the vintage dealer we spent most of our time with. He had posted on Facebook before the show that he was going to have some 9 pocket pages of vintage cards at the show for $4 each. He always has interesting stuff, so I made a point to get to the show as close to opening as possible and it's the main reason we headed to his table first.

He had a cardboard box with some 9 pocket pages on his table. The sign on the box said $4 each or 5 for $15. We started digging through the box and I found a few pages that caught my eye. 

I have some of these 1961 Fleer cards already, but for the price I couldn't say no.

I grabbed this one because of the Vern Law card, but it turned out I already have it. That's okay though. These will make a nice addition to my 1959 Topps collection.

This page has a few more 1959 cards, but there are a few other years represented here; including three 1957 Topps cards. I grabbed this page because of the 1957 Topps Whitey Herzog rookie card. It's in rough shape, but he's a Hall of Fame manager, and I didn't already have his rookie card, so for $3 for the page and only about $0.33 per card, I was excited to add this card to my collection!

So I was able to grab these five 9 pocket pages of vintage baseball cards for a total of $15.

But these weren't the only pages I bought from this dealer. 

I ended up buying another 28 pages of 1980-81 Topps basketball cards. More on these on my next post!