Card Show Recap #4

Hope everyone is having a happy Easter! Yesterday I went to a card show. I only had about an hour before I had to go get going to my son's basketball game. I ended up only spending time with two different dealers, but it was well worth it.

My focus for the show was to find some Barry Bonds cards and hopefully get to 762 unique Bonds cards. I started the day at 705.

The first dealer I went to is the main vintage dealer I buy from quite a bit. Most of his stuff is vintage, but he usually has some stuff from the 90's and early 2000's. He had a 3200 count box marked as all cards for $1 each that was filled with exactly these types of cards. There was no rhyme or reason to the box. All sports. Cards were from late 80's to today, but the vast majority of cards were 90's and early 2000's. Perfect for Bonds.

At $1 each I had to be a little more picky than usual, but I was able to grab 21 Bonds cards that I was pretty sure I didn't already have. I ended up needing 19 of the 21, which is pretty good. 

Most are inserts and several are numbered.

From the same $1 box I pulled out a few more cards. I ended up with 29 cards in total.

I thought these were regular Diamond Kings, but these are Rookie Diamond Kings. Still all numbered to 10,000.

A couple of Mike Piazza cards and an Upper Deck Mickey Mantle Baseball Heroes and a 2006 Ultra Lucky 13 Zack Grienke gold parallel.

I looked through his vintage boxes for a while looking for any Hank Aaron cards I still needed, but I din't have any luck.

Okay, so 29 cards from the $1 box. I was hoping maybe I could get the dealer to do $20, but decided I would do $25. I told the dealer I had 29 cards from the dollar box. He thought about it and said "Uh $15, no gimme $12." Sold!

I didn't have much time left so I decided to check out one last dealer. He had a bunch of boxes labeled by player and he happened to have one for Barry Bonds. As I was looking, the dealer said "Those boxes are all 10 cents each." Score!

At just 10 cents each I was a little more liberal in grabbing cards. I grabbed 67 Bonds cards. I needed about two thirds of them, so it was still a great haul. In fact, between all the Bonds cards I got at the card show I was able to get to 762 unique Barry Bonds cards. I went a few over by a few, but I'm okay with that. I will do a separate post on completing this project.

The dealer was a Bonds fan. He was actually wearing a Pirates jersey, so I think that is probably where his fandom began. We talked for a bit about watching Bonds play. If you weren't a Giants or Bonds fan you booed him and then hoped he hit a home run. I totally remember it being that way as well.

After going through the Bonds box I went through the Mike Piazza box as well and grabbed a few that I thought it was possible I might not have.

I also grabbed this 1988 Topps Traded set as well. I got the Piazza cards and the traded set for $5. I have been working in my den and had recently noticed that I was missing this set, so I was really happy to come across it at a reasonable price.

After that I was out of time and out of cash, so I left and made it to my son's basketball game.

OfferUp Trade: 3200 count box of Top Loaders

One of the 3200 count boxes I got via a recent OfferUp trade contained 95% top loaded cards. Most of the cards are from the junk wax era, but there were some gems in there. Let's take a look.

Lots of small groups of various players, mostly from the 90's, but a bunch of random cards as well. Here are the highlights.

Lots of rookie cards of some well known players, but not many of these are new to me.

My favorite rookie card and probably my favorite card from the entire box is this 1972 Topps Dave Kingman rookie card. This is one that I didn't already have.

This was another rookie that I didn't already have. It's a 2003 Donruss Classics rookie card of Shane Victorino.

It's numbered on the back out of 1500.

The 1972 Kingman wasn't the oldest card in the box. That honor belongs to this 1959 Topps Ernie Broglio card. This happens to be Ernie's rookie card. I wasn't familiar with Ernie, but a quick search shows that in 1960; just his second season, Ernie won 21 games for the St. Louis Cardinals. This was his career high. He would win 18 in 1963 which was the primary reason that the Cubs traded Lou Brock for him in 1964. Broglio only won 7 games for the Cubs between 1964 -1966 and then was out of the big leagues for good after that. Brock would spend the next 16 years in St. Louis getting 2700 hits and swiping nearly 900 bases for the Cardinals. Many think this was the most lopsided trades in the history of baseball.

These coins were in the box as well. I think the Aparicio is from 1971 and the Bunning is from 1964. I've seen lots of these before, but I don't think I already had any in my collection. 

I was happy to see this 1961 Golden Press Lefty Grove card as this is a set I'm familiar with and would love to complete at some point. Too bad this was the only one.

I had to do a little research to figure out this Willie McCovey card. I believe it's from the 1972 Milton Bradley game.

There was a nice little stack of Mike Piazza cards. I haven't gone through them yet, but I'm pretty sure I already have most of these.

There were bunch of inserts from the 90's and early 2000's. These are my favorites.

There were a few Topps Tea cards of Tony Gwynn from it's first iteration.

There two Dave Winfield cards got me thinking about doing a Topps Dave Winfield run. I already have his rookie card and most of his other cards, so it shouldn't take much to complete it.

There were a few of these EX 2000 cards. Such a cool set.

So there is a recap of this 3200 count box of top loaders. Nothing too crazy, but some nice cards that I will be able to add to my collection. 

Years in the making….

I’m not sure if they have one in every Red Robin restaurant, but I’m pretty sure in every Red Robin I’ve been to they have an American flag made of baseballs. That was my inspiration for this project. 

The difference between the ones in Red Robin and the one that I made is that every ball in mine is from an MLB game, Spring Training or an Arizona Rookie League game. My boys and I have been collecting these balls for years. We finally got enough this past year and so in February I began putting this together.

It took longer than I expected and wanted to put it all together,  but I finished it and got it hung up this past weekend. While there are many imperfections and lots of changes I would make if I did it again, I absolutely love the end result.

I didn’t pay for a single ball, but materials still ended up being around $150. I used a peg board, so the holes were already there for me. If I did it again I would just use a solid piece of wood. The bulk of the cost was spray paint. I think I used 5 cans of red, 3 blue and two black (my measurements were off just slightly, so I had to buy and paint tow different peg boards). There was also three boxes of screws, some a yard and a half of black felt, the French Cleat and a package of screws and anchors.

It super heavy and required at least two people to hang it. I estimate it at 100-120 pounds. I had four people helping when we put it up on the wall. I used a French Cleat rated at 300 pounds to get it on the wall. 

So glad to be done with this project and to be able to enjoy it.

More from the OfferUp Trade: 1992 Confex Baseball Enquirer Set

Next up from my OfferUp trade is this 1992 Confex Baseball Enquirer set. I wrote about this set briefly back in November of 2020 because I had come across a small lot of them when I purchased a collection.

This is the entire set of 64 cards. I love this type of stuff, but due to limited collecting funds, I would only pick it up if it was a couple of bucks, so to get these as part of a collection purchase, or in this case a trade, is perfect.

Alright, here is the set. Without names on the front, some are a little challenging to identify. I mean it has been 30 years and some of the players are more obscure than others. Actually, they aren't even all players. There are some announcers, umpires, owners, retired stars, an actor and even a black box that make an appearance in this set.

I would love to know more about this set if anyone has any info. What was the inspiration behind it? How many sets were produced? How was it packaged and produced? Was it sold in set form only in packs? Did they experience any legal issues? Do players sign these cards or would they consider them in poor taste?

Let me know what your thoughts are on this set.

1986 Sportflics Rookies set

One of the first things that caught my eye that the guy from OfferUp had available was this boxed set. It's a 1986 Sportflics Rookies set. Of course with these coming from someone on OfferUp who got them himself from a collection he bought at some point. So I didn't know if it was a complete set or not. It ended up being complete, sort of. 

Obviously with these being Sportflics cards, they aren't going to photograph well, but I want to try my best to document the set.

Lots of familiar names: John Kruk, Will Clark, and Wally Joyner are the biggest names on the first page.

Jose Canseco, Barry Bonds, and Ruben Sierra bring the star power to sheet number 2. While this is technically a unique Barry Bonds card in my collection, I am not counting it towards the 762. I am not counting any of his cards that are in any of the sets that I have because I want them all to be in one binder and not spread out in various other sets.

Not quite the same star power as 1 and 2, but page 3 has Danny Tartabull, Andres Galaraga and Bobby Bonilla.

The only Hall of Famer to have their own card in the set is Barry Larkin and he is the lone star of page 4.

But right next to Larkin is the 1986 N.L. Rookie of the Year; Todd Worrell, so back in 1986, this probably would have been a nice card.

Bo Jackson is the big name on page 5.

Since this is only a 50 card set, the 6th page is a partial page. I did include a Don Mattingly Fan Club "card" that was in the box. Not sure if it came in the box or not. It doesn't have any mention of Sportflics and is not really a card. More like a slip of paper.

There are 3 cards that are not dedicated to one player, but feature three different players and none are rookies. There is lots of star power among these players and a few that are Hall of Famers (Eddie Murray, Tom Seaver, and Willie Mays).  Kevin Mitchell is the biggest "rookie" out of this small group and is the last card in the set.

Here is an up close look at the Don Mattingly Fan Club "card". Can anyone confirm if this indeed did come with this set or if it just happened to make its way into this box?

As for the Trivia Cards, I am one card short. It was missing the last card, card #34. If anyone has an extra laying around, I'd love to trade for it.

I am happy to be able to add this set to my collection via trade and especially for some football and basketball cards that are not of interest to me. I have some Sportflics cards in my collection, but not much.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this trade. I've got a bunch of other great cards to show in the near future.