Enjoying a quaint card show rummage

My buddy took me to a card show and the last time I was there was when Albert Pujols hit his first Angels home run in 2012 - I also remember looking at a showcase that afternoon where I saw a BGS 9.5 2009 Bowman Sterling Mike Trout autograph for $100; I wouldn't have $100 to spend at any one time, but I'll wait and see if the hype falls down to earth; Trout is going to be a good player, a great player for the Angels but even the top prospects are going to be up-and-down; Harper is still the guy that is going to be a once in a generation superstar.

The place has never been anything big time, but I was glad it’s still around with 5-10 dedicated tables and some curious foot traffic - I didn't actually get to walk around much, but when I first tagged along with my friend to make trips there starting in the mid 2000s, the atmosphere was like a morgue.

Not knowing where to start, I immersed in working through the six or seven 5,000 count monster boxes from a familiar seller - I don't know if I ever bought anything from his booth, which has been set up for the longest time, but back in the day, maybe my mindset was to find loose cards I'd try to get inked up in-person or through the mail, but no junk wax era drivel.

With the emphasis on mini-collection adds however - I'm more game about trying to see if I can round up a good number of cards for cheap [maybe 25 for $1], particularly cards I wouldn't look to buy online outright.

1988 Fleer Ken Dayley #30

1995 Upper Deck SP Championship Series Ken Caminiti #89

I obviously couldn’t go through the boxes card-by-card, but I still tried to add many cards that caught my eye - I worry about going nuts over cards, because I don't want to overvalue cards that are virtually commons.

Maybe in-person is where I give myself license to freelance within reason, where I shouldn't worry about being picky - I probably wouldn’t remember the cards I pass up if I didn’t set them aside as a probable pick up; I needed to live a little, be daring in snapping up those collecting topics subset cards with some sort of quality that wasn’t obvious i.e. maybe what makes the card unique is an image on the back or the card features a player who I've never heard of.

Despite a few stragglers from other sports, I stuck to baseball otherwise - my afternoon would never end if I actually went through the football and basketball cards, knowing I'd be poring over them as well.

1996 Topps Stadium Club Chris Zorich #184 - picturing him *trying* to tackle some random running back with the last name Sanders while two other teammates close in.

1995-96 Topps Stadium Club Predrag Danilovic #313

The seller gave me a 800-900 count box to fill and maybe that’s the challenge for next time - my buddy was lurking on standby mode and I had him count out the loose piles of cards in multiples of 25.

He counted out 325 cards and after looking at what I had, the seller charged me $10, which seemed reasonable enough - the majority should be collecting topics subset adds, though there might some cards designated to go to other projects or maybe dupes I probably had.

I was able to cross off 11 cards from my wantlist - giving me a little bit of satisfaction, even I didn't really look for them outright.

1994 Upper Deck Collector's Choice Jeff Blauser #53 - Will Clark

1997 Topps Stadium Club Sandy Martinez #371

1997 Upper Deck Andy Benes #465

1993 Topps Stadium Club B.J. Surhoff #711.

1995 Upper Deck SP Steve Finley #108 - ended up being the Silver parallel

1997 Upper Deck Collector's Choice Fernando Vina #148 - Tim Salmon

1997 Upper Deck Charlie O'Brien #517 - the blurb on the back of the cards tells the entire story.

1996 Topps Stadium Club Robby Thompson #359