Card show trip - picking through odds and ends

These card find were from the big summer card show on the West Coast - for better or for worse, paying $35 to get into the door for an afternoon of mostly rummaging around poverty bins is the closest I'll get to a major show experience.

The National doesn't travel out west anymore and while it should be a bucket list item in an ideal world - I have not been a collector who makes plans to go across the country for a card show, like I have seen veteran collectors do it on YouTube.

I guess one of my goals for the show date I went to was to find a so-called personal collection card I didn't know I needed - reality hit as that might be such a random card in a showcase tht was going to cost around $1000 and that might not be much to others, but out of my league if I was just looking for something that caught my eye on impulse.

At one seller table, maybe the signage had the cards marked as '10 for $5.00' - so I maybe it was implied that you couldn't just buy one or two cards [though you figure, you might be building a stack anyway that may end up $15, %20 or $25 anyway.

I had to maneuver around the bulk monster boxes where another collector was planted digging and digging to make keeper piles - maybe I tried to pick up a pile to thumb through, even as the 'spacing' was a little awkward, even as it looked like the other guy was only focused on football cards.

I was kind of idly digging, maybe not really into the rummage - but after finding a Justin Verlander rookie, maybe it was worth building a little keeper pile for myself.

There was really a lot of cards but was this going to be where I blew my wad [?] - I found a couple of retro Mickey Mantle cards from the early 2000s; $0.50 material all day long, but one had the Triple Crown image that was once highlighted on the Dime Boxes blog and the other may be the image just about replicated as a painting on the iconic 1952 Topps Mantle.

I found a Juan Marichal card and while my intent is to focus on here and now guys - I may end up making keepers out of retired players retro cards as a fallback.

Finally, I found a couple of Rickey Henderson cards to salvage - where I make keepers out of a short list of all-around guys in my book.

At another seller's table, I was doing more idle digging where a good portion of the table was binned vintage / old school singles - I am acutely aware that rummaging through vintage / old-school cards causes me to glitch out at times, where these [msotly common] cards of rank and file players are just not from my time [or a time I might conjure up some faux nostalgia over either in 1996 or 2026].

I may have overpaid for the following compared to just grabbing the cards on eBay - but deemed a Dick Allen card and a Steve Garvey rookie as filling my vintage quota of the day, where it's an obligation to make some old-timey cards keepers.

Maybe Allen is still a 'newer' Hall of Fame legend for me to collect when I find cards of his in the wild - where I had not considered him before his induction into the HOF.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Garvey might have been a superstar as far as fan sentiment goes [even if he turned out not to be so perfect] - I have been able to get his autograph in-person a few times over the past 25 years, so he's good in my book as a non-HOF retired player.

Some Angels content from a random table - I think the seller may have double charged me for a pile '2 for $1.00' cards at another show somewhere, but maybe it was a one-time deal where I would give the seller one more chance [rather than completely avoiding the table for good].

I ended up bipping myself on a Jim Edmonds insert from 1996 - I found one copy of the Edmonds with the Kenny Lofton back; I thought it might have been a wrongback error and so I made it a keeper.

I also made a keeper of another copy - so I have an error and a regular / correct version of the card.

Going through my the cards after the fact - it ended up a case where a separate Lofton from the same insert set was stored in the same penny sleeve; I had to pry one card from the other since they were basically stuck together good.

The other copy of the EDmonds insert had two more of the same card in the same penny sleeve - it amused me to end up with four of the same card.

One last idle rummage through a #0.50 box at a seller table - I got a unique die-cut insert of Jeff Bagwell, which may not be a former player whose cards I am ever going to look to make keepers out of, but this was my second Bagwell of the day.

He ends up being rubber stamped as a 1990s debut guy for me - so there is a little lingering sentiment there I guess.

I know I have another copy of the Salmon in-hand but maybe I make keepers out of extra copies of cards I deem 'cool' or whatever - where I might have one card in my player collection and can use another card for a regional, Angels themed curated set perhaps.

This promo card might have cost me the $35 I paid to get into the show - where you got a little slip of paper to redeem at the Upper Deck booth at the show.

I know nothing about hockey where the sports is simply out of sight, out of mind - at least this card is of an actual professional athlete that might just be the young star [I looked him up for a moment] for the local NHL team, rather some odd non-sport subject pictured on a random card.

Digging through an MIA card show pile

This might be a 'I'm still here' post for whoever is reading - where I want to churn out blog posts on the regular and think about cards on a day-to-day basis, but maybe content to let things be, where collecting has become really a personal and solitary deal.

I've let this $30 card show pile sit around loose for the past four years and maybe my intent was to list the cards out in a Google Docs file - where I would have listed my purchases over the course of a couple of months at a time.

I am trying to be a little bit more proactive in picking up for myself, so these cards have to be sorted further - I took some photo ops in order to tie certain cards to a this stack purchase.

Maybe one of the hot cards then was a 2023 Topps Chrome Shohei Ohtani #17 - he was the presumptive MVP and Topps was buying base cards [and corresponding parallels] back from participating card shops, where you could get $20 store credit for the base card.

I wasn't clued into any of that buypack business, but may have wanted Ohtani's card anyway - now the card might be just another $5 and a whatever reminder of a guy that was once an Angel.

I also found what I assume is a 2018 Topps Opening Day Stadium Signatures Mike Trout Angels SS-MT - on social media, I occasionally see collector accounts who post a value box find, with the tag line / cliche, “this is why you dig.”

I’m pretty sure this Trout find falls under that category - but I thought it was just a cool Trout card with him signing autographs.

Sadly, as far as durability and production goes, the Trout of the mid 2010s is long gone - I didn't think he would have ever had a decline, but each year he gets hurt again is a reminder of the fragility of a playing career, notably for an all-timer.

Maybe the idea of trying to round up bulk cards of star players [like a Mookie Betts] ends up silly past a certain collection age - but maybe tied to idea I'm obligated to be on the perpetual bandwagon of anyone remotely good and hoard their cards for cheap.

Through 2026, maybe Betts isn't the same superstar player four or five years ago - but he's had an excellent [probable Hall of Fame] career and instrumental in World Series winning teams, notably with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Maybe the idea of trying to round up bulk cards of star players [like a Bobby Witt Jr.] at some point ends up being a way to cover my bases - where I want to be aware of the good young players, even if it just means grabbing their random cards to have them.

Through 2026, maybe Witt Jr. has just been a very good player at shortstop, not quite that step above superstar - now it looks like he got hurt and is going to miss some time.

I didn’t realize there was a 2021 Topps NPB Roki Sasaki #112 in the pile - I know I once bought a copy for $20 online at some point when he was really hyped up, but with his share of MLB cards out, and batting some growing pains, the card might be a $5 curiosity.

The Topps Silver Pack cards like the Mike Piazza end up pretty common coming out of bonus packs in Topps hobby and jumbo boxes - but I've made it a mission to make any 'decent' ones in the wild keepers if they end up being like a dollar or less.

When I was building up a pile at the card show, I didn't know how much it might cost per card - I usually stay away from unmarked boxes or bins, but I literally get lured in by the cheap stuff I assume isn't going to cost me much to start with.

Most of the time, the cards are not going to mean much - but they are more cards I make keepers, to sort them towards my hierarchy of interests, whether it's for my mini-collections, decade / binder stars material or for miscellaneous themes.

COMC order #4 - Al Schacht

I had picked up a vintage card of Al Schacht in 2022, which I thought was a real neat, quaint odd card for a someone mostly trying to catch up with the here and now - maybe in 2023, I saw another different vintage card of Schacht during a card show rummage, but it didn't register as something I had to pick up and probably pair up with the other already in-hand.

Maybe I regretted not making a keeper out of the second Schacht card, so on a random search on COMC - I had the card in my memory banks and see if I could seek out a copy to add to my account / port.

Card show trip - picking through binned singles - Ichiros

These were more pick ups from the last show I went to over the summer - this should be the last roundup, where I have dragged things out.

At one seller table, I found myself thumbing through what I think were Japanese Menko cards, but wasn't familiar with them at all - so maybe I was a little unsure if I was going to find some probable [impulse] buys.

I think the seller said "hello again" as if he remembered me from somewhere and explained there were different kinds of Menko cards - depending on whether I was interest in sports / non-sports / etc.

It took me a moment to realize I bought a couple of cards [$10-$15 each] from the seller at another show back in 2024 - I ended up going through the binned singles with Japanese MLB players and figured I was going to pick up at least one more Japanese era Ichiro card [just like in 2024].

For years, maybe Ichiro's Japanese cards were out of sight, out of mind - but I saw one that piqued my interest at a seller table at a local card show.

I passed on that random card, but started seeing posts on the Dime Boxes blog about picking them up every so often - so maybe I was 'inspired' to be on the look out pre-MLB Ichiro releases.

Ichiro may have been that Japanese import, the past 25 years that became an all-around star to look up to or collect - with Shohei Ohtani being that 'here and now' guy from Japan, perhaps the interest in Ichiro has been muted.

In my dig, I tried to look for more unique Ichiros, where they might jumble together in the bin [with varying prices] - I picked out a couple of loose singles [$10 each] that looks like they had a lenticular surface, so even if I paid more than what they where worth, I thought I had a pair of unique looking cards to make keepers.

The third Ichiro I picked up ended up being a graded card for $15 - it might be a case where I did not look hard enough with spotty vision, but the card looks like it has an acetate finish, where that made it a little 'cooler' to make a keeper out of.

My favorite find of the show was off a booth promoting a Japan based commerce Web site that also had cards such as binned singles for sale - it's a graded 2000 Upper Deck Ovation Japan Ichiro #41 [$30].

In a collecting world where PSA 10s rule, I only got myself a PSA 7 copy - but the way I look at it, I could pick up a raw card, spend to get it graded just the same and have the card in a slab with the same numerical grade.

It ends up easier making a decision on a graded card rather than a raw one - as long as the price on the label is still fairly reasonable.

The card might just been another Japanese era, Ichiro card where he was pictured as a longtime veteran - but the cards were patterned after the 2000 Upper Deck Ovation set, which was embossed to mimic a baseball, which was a pretty neat thing to this day.

The card was printed the year before Ichiro would debut in the big leagues - so I almost associate it as a pre-rookie card rather than an 8th year base card of an all-time legend.

FWIW, I picked up the Ichiros knowing that I might have been going to Japan to do some traveling [which eventually happened this past November] - maybe my finds were designed to take the pressure out of seeking out card shops or card related things, where it didn't have to be a do-or-die mission if I came up short.

Card show trip - picking through binned singles

These were more pick ups from the last show I went to over the summer - I may have a couple of more things to show, though it might be up in the air whether future roundup posts will ever be made, where I drag things out through the end of the year.

At a pit stop at one table, there was a Todd Helton game used base card I thumbed through and put back - Helton has ended up one guy whose cards I end up looking for as a non-geographical player / Hall of Famer to collect.

Maybe a philosophy I have digging through binned singles or value boxes is never looking back, where I may have interest in a card - but I put it back and it gets lost amongst endless cards, I'm not bothering to find it again.

However it might have been a self-imposed challenge to find the table again and see whether I can dig for the unique Helton card - time is a valuable thing, but I find myself languishing at a card show where there is a little personal intermission where I'm just wandering around.

I find the table with the binned singles and start digging - I even find a Helton sticker / hologram auto that may have tempted me, but the signature was running off the label.

I eventually find the Helton I was looking for, but maybe $20 was still a bit steep - there was some corner wear, though it's a thicker card, so harder to avoid such a blemish.

Instead, I settled on a Helton relic [$5], which gave me the satisfaction of picking up a unique [if decidedly low end] Helton single for my collection - while I tried to build on other odds and ends, that I ended up being charged $35 for.

I made a Johnny Cueto pack pulled autograph a keeper - he was a longtime star for sure, but it goes into my all-time Angels autograph collection, for his short, odd stint with the team in 2024.

I picked up a relic card of Dick Allen - the card maybe at least 25 years old already, which is kind of hard to believe how long ago since it was made.

Allen probably wouldn't have registered besides just another old-school / vintage player who may have had a case for the Hall of Fame - since he was eventually inducted where that certifies him as a legend, I'm more inclined to keep an eye out for his cards in general [even as others have done so, long ago].

Card show trip - some more vintage

These were more pick ups from the last show I went to over the summer - I may have two or three more things to show, though it might be up in the air whether future roundup posts will ever be made.

The individually priced vintage bins from a familiar enough seller table may have been picked over just the same - but I tried to rummage around to flag some vintage odds and ends, then moved over to the $0.50 bins with the newest cards, but wasn’t patient enough to pick through that.

1959 Topps Baseball Thrills Duke Snider #468 [$10.00] - on my blog, this has been on my collecting topics wantlist - Top 10-15 wants, so I finally knocked it out.

1964 Topps Coins Roberto Clemente #150 [$10.00] - a vintage oddball item picturing an iconic Hall of Fame has symbolic value, even when a cliche I spit out is something being only worth what I paid. 

1967 Topps Dick Allen / Hank Aaron Roberto / Clemente #242 [$10.00] - a trifecta of Hall of Famers makes this leaders card keeper.

1967 Topps Lou Brock #285 [$5.00] - there might be infinitely better cards than a vintage base card of a Hall of Famer, but I'll take it for what I paid. 

Card show trip - some odds and ends

Maybe I've slowed down on going to card shows over the past year, but towards the end of the summer, I went to a higher profile card show - I usually like to make the rounds at sellers' dollar and under boxes, but since I had to pay admission, maybe I tried to be a little pickier where I spent my time at.

I can't completely avoid rummaging through sellers' cheap-o bins however and these were my finds over three such tables - because of the admission fee to the show, I tack on a premium to my total paid per seller in my mind, so the price per card ends up more like $2 each.

Future stars - with how Bowman products are priced out of the gate, I might be more content to round up various base cards and inserts of top prospects in order for me have something for me to build up, rather than overlook them just the same as filler material for most modern prospectors.

Some fun stuff - that was only worth what I paid, but I have no regrets about adding them to my keeper pile.

Ichiro - I try to make Topps Now cards keepers in the wild, where they are still a little different.

After digging through one dollar bin, I was content to put whatever I'd found back and walk away - but thinking about the pack pulled autograph of Chuckie Robinson with him blowing a bubble made me go back.

Vintage that was a dollar each or 3 for $2.50 - I tried to make a pile of mostly Angels keepers for my all-time Angels register project or my Angels Opening Day starters project, but after a certain point, was content to cut my original keeper pile in half.

When it comes to vintage cards, it ends up just being way before my time - but I do try to attach some meaning to cards of subjects I might have read about in passing.

I found a 1969 Topps Mel Queen card which may just be another common - but it has stat lines for both pitching and hitting, where he might have been one or the other at different points of his playing career.

Card show trip - some odds and ends

I went to a card show a couple of weeks ago and while I might need only a few sellers tables to rummage through and find something to wrangle cash out of my pocket - what I may have noticed is the shift to Pokemon or TCG sellers, where just two or three years ago there would be more seller tables with primarily sports cards.

Maybe I've come to expect that any card show dates I go to onward will not have more of the familiar sports card seller tables - where for better or for worse, I prefer the swap meet style set-ups I might have seen back in 2005 or 1995.

One seller table did have a swap meet vibe going on where he had bins of loose cards - none of the bulk cards had prices on them and I guess you just make a pile and the seller gives you a 'deal.'

I ended up picking up only so many cards, including the oddball Dodgers cards that were in perforated panels [?] - I didn't know what the cards exactly were but might be worth taking a flier on, with a Sandy Koufax and a Juan Marichal [Dodgers] card among the others.

I presented what I found and the seller ended up charging me $4 - seemed reasonable enough where I wouldn't walk away from this show date with nothing.

After doing a circuit around the two 'rooms' that had seller tables - I ended up at a familiar seller table where I've bought from the person before.

He kept redirecting a few times towards his dime boxes and I relented to plug away and see what I could find - maybe I should have screened through my finds at some point instead of blindly building up a couple of bricks of cards.

I was probably hoping to bundle the cards with some other finds but basically just ended up with around 260 dime cards to take home - rather than a combination of other cards from the seller's value boxes.

Days after the show, I went to see if I can spread the cards out somewhere to make sense of them - this ends up being the finished product where the cards ended up mostly in a couple of piles, after being sorted according to my hierarchy of interests.

These were two random cards from the dollar bin I managed to tack on top of my bulk finds - each featuring a pair of all-time NFL greats that continue to end up polarizing in their own infamous or unique ways, long after retirement as players.

Card shop trip - some odds and ends

I needed a good number of penny sleeves for various loose card projects, so I finally decided to make a card shop trip - I could literally be making weekly visits to my closest card shop, but I've been weird about it, where I don't want to make it a habit.

Of course if I'm at a card shop, I can't just be worried about card supplies - when I have the opportunity, I want to dig around and rummage a little, especially at the quarter bins.

Go figure the last time I was at the card shop, my priority was getting penny sleeves as well - but after I was completely done with my rummage, paid up and left the store entirely, did I realize that I'd forgotten my precious card sleeves.

As I hovered around the counter to go and pay for what I'd gone through this time around - I'd made sure to look for the penny sleeves and ended up grabbing one of the 1000-count bundles [rather than individual packs] that were being sold for $8.

This is just a tease of the cards I ended up with from the quarter bins - I've mostly bought bulk cards online, but there is nothing like building up a card shop or card show pile.

Building up 50 card stacks, I ended up with exactly 125 cards / items - where to make things easier, I always try and make sure I count out exactly the right tally.

In the quarter bins, I also found an oddball pack of 1993 Topps Stadium Club teams with only Colorado Rockies and Florida Marlins cards - maybe this was handed out somewhere and/or sold regionally, rather than a national pack release?

Florida Marlins portion
#11 Cris Carpenter
#16 Ryan Bowen
#17 Ramon Martinez
#18 Bret Barberie
#22 Mike Myers
#24 Darrell Whitmore
#23 Geronimo Berroa

Colorado Rockies portion
#2 Quinton McCracken
#1 David Nied
#11 Andres Galarraga
#29 Roger Bailey
#28 Danny Sheaffer
#24 Butch Henry
#30 Brad Ausmus

Rummaging for some old school material

Card shows are a mixed bag where you can a have a good number of tables in a seemingly nice [hotel] venue - yet it's not 20 or 30 years ago where you might see more tables to pick through dedicated to sports cards and/or strictly to baseball cards of all sorts [though that might be too narrow of a scope anyway, if you are trying to sell things at a modern era card show].

As is I thought I was just warming up digging through the value boxes [$1 each] at one table with more old-school and vintage material at a card show date - but I guess this particular dig ended up my highlight of the day.

Newly minted Hall of Famers - Richie Allen and Dave Parker give me a couple of new legends to sort of collect in a 'catch all' sorts of way, even if I wasn't doing so before.

Cult favorites and/or cult favorite cards - in my collection, I had at least one copy of the 1975 Topps Herb Washington RC #407 and 1975 Topps Oscar Gamble #213, but picking up one more of each should be no brainers.

Odds and ends cards - a 1972 Topps In Action Darrell Evans #172 and a 1975 Topps 1974 NL Championships Steve Garvey/Frank Taveras #460 are just random cards that have ended up as scratch the itch oddities, with Evans caught in the air on his card and the all the dirt kicked up on the Garvey / Taveras card.

Maybe the 'star power' is too much to ignore on the 1975 Topps MVP subset cards - though I don't know if I like the idea of cards pictured within cards, rather than using an original image.

I would have thought to do so before, but I picked up a 1974 Topps Garry Maddox #178 - to go into one nickname themed 'curated sets' [of 100 cards], where I've already built up around three versions.

I wanted a card for the 'Secretary of Defense' that teases some mid 1970s flair - rather than trying to dig up the 1 of 2 I may have squirreled away.

Finally some scattered star power - I was finding the occasional low valued star cards from the mid 1970s onward, so I tried to fish out the ones that didn't seem to have obvious blemishes [off-center, miscut, dog-eared, etc] at first glance.

Some junk wax era finds at the card show

When I go to a card show, maybe I have delusions that I'm going to come away with an important card in either value and/or sentiment - but the reality is I haven't been about that collecting life where I do any sort of homework on targeting a bigger card.

More often that not, I get sidetracked and stick digging around more bulk / value box material - where I just like picking through cards I can actually thumb through.

At a card show date, I was digging through a dollar or '6 for $5' box off one seller - I ended up grabbing about 18 cards, none probably older than 1995, but fun to take ownership of like the following cards.

1986 Utah Sports Card Co. The Wonderful World of Wally Joyner at BYU - maybe not particularly hard to find as a set on eBay, but I ended up grabbing the ones I could find from the 14-card set since they were unfamiliar to me.

I thought I had picked up a Joyner card from the set a couple of years ago - but it turned out to be from another BYU themed set put out by the same company.

1986 Sportflics cards of Rod Carew, Don Mattingly, Mike Schmidt and Reggie Jackson - besides vaguely remembering buying a box of 1989 Sportlics at a toy store at an outlet 25 years ago, I've never given Sportflics cards much thought other than dated relics from the junk wax years.

However, there might renewed interest in the loose cards I find in the wild - where the illusion of motion kind of amuse me.