Taking a different direction - vintage and old school

I'd briefly mentioned in my previous post, the seller at the card show with the $0.50 material wasn’t around a few weeks ago - I wasn't really concerned, because I might have been trying to change things up, though maybe it was odd I didn’t see the seller going around.

His spot was taken up by two other seller tables, including a guy with what looked to be a 1970s, early 1980s monster box - I just didn’t get a chance to look through the other time when I was busy with $0.50 material guy and only had so much time.

This person had several small ‘cubbies’ or baskets labeled Mike Trout, rookies, error cards and bargain vintage which might be interesting - maybe the ‘better’ cards in the rookie basket were marked at ‘book prices,’ from a different time and place, so those weren’t necessarily a consideration.

There were top loaded cards spread out loose on the table - mostly junk wax or more common UV coated era inserts from the mid 1990s; nothing really caught my eye.

I was flipping through cards from the vintage cubby, thinking this could be material to pounce on - but my intent was to dig through the 1970s, early 1980s monster box.

I asked about them and he dug out the box for me - to look at over his display case.

“Knock yourself out,” he said.

If I can grit through things, maybe I can build up a grab bag quality of old-school cards to take home - the lure to these cards are their relative ‘oldness,’ but maybe I feel aimless when there are obvious anchors to build upon.

These cards are more likely set builder commons and while these were a dime a piece - I just don’t know if I have the patience to find least 5-10 keepers to cling onto among your garden variety commons featuring players I'm unfamiliar with.

The plan was to try and come up with random cards, maybe minor star or even just mini-collection material - though it it almost feels like I'm making things up as I go along, not knowing what I'm setting aside.

Old-school / vintage pick ups have to mean something where they have a purpose - it maybe easier to see where I can funnel newer, contemporary cards towards something, but maybe I'm at a loss with cards from the early 1980s and 1970s.

Maybe after about 45 minutes, I haphazardly grabbed 80 random cards trying to make sure the number I had in-hand matched the number I told the seller - handed them over and the guy actually counted out 81, so my mistake in actually going over by one.

These were singles I picked out of the vintage and rookie baskets [1978 Topps Lou Whitaker] and while my modern collecting mindset is to turn my nose at lesser condition cards - these well loved copies probably hit the spot an impulse buys.

I'm not going to be mindlessly hoarding vintage cards, because I feel I might miss out on here and now interests to end up with a pile of miscellaneous old cards I don't know what to do with - but as long as I collect, I want to experience the feeling of grabbing loose old-timey cards out in the wild.

Mini-collection material - baserunning; play at the plate [George Hendrick], double play throws; shortstop ['74 A.L. Championships]; signage; Coca Cola [McAnally and Renko] and maybe cult baseball players / feats [Office].

Mini-collection material - facial hair guys

Mini-collection material - hats-off, multi-sport athletes [Bart Johnson], nations [Winston Llenas; Dominican Republic] and players smiling [Manny Sanguillen].

Mini-collection material - tools of ignorance

Mini-collection material - cards or subjects I tally as 'haves' in my collections rather than new 'adds' for the year because I already have the specific card of a player [Broberg] or I have at least a card of the other players.

Broberg and Pole goes into my 'what's in a name' collection, Stottlemyre goes into my bloodlines collection - while Romo and Mendoza [The Mendoza Line] goes into my nations collection [Mexico].

Maybe binder material - admittedly I may not have cared to build up a collection for either Niekro [R.I.P.] or Jenkins, but they are Hall of Famers.

Topps year-to-year team runs - I've neglected the project [1978-present] for the most part, unless it's to try to add the newest years of Topps to the mix, but here is quartet from 1980 Topps; R.I.P. Richard and also Staub.

Angels Opening Day starters collection - for the most part, need a 'bunch' of missing holes from the 1960s through the 1970s, while I feel missing stragglers from the 1980s onward are a little more manageable.

Team boxes material - for the smorgasborg of cards I've sorted out according to teams, I want to infuse a little bit of old-school flavor in this instance.

Miscellaneous - I have a copy of this card autographed in-person, but wanted an unsigned copy just to have in hand.

Miscellaneous - hmmm, I wonder what I'm going to be able to do with these cards?