A rummage through the $0.50 wasteland of doom

I ended up casually digging through three or four monster boxes I may normally pass over at a show I go to - they belong to a seller who is the one of the promoters and the boxes show up more often than not.

It's not like the seller is an old school guy where he buys collections that leads to odds and ends that I may get into - the bulk is the least important of what he has for sale at the table, probably leftover cards from different unopened box / case breaks, notably from other sports.

Any baseball only exists in scattered pockets in the rows of basic, basic parallel and insert cards - so the dearth of baseball may be the biggest thing that turns me away more often than not.

I couldn’t decide on whether to make keepers out of at least 20-25 baseball cards I found, so go figure I threw in some football to the mix - to put together a grouping of 30 'mix mix' cards for exactly $15.

Even though he was out for most of the year, maybe I was inclined to make loose Tatis Jr. cards keepers as cheap-o binder material - since he was a young superstar and certainly he'd come back at some point.

I didn't think he'd be suspended 80-games for PEDs and be out until 2023, where his big league legacy has been torpedoed - it's kind of depressing seeing Tatis Jr. mess up and endure the extra scrutiny where his faults have been magnified by people who might have never liked his antics anyway.

While he might always be seens as a tainted player - maybe he just needs the next 12-13 years to focus on just playing baseball, rather than trying to be marketed as the face of the entire sport.

Some basic inserts from flagship Topps that often feels redundant where they all jumble together from year-to-year - maybe the Welcome to the Show inserts try to show players at the very start of their careers, so I guess that could be a novelty.

For the 1987 themed cards, maybe I can go hunt down and pair them up with the originals [for at least McGwire and Ripken Jr.] - they are not bad looking, though I feel like the paper inserts get stale a couple of weeks into the flagship release.

Some shiny odds and ends - Rainbow foils and die-cut inserts.

A pair of 2022 Topps Home Run Challenge cards - I had fun with this promotion in 2021, though I haven't found many loose code cards in the wild this year.

Among the four I entered, counting these two - I have selected all losing dates.

Some cheap-o binder material for my decade stars collection featuring players who made their debuts at the tail end of the 2010s - focusing on Juan Soto specifically, maybe it hasn't sunk in that Soto is now in San Diego, so I made a pair of his Washington Nationals cards keepers anyway.

I don't know if it really works out, but while I pick up loose cards of guys knowing they might move onto other teams - I lose interest in their old team cards, the moment they end up being traded or signing with other teams.

In a game I play while rummaging around, I might wait a year before considering making old team cards of players [involved in current year transactions] potential keepers again - maybe the older cards are easier to put back and maybe end up less appealing [unless it's a rookie issue or something more notable than a base card].

Some NFL cards I ended up grabbing featuring Peyton Manning, Aaron Rodgers, Josh Allen and T.J. Watt - if it were all just fun and games, I'd be amazed at all the different varieties of cards I can pick up to start a football collection for less than a dollar.

I think it would be fun to curate a collection of odds and ends, though I can kind of see where certain cards [regardless of who is pictured on them] end up being only worth so much - because they end up being bottom of the barrel types as fillers to bigger cards in once unopened product.