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.
2 comments:
A. I feel like Pokemon card vendors are here for the long run. You've got all of those Millennials who grew up buying them and playing with them in the late 90's/early 2000's wanting to relive their childhood. Plus when Pokemon Go came out in 2014, it sparked a new generation of fans. The one thing I like about it is that I know at least two families that collect the cards together, which I think is really cool.
B. The Dodgers oddballs are cool.
C. I wish more card shows around here had dime boxes.
I like that Valenzuela Pristine card.
The perforated Dodgers are from the 1989 Smokey Bear set celebrating Dodgers' 100th anniversary.
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