Monday, June 3, 2013

Even More Show Pickups

There are few things as enjoyable as coming back from a show with a big 'ole bag of new cards to look at and sort. 

There are few things that I enjoy less than having to enter and scan all those cards.  It's not the individual act of entering/scanning that gets frustrating.  It's when you have to do it 100 or 200 times over that it gets a bit frustrating, particularly when dealing with loads of oddball cards and strange parallels, which must be individually looked up in Beckett's database.

There are worse problems to have, right?

In the interest of saving some time and space, I've skipped scans of all the modern base cards, and am posting group scans (which I almost always hate doing).  But don't worry, the good stuff is being saved for the next post, and those will get their own scans.

As I wrote in part 1, this show was noteworthy for its discount vintage.  And not just any discount vintage.  I find $.50 late '60's vintage fairly often, and my needs on those sets have shrunk quickly.  But late 50's and early 60's cards for $.50?  That's one I haven't seen before.
 Admittedly, the cards are far from flawless.  The Moose and Mota were a dime each.  Their condition is very, very rough, but they're great placeholders for the time being.  Ironically, the Manny Sanguillen/Madlock league leaders was only a dime, but is an upgrade on the current copy of the card I have.  I believe the rest were all $.50.  The 1962 set is one of my favorite designs, but for some reason I only had a couple of cards from the set before this show, so I was able to take a nice bite out of my needs for that set.
 All the cards in this scan came out of a 5 cent box from an antiques dealer who apparently had thousands of cards he just wanted to get rid of.  No complaints here.  These are the first cards from the TCMA 60's Champions set - the TCMA releases are tough to find at shows, though I don't know if that's due to their limited release, off brand status, or some combination of the two. 
And back again to the vintage.  I've never been a big fan of the '58 design - it's too close to the '59 design for my liking, and I prefer the rounded window on the 59 to the square, boxy design of the 58's.  But...new vintage!  But not to be outdone, I was able to find some modern cards.  And shiny ones at that. 

I like the contrast between the 54 Lynch and Heritage Walter Young, showing the size difference between "traditional" card size and the older Topps sizing.  The 54 Lynch was $1, again setting record lows for pricing I've seen on that set.  I have a few more 54's coming in part 3, including one biggie.  Before this show, I only had 2 cards from the 1954 set, so I made a major dent in the team set, leaving the 1952 set as my least populated Topps set.

The vintage-heavy focus was frustrating at first.  I had been hoping to find some awesome modern numbered cards.  It's not that I don't enjoy vintage (I do), but just that it's often tedious flipping through hundreds of the same vintage cards to find the ones I need.  But the dents I put in my vintage needs probably mean it'll be more efficient to buy my remaining needs off ebay or from dealers with their cards in numerical order, rather than flipping through thousands of discount vintage cards to find my remaining dozen or two cards.

And tomorrow...star power!

2 comments:

  1. I always love finding Harvey Haddix cards at shows, haven't found that '62 Topps one yet. Nice pickups!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Nick. Haddix is always a fun guy to add. I still need to pick up a copy of his 12 perfect innings card.

    ReplyDelete