Flea Market Fun, Part 3

For part 3, our flea market adventure moves indoors.  The flea market is in a movie theater that is relatively new, but crashed and burned after being open only a couple years.  The new owners have turned the various lobbies and theaters into vendor space, and there are a few card vendors set up on permanent display.

But it mostly looked like guys selling off their 90's commons at inflated prices.  Still, with some time to kill before the Pirate/Cards game, I decided to give it another look.  I'm glad I did.

A bin of cards market $.10 caught my eye.  I usually hate fishing through large bins of cards, since it's almost impossible to keep track of what you have or haven't looked at.

But it looked like a worthwhile dig, with some 83 Donruss sitting on top.

It looked like a graveyard for players who had left Pittsburgh.  Recently released James McDonald.  Jordan Staal.  James Harrison.  Even some Topps commons of current players like Pedro Alvarez and Neil Walker.  

While there was most certainly quite a bit of junk, it seemed pretty clear this wasn't your ordinary dime box.  There were some nice finds to be had, and it seemed pretty safe to say sports cards weren't the main draw at this flea market.

The box yielded some nice parallels, and a hefty stack of rookie cards of 2012 draft pick Chris Rainey.  And of course I love any card capturing the Steelers in all their Super Bowl glory.

All told, I picked up about 120 new cards for the various Pittsburgh collections, including some cool Pens cards.  Right now the hockey collection is looking pretty weak, at only about 300 different cards while my Steelers and Pirates collections are at about 1500 and 11,000 respectively.  So no, I am not a very proportionate collector.

These additions definitely make up for the lack of card shows since moving back to Pittsburgh.  Weekends are nuts as the wedding approaches, but I'm hoping I can make it up there again before the end of flea market season to dig a little big more.