Kicking Off Flea Market Season

Saturday turned into my lame adult version of a whirlwind adventure.  I headed to bed pretty down Friday over a job offer that fell through due to some shady behind the scenes politics.  Saturday was Free Comic Book Day, and for the past 6 years it's been an annual tradition that we would go to a store south of Pittsburgh and meet up with a couple of my good friends from my time in Morgantown.

But Kate was in Chicago playing roller derby, and our West Virginia friends were in New York City for the weekend.  I had made tentative plans earlier in the week with my old roommate from college to go to FCBD, but I was pretty sure I wasn't going to feel up to doing much of anything when I woke up on Saturday.

I woke up Saturday feeling about how I expected, but figured moping around the house alone all day wasn't going to do much good.  So off to the comic store it was.  I wouldn't exactly call myself a comic book person.  I'm certainly not a collector, and just about the only single issues I own are the ones I've gotten on free comic book days.  But I enjoy reading the collected editions.  I enjoy some of the great sci-fi and horror comics out there, moreso than most of the superhero stuff.  But as a proper English nerd, I love good storytelling.  And comics open up some really interesting opportunities that just aren't there when you're working with just text. 

Plus I like supporting local businesses.  So my friend met me at the house around 10 and we headed off to the comic store.  As always it was a great time.  From what I've read, many comic stores let visitors pick one, two, or three free books.  The books are free to customers, but there's still cost involved for the stores.  And I suppose they don't want to be spending money on the many kids and casual readers who come out of the woodwork on FCBD.  But the store we always go to, Pittsburgh Comics, lets you take anything you'd like and puts out a lot of other promotional books in additional to the free comic day titles.  It's been a great way for me to discoverother titles I'm interested in, and the extra effort the store puts into FCBD to go above and beyond makes me happy to shop there year throughout the year.  In addition to the free books, I was able to get some great buy 2 get 1 free deals that made for an awesome day.

So you're probably wondering where the flea market ties in here.  We were headed back home after a great time at the comic store when I asked if my friend had ever been to the flea market that's a few exits away from the comic store.  He hadn't.  We were a good 20 minutes in the opposite direction, but what are two guys with nothing better to do on a Saturday afternoon to do?  We headed to the flea market.

The weather was beautiful, but it was past noon by the time we pulled in.  From the parking lot I could see vendors already packing up or already driving away.  A rushed walk though didn't yield anything of interest for either of us.  But there's also an indoor section of vendors.  Many were already tarped over and closed up, but I spotted one card vendor.  I headed over to a box while my friend keyed in on some boxes of records the guy had.

My haul wasn't nearly as impressive as my takeaway from the comic store, but I was happy to add some new cardboard.

The gem was this Chris Duffy 2002 Traded black refractor.  Pirate black and gold refractors always look great, and the 2002 design may be my favorite.  The 2002 Pirates traded set was prospect heavy, and the Pirates had some surprisingly decent players in it.  Chris Duffy is the last of the significant rookies I needed.  I already have black refractors of Ryan Doumit and Jose Bautista (which I got long before he became a homer hitting machine), so it was nice to complete the trio.

What really drew me in was spotting cards I had never seen before.  It always amazes me when I see a card I didn't know existed.  I've been pretty involved in the hobby going back to the late 90's, and obsessively collecting Pirates since the early 2000's.  So what I see a card for the first time, it's an interesting experience. 

I don't mean have never seen a copy.  I mean full on "huh, never knew that set existed" sort of way.  The Classic Clippings die cut insert is really cool.

And the other cards are apparently from a Stuart bread release that came as a tri-panel card.  Jim Morrison is the third in the set, though he didn't make the scan.  It's my first time coming across either set, so they're welcome additions.

2001 Studio is a set I opened a few packs of in various repacks back in the day.  But I have one lone card from the set - the Jack Wilson rookie, which was nearly impossible to find.  It's a great design, so it was nice to find a base card.

For whatever reason, this particular flea market seems to be the go-to place for oddball cards.  I've seen quite a few different cards there that either were completely unknown to me or are typically tough to find.  The Giles card is apparently a Post Cereal insert from 2003 that I had never seen, and the Doumit is from a 2009 Topps Attax product I didn't know existed.  It's always fun to expand my hobby knowledge.

My haul was pretty modest.  I spent $7 at the flea market, and came home to discover that of the 25 dime cards I snagged I already owned 13 of them.  Oops.  My friend did a lot better, grabbing a nice stack of vinyl and a couple of Moby cassette tapes.  Apparently cassettes are an underappreciated format in his eyes.  I'm not quite sold on that argument, but we were both happy campers.

It was a slow start to flea market season, but for a day I hadn't actually planned on going to a flea market it was a great start.  I'm looking forward to getting out there in the next couple weeks and being able to spend a little more time.  But overall it was a great way to spend a Saturday morning and afternoon.

The Never Ending Trade

This is a story that would make Hunter S. Thompson proud.  Let's take some artistic liberties and assume it all begins in a smoky Mexico City bar over some tequila where a deal is struck.  It's May 30, 1997.  The Pirates just agreed to sign a 27 year old left hander from the Mexico City Reds named Ricardo Rincon.

Four days later, the lefty makes his major league debut.  A little over four months later, Rincon is part of a combined no-hitter with countryman Francisco Cordova.

Today Latin American prospects don't last to 17 let alone 27.  And they certainly don't head straight to the big leagues.  But this story is just getting started.

Rincon pitched well in his first major league action appearing in 62 games with a 3.45 ERA for the Freak Show team that nearly stole the division despite finishing under .500.  The next year, he followed up that with another strong season and sub-3 ERA.

The 1998 season wrapped up for the Cleveland Indians with a ALCS exit, following a heartbreaking Game 7 walk-off loss to the Marlins the year before in the World Series.  They had an embarrassment of riches, including young future All-Stars Richie Sexson and Brian Giles.  The Indians were anxious
for bullpen help, and the Pirates were looking to build an exciting offense as they got ready to enter a new ballpark in 2001.  Rincon was viewed as a potential setup man by the Indians, while the Pirates had lefty Jason Christiansen ready to take Rincon's place in their own pen.  The Pirates were pursing B.J. Surhoff, and probably envisioned a power hitting tandem in the middle of their lineup.  It was a win-win for both sides at the time.





Giles developed into a marquee player for the Bucs and one of the best players in the game, though his numbers flew under the radar on some terrible Pirates teams.

                                       
Flash forward to 2003, and the Padres are in a similar situation to the 1999 Pirates.  Preparing to open a new ballpark, they're looking for some name value.  And apparently when you want to put butts in seats, Brian Giles is your guy.  Original negotiations had Giles, a San Diego native, and Jason Kendall heading to the Padres for a package headlined by Xavier Nady and Oliver Perez (don't worry, much like the Mounties, Dave Littlefield always gets his man), but wind up being just Giles for Perez, Jason Bay, and a PTBNL.  The Pirates were in the midst of shedding salary like they were the 2018 Marlins due to some poor bookkeeping that put them in violation of allowed debt ratios.

Yet again, the Bucs would strike gold.  At least for a little while.  Jason Bay won the 2004 Rookie of the Year award, while Oliver Perez looked like a potential ace.  Throwing mid 90's heat as a lefty, Perez 239 K's with a 2.98 ERA in 2004 at the ripe age of 22

Perez would implode in 2005 before being traded to the Mets for Xavier Nady (see, I told you!).  Nady would eventually get flipped to the Yankees for Jeff Karstens, Ross Ohlendorf, Daniel McCutchen, and Jose Tabata.  The former three would eat up innings on some developing teams, while Tabata would stick around long enough to be part of playoff teams in 2013 and 2014.

But the more exciting story is with Bay, who would develop into a perennial all-star and a fixture in the middle of the Pirates lineup.

In a trade deadline shocker, Bay was traded to the Red Sox seemingly out of nowhere in 2008.  He still had a year and a half left on his contract.  Pirates GM Neal Huntington was in his first full year as GM, and basically got taken by more experienced executives as the vehicle to get the Manny Ramirez show out of Boston and into Hollywood.

The return?  A basket of supposed near-MLB ready prospects - Boston contributing 2005 1st round pick reliever Craig Hansen and (eventual) power hitting outfielder Brandon Moss while the Dodgers kicked in 2006 1st rounder Bryan Morris and top prospect Andy LaRoche.  Hansen, Moss, and LaRoche all flamed out amazingly fast with the Bucs given their pedigree.

Morris didn't develop as hoped, but made it to the majors as a reliever, putting up a 3.47 ERA with terrible peripherals for a 2013 playoff club.

But because this trade WIll.NOT.DIE, Morris was flipped to the Marlins early in the 2014 story for a newly-tradable Competative Balance draft pick.

That pick wound up being 39th overall pick Connor Joe, a college corner infielder with some pop who the Bucs were going to move to catcher.  He hurt his back shortly after being drafted, which canceled those plans.  The power never developed, and Joe had basically unanimously been labeled a bust.  And that is really, truly where this should have ended.  Joe spends another year or two in the Bucs system before leaving as a minor league free agent, and this twenty year odyssey comes to a close.

But nope.

On August 5, 2017, the Pirates traded for former Buc Sean Rodriguez, a utility player making $5.7M in 2017 AND 2018 hitting .162 at the time of the trade.  And the "return"?  Connor Joe.

So here we go, folks.  Will Sean Rodriguez bring a trade return this year, continuing this absurd adventure into its 4th decade?  Or will he merely leave as a free agent after the season, letting the trade of Ricardo Rincon finally rest in peace?

Flea Market Shenanigans

It's been a pretty busy summer around here, which at least partially accounts for the lack of posting.  While it hasn't been as often as I would like, we've hit a few flea markets this summer with some great results.

These cards all came from a flea market trip two weekends ago.  My regular vendor at the flea market bought the collection of a friend who had died unexpectedly to help the family out.  He's more of an old school vintage guy, and really didn't know much about what he bought, but wanted to help the family out at least a little.  This is actually my second time digging through the collection.  The first time, I picked up some great cards (which I'll get around to posting eventually), but didn't want to spend toooooo much, so cut myself off after a while.

I was headed out that direction to help my parents rearrange some furniture since the nearly year long house remodel is almost over, and figured a little flea market stop wouldn't hurt.

 I felt pretty good that I had gone through the cards pretty thoroughly the first time through and pulled out anything that was a "must have" for the collection.  There were about six monster boxes.  But the vast majority of the cards were football rookies and baseball prospect cards from the last couple years.

 I imagine there was some really nice stuff in there at some point, but the dealer said the family shopped the collection around at the big Robert Morris show, and some dealers picked off all the best stuff.  So while it wasn't exactly a treat to flip through 300 2014 Bowman Jameson Taillon cards, it was worth it when I hit some gems.  The Newcomb above was a welcome addition to my long-long term plans to put together the 1960 set in any condition.

 Going through the boxes, the collection was a bit of a mystery to me.  There was a box with a fair amount of vintage, mostly early 70's commons and a few early-mid 80's star cards.  And then the boxes upon boxes upon boxes of commons from recent Bowman products.  How many Dri Archer and Alen Hanson cards does one man need?  Apparently the answer is "a lot."  I'm guessing the original owner was buying up a lot of those Bowman paper lots that flood ebay.

There was some 90's and early 2000's stuff too, but not a lot.  Though I did fine a nice run of Kordell Stewart commons that will fill in quite a few gaps in my collection. 

 Best guess?  The guy collected some in the 80's, narrowed down his collecting in the 90's, left the hobby when the game used/auto revolution happened in the late 90's, and then came back to the hobby semi-recently using some of those old school "hoard ze rookies!" mentality.

 Maybe I'm weird (I am), but I always find it interesting to see how other people collect.  There are so many ways you can approach the hobby, and I find it interesting to see what make other people's hobby radar tick.

 There were some interesting odds and ends still in the box, but the majority of my stack was just plain old commons.  I added a good chunk of my needs for 2014 Heritage, Gypsy Queen, and a few of the other sets from last year that I'm woefully behind on.

 When it was all said and done, I had a nice stack.  I asked him how much, and the vendor said just give me whatever you think they're worth.  It's an interesting system we have - he always gives me a fair deal on the stuff he knows prices on, and trusts me not to rip him off on the rest.  And I get the impression he doesn't have much into these cards.  For a cool $10, everybody was happy.

 When I got home, I counted up the haul.  I ended up with just over 100 cards, pricing everything out at about a dime a piece.

 Can I count this as a dime box haul?

 While nothing is exactly going to set the world on fire, I was able to add some cool new cards and fill in some holes in recent sets.  I do everything I can to stay away from all the prospect-centric sets, so it's convenient when somebody else does all the legwork for me and I can pluck up what I need for my binders.

If I'm out that way again soon, I'll definitely be stopping by for round three with these boxes.  They're probably picked over of all the really exciting stuff, but there were a few commons I realized I still needed and I may take a closer look at some of the Steelers and Pens cards just for the hell of it.

All hail flea market season!

All that glitters is gold

The whole game used thing?  Yeah, I'm over it.  But sometimes I just can't resist a pretty baseball card.  2003 Leaf Certified Materials was one of my first "favorite" higher end sets.  Not that I ever came anywhere near busting any of the product.  But it was the first nicer product featuring Jack Wilson after his rookie season.  Jumpin Jack Flash had both autos and game used cards in addition to the gorgeous Mirror base cards.  So I'm always happy to add another card from the set when I get the chance.

This Brian Giles Mirror Gold /25 was just calling my name when I came across it on ebay last week.  Can't beat black and gold.

Prime Patches

Game used and patch cards have largely lost their luster with collectors.  And for good reason, with recent discoveries that non-used jerseys were inserted onto cards and card companies were most likely aware.

At the National, I was pretty surprised to find beautiful game used patch cards for sale anywhere from $3-5.  And some decent names too, though no Pirates.  Still, the hobby landscape has changed significantly.  Not that that has stopped Topps from putting gu swatches on everything...but I dirgress.

Even though gu cards aren't anything I actively seek out anymore, there are still a few that are among my favorite cards in my collection.  The 2005 Prime Patches set lived up to its name as Donruss looked to liquidate its back stock of game used and autographs before losing their MLB license.  The result?  Lots of amazing multi-player items.

This card immediately became a must have for me when it went live in 2005.  The card featured patches from three of my favorite Buccos (missing Jack Wilson, of course).  I had just joined ebay in late '05, and this card instantly became one of my prime targets.  I love the Giles patch the best, and the inclusion of red brings a little life to what are often boring Pirates patches.

I actually ended up picking up two copies of this card, and I think both were had for around $10-12.  I saw a copy up on ebay a few months back that sold for more than that, so maybe game used isn't totally dead after all.

All the Small Things

I was sitting at home last night doing some card sorting when my phone started ringing.  One of my college friends was calling.

Me: Hello, friend (editor's note: there may have been a less cordial greeting, implying that his head was made of feces)

Colin:  I'm driving to Toys R Us to buy baseball cards.  I've done this every day this week.  Tell me I don't have a problem.



Wait, what?  None of my friends have collected baseball cards since I was in about 7th grade.  I have a group of closer acquaintances within the cardboard world, but nobody that I could consider "be in my wedding" friendly.  Colin and I have been friends since college, when we found ourselves making snarky comments in the back of English classes together.  Our friendship was based more off of music, sarcasm, and a propensity to get into the occasional bit of trouble than it was baseball.  But as we got to know each other, we found a common ground there too.

Colin was one of the few true Pirate fans I knew in the Dark Ages of the mid 00's.  It may have been all too common for us to cut class make the 15 min walk down to PNC Park to catch a day game.  We've been close friends for years - he was in my wedding, and Kate insists we talk like a pair of old ladies.  It's not uncommon for us to talk on the phone once or twice a week, with conversations consistently stretching over an hour.

Which made it all the more surprising that he had picked up the Wax Bug.  This is the guy who mercilessly gave me shit about insisting that we get to game unreasonably early so I could get autographs, after all.  Now he's asking my advice on what blaster to buy?
As we got to talking, it wasn't a surprise that our reasons for collecting are pretty similar: the cards connect us with a childhood love of the game and the memory of opening packs that dad would bring home from work.  While we're both die hard Bucco fans, Colin's dad grew up in California, and he inherited a passion of the Dodgers.  As I feel more and more disillusioned, it was genuinely nice to hear somebody gush with enthusiasm about the Kershaw base card he pulled, or his three Garrett Jones cards.

And for me it took me back to when I got back into collecting in 2000.  All it took was a nice base card to make a pack.  I didn't need to pull a patch/auto 1/1 to be happy.  Just give me a card of Warren Morris or Brian Giles and I would have my week made.

 Apparently he has cleaned out the local Toys R Us, so I suggested checking Wal Mart or Target.  I didn't dare introduce him to a hobby shop yet, let alone a card show.  But in this day and age when we hear of more and more collectors leaving the hobby, and releases consistently coming out at $50-100 per "pack," there was something warmly refreshing about finding out that one of my good friends had stumbled into my hobby au natural.  And even better, was completely satisfied just ripping open a few packs of Flagship.

A few hours later I got a text saying he had pulled a Kershaw parallel out of a blaster of 2009 Topps, complete with a picture of him grinning from ear to ear like a damn 8 year old.

Part of me wishes I could go back to that place in my collecting life.  Forget the thousands of Pirate cards, dozen or so mini collections, and unhealthy amount of hobby knowledge seared into my mind.  Just a small shoebox with my prized collection of base cards.  But then again, I'd eventually probably end up where I am now one way or another.  But it was really refreshing to watch someone else find the same love of the hobby that I found years ago.  Having a friend to talk cards with?  Even better.  Having somewhere to finally offload some of my 1991 Donruss cards?  Priceless.

Needless to say, Colin's Pirate and Dodger collections will be growing significantly next time we get together.

Nooooo Doubt About It: A Future Arts and Crafts Project

There are probably a dozen games that really stand out to me as being special.  Of the hundreds of game I've attended and the countless more I have watched on tv, only a few really stick with me.  Special moments that define my fandom.  I've posted before about some of the great memories Brian Giles created for Pirate fans, even if he was kind of a dick.

I've been really focused on adding some cool memorabilia from the late 90's/early 2000's sweet spot of my baseball years.  The years between 1999-2009 were just really special years for me as a baseball fan and as a kid growing into semi-adulthood.  The only problem?  Not much for the Bucs going on in those seasons.  The final year of Three Rivers.  The 2006 All-Star game.  Jason Kendall, Brian Giles, Jason Bay, Jack Wilson, and Freddy Sanchez.  Some of my all-time favorites, but not exactly anybody that will go down in history.  There were some amazing moments, but I've had a tough time finding memorabilia that would do them justice.

And the weekend looked like no exception.  Todd had dozens of beautiful pieces, but as you have seen they are largely centered around the sweet spot of Bucs history - 1960, the 70's, Hall of Fame players.  Not much love for the 100 loss cellar dwellers of the 00's.

 But flipping through a stack of odd posters and photos, I saw this photo.  Probably doesn't mean much to anyone.  Except for this little historical tidbit.



With two outs in the 9th, the were down 2-8 to the Astros.  About 20 mins later, they would walk off the field with a 9-8 win, capped off by a Brian Giles walk-off grand slam.  It was the magic moment of the 2001 season.

I asked Todd for a price, thinking for $5 or so I would love to frame the photo.  Until he said, "wait, did you see what else there is?" and flipped the oversized toploader over.

 Tucked behind the photo was an array of related memorabilia that he had hoped to turn into a framed display piece, but never got around to it.  The gem is the original scorecard kept by Bucs lead broadcaster Lanny Frattare, the voice of the Bucs for over 25 years (who can be heard in calling the play by play in the video above).  The scorecard also has some really cool notes on the margins, presumably stats, facts, and tidbits he wanted to work in throughout the broadcast.

The package also includes a ticket from the game (I have two of my own from the game, which I'll probably swap in for Todd's), a couple cards featuring the fist pump after the HR, and a few other Pirates promotional materials that also recaptured the moment.

There was no question that this piece was heading home with me, a major addition to the stretch of Pirates history that means the most to me.  Maybe it's not the most visually impressive piece compared to the other pieces I picked up, stuffed in a toploader awaiting the time and cash to frame it properly.  But this is undoubtedly one of my favorite Pirate memories, and it is completely mindblowing to me that I now have a one-of-a-kind piece of memorabilia from that game.

Forever Young

Anyone who has been reading my blog for a while should know when I write - really write - I tend to take the scenic route.  But I've added a decent number of readers in recent weeks, so I thought a warning was needed.  If you don't like the long way there, just look out the car window and enjoy the pretty pictures.

When I got married this past October, there weren't a lot of decisions put squarely on my shoulders.  Which isn't to say I wasn't involved (I was).  Or that I wasn't opinionated (I am).  But for the most part Kate and I saw the wedding the same way, and the decisions in regards to food, themes, and overall ambiance reflected who we are as people.  And since we've been damn near attached at the hip since we were 19, the fact that most of these big, sweeping decisions could be made with a few glances and a facial gesture or two didn't come as any great surprise.

But the music?  That was all my kingdom. The playlist was masterfully crafted in a way that I could only trust myself with.  I wouldn't dare entrust the music, the soul of the evening both literally and figuratively, to some total stranger.  I was not about the spend my wedding night watching distant relatives gyrate to the Electric Slide or hear the latest Beyonce tune.  The playlist was as eclectic and expansive as my taste - some early punk smoothly transitioned into some smooth Memphis soul.  The night told the story of my growth as a person and as a music fan, and much like the grandiose combining of the record and dvd collections years earlier, Kate and I moving from two very separate people to one incongruous entity.

But while my initial playlist was pared from 8 hours down to a more reasonable three, one spot was completely blank.  The mother-daughter dance.  I just couldn't find a song that fit what I wanted to express.  And just as important - couldn't find a song that was short enough to get my uncoordinated ass off the dance floor at the most mercifully short length possible.

But as I made list after list of options, I couldn't get away from Bob Dylan's Forever Young.  All 5:01 of it.  Dylan changed the way I listen to music.  Driving on vacation to the beach in the summer of 1999 or 2000 I heard Like a Rolling Stone on the local oldies station.  They didn't play Dylan on any of the Pittsburgh stations we listened to.  And suddenly this music was unlike anything my teenage self had ever heard.  A few years later my mom bought me Dylan's Greatest Hits, which stayed in constant rotation throughout high school.  A Dylan poster hung over my bed.  And as I worked backwards, moving from loving more "classic" rock to being immersed in folk.  It may not have as monumental as Dylan going electric to the rest of the world, but for me it changed the way I looked at the world.

Which is the long way of saying that as I stood there for four and a half minutes (I found a slightly shorter live version in my massive Dylan library) waddling side to side with my mother in a pseudo slow dance, I spent what felt like a great deal of time thinking about...well, time.

For many of us cards are, in one way or another, a way of staying timeless.  Our critics call it a childhood hobby.  And at best our collections are attempts to cling onto passing memories and seasons.  When people find out that I'm married, it leads to natural assumptions.  That I'm older.  Or deeply religious.  Or desperately want a family.  Cause really, I'm well aware that I don't really fit the mold for the "married at 25" category.  And while it all fits together just fine and dandy in my little intellectual and ideological bubble, the "well we've been together nonstop since we were teenagers anyway" argument just doesn't seem quite gratifying enough for most folks.

But isn't that life?  Whether it's baseball cards, or music, or people, we mark out lives with these mileposts.  Ways of breaking down and understanding the passing of time.  And perhaps I'm not too good at playing by the conventions in that regard.  I'm 26, look like I'm 36, behave like I'm 86, and collect cards like I'm just plain old 6.

Flipping through my 1991 binder instantly transports me to my dad buying me a pack or two and a slurpee every time he took me to the gas station with him.  Or 2000, and my dad buying me 20 packs of Topps before dropping me off at grandma and grandpa's for the night before they went for a rare evening out.  Or registering for a Beckett account, feeling like a rebel because I clicked the terms of service saying I was 13 almost a whole half year before my actual 13th birthday.  Or hearing "Like a Rolling Stone" and being taken back to the backseat of our minivan, salty shore air cutting through the windows and the tightly woven lyrics ripping through me and pulling out a kid wanting more than what his boring suburban life could offer.

Our collections, if you'll forgive the drawn out analogy, are our playlists.  These pieces of ourselves placed in time and space.  Memories being made and remade constantly.  At times impossible to explain away to friends, or family, or coworkers.  But the very things that make us who we are, and how we see ourselves.  Whether you're 16 or 66 reading or writing about cards, those memories and connections are at their most basic quite the same.  And either way, may you stay forever young.

Flea Market Fun, Part 2

When I last left off, the first box of Steelers cards had yielded some unexpected finds.  It wasn't my first rodeo, so I knew not to have similar expectations for the Pirate box.  I am convinced one of the scientific laws of the universe is that exceptional box digs shall not yield Pirate finds equal to or greater than the quality of other teams' cards in said box.

Sadly the law held true.  But I saw still able to come away with a nice pile of Pirate cards that filled some holes.  As an added bonus, all the cards were in what looked to be relatively new toploaders.  Those things cost more than $.10 a piece themselves nowadays, don't they?

On to the finds!

Todays post was brought to you by Chromium technology.

The box yielded an impressive number of Chrome cards, including almost complete sets of 2001 and 2002 Topps Chrome.  I think I had a total of 3 cards from those two sets, so it was a nice find.  Better yet, the cards all appeared to be in almost flawless shape without any surface scratches or major wear.  Anybody who has handled Chrome cards knows how sensitive they are to surface scratches, and I've noticed very few Chrome dimebox cards come with the courtesy of a penny sleeve.

And while the fun insert finds were scaled back quite a bit in the Pirate box (the law, dammit), I did manage to pick up a card off my Most Wanted list.

2000 Vanguard was one of those sets that just felt like they were reserved for the hobby heavyweights, and these High Voltage cards took the cake.  Just look at it - it's electric (boogie woogie woogie).  I'll gladly excuse the horrid spring training uni on Giles and just appreciate the sheer design insanity.  Amusingly enough I have a few numbered parallel versions of this card, but up until now the base version had escaped me.

Speaking of cool Pacific designs, they sure did have a way of making cards look unique.

It's been nice to see acetate making a small comeback in the hobby.  On a base card?  Pure gold.

And of course the day wouldn't be done without finishing off a few set holes.

 It's always amazing that after probably half a dozen large Pirate lot purchases of at least 1,000 cards each that I still don't have what might seem like the most simple of base cards.  See my almost entirely barren binder pages of '83 Donruss for example.  But that only proves another hobby law: the easiest to find cards are the hardest to come across.

Speaking of which, after my dime box work and a total of $2 in purchases I headed back to the indoors part of the flea market and presumably to my car to head down to Game 4 of the NLDS.  But I made a detour to one of the card dealers set up inside whose booth had looked incredibly unimpressive on my last trip.

And this time, the hobby law was wrong.  But we'll save that for part 3.