Thrift shop card finds!

Something happened to me for the first time on Saturday. I found cards at a local thrift shop!

I’ve always been envious of collectors who show off their thrift store finds. Admittedly, I’m not one to hop around from shop to shop and make a day of it, so no wonder I never find any. However, I do have a thrift shop in the basement of a church just three blocks from my house, and I’ve stopped in from time to time without finding much of anything. Everything seems pretty run down and there is a lot of junk. I guess it’s like any other thrift shop, isn’t it?

I live on a street just off of the main road in town, and still have a “walker’s mentality” from my time living in NYC and Hoboken. I have no problem taking a short walk to run an errand. In this case, I had two errands. I first went to the barbershop for a haircut, and once that was done, walked another block to the post office to mail a package to Brian atCollecting Cutch.

I didn’t have any more cash. I brought exactly enough for my haircut (including tip), and then used my credit card at the post office. I still decided to swing by the thrift shop on the way home. After all, it’s only open on Saturdays and Tuesdays. I went in. Cashless.

I made my way over to the books and DVDs, and then I saw them. Two binders and a box of cards! Whhhhat?!

I grabbed the first binder, which was of all basketball cards and marked for $5. I took a quick scan to see if I saw any late ‘90s inserts that go for quite a penny these days, but didn’t see anything too interesting. It’s entirely possible I missed something good, but haven’t collected basketball cards in years and don’t have a keen eye in that area.

Then I grabbed the baseball binder. It was a big ass binder too. H-e-a-v-y. This was marked $5 as well. I started flipping through, and while some of the cards looked ok, I didn’t think this would be for me. Everything was basically from 1997-2002 or so (admittedly an era of cards I like a lot), and there were a lot of cards; cards I’m currently trying to get rid of in a big box…so why would I buy more? I flipped through for a minute and then put the binder back.

I then quickly looked at the longer box, which was mostly football cards that weren’t of interest to me. And I left the store. Yep, I left. Empty-handed. I didn’t want to spend the $5.

In the literally three minute walk home, I had a change of heart. It would be fun to go through, I thought. And you never know what might be tucked away. Plus, the very day was my 7^th blog anniversary. I had do something card-related, right?

But the $5 price tag felt a little steep. This is a thrift shop, I said. Shouldn’t it be like 2 bucks? But then I realized something. I routinely spend $4.99 on Walgreen’s repacks, or buy a handful of Dollar Tree repacks. Why am I ok with paying 5 bucks at Walgreen’s for 100 cards that are mostly junk, when I could pay $5 for this and got a lot more cards, easily over 1,000. Plus I saw a few Hall of Famers and interesting cards in my quick scan in the store. And it would last a lot longer than a repack.

I changed my mind.

I got home and ran in the house and grabbed five one dollar bills and told my wife I was headed back to grab something. I walked very fast back to the store, worried some thrift shop vulture may have seen me thumbing through them and then scooped up the binder himself, Vegas slot machine style.

Luckily, I got back and it was there! $5 later and a binder in hand, I headed home.

As noted, it was a pretty big binder. He’s are two photos, one for scale. 

It consisted of 70 pages, mostly filled with card on the front and back of each page. That alone would be 18 cards per page, or 1260 cards. Some had three or four cards in each slot as well.

All-in-all, there were exactly 1,291 cards in the binder. Of those, 133 were of Hall of Famers (stack pictured below), mostly newish ones at that. That doesn’t include the Wade Boggs cards which went into my Yankees pule. There were 54 Yankee cards.

Ok, enough rambling. Here are some cards. This is really just a random sampling to show what I found.

By far, my two favorite cards were these 1995 Topps Cybserstats Season in Review cards. Honestly, they are strikingly gorgeous cards. I’m not sure how a card like this were to be viewed if it were new in 2018, but a lot of cards from the mid to late 90s have far superior graphics and designs to current insert sets. That is a fact.

Another interesting card was this double-sided 1994 Donruss Bomb Squad card. One bomb = one home run. There would probably be outrage if this card showed up in 2018.

There were a lot of 1998 Metal in the binder. Probably close to 50 or 60. No issues with that on my end, as I loved these sets.

This person really liked this Score Goin Yard subset.

I think I would have gotten along well with this collector. There were a ton of Collector’s Choice, Opening Day, Circa, Sports Illustrated, and other brands I really enjoyed as a kid.

There were also severalUpper Deck Folz Vending machine mini cards. I had never seen these. They are a little bit smaller than the size of a normal card, but don’t jump out as a mini. They also look like like Collector's Choice cards, but are not branded as such.

There weren’t too many oddballs.

As for the Hall of Famers, I mentioned there were 133. Here’s who appeared the most:

Greg Maddux – 16 cards

Roberto Alomar – 15 cards

John Smoltz/Barry Larking/Tony Gwynn – 12 cards each

Ivan Rodriguez – 9 cards

 

And the Yankees! Tino made an appearance.

Boggs was in there a lot, as was Big Daddy.

There was a lot more too!

Am I glad I spent the $5? Easily. I didn’t find anything super valuable, but I really enjoyed going through the cards, and know I’ll be including some in upcoming trade packages. It was definitely money well spent when I think about the alternative of a 100-card repack. I mean, nearly 1300 cards from the late 90s? Hard to beat for this collector.

The binder and pages aren’t particularly in great shape, so what I think I might do is steal a few to cut up for PWEs, and then stuff the binder back full of other cards and bring it back to the thrift shop for someone else to buy.

Either way, I’ll definitely be stopping by regularly to look for cards. It’s a three minute walk from house. I’d be crazy not to.

Are you supposed to pull cards like this in Dollar Tree repacks?

Two weeks ago, I stopped by the Dollar Tree and there were zero baseball packs. Nada. I was disappointed, as I had seen a few people stumble upon 30 card PressTine repacks.

I begrudgingly stopped back in this past Saturday, as I needed a few bubble mailers. I know there are other places to get them a little cheaper, but these come in packs of two for a dollar. So snagging 5 packs leaves me with ten new, fresh bubble mailers. That’s not too bad.

I swung around to where the cards are, just in case, and lo and behold, there was a fresh, gravity-type box of PressTine 30 card repacks! I couldn’t believe it! They must’ve just been open, as the packs were still neatly in there. If only I could experience this at Target, knowing the packs hadn’t been sifted through.

I ended up snagging 7 packs. It was tempting to get more, but it’s important to remember that probably 25 of 30 cards are junk. There weren’t too many great cards showing, but I snagged a few with some Bowman prospects, as you never know. I also snagged one with a 2016 Bowman Masahiro Tanaka on the front, as that’s not a bad card to get.

However, within one of the packs, I was shocked to find this card:

Front and back, what a cool card! It was certainly an outlier across all packs, that’s for sure. Unlike Fairfield repacks which guarantee X HOFs or the chance of a hit, these don’t do anything of the sort. While perhaps not a traditional hit, a low-numbered (162/250) insert card of a current and probable future Hall of Famer is pretty damn cool. This is from 2004 Donruss Elite, and is a green parallel within the Passing the Torch set.

I’ll show more of the cards from the other packs in a future post, as there were a few decent cards you’d expect in a repack. But honestly, this card blew all the others away.

Random Listia autos - Part 2

Last week, I mentioned that a Listia seller added about 100 random autographed cards to a pair of recent cards I won on the site. Here are six more cards, and as you can see, there is quite an assortment and a little bit of everything.

 

Vlad! Definitely one of the biggest stars of the lot, Vladimir Guerrero is a future Hall of Famer. His career spanned 16 years from 1996-2011, mostly with Montreal and Anaheim. He was a 9-time All-Star, and won the 2004 AL MVP in his first season in the American League. With a .318 career average, over 2500 hits and 449 HRs, Vlad should definitely be Cooperstown-bound sooner than later.

Thank you for being my friend! Bob Friend, that is, on a '53 Bowman reprint. In 16 season, 14 with the Pirates, Friend won 197 games...which is a lot. He also lost 230...which is a lot. He was a three-time All-Star, and also lead the NL in innings in both 1956 and '57, throwing a total of 591.1 innings over that two year span. Follow that up with another 274 innings in 1958, and that's a ton of mileage! They don't make pitchers like that any more. Friend also won a ring in 1960 (grrr against the Yanks), but he didn't pitch well in the World Series, posting a 13.50 ERA in six innings. So, there's that, I suppose.

Jay (or J.W.) Porter spent six seasons in the Majors, three with Detroit. His 1953 and 1954 seasons were put on hold due to military service. Porter actually was signed at the same time as Frank Robinson, and received a bigger bonus. He was once part of the trade that brought famed TTMer and all-around-good-guy Virgil Trucks to the Tigers.

Oh, Dallas! Actually, that's Odalis. Perez always felt like a journeyman to me, but he played for 10 seasons with just four teams. I thought he bounced around more than that. I remember that in the late '90s card sets, Perez was a pretty big Braves prospect. His first career win was actually in the post-season in 1998, before he won a regular season game! He was part of the deal with the Dodgers that brought Gary Sheffield to Atlanta. He responded by winning 15 games in his first year in LA and earning an All-Star nod. His career was downhill from there. In all, he won 73 games and retired with a 4.46 ERA. Serviceable career. His signature rivals Don Baylor's in ugliness.

Hey, a current player! Actually, I had to look up if DeJesus was a current player. He is. He's with Tampa Bay still. For years, the Yankees were always interested in acquiring him, which means they still will at some point when he's out of gas and has been DFA'd. I love these Cracker Jack cards, and would not be upset if Topps replaced one of their current sets with these again. Anyways, DeJesus has had a nice career as a starting/fouth outfielder, although he's been bouncing around a bit as of late. The long-time Royal is a career .278 hitter and has hit over .300 a handful of times. He's also made over $32million in his career, and is married to her:

Hey, another current player! I remember picking up Clint Barmes in my fantasy league when he was a rookie, and he did quite well. Somehow, he's now a 12-year vet currently with the Pirates. He hit 23 HRs in 2009, although his power has now evaporated and hasn't hit one this season. Still, he's appeared in 43 games for the Pirates as a backup infielder. Guys like him, while not the sexiest of names, are important to any ballclub.

A careless Series Two card

I was flipping through a few 2012 Topps Series Two cards and noticed this Vlad Guerrero. It’s a checklist card noting his accomplish as the All Time Domincan Hits Leader. Certainly a feat worthy of celebration.  

Upon closer look at the card and the text below Vlad’s name, Topps carelessly covered up part of the word “All” with the Orioles logo. It’s a minor detail, but it looks sloppy. It could have been easily avoided by shifting the text over to the right, or down, or even stacking it and making it two rows. The designer of the card should have been more cognizant of this as well. Have a little pride in your work

Trade Review: Josh Hamilton auto

I don't generally trade away or trade for TTM/in-person autographs. I have my collection of my personal TTMs, but that's about as far as it goes. However, this is my second trade in two weeks for such autographs. I don't envision this becoming a regularity, but I like helping fellow collectors out if I can. As you may have read, last week I traded with Paul's Random Baseball Stuff - a Corey Lidle auto he needed for a Sparky Lyle I didn't have.

In my second deal, there was a collector over at www.sweetspotgraphs.com looking for a Vlad auto. I had an extra from a TTM success a few years ago, and he offered to send me an extra Josh Hamilton that he had. I know that Hamilton signs TTM - usually takes about a year - so I figured this would be an easier way to add him to my collection. I was at the 2008 HR Derby in old Yankee Stadium, and I've always been a big fan of him for that, as well as his story and the obstacles he has overcome.

This Hamilton is a sweet looking sig on a 2010 Topps. It was a blind trade, and for whatever reason I was expecting an older, so I was pleasantly surprised that this was a 2010 Topps base card. It looks great and is a solid addition to my collection. I sent a Topps base card of Vlad - I think it was a 2001 - so hopefully the other collector is just as happy with his card as well.