Card Show Haul - 1955

I got on quite the roll with buying discount vintage cards. In addition to the three 1952s 1953s, I bought two 1955s, and eighteen 1956s.

Wait a sec? I bought eighteen 1956 cards?

*counts*

*counts again*

Yup, eighteen. I guess I'll have to divide those up over two posts. Anyhoo, here are the 1955s. 20 game winner Harvey Haddix and 1952 NL MVP Hank Sauer.




My LCS didn't have 8 pocket Ultra-Pros in stock, but said he would order some. I don't have the heart to throw them in my storage closet. So, in the mean time, I've got this stack of top loaders sitting on my desk with all these cards from the Fifties. I work from home, so I keep finding myself picking them up and looking through them when I should be pumping up my WAR.

Card Show Haul - A New Beginning

As I wandered around a last time before heading home, I stopped at one dealer's table and he had some vintage cards out that he had just gotten in. I decided to look through them in search of more cheap 1956's. I managed to find a few, but also found some 1952 1953's that were a few bucks each. So, now I own three cards from the first full Topps set.


This Antonelli card is stained, but since he and I share a hometown, it doesn't really bother me.





That Indians logo is something else, isn't it? Not that the current logo is that much more politically correct.

My wife is from Ohio. On one of my solo trips back that way, I stopped at a sporting goods store and bought her a Indians hat, with Chief Wahoo logo on it. She rarely wore it. In contrast, I live in ball caps and tend to go through ten or more hats a year working on our farm.

So, at one point, when my stock of hats ran low, I picked up the Indians hat to wear when heading into town for some reason or another. Now, Oklahoma has a fairly sizeable Native American population. I got a few dirty looks while wearing that hat, and, upon my arrival home, relegated it to the "wear only at home" pile. True story.

Boring, but true.

I Think I May Have a Problem

After returning to the show on Sunday to look through a box of cards that a seller had forgotten to bring the day before, I wandered the floor looking for bargains to consume more of the money that remained in my pocket. I spent a little time at one table where the guy was making deals. As I was looking through his vintage I noticed a lonely stack of cards that I thought my wife might like, so I asked how much he wanted for them. When he responded "5 dollars", I handed over a Lincoln.

Now, I know what you are thinking. This is one of the hallmarks of addiction. Justifying your behavior by blaming someone else. That may be true, but not in this case. I swear. No seriously, these are for my wife. Honest.





My wife is a huge Star Wars fan. Not, huge as in collecting all the merchandise, but huge as in she was one of those kids that saw the movie multiple times when it first came out in 1977. Me? Not so much. It was probably over a year after it was released before I finally saw it.

So, when I saw these cards I had to get them for her. She seemed to like them, so yesterday, I put them into Ultra-Pro sheets and a binder. Of course, as I sorted through them, I had the typical Topps experience: nothing even remotely close to a complete series and plenty of duplicates. Yay!

Now I guess I am going to have to start searching around for more of these cards, so I can complete the set for her. No, really, for her.

What? You don't believe me?

Card Show Haul -1977 HOFers

I have to admit a case of writer's block. I am just not sure what to say about these cards, other than I had a fair number of Hall of Fame inductees on my want list prior to the weekend show. I knocked more than a few off.










At this point, I only need 20 cards to finish my 1977 set. I intend to knock them off in September over at COMC. This will be my third complete set, having previously completed 1974 and 1978. What set am I am going to work on next? I have a pretty good idea, but don't want to say anything until I know whether I made a great deal or another rookie mistake.

Rookie Mistake

I only got back into collecting last November. I am still a rookie and have made a few mistakes. I've been less than perfect about updating wantlists and have managed to purchase a few cards that I already had. I also dropped almost a C-Note on that box of Upper Deck Yankee Classics I wrote about recently. I also made a dumb error at last weekend's show. I was pawing through one seller's $2 box and it was a mixture of vintage and modern cards. I was managing to find a few 1977 star cards I needed and a 1973 Clemente in what I would call VG+ condition. Then I ran across this card:


I was pretty excited about finding what seemed to be a decent Mike Schmidt Rookie card. I didn't know how much it was worth, but surely $2 was a bargain. So, I got it. Then I got home and took it out of the toploader and penny sleeve to a closer look:


Did you see that? No? Let me zoom in a bit:


Yeah.

I didn't find a 1973 Schmidt rookie card. I found a 1998 reprint of the 1973 Schmidt rookie card in a dirty toploader.

1977 Topps - The Fun Cards

I understand that, back in the days before Photoshop, that Topps had to airbrush players into the uniforms of their new teams. I have to wonder why they chose a picture of Butch from his Junior Varsity days.



Because, even though the body may be 45, we are all still 9 years old on the inside.



Andy is looking forward to his appointment at the Wally Moon Depilation Clinic.

Twin Brothers from Different Mothers, the Exercise Video

One of the 1977 cards I got this weekend:



Randy Jones and Richard Simmons