Early morning card show report

 Card show!!  I got there very early, because I had kid activities early in the day.  In fact, I had to wait outside the mall for a bit until the security guard opened the doors to let the dealers start setting up.  But that just meant that I got first crack at the boxes!

I made purchases from dime boxes, 20 cent boxes, 50 cent boxes and dollar boxes.  And I even bought a few cards that I had to pay more than a dollar for!!  Does that mean I'm finally growing up? Maybe...  Probably not, the cheap stuff is where I live and that won't likely change.

Anyway, here are some of the cards I grabbed from the 10 and 20 cent boxes:

Four from the Home of the Whopper...

Six from the Great White North...

The cards in both of those first two scans were no brainers for me.  Very cool cards.  I got a few dupes of some of the O-Pee-Chees if anyone is interested. The Schmidt, Franco and Yount, I think.  Not all are mint though.

Still in the cheapest boxes, I grabbed some beat up 70s cards and a bunch of shine and color.

I was super, super happy to find early refractors of Buhner and Larkin for so cheap! Especially the Larkin, that thing was in a 20 cent box??   And a Gossage RC, even as beat up as it is, was a steal!

Before we move on to the higher priced boxes, let's take a moment to talk about Juan Gonzalez.  I don't know if you like him, but for a while, he was a pretty big guy in the hobby.  Now that some time has passed, not so much.  But there were a ton of interesting cards made of him back then.  And I seem to run across them pretty often.  Juan Gone makes a lot of appearances in my Cuts & Colors collection because 1.) He was in all the cool insert sets and 2.) He isn't such a hobby darling that people hide his cards away in their collections, never to see the light of day again.

So I have slowly created a burgeoning collection of Gonzalez, and this show had a ton.  I kind of got carried away, but oh well.  The Gonzalez's below were all from 20 and 50 cent boxes, and the non-Juan cards are all from 50 cent bins.

Some highlights here.  The awesome Pacific die cut in the middle.  The minor league card.  And my favorite, that monstrosity in the lower right.  If you have never seen one of those (I hadn't), each of those black dots is heat sensitive.  So when you touch them for a moment with your finger, they turn transparent to show a number underneath.  I guess you are supposed to find the number of home runs Juan hit that year or something.  So strange.  Leave it to Pacific to come up with that!

Super shiny!!!  Too many good ones here to call out, but my favorite is the Chrome refractor in the center!

Non-Juan 50 centers...

All wonderful cards.  I needed the Grieve for my set build.  It is the first Diamond King I have added for a set build in well over a year.  Those things just don't show up often for me.

Those Ozzie Smith's there are 1996 Pinnacle Starburst and Starburst Artist's Proofs.  Amazing finds for half a buck!

Dollar boxes

Sweet 90s refractor of a HOFer, cool minor league card and an old Fregosi RC!

More!  This stuff, I paid a little more for.  But still great deals in my opinion!  Aren't these sweet?

What I paid (according to my horrible memory):

Fidrych RC - $2 (always wanted one, surprised it took so long)

John RC - $3 (a huge upgrade to my scribbled on copy!)

Mays/Rigney - $3 (Vintage Mays for $3?)

Griffey - $2 (!!! #d /10000)

Griffey gold signature - $2 (Not the prettiest card, but seems like a really good deal)

Masa RC - $3 (an iconic card, if only in certain circles)

Mays catch $4 (Total steal!.  It has a good crease, but how else could I have gotten it for $4?)

And the last card(s) for today, this panel of Hostess was a throw in on another purchase which I might get around to scanning in later.  I paid $15 for a couple of items, but I was not sure, so I asked if the dealer would throw this in.  He said yes!  Pretty sure this alone could go for $15 some places.

It's kind of blurry, but I like it.

Thanks for reading!