Card shows rising

 I had thought that the card shows in this area had reached their peak, but I seem to have been wrong.  By "peak", I am referring to their frequency and the number of dealers, not the quality.  A year ago, we had one monthly show in Portland, which technically had 2 days, Saturday and Sunday, but really Sunday was just a whimper, with lots of the dealers not showing up.  These probably had 40-50 dealers.

Then the dealer numbers started swelling.  We now likely have 75 or so for each show.  And from what I hear, Sunday is almost as packed as Saturday (I always go on Saturday).

And if that wasn't enough, just this past weekend, they slotted another show in-between the regular March and April shows.  So only 2 weeks between shows!  I still feel like the drop off isn't far away, where we will start retracting some as a hobby.  But what do I know, almost all of my predictions are wrong.

Anyway, here are some of the cards I picked up last show.  First up was a dime box filled with nothing but Ken Griffey Jr!!  The vast majority of the Griffeys in the box were mass produced, junk sets and the like.  But there were some diamonds in the rough!  I walked away with 36 cards, the coolest of which are here:

Jackpot!!  And yes, that is an actual Griffey RC down there, even if it is a little beat up, for a dime, I was pretty happy.

Next up are some funky lookers.  I couldn't figure out what these were for a while, I had never heard of the Topps Chrome Sonic set before.  These were in a 3 for a dollar box, which worked for me.  The Bogaerts is numbered /99.

The Rizzo will probably come up in some freebies soon, but the others I am keeping.

Now this one I just bought for the craziness factor.  Same 3/$1 box.

Don't really know who Oscar Colas is, but I like having at least one card from over the top sets like this. 

This 2nd year Ichiro was in a dime box.  I didn't even notice the tiny "Limited Edition" text in the lower right until I got it home.  I wasn't collecting then, so don't know if that is special or not, but I will certainly take it for a dime.

And last up, I actually spent some money!!  If you look at my card show purchases regularly, you know that I am usually a strict "cheap box" guy.  But since I sent my copy of this next card off to a fellow blogger a few years back, I have always itched to get me another copy.  But the price was always too high.

Anyway, in a stack of cards for a bargain price, I got this:

Since it was in a stack, I can't really say how much it cost, but based on the total price of the stack, I would estimate that this cost me $10.  Great deal!!

Thanks for reading!