Thanks so much to all the people who entered the little card show contest! Super quick post to randomize and select the winner.
As I said in the original post, I will take the entries and randomize them three times. Here are the results:
Original list:
First randomization:
Second randomization:
Third randomization:
And the winner is Matt!!!
Looks like I will be searching the cheap boxes for Red Sox cards of Pedro Martinez (any Red Sox really), Laughlin World Series cards, cards from the Senior Leagues and Sporting News Conlon Collection sets.
The Red Sox stuff will certainly be the easiest, but I will try for some of the other stuff too!
Again, thanks to all who entered, and have a great day!
I'm heading to a card show this Saturday (April 29th), and if you are lucky, it might benefit you!
This is a quick little contest with a prize that might be good, or might be bad, it depends on the quarter boxes at the show! Here's how it works:
To enter, comment on this post with the players, teams, sets etc. that you want me to look for in the cheapie boxes at the next card show.
Examples:
"I want you to look for Francisco Lindor, Clayton Kershaw, any serial numbered under /1000"
"Please look for all Diamondbacks, any Panini colored parallels and Bowman cards of young up and comers"
"I'd like any cards from the 1950s, late 90s inserts, Tom Glavine and any O-Pee-Chee"
Feel free to be more or less detailed with your request as needed. Keep in mind that I am looking in cheap boxes, so some requests will be harder to fulfill. Like the request for cards from the 1950s above! If you ask for Roberto Clemente, and that is all, I may not find anything, and even if I do, they will likely be modern cards.
You can put other sports than Baseball if you like, but I spend most of my time in the baseball boxes, so take that for what you will.
I will take all the comments and use Random.org to select a winner (randomized 3 times). For the winner, I will look in the quarter (or less) boxes for you, scanning for cards that fit your request. You will receive up to 18 cards, depending on what I can find, PWE shipped to you.
This contest will close on Thursday, April 27th at 5PM PST!!
**No promises on what you will get. I usually have good luck in these boxes, but I am looking for a really wide variety of cards. Limiting it down to specific requests will certainly make it harder!
For some of you, this may be the most boring post you've read...
I'm in the process of scanning my keeper collection. It's a slog and will probably take months at the very least. I store my cards by player, alphabetically. And that's how I am scanning, in alphabetical order.
I recently got to the end of the B's, and ran into a section of players that I really like, but who just can't stay healthy. I'm wondering if I should de-emphasize some of these, as these guys are starting to look like they may never live up to their early potential.
Anyway, here are the 30+ scans of the players with last names starting with BU. Hence the title of this post, I got the BlUes...
Byron Buxton 2012 Elite Extra Edition - Yearbook 20
Walker Buehler 2021 Panini Donruss - Holo Red - Name variation 101
Walker Buehler 2021 Panini Mosaic - Blue Camo Mosaic 56
Walker Buehler 2022 Topps Fire - En Fuego - Gold Minted EF-20
So in your oh so humble opinions, which of these players are 'worth' collecting to you? Any of them? Are any of them going to get past the injuries and become as great as they can be?
Well the previous card show was epic, read here if you missed it. Unfortunately, this latest one was not quite so big for me, but I did find a lot of cards in the cheap boxes, some of which had me scratching my head.
First up, here are a few of my favorites from quarter boxes:
1. The Freeman turned out to be a dupe for me, but I still like it. 2. The Robert is really great for a quarter. He's off to a nice start this year too.
3. The Soto is just cool.
4. Here's the first big score! Hall of Fame RC of Trevor Hoffman in a quarter box. Woohoo!
5. I have been really wanting this Guerrero. The pic is awesome. I'm not so big on Opening Day though. Now I want the regular Topps and Chrome versions of this!
6. Don't know why I like the Brett, I just do.
7. Another big find! This Greinke really cements my early Greinke collection!
8. Red White and Blue Ohtani Prizm?? Don't see those in cheap boxes much...
9. And a relic of a HOFer. Great find.
Next up, I have always really liked the old Gold Refractors. But you don't find them often, and even less often for cheap. These two made me happy.
Now a quick break from baseball. These football cards were all quarters too!
Other than maybe the Marino, I was kinda stunned to see any of these in a quarter box! I think my favorite is the Warner jersey. I don't have much Warner. Need a RC of his.
Back to baseball! The boxes at my local show often have good selection of youngsters. You have to really dig, but I took the time this show, and came away with quite a stack of guys who are possibly on the up and up. Here's a few of the hottest:
I hit almost all the guys you hear about, with one notable exception. Corbin Carroll, the Diamondbacks young stud was nowhere to be found. But realizing that jogged my memory. I just KNEW I had a Carroll somewhere from a show long ago. So I went digging, and what do you know.
This card is actually clean, my scanner seemed to pick up some dust. And you probably can't see it, but in the upper left, stamped over the DIA in Diamondbacks, there is a serial number. #/25!! I hope he continues to impress, I might have to unload this card someday.
And lastly, I spent a little money (more than $1 is 'money' to me) on a card for the second straight show. Certainly not a quarter box card. I've been enamored with the Orioles young talent, Ryan Mountcastle, Grayson Rodriguez, Gunnar Henderson and especially Adley Rutchman. He seems like a quality player. So I negotiated for a while, and got the price on this card down to $15:
I don't know if I will regret this purchase or not, but for now I am quite happy with it. I dislike graded cards in general, but... whatever. In fact, this is only the 13th graded card in my collection. I plan on doing posts soon on both my graded cards and my slowly growing prospecting hoard. Look forward to that!
OK, this is not going to be a sports card related post. If you don't want to see pictures with me in them or with fish in them, you should probably leave now!!
My son has REALLY gotten into fishing the last few years. I never fished as a kid, so we have learned together. He would love to fish every day for 10 hours if I would let him. It get's kind of tiring for me sometimes, but how can I complain when I have a kid that wants to spend time with me?
Anyway, he fishes for small stuff around here, trout, steelhead, carp, bluegill, suckerfish, really whatever is biting at the time. And of course, he's always on the lookout for something different, and especially something bigger!
Well this last week was his 16th birthday, and I had promised him a couple of years ago that I would take him on a one day charter fishing trip for the big 16. I figured he'd want to go deep sea fishing, but instead he chose sturgeon fishing, with the hope of getting something really big. Spoiler alert, he was not disappointed!!
Unfortunately, I was pretty busy while we were out there, so the pictures don't really do it justice, but there are a few below. We were out for about 7 hours, and we caught 9 sturgeon! Far beyond our expectations! On the drive over, he said that he just hoped to catch something bigger than him. He's 5'5", 115 lbs. I told him he had a good chance, but not to get his hopes up.
5 minutes after our first casts, we hooked one up, and he started the fight. About 10 minutes later, with a little help, he pulled in this one:
It's about 4.5 feet, and probably weighed 35 lbs, but as you can see by his face, he was pretty happy. It was a new personal best for him, if not quite his goal. And no, that's not me in the pic, that's one of the guys running the boat. Good thing they were there, because we caught a few that we would never have gotten to the boat without their help!
Like I said, the pics are not great (and definitely don't capture the sheer size of these things!), but here are a few (and some video).
This is my boy trying with all his might to pull a big one up from the bottom. They are deep (50-90 feet down where we were), and a bear to bring up to the surface. We would rotate, giving 3 or 4 of us a turn on each fish because it was so much work. 5-10 minutes on one person working, then hand it off to fresh hands. And yes, that's ugly old me looking on.
Here we are after a long fight holding on to an 8 footer. When you turn them over like that, they stop thrashing about. Anything over 54 inches, you are not allowed to take out of the water. And much bigger than that, you couldn't haul up anyway, nor would you want them thrashing around and wrecking your boat.
Here is a so-so pic of a 9 footer!!
And my son letting an 8 footer go:
And the last of the pics, a different 9 footer. It would look a lot better if the tail wasn't pointing down. To me it looks like a 7 footer there, but we measured it, and believe me, it was 9.
Here are videos of that one (I think?):
Unfortunately, we didn't get a pic of the biggest one. It was so hard to drag it up that we were all exhausted. In fact, at the end, the boat captain had to get on leather gloves and pull the last few feet up by pulling the line with his hands, because we couldn't pull it up any more with the pole. Then we rolled it on its back, but before we could get pics, the sheer weight of it pulled it out of his hands. My son tried to reach out and grab it, but if he had gotten a grip, it just would have pulled him into the water with it. The captain felt pretty bad about losing it.
Here is some video of getting the 10 footer up to the boat:
And some video of losing him:
It was significantlybigger than the 9 footers. Maybe it doesn't seem that way in the video, but in person, it was impressive, even intimidating. The captain was guessing 11 feet, but my son and I are calling it 10.5 feet, just to be safe. It was also much thicker, bulky!! The captain said it likely weighed about 600 lbs and was probably 80-100 years old. It was a real monster!!
Needless to say, my son had the time of his life, and wants to start saving money to go again. The captain told him it isn't usually this amazingly good, but I don't think he cares. We ended up catching 9 total, with lengths (a couple estimated, but most actual measurements) of: 4'6", 5'5", 6'1", 8'1", 8'3", 9'0", 9'4, 9'7" and the whopper at 10'6"!!
Next post will be back to cards, thanks for reading!!
OK, the title kind of gave away the finish on this post, but the rest of it is fun too! Skip to the end if you like.....but if you want to see some other great cards I picked up at a recent show, read on!
I spent way more than usual at this show (~$65), but it was worth it as I got some awesome deals! Oh, and my scanner was out of commission, so you get phone pics today instead of scans. Here are some highlights of my finds.
I LOVE gold refractors, and they don't usually come cheap, so I was really happy to add this one of a solid catcher. This was in a 50 cent box, but I got a volume discount.
Cool 2014 Finest of The Captain. I believe this was a quarter.
I love these too! The old Pacific sets really did some fun stuff. The string was hard to get into a top loader, which is how I store my cards. Same 50 cent box as the Perez.
I already had all of these, but they were in a quarter box! I would have grabbed 50 of them at that price!
OK, this one I am confused on. See the white border on the top and left of this card? It almost seems miscut, but usually there is not a white section between cards in a sheet that would show on a miscut card. Especially in this set. The card looks and feels just like others I have from this set though. And the back looks right too. Any thoughts? For a quarter, it was still a no-brainer.
This one I pulled out of the 50 cent box just because I didn't have any early Rizzo's, not because I really collect him. When I got it home and looked it up though, it looks like I got a steal at that price! Lucky me, I grabbed 2 copies of it. Anyone want to trade for the other?
This was in a quarter box as well. It's not just the SP version (according to COMC), but the SP Rare version with him holding all those presents. Whatever that means, I like it!
Oh yeah, I love me some Ichiro parallels! This one is numbered out of 450. Was in a volume discount stack that I will talk about later.
Another 50 cent steal here, though I didn't know how big of a steal until I got home and found out that this is the 2011 Topps Update SP Legends variation. I'm feeling pretty lucky!
One of several Urias cards I found at the right price. I just didn't really have anything cool of his. Still don't have an actual RC though.
And another 50 cent find, this strange "Peach" parallel Machado. It is serial numbered, but I can't remember out of what. Volume discount stack again.
Solid, if "ugly Panini" Griffey parallel.
I quite like this set, like many others. This was one card that I actually feel like I overpaid for. $1.
A quarter may be overpaying for this too, especially since it off centered. But I like it.
The flashiness got me here, but I don't feel bad for 25 cents!
This one was in that volume discount stack. Got it home and found out it's a pretty good card! This insert set must be one of the semi-popular ones from the years when I was out of the hobby.
And these Happy Days stickers were quarters too. Just couldn't pass them up. They are from a 1976 Topps set.
And finally, we get to the main event, and where I spent most of my money. I was at a table with a dealer that is new to these shows, building the "volume discount" stack I keep referring to. Some nice cards, for sure. The dealer was quite a talker, telling me all about his wife not liking cards all over their house and other stories. Then he pulled out a small stack from behind the table and showed me a couple of cards that I was VERY interested in, but figured I had no shot at due to my tiny budget. They were pretty beat up. He pulled one card out and mentioned that he had offered it to someone earlier for $50 and that they might come back later to get it. I (expecting to be laughed at) offered him $25 for it. He didn't laugh!! But he didn't say yes either. He hemmed and hawed, while I looked through the stack he had brought out. I grabbed one more old beat up card from the stack, and the other cards I had been piling up, and made another offer. I offered $40 for the "volume discount" stack AND the 2 cards below.
And he took it!!
As you can see, they both have serious flaws, especially the 3rd year Alcindor. How much do you think I cared at that price?
