I don’t go to a lot of card shows… as you might guess because this is only the second “Card Show Review” post I’ve ever done. I’ve been to more than two, I just don’t always create a review post. But I still don’t go to a lot of them.
I always see shows advertised by Tidewater Cards & Collectibles, but they are always pretty far away from me. Most of them I would guess are over two hours away. I really don’t like the idea of driving for longer than I might spend at the show. But this time, the show was a bit closer so I figured I would check it out.
But to add to all that, this time I brought along a buddy. I asked my friend and neighbor Sean, from @seanssportscards on Instagram and @sthvt on Twitter, to see if he wanted to tag along. I like having someone to go with but normally it’s my brother. That’s fine, but I would rather go with someone who enjoys cards the same way I do.
I think the show was small, but it was good. It wasn’t really crowded, but the people that were there seemed like a good lot. A good portion of the tables were Pokemon and the like, but it was majority sports cards. There was also a huge table with all the card collecting gear (I think that was the folks putting it on). But most of the tables were not really my thing. They were either single cards, new stuff, or things like that. I’m into the cheap stuff.
I found an old guy in a back who had some unmarked boxes to go through. He basically said they they were cheap (like .10, .25, or .50 a card depending), but just pull some out and we’ll work out a deal. Well, I started going through and making a pile. He had his wife there and said he was really just looking to get rid of some things, you know, for her. So as he saw my stack he just made me an offer for the whole row of cards I was going through. Sounded good to me.
I kept going through, and Sean was going through them too. I ended up offering for both of the boxes he had and he was cool with it. Then I basically had Sean pay me for what he wanted and we made a deal that he could come back and check out if there was more he needed or wanted. To be honest, I probably should have offered less and he would have been fine, but I was OK with what I paid for it.
Let’s take a high level look at what was in there.
Boxing Day
The boxes were not closed up, they were completely open of course so that you could go through them. But basically there was a big five-row box and a small four-row box. Both the boxes had pretty similar content. The big box skewed mostly towards commons, but had a little bit of everything. The smaller box had a lot more stars in it.
Now really neither one had anything crazy in it. I would say that the years were really in the 1995-2002 range. Things went beyond that on either side, but that was what the majority was from a range perspective. That probably doesn’t sound interesting to a lot of people. But for me, a guy who stopped collecting in ’93ish and picked it back up again in ’07ish, that really fills some holes in my collection.
Open the Package
I took these pictures after I started sorting just a little bit, but it was just a high level sort for each box. You can see a couple things in this first box.
First, on the left you see all the non-baseball. There’s some Olympic cards, a tiny bit of hockey (20 cards maybe), a little bit of basketball (a hundred cards maybe), and football (a few hundred cards). Second you see the baseball which is a lot of 1997 Topps, 2002 Topps, and then a good chunk of 2001 and 2003 Topps. The other sets I saw a bunch of were late 90’s Stadium Club and Ultra.
Something you don’t see in this picture was that there were about 20-30 packs of cards that had been opened, but still had cards in them. Some seemed full some not. They weren’t supposed look unopened or anything, they were obviously that way when I go them. It’s just kind of weird that they were not taken out of the packs. That’s actually where a lot of the non-baseball came from.
Here’s the little box and just a little bit more. It was a whole lot more varied than the other box. A lot more randomly placed in the box whereas the other box was a little more organized. It really was a lot more of the same in years and brands and stuff. There was one unopened rack pack of 1986 in there too.
The other stuff you see in here are a bunch of rack packs of 1988 Fleer. That all came from a different guy. He had those out there for a dollar each. I can’t resist stuff like that so I had to grab $10 worth.
Just TTM-it
TTMing is the main reason I do anything right. This is why I like the boxes I was going through with the old dude. I was just picking out anything I thought I could TTM. So these are the stacks I ended up with after a first pass through the boxes. Not too bad a haul. This plus filling some holes in the collection with the rest of it was a successful trick I think.
But on top of all that, it was great to hang out with Sean. He hadn’t really been to a full blown show so it was nice to be part of his first. You never forget your first time you know. We got to know each other a little bit better on the trip back and forth and it was nice to have a partner in crime. Now I want to find another show to see if he’s up for another one.