Card Show #2 Loot

Buckle up this is going to be a long one.


The day didn't start off on the best foot. I left the house late. Real late. I wish I could blame it on the kids or the wife but really it was all my fault. I overslept. That never happens to me. Throughout the week I don’t use an alarm clock and I have to be at work by 6 AM. It is not that I don’t set the thing I just automatically wake up before it goes off. Anyway my plan was to leave the house by 10 AM. At 10:30 my son woke me up asking when we were leaving. I wish I could say he was anxious to go to the show but in reality I promised him Chucky Cheese.

So after a shower, packing the car and getting the kids ready I left at a little after 11 only to turn around to get the MP3 player my son forgot. We then made a stop at McDonald’s for brunch. The new 50pc nugget meal is the best deal on the planet. (Best deal except for those $2 Goudey Friday night) “Are we there yet” started in Rolla. For those of you that don’t know MO that well it is about 100 miles out. I made St Louis in near record time. I have only made it to St Louis faster one time. Back then I was younger, dumber, and defiantly really really lucky.  Fast cards and youthful feelings of invincibility are not a good combination. At the time I considered the left hand shoulder a good place to pass if there happened to be oncoming traffic. Once again really really lucky. On this day I pulled into the show at about 2:50. The fact that I left at 11 wasted about 15 mins going back for the MP3 player and stopped for McDs drive-through and still made it at 2:50 says I was basically flying low.

During the dash to the show my lovely daughter spilled a large soda in the car. Did in land on her toys, no? It landed on MY CHECKLIST. So I go into the show with wet… sticky… checklist in hand, which is still better than the last show.

All the hurrying to get there put me into hyper drive. Not Good. My patience goes out the window and I get scatter brained. I also can’t get things done quickly enough. The fact that tables were already starting to clean up only made it worse. I ran from table to table pulling a kid machine-gunning questions at dealers. Where are your 60 high numbers? 61s? Have any Preacher Roes? ’62 Virdon? Affordable Williams cards? Any really old Red Sox? Next table please. I haphazardly ran from table to table throughout the show and was so all over the place I came up empty handed after my first pass through the place.

I was dragging my daughter along when Rhubarb called. I found him across the show and headed his way. I had done a Twins excorcism on my cards earlier in the week and trapped the evil things all in one box which I handed him upon introduction. In return he handed me a box of Red Sox and some much needed 15 card pages. I’ll get the box in a different post but I have to say what I gave him was in no way worthy of the stuff he gave me. I’m afraid to say that I don’t’ think I made a very good impression. I was in hyper mode, dragging kid, and trying to tell my wife not to buy the stack of cards that some dealer handed her across the aisle (he was trying to sell her 87 Topps Red Sox for a buck a piece) while I was talking to David. I was in such a hurry I had meant to take the camera along to document our meeting but forgot it. I’m afraid I probably came of kind of jerkish. David was a real nice guy and probably felt a little slighted. If so I’m sorry. Hopefully I can make it up to him in cardboard one day.

After our brief introduction I dashed off after some cards and made my first purchase. It was one of the cards on my priority list. Sweet playing day completion; or so I thought. More on that later.

**Scans look aweful.  I am playing with my scanner settings becaue I am tired of it taking 20 mins for a picture to upload, even when using high speed.  The scans look bad but it took less than 30 seconds to up load with dial-up.





Still making mad dashes from table to table. If I could turn back the clock I would have stayed at one table and looked through every single card before going to the next. But in my mind they were all closing and if I didn’t’ get through each table fast I would miss something. I’m sure I missed WAY WAY more by being in a hurry. The next cards I bought were form Sports Memories. The guy that Dayf posted about. His booth could almost be considered a sports card museum. He had some of every vintage set you ever heard of. He didn’t’ however have the last 1960 Topps card I needed #544 Bill Monbouquette. In fact I never found it anywhere. I did knock a bunch of 61s off of my list even though he didn’t have any deal boxes like Junkie talked about. In fact I had a totally different impression of the guy than him. I thought he was pretty high on just about everything and wouldn’t budge a single bit from anything he had priced. To me buying cards is a lot like buying a car. If they don’t come down from the initial asking price I feel like I am getting screwed. Even so I picked up some 61s I needed. I am now 4 cards short of the team set.

There was this one dealer that that was about as loud and over bearing as a dealer could be. Don’t get me wrong he was a nice guy, he even gave my son an 86 Clemens, but he would yell over to other booths and carry on. He had some pretty nice stuff. A few T206s a whole bunch of Goudey and Playball. He even had the Joe Louis 1938 Churchman card I need even though it was priced waaaaayyyyy to high. I did find one card in his case I needed though.

Next thing I bought was a bunch from a guy that was 90% of the way done packing his things. The only case he had left open was his oddball case. I picked up some pretty cool stuff from him.

I have no idea what year it is or what it is worth but I gave $2 for it because it would be my first stamp card. Please help me cardboard encyclopedia, what year stamp is this?   (I really need to get one of those Beckett Books that show all the vintage sets.  I never have shelled out the $30 for one though because I would always rather buy cards with the mone.)

I also picked up this ’54 Red Man Sammy White. It is my first Red Man card.  Not  sure how I am going to store this yet but cool none the less.  Anyone know if they fit better in 2 or 4 card pages?

1959 Ted Williams Fishing card. Because I love to fish this is one of the cards I wanted most out of the set. It is pretty crazy I have 4 of these ’59 Ted Williams cards today because just last week I had zero.  I tried to buy a whole stack of them but the guy wouldn't come down far enough for my taste.

This is a 1962 Kahn’s Hot Dog Bill Virdon. My kids love hot dogs; if cards still came with hot dogs I could put together sets in no time. Okay I guess I just need to go ahead and say it: I am now a Bill Virdon Super collector. I thought I had them all but found another one that I didn’t have. I’m going to start researching Bill Virdon cards and make a list because I’m sure there are more I need. One Ebay search shows Jello and Root Beer cards I need. Anyone know of a good place to find a list of every card for a particular player?

I’m going to end this post on that. Tomorrow I will show what I spent 90% of my money on and give my overall impression of the show. I’ll just say they are some splendidly foxxy cards being posted tomorrow.