Week 11 starts at a local card show

Good Saturday to all, hope that your weekend is great so far.  This is the start of week 11 for me, and that means doing a little "housecleaning" as far as my piles go on the desk.  This weekend is also a local card show not too far away from me, so I figured I would go check it out.

This was actually the first time I'd been at this show, which is at a mall about 15 miles from my house, not too far to go for me.  I walked into the mall, and it was pretty quiet, like it always is, and the hunt was on for the tables.  I hit the center of the mall, and sure enough it was similar to the last show I was at, a small clustering of about 20 tables, with several dealers having multiple tables.  I remembered the good luck I had at the last show finding cards to go into my collection, so I decided to take a good look at this one.

I make it a habit of making at least one lap of all the tables before I start making any purchases.  I do this because if I buy the first thing I want at a table, I'll do it at the next, and so on until my budget is blown.  In the past I blew my budget early, and wound up missing out on some good deals because I had no cash left.

I began "the walk', and found that this show was a little more football intensive than the last one, which kind of disappointed me, because I'm trying to stay away from football as much as possible.  I didn't see much on the first lap until I hit the 2nd last dealer, who had several boxes of top loaders, and a table full of 70's cards in snap-tite plastic cases.  I started perusing the cases when BINGO!, I saw the '77 Topps snap-tite.  100 cards for $6.  I have to see what's in there, so I politely ask the dealer if I can take the cards out.  The dealer was an older gentleman, and very politely said no problem.  I opened the case and these cards were in OK shape, mostly would grade out to excellent, which for me is perfect because it's a '77 set, and I'm not extremely concerned about condition.  I start flipping through the cards and I come across a checklist.  Now if you're old like I am, you'll find that these checklists remind you of your childhood collecting habits. "Hmmm, I got that card, let me color in the square". You kept doing it until your set was finished (or in my case, until you ran out of $$ to buy cards).  Well, take a look at this checklist:

Back is untouched

Front, not too bad.

The back is pristine!  Wow, I was shocked.  It also looks as if whoever collected this originally only bought one pack, because there are only 12 cards marked off on the front.  I also got some other cards that I was happy to get...

More 77 fun

Let's see we have, Don Money, great name for a baseball player in today's era, not so much back in the 70's.  Luis Tiant, still the best windup ever in my opinion.  Roy Howell played for the Jays in the late 70's and early 80's, and has the distinction of driving in 9 runs in a game against the Yankees.


Bobby Valentine still looks exactly the same today, doesn't he??  Mike Marshall will forever hold the record for most appearances in a season; in 1974 he appeared 106 times, went 15-12 with a 2.42 ERA and won the Cy Young award.  Biff Pocoroba is just there, because I like saying his name. 






This dealer also had some $1 and $2 77 Topps cards on his table, so I picked up a Joe Morgan NL All Star card, a Dave Winfield and a Robin Yount as well.   Grand total for all the cards was $10.  Nice!  I'm almost 25% of the way to completing the set for a grand total of $16.  Get this, I'm not done yet for the card show recap, I've got more cool hits, and a story about a family...well let's just say that I felt bad for somebody there today.  Part 2 is tomorrow, check back then.

Thanks for reading, Robert (34 days)