Now I know where all the serial #'d cards went

As promised, more to show you from my first day at the National.  Tonight's post will feature more modern stuff, purchased on the cheap (did you expect anything else?)

I found a table that was offering up relics/autos for 60-70% off.  I could have sat there and loaded up on a bunch of stuff, but I didn't really want to blow a good portion of my budget on these types of cards.  I wound up purchasing 4 cards for $15, which I thought was a pretty good deal.

This first one is headed to a certain Texas Rangers fan....

Brian, I have 2 cards coming at ya!

The next 2 are welcome, and cheap additions to my Blue Jays auto/relic collection.  I'm hoping that both of these guys turn it around soon, or the wild card in 2012 will become just another memory...

The Lind is a pretty nice looking auto if I do say so...

This next card is another sad obsession that is plaguing me.  The letter manupatches are becoming a quirky little side bar in my collecting habit.  This one not only has the first letter of my last name, but the team colors are the same as my high school colors....green, white and gold.

 

Danny Putnam.   You remember him, don't you?  Come on....think!!!

OK, I'll end your misery.  Danny spent a grand total of 17 days in the majors during the 2007 season.  Come on, you don't remember his HR off Neal Musser of the Royals?  The A's were ahead 12-3 at the time....

LOL...OK, enough, I get it.  The card actually looks better than what it scans....and like I said, the letters are a bit of a weakness.

Now, as the title of the post leads you to believe, a little bit of insanity took place at the show.   I printed out the entire want list, all 900+ numbers needed, and wandered the floor.  Sure enough, I came upon a table that had boxes of nothing but serial numbered cards for 50 cents apiece.

Not just little two row shoe boxes.  Monster boxes.  2 full 3000 count boxes of nothing but serial numbered baseball cards.

Now only if they had a chair I could have used, I would have spent more money at their booth.  But, the lack of seating caused me to stick to my predetermined limit of $20 per table (I am a cheap son of a gun...).

$20 is worth 40 cards....sure enough I found 40 numbers that I needed that were of Topps/Bowman products, and went on my merry way.

See if you can spot the error in the first scan...

There should have been one more lefty hitter in this scan

Here's some more serial #'d goodness for you:

I even did reasonably well in picking out teams where I needed cards, such as the Rockies, Royals and Brewers. 

I still haven't gone through my entire Friday at the show, but suffice it to say that these 2 purchases were the only modern cards I picked up on day 1.  Not what I had expected to do, but hey you never know what's going to fall in your lap until you get there, right??

Thanks for reading, Robert

What the 'L'

You may or may not have seen recently that Eric over at Manupatches & Hochevars (yes, that is my summer title for his blog...) had acquired a Luke Hochevar collection.  In order to recoup some of the money he invested in the collection, Eric listed a bunch of cards on eBay for the masses.

I was fortunate enough to win one of those auctions, for the letter 'L'.

Yes, a Kelly Shoppach By the Letter auto/letter card.  It has long been a project of mine to actually get enough of these letters to spell out my name.  Yes, it's been a long time, but I now have in my collection two letters towards my name.  Last winter at the Expo in Toronto I plucked an 'E' for cheap...

the $4 each that I paid for both of these cards is the right price for me.  I took a look at some of the auctions that are up for these letters (especially the hockey letters), and the prices are crazy.  I think every hockey letter that was listed was going for $100+, which to me is absurd. 

Maybe I'll just pick up another L, and then an H, and then put the four together and tell eBay sellers where they can go for the prices they are charging...

LOL...a little bitter, don't you think? 

Nah....

Eric, thank you for the auction, and for the Hochevars that came with...blogger generosity strikes again.

thanks for reading, Robert