My favorite Holiday next weekend...the card show is in town!

I absolutely love the third weekend of January.  It is simply wonderful.  It is the time of year the big sportscard show comes into town!  It is one of the very, very few times, I unman my desk during work time for a few hours and drive out of my comfort zone to a far away land known as downtown Houston, to search for cards and collectibles I can either have fun with, sell for profit or both. 

It is also a wonderful time that I can take my son with me.  He is 9 years old and has gone with me for probably 5 years in a row or so.  It is a time where he looks for star wars things (though I suspect he'll be on the lookout for legos this time!), we get our hot dogs and orange sodas and shop!  The past few years, my dad has gone with us too since my folks have lived here.  I typically try to go when it opens on Friday afternoon to stay until night to get the best cards, and then again on Sunday morning and stay until the afternoon to get the best deals. 

Years past, I have scored some cool deals on vintage cards, massive amounts of cheap-o complete sets, autographs and one year - even graded britney spears cards with a piece of her clothing on them.  I figured at a buck a pop, someone out there would want them.  Sure enough, some guy in Canada bought them all from me. 

One year, I picked up 5 Pete Rose autographed bats that I was able to sell pretty easily.  Another year, I picked up autographed balls of Thomas, Snider, Kaline, and a few other folks - they didn't sell too quickly. 

I absolutely love going there and diving into the boxes.  I always feel like I would be much better suited with having 5 of me going out and looking at the same time.  Can't wait to see what I come up with this year!

Topps Complete Sets for your College Tuition

So, admittedly 2012 has not been the best to me so far just yet when it comes to work. Very many hard things to go through, that have made me pull out my hair. I just noticed that I had not made a blog posting in a very long time ... since last year, in fact! I know it has been less than 2 weeks, but that seems to be an eternity.  

I was just thinking about a deal I made a while back, and it stemmed from what many parents/grandparents did back in the 80s/90s.  They bought their child/grandchild baseball cards in hopes of paying for their college tuition.  It was seen as a solid investment, thanks to the skyrocketing interest and prices in baseball cards from that time period. 

Well, I ran into such a person - it was a college kid who realized his topps sets he was given (one a year from 1983 to 2006, I believe) wasn't quite going to pay his way through Harvard, so he wanted to unload them. 

And unload them, he did.  He sold them for what a few college books from your local community college would go for.  That is a far cry from putting you through college.  Could you imagine?  That was the mentality back then though.  What a bummer to realize the true value of cards are a mere fraction of what you thought they would be worth! 

It was fun to have that run of Topps sets.  I didn't hang onto them for long, as I had purchased a large collection the day before, for about $1,000 that had many jersey/autographed cards and then sold everything as a lot for $2,000 to someone else.  I was able to keep some pretty cool stuff too, which is always nice!