I have been going to card shows for years. I would say that this is the best one yet..by quite a bit! I went all three days, and took my son with me one of the days, as usual. While his eyes were searching for all things star wars, I was on the hunt for deals that I can have fun with and get rid of in order to keep this a debt free hobby for me. Let's just say I'm going to have to sell more from this show in order for that to happen ;)
Friday evening was great - I had called up a dealer in Oklahoma I know, to bring me some complete sets. He wasn't able to bring as much as he wanted to, but in combination with his sets, a bunch of unopened boxes from my friend who is a dealer at the show, and another table, I ended up with nearly 200 complete sets and unopened blaster boxes. The Oklahoma dealer threw in about 15 starting lineups also...mainly of Griffey.
But that wasn't all. The dealer from Oklahoma had a bunch of very nice framed/matted autographs from guys like Frank Robinson, Terrell Owens, Roger Clemens, Steve Yzerman, as well as 4 autographed bats from Carlos Pena. I grabbed them all ... including 6 of his $.25 boxes. (These are 2 row boxes filled with cards he was selling for a quarter.)
The bulk of my time was perusing the quarter and dollar boxes, to which I ended up getting a huge stockpile full of rookies of Biggio, Bagwell, Griffey and Bonds, not to mention many inserts of Ripken, and other guys. I also picked up around 115 or so baseball jersey cards, and close to 2000 vintage baseball commons.
The next day, I took my son, and he found a vintage Lando Calrissan (sp?) star wars action figure. The dealer (whom I know from years past) said he'd take $5 for it. I asked my son if he really wanted to spend $5 on a little guy like that and he said to me "maybe he will take less for it." That's my boy! (I don't think I ever pay what people are asking ... always ask them to go down when I am buying in bulk at least.) I told him he would need to ask him. So, we went back to the ealer and I told him my son had something to ask.
"Will you go any lower than $5?"
The dealer smiled and obliged, by saying he would take $4. My son was a big help that day in bringing the hauls out to the card, so in addition to our ritual of enjoying an over priced hot dog, sprite and too-big-for-one-person piece of fudge, I got him his star wars figure too.
Later that day, a dealer I had dealt with before, had 13 2/$1 boxes (the cards were 2 for $1...not the boxes, lol!) He also had a collection under his table that he was looking to unload. We got to a dollar figure that made sense, and I ended up taking all of it. The cards were really cool - when I got home, there were tons of stars, and hall of famers (from Legendary Cuts, etc.) in them.
Sunday, I was able to score a really rocking deal on some 8x10 autographs. I got what I could only describe as a dealer's worth of them. Nobody HUGE, and many duplicates, mind you, but I had never seen so many in my life. Now they are all mineeee...bwahahahahaha.
I also picked up about 265 jersey/auto basketball cards (mainly semi-stars and stars). While doing this deal, another dealer came up to me and requested I visit his table when I was done. He had 7 dime boxes of cards, and tons of Gypsy Queen / 2012 Topps inserts & Parallels. He gave me a deal on everything that I was quite happy with - there was also a box he had filled with $3 or 2/$5 cards that I picked up from him.
I went back to another dealer's table that I frequent each year, and he had picked up a nice vintage collection of football cards (mainly incomplete sets from the 70's). He said he would throw in a huge tub of other miscellaneous stuff, plus three 3-row boxes of other cool items as well. I couldn't pass it up, so I didn't. :) There was a Walter Payton rookie, a 1986 Topps complete football set, and lots of other stuff. While I was there, I ended up grabbing a 4-row box of refractors from him too.
The last deal of the day found me waiting at a dealer's table I had been waiting on for a while. He snagged me from friday asking if I wanted to do a deal for a huge amount of sets in the back of his van. Trust me, it wasn't nearly as creepy as it sounds. I ended up grabbing a 5k box and binder of stuff, plus about 28 newer complete sets.
In the end, here is what my garage looks like now. There is even more stuff I got, but I figured I would just post this picture. And to think I have to make room for about 400,000 more cards coming in a bit.
That is a problem I will take ANY DAY over what problems that real life throws at us!
Oh, and if you are interested in any of these things, let me know - I'm always willing to deal!
