Trade with Shoebox Legends

Firstly, let's give a quick promo to the draft that is going on over at the already mentioned Shoebox Legends before I start showing off some off the cards that came my way. 17 rounds. At least 4 bonus rounds. Great (mostly) hockey and baseball cards for 22 dollars that range from Young Guns to vintage cards. Head on over and sign up!

This started on zistle as a small trade for miscellaneous commons, and kinda sorta expanded. I got those cards together. Then I went to a show, where I found one of the 10 cards on his top 10 wanted list. And then I thought "Hold off for a bit. I'm going to the Expo. Maybe I'll find more goodies. There I came across 2 more from the top 10, and 82-83 OPC Commons, and it expanded even more. I ended up with a couple sweet hits, and some nice Jays and Mets.

But, weirdo that I am. I don't open with the hits. I open with this card.

A sure-fire one for the mask binder. I loved the Frank Nitti mask from his days in Philly. That one will most certainly get posted someday. I liked that he kept the gangster motif, and did so with a mafia shark. A sweet one that was part of the original zistle trade proposal.

After acquiring a number of them at the Expo, Sportflics might become cards, like Diamond Kings that I'll never tire of. Here's a Ron Darling:

Minis are always welcome. Such as this Gypsy Queen backed David Wright.

As well as a couple of Turkeys.

And the best way to wrap this one up. 9 80s Jays & Mets commons. Enough to fill a page! Plus, anything with "Le Grand Orange" is automatically great.

I don't just buy sportscards at the dollar store

That's true. I often buy snacks. And binders. And DVD cases for my Rifftrax. And card album pages. And sudoku books. And bubble envelopes to send cards out.

OK. Maybe a lot of what I buy there is directly related to the hobby. I often buy oddball items. Usually of questionable licensing. I've bought a Tie Domi mini bulldog. I've also purchased this, and with Chan Ho Park calling it a career earlier today, it seemed like now was a good time to post this little item:

The card didn't come with it. I just wanted to put something next to it to show its size.

The tag reads:

"Chan Ho Park #61 Korea. Issue Date July 20, 1999. Park's a superstar in his native Korea and the favorite of Southern California's large Korean-American population -- but NL batters aren't so fond of him."

And that's why it pays to look beyond the card area for interesting collectibles.

And since I want to get through the Expo posts before 2013, here's a 6 pack of Mets I found in dime bins.

The Piazza is out of /3500, and the ''P' square is indented. The Rivals should show up in gold as opposed to swamp creature green. Not sure why I picked up the Alomar card. I'm trying to forget his time in Queens as best I can.

Expo Goodies - Part 15

This dime box update is Ginterrific!

A mini!

Game show junkie me is probably the only person on the planet who would call this particular card his favourite in this set. Not the favourite non-baseball card. The favourite card. Period.

If Chuck doesn't suit your non-baseball needs, how about a ship?

Back to baseball. I only picked this one up because I liked the picture of the Twins logo.

A horizontal Met.

A Hall of Famer!

A kid from Etobicoke!

A pair of Perez sketches. And finally, a Jays slugger. (OK. This one was a quarter)

What I don't expect from a dollar store repack

When I pick up a repack, there are things I expect. It is mainly from the overproduction era, with some recent cards thrown in. But there are gems. Perhaps there would be a unique minor league hockey jersey photo from an ITG set. A memorable photograph. A unique design that I'd never seen before.

I don't expect refractors.

Check that. I don't expect X-fractors.

I don't expect rookie X-fractors.

I don't expect rookie X-Fractors that are numbered.

I don't expect rookie X-Fractors that are numbered out of 199.

But hey, sometimes these beauties show up where you least expect to find them.

I still was thinking that it was merely a nice card, but searching for more information on it, showed that someone managed to sell one of these on ebay 2.5 months ago for $24.99. Do I think I'll try to flip it? Nope. Just like the dime box Verlander rookie, this one looks far too nice in a top holder.

As always, the best thing about repacks. If you find a gem like this, there's more cards to go with this. All for a dollar. 9 more basketball cards. 10 more football and 10 more baseball cards. That's always something good to expect.

What does it say about me that my second favourite card in the pack is a card from of a punter from one of my least-liked teams?

Expo Goodies - Part 14

More Diamond Kings! With this posting, here's a foursome of Mets. The Mets fan in me is happiest with the Darryl, but the Canadian was happiest to add Le Grand Orange to my collection.

For some reason, I picked up a couple of Tim Salmon cards as well. I was hoping to find his 1993 Upper Deck checklist card, due to the great picture on the front of it. Failing that, these two were interesting enough to make up for not finding that one.

Plus, I picked up even more literature!

I'm far too lazy to scan the full book this time.

Expo Goodies- Part 13

Let's keep going through these today with a team theme to this post. I started scanning through the cards I bought, going through it by team. I didn't bother with Mets, Jays or Expos, since I know I had a good number of those. Surprisingly, I did end up with 7 Astros out of the bunch. (6 1/3 is more accurate, though). So, here's all the Houston Astros cards I ended up pulling from dime bins.

How about a psychedelic card of an almost certain Hall of Famer? How about another one who might get there as well?

On the upside, at least the second one doesn't have the background moving when the card does. Not so much with this one:

Squint! Squint! It's a three player Sportflics card. I picked it up because of the Keith Hernandez Mets part that is most visible in this scan. Will Clark's also there. Really. He is. That's his foot behind Keith's. The Astros portion is Glenn Davis in the background, the only one of the three to be shown batting. Is 3 players too much for a card like this? I've got a 12 player card that I'm more than happy with. So the answer is a solid 'No.'.

Time for something a little more subdued.

Easily the thickest card I picked up. Thicker than the few relics I picked up. If I'd forgotten my keys, this card would have been used to break in when I got home. Naturally, I grabbed some Diamond Kings as well.

Nice. But why didn't I pick up the Nolan Ryan one as well out of a quarter bin? D'oh! I remedied that at COMC Black Friday. And, for our last Astros card. How about a speedster?

OK. This one I just picked up because it was the son of a guy who I liked during his Montreal stint. I've picked up cards for sillier reasons. Well, there's another bunch of Expo cards out of the way.

Expo Goodies - Part 12

Now, we get to the Carlos Delgado portion of the show. The best Delgado find came out of a quarter box, as opposed to the dime boxes I raided elsewhere. Worth a quarter as opposed to a dime? For me, it was, as it knocked one of the cards out of my Top 10 most wanted list.

Delgado and Piazza on the same piece of cardboard. A top prospects card with two of my favourite players? Yes! Yes! A thousand times YES! As for the other two guys, Donnie never made the bigs, but Brook did jump around to 4 big league teams from the mid 90s through 2004.

I guess it wasn't surprising in retrospect, but this was the only card of Delgado I picked up where he was in a Mets uniform. With the show being just outside Toronto, there were a lot of Blue Jays cards available featuring Carlos. I suppose I could have just grabbed a fistful out of the dime box and still left happy, but I did narrow the # of cards down as the searching went on. The hardest thing was deciding which ones to post here.

So, here's some artwork for the culturally inclined.

Maybe another card of Delgado when he was still considered a catcher?

But I think this one was my favourite solo-Delgado card of the day. A classic pose with Dome in the background.

Hey, I'm about 40 percent of the way through the box! I'll get this done by 2013.

Expo Goodies - Part 11

Back from the Grey Cup, and trying to catch up and get a lot of missed sleep under my belt. Let's just randomly go through 5 cards from the show without rhyme nor reason.

Cooperalls! How did my collection survive without at least one card of those? That had to be fixed, and I'm glad it has been.

If I've got a Whaler one, I might as well have a Flyers to go with it. Although typing Mark Taylor isn't nearly as much as fun as typing Risto Siltanen. Finns might disagree.

I got this one for my set build, but it turns out I already had it. At least I've now got the 9th card for another page in the mask binder.

Let's see. Do I care that the card has a crease in it, or do I acquire a '72 Tommy John for a dime? Exactly. Let's wrap up this posting with some literature.

Expo Goodies - Part 10

By the time this gets (hopefully) auto posted, I'll be sitting through a halftime show featuring Justin Bieber and Carly Rae Jespen. I'm guessing this one will be more of a show for those watching at home than those in attendance.

In the meantime, more Dime Box goodies from the Expo, this being one of several that will focus in on Diamond Kings.

That's a really great portrait of Pops. I also like how the colours on the middle of the card match with the hat and jersey. The Pena one isn't as nice, but I do like how the smaller portrait isn't your standard for the set. Instead, there's a defensive portrait of Tony in the tools of ignorance.

A classic Fernando! Nice to see one of Steve before he ended up charged for all those murders in Springfield.

I'm not really a fan of the McGee portrait. He just seems stunned by something. I like the Eck, but I think I would have rather seen him as an Oakland A on the card. He's wearing it on his HOF plaque. The card is a Hall of Fame Hero. Why the Cardinals?

Wrapping this scheduled post up with a completely random minor league card. I just picked it up because I liked the name 'Bowling Green Hot Rods'.