Last Saturday, I walked around the Serramonte Mall card show knowing that I had already eclipsed my monthly cardboard budget and knew I had to demonstrate self control... which is why I only took $40 with me.
But when I found a guy selling a collection of 80's Garbage Pail Kids... I came to the conclusion: Sometimes you just have to say, "what the f%#k".
My buddy and I went to the bank, withdrew more cash and went back to the guy. We talked some more about the cards, then settled on a price: $90 for the GPK collection and a vintage Oakland A's souvenir baseball helmet that is now hanging up next to my 1972 World Series Champions pennant in my office. The helmet is pretty awesome, but was sort of a bonus. The focus of the purchase was on this binder:
If you've been following my blog long enough, then you know I grew up during the 80's and collected these in middle school. Most of my GPK collection disappeared over the years, but there's always been a part of me that's wanted to go back and collect them. So when this opportunity presented itself, I was all over it.
My purchase included complete sets of eight different original GPK series... and one set that's almost complete:
2nd, 3rd, & 4th Series
5th, 6th, & 7th Series
8th, 9th, & 10th Series
The 4th Series set is missing 5 cards:
137b Deadly Dudley
158b Ig Lou
164b Battered Brad
165a Dana Druff
165b Flakey Fay
If by chance any of you guys have these, let me know... I'd love to trade for them.
At first, I was upset about the missing cards, since the guy told me these were complete sets. But after looking through all of the cards and seeing how many extra variation cards he included, there's not much room for complaints. These cards are in MINT condition... freshly pulled from packs. In addition to that, he sleeved them in brand new Ultra Pro 9-pocket pages. The only thing I replaced was the binder, because the old one was a little dusty.
Plus... he threw in a couple of Series 3 wax packs...
Okay... so maybe these aren't for everyone. They don't have famous athletes on them... or even scenes from a favorite movie. But... they're a piece of my childhood and I'm thrilled to add them to my collection.
What about you...
Do you collect anything outside of sports memorabilia?
If so, do any of them stem from your childhood?
Just browse me blog and you'll see that I collect everything from Star Wars memorabilia to comic books. In other words, I'm your stereotypical geek ;-)
Speaking of comic books... I'm headed to Barnes & Noble to see if I can find a copy of The Walking Dead Compendium. Happy hump day... and sayonara!
9 comments:
I collect Lego, Cd's and Vinyl Records but I guess I'm still in my childhood :P
The biggest other collection would be 1930s wood radios. Love those things, but they take a lot more space than cards.
Wow nice score Fugi! As a fellow GPK collector, well done sir. I'll to see if I have any of those cards from series 4 in my extras but don't hold your breath.
mini groover - awesome... i collected vinyl in the 80's & 90's... then later moved on to cd's. but i haven't purchased any cd's in over 5 years.
1967ers - wow... that's pretty cool. i can only imagine how much room those radios take up.
cynicalbuddha - fellow GPK collectors unite! thank for checking... if you find any, i'd love to make a trade for them.
Too much room, unfortunately. :)
I like 'em, though. Great sound and they were designed to be special, as opposed to just an appliance.
I picked up a set of Welcome Back Kotter cards not that long ago. Those were the first cards I ever collected.
Never did have the GPK, but I did do Wacky Packages in the late 70s/early 80s.
1967ers - lol... vaguely remember that show from my childhood. never realized they made cards. that's pretty cool. the first time i saw wacky packages was after gpk became popular, so they were considered the vintage version and more expensive. maybe one of these days i'll grab one of those sets too.
What don't I collect? While there are some sports related pins in my collection, the majority don't have anything to do with sports. The same holds true with my pressed pennies. Surprisingly, my baseball collection doesn't have anything to do with sports either. The majority of them are souvenir balls from various places that I've visited (mostly Disney, same with the pins and pennies). I've got a ton of action figures, almost all opened. I've got a small collection of vinyl.
One of these days, I'll finally get the man cave all sorted out and then I can detail all of my collections on the blog.
offy - my favorite posts are when people show off their mancaves & collections. can't wait to check it out.
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