30 Day Baseball Card Challenge

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Flea Market Finds #54: Grab Bags and Busted Boxes

When:  Saturday, February 15th
Where:  Branham High School Flea Market
What:  Sports Card Grab Bags, Soccer Cards, and Non-Sports Cards
How Much?:  $10

After a brief hiatus, I woke up last Saturday and decided it was time for me to get back out there and walk around a flea market.  I took a few weeks off after being a little burnt out and dealing with a small cold.  The Branham HS Flea Market was the perfect place to get my feet wet before diving back in full throttle, because it's pretty small with a high percentage of vendors who are cleaning out their closets.

It took me less than an hour to walk around the seven or eight rows, but in that amount of time I discovered five people with trading cards.  In the second to last row, I stumbled across a guy who had a few boxes of sports and non-sports cards sitting on his table.  While sifting through his stuff, he proceeded to pull out three more storage boxes of cards from his truck.

We started talking and he told me about his recent storage unit purchase that contained all of these cards.  He really wanted me to take the whole collection off of his hands, but the last thing I need is thousands of cards from the Junk Wax Era, so I settled on these...

Purchase #1:  Sports Card Grab Bags  $5


I'm not sure if this was a great purchase or a terrible one.  On one hand, I gonna have fun digging through these over the next couple of days.  But from the looks of it, these bags are filled with overproduced 90's cardboard.


Purchase #2:  1988 Topps Fright Flicks Opened Box  $2


The majority of his collection was forty to fifty wax boxes that had been busted and thrown back into the box.  I grabbed two.  The first one was this 80's non-sports box that features a bunch of horror movies like:  A Nightmare on Elm Street and Poltergeist.

I had a stack of these from another non-sports card purchase, so I hoped to make at least one set from the two lots.  Unfortunately... I didn't.  Anyone have any singles from this set laying around?


Purchase #3:  1990-91 Pro Set England Opened Box  $2


I picked this box with one specific purpose... to finish my Pro Set soccer set.  One problem.   I'm building the 1991-92 Pro Set soccer set.  Looks like I'll be building both now.


Purchase #4:  1994 Upper Deck World Cup 'Toons Set  $1


After striking out on the first two boxes which left me with two incomplete sets, at least I walked away with one complete set.  There were also a bunch of cool looking holograms that were inserts for this product.  Guess what?  Another incomplete set.  I have sixteen of the twenty-four holograms, so I guess add another one to the list of sets I'm building.

Okay... so maybe this wasn't my finest flea market outing, but you can't win them all.  At least I'm motivated to get up and go out there again.  And the timing couldn't be better.  I have this week off and one of my favorite flea markets is the Capitol Flea Market on Thursday.  It's the same one I usually go to on Sunday, but on Thursdays there seems to be better deals.  I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Happy Tuesday and sayonara!

10 comments:

Commishbob said...

$10 is the cost of one movie ticket these days. Surely you'll get more enjoyment and entertainment value out of that purchase than the remake of Robocop would give you. I'd pick up that $5 box in a heartbeat and give out the bags as prizes to my elementary kiddos.

If that footie box yields any Man U dupes, keep me in mind will ya?

Play at the Plate said...

I hope that grab bag box yields some goodies!

Yankeejetsfan said...

Good luck on those grab bags!

BobWalkthePlank said...

Good luck!

Mark Hoyle said...

You will have to keep us upgraded on what's in all the grab bag packs.

Dion's IP Autos only said...

Hey Fuji,
Take a look at my Atlantic League list on my blog if you get any of them in your goody bags I'd be happy to take them off you hands in a trade of course also that list will build as guys get signed so please check back. Thanks, Dion

Fuji said...

They're yours. Email your address and I'll ship them out today or tomorrow.

Fuji said...

Nothing huge. A handful of Gwynn and Maddux cards for the collection, plus two rookie cards I didn't have (1991 Fleer Update Ivan Rodriguez & 1989 Donruss Baseball's Best Ken Griffey Jr.).

I also found a unique PC that I'll be posting and giving away in today's post, so stay tuned.

Fuji said...

Thanks guys. Unfortunately there wasn't anything too special in these grab bags... but at the same time I didn't expect much either. It was a blast sifting through the first half of the box, but a lot of the packs started looking like every other pack. Typically each pack contained a bunch of commons with one or two stars mixed in.

Dion - I checked your list and didn't recognize any of those names except Hobson and Karkovice. I wish I would have seen your comment earlier, because I would have pulled them out... if there were any in there to begin with.

Jafronius said...

Oh well, they can't all be winners!