30 Day Baseball Card Challenge

Thursday, July 3, 2014

Dime Boxes Rule!

Last Saturday, I showed off my five favorite purchases from the Serramonte Mall Sports Cards, Toys, and Collectibles Show.

Today's post covers everything else I picked up.  Let's kick things off with my dime box purchases.

My buddy set up next to a guy who works for Check Out My Cards and had some of the best dime boxes I've ever sifted through.  Actually they weren't even dime boxes.  He had his vintage cards priced at 12 for a buck.


Obviously this made his table very popular, so I wasn't able to check them out until later in the afternoon.  Even though the box had been picked over numerous times over... I still managed to find nine dollars worth of vintage cardboard.  In the meantime, I stood around and sifted through a boatload of dime boxes filled with all kinds of goodies.


I was able to add close to two hundred new cards to my baseball inserts and parallels binders, including eleven new cards for my Greg Maddux binder and five new cards for my Tony Gwynn binders.  Originally he had the newer cards priced higher than the vintage (8 for a buck), but by the end of the day he charged me the same price as the vintage.

If I had to estimate how much time I spent at this guy's table, I'd probably say I stood there for close to five hours.  But I wasn't finished with dime boxes.

One of my favorite vendor's is a guy named Dion, who has dime boxes that are sorted by player and loaded with rookie cards, parallels, and inserts.


Plus he's one of those vendors who takes the time to talk to you about collecting, so I hung out and swapped sports card stories.  When the dust settled, I had a stack of over 130 cards that set me back another $13.

I would have had more, but a kid walked up a few minutes after and joined me.  Anyways... he jumped ahead of me and started pulling cards that I hadn't gone through yet.  If that wasn't enough, he also had no problem with invading my personal space.  He reminded me of one those "close talkers" who have to be right next to you.  I'm not sure if anyone else has been in a similar situation, but I was pretty annoyed.

Luckily he only hung around for around ten minutes, but in that time he definitely picked out fifty-something cards.

A little later, I ran into the guy who has been selling me '75 Topps Mini lots.  Anyways, he had just purchased a small vintage collection that included some '67 Topps Posters, plus a bunch of Willie McCoveys.

There were several I wanted, but since I still hadn't paid the COMC guy, I settled on his 1965 Topps card:


He threw it in for $5, since I was buying the set of posters.

Okay... almost finished.  I'll combine my final three purchases:



I found the two memorabilia cards at two separate vendors and paid a dollar for the Cormier and two bucks for the Boggs.  As for the 1990 Leaf baseball packs, the COMC guy had these laying around and sold me the twelve packs for $4.

The last card I added to my collection is this memorabilia card of Clint Dempsey:


My buddy Ben gave it to me, since I drove him to the show.  He let me choose between this card and the Tim Howard.  Both guys are superstars that I recognize, but I ended up grabbing the Dempsey.  It's a shame that they weren't able to advance on Tuesday.

By the way... my 1000th post contest ends this Saturday at 7am.  I'll be posting the randomizations and winners sometime during the day.  Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to read and leave comments on my posts over the past 1000 hours.

Well that's it for now.  Happy Thursday and sayonara!

18 comments:

defgav said...

I'll never forget these 1000 magical hours. Congrats again!

Jeff said...

12 for a buck? Jealous

Nick said...

Those are some awesome 12/$1 finds, especially the Robin Roberts! My copy of that one cost five bucks. Love the '73 Cepeda as well. He only played in three games with the A's.

I've never had too much of a problem with those personal space hoarders, though I've heard stories of others having to deal with them. It seems especially prevalent with kids. I'd give them a little more of a pass, as I don't think I was as familiar with card show etiquette at a younger age.

Still, if I see someone else digging through a dime box, I always ask where their place is. It's one of the first rules of card shows.

Hackenbush said...

I like the Mets Maulers. "He was a close talker" "She ate her peas one at a time."

Tony L. said...

What awesome "dime" boxes!

Yankeejetsfan said...

Some great cards you picked up. Congats.

Ana Lu said...

That Dempsey cards looks..funny.
Packs to open is sweet!
On that Mets Maulers card they look so alike. I'm starting to enjoy cards with pairs of players more and more.

Matt said...

Great pickups! Love the 90's cards. You know I am a sucker for those!

Anonymous said...

Another post that made me jealous! Congratulations on your find!

If we didn't live thousands of miles apart, I would've thought "Oh, it's that kid again!" I wrote about a similar youth last year:
http://shlabotnikreport.wordpress.com/2013/07/18/the-unspoken-rules-of-card-shows/

Mark Hoyle said...

Very cool pickups. Love the Boggs

Greg Zakwin said...

Vintage at a card show, ain't nothing like it.

Fuji said...

I ended up screwing up and accidentally extending the contest one additional month. Not sure exactly, but it probably ended up being closer to 2000 hours.

Fuji said...

It wouldn't have bothered me as much if it was a little kid. This one in particular was 12 to 14 years old. I'll go into more detail in tomorrow's post.

Fuji said...

That girl could eat her peas one at a time... anytime. Seinfeld always got the hot chicks.

Fuji said...

I'll bust them one of these days when I'm bored and have a scratch to itch.

Fuji said...

Huge fan of the 90's inserts and parallels too. Scored a bunch for my binders.

Fuji said...

Thanks for sharing that again. It's going to be my Sunday morning post topic.

Fuji said...

That was the final piece for my Boggs Sports Card Trifecta. I'll be showing it off in the near future.