Flea Market Finds #152: Shoebox Collection & Some Coke

Not last weekend, but the weekend before... I hit up the Branham High School Flea Market.  It's another one of those once a month flea markets located in the parking lot of a local high school.  It's smaller than the De Anza Flea Market, but usually has more sports memorabilia.

Purchase #1:  Magazines $2

The first dealer in the first row is a regular vendor who has plenty of regulars looking for sports memorabilia.  He had a bunch of magazines for a buck or two.  I grabbed two $1 magazines...

The first one is a Legends magazine from the 90's.  Each issue comes with 9 cards and three postcards that a printed on high quality card stock.

Here's a look at the 9 cards in this issue:

Solid lineup here.  Nine athletes.  Nine hall of famers.  There's also an offer for readers to purchase a Tony Gwynn signed issue for $25.

If you'd like a closer look at the autograph, I bought one back in 2013 for $17.16 on eBay.

And here are the three postcards in this issue:

Three more athletes.  Three more hall of famers.  Not bad for a buck, right?

The other magazine I purchase is actually a program for the 1984 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament:

I'm not really into basketball these days, but this program is pretty cool.  That Final Four featured several future NBA players... most notably... Patrick Ewing and Hakeem Olajuwon.

The back cover is pretty sweet too.  It featured the first 300ZX... which were popular for nearly two decades.  Not sure if any of my readers are car enthusiasts... but Nissan just released their latest Z this year (technically a 2023 model). 

Purchase #2:  Quarter Bin Cards $2

The same vendor with the magazines also had several quarter boxes (or 5 cards for $1).  I picked out these ten cards:

I've dug through his boxes before and always seem to walk away with at least one new Artist Proof or Dufex parallel for the collection.

1997 Bowman's Best International Preview #BBI 19

I added this card to the stack, because there was a time when it was a pretty sweet pull.  Although it's a Bowman's Best card, it actually came out of a 1997 Bowman Series 2 pack.

If you collected back in 1997, then you probably remember the hobby hype around this guy.  According to the January 1998 issue of Beckett Baseball, he was the 5th hottest player in the hobby:

He was popular enough to grace the back cover of that very issue.  This parallel I picked up was listed in that price guide for $20.  Today it's 1/100th of that price.

Purchase #3:  Shoebox Collection $10

The final thing I grabbed from the first vendor were two boxes filled with baseball cards:

I wish I could report some hidden treasures, but these were pretty much a bunch of non-mint base cards.  I'll probably just take these into the classroom as samples for students.

Purchase #4:  Mt. Rushmore Coke Bottle $3

After dropping the boxes and magazines off at the car, I returned to the first row and stumbled across this massive collection of Coke bottles:

This lady had been collecting them since the late 80's with her husband.  They had tons of cool ones ranging from Disney to sports.   Most of the bottles were $3 each or $15 for a six pack.

I considered buying a few different ones, but settled on this one for my classroom:

The uniquely shaped bottle commemorates the 100th Anniversary of South Dakota.  I think it's cool that the soda is still intact after thirty-three years.

Purchase #5:  Digable Planets Photo $1

A few weeks ago, a Digable Planets song (Rebirth of Slick) came on while my students were working on a project.

One of them recognized the song and started singing it.  Figured she'd think this was cool, so I bought it for her.  

Purchase #6:  Basketball Cards $10

My final purchase of the day was off of a guy who had several boxes of 90's baseball, basketball, and football inserts.  Every card was priced with what appeared to be current eBay prices.  I was kind of impressed with all of the effort he put into pricing his inventory.  You don't see that very often with flea market vendors in my area.

There were a small percentage of cards he didn't have priced.  Being the bargain collector that I am, I passed on the priced cards... but inquired about two basketball parallels. 

1995-96 Skybox E-XL Blue #10

I really liked this product back in the 90's... and recognized this as one of the blue parallels.  It's not rare (one per pack), but it's MJ.  The guy said he wanted $10 for this card and $4 for this Kobe parallel:  

2000-01 UD MVP Silver Script #189

I offered $10 and he accepted.

That wraps up another trip to the flea market.   De Anza is this upcoming Saturday.  The plan is to get out there and walk around.  It's generally cheap entertainment, but gas prices are still insane out here.

I miss the days when gas was only $3 per gallon.  Starting to think those days are a thing of the past.  Last week I paid $6.69/gallon.

What are you all currently paying for gas?

Happy Tuesday and sayoanara!