Card Show Road Trip

Would you be willing to hop into your car and drive 140 miles to attend a 40 table card show?  Depending on how deprived you are of card shows or how much you're craving cardboard and camaraderie... your responses will range from "heck yeah" to "hell no".

I usually fall into the latter group, but my buddy was looking to get out of the house and away from the kids, so he offered to pay for gas if I was willing to drive him to Sacramento on Saturday.

The roads were wet and the drive took two hours, but there's something about hanging out with your friend and rambling about cardboard.  About twenty minutes away from the show, one of our friends called and mentioned that he'd gone to this show before and it was a complete waste of time.

Obviously... that's the last thing you want to hear after driving for almost two hours.  Luckily he turned out to be wrong.  There were probably around twenty dealers carrying everything from wax boxes to Kris Bryant autographs to bargain bins.

You can probably guess what I was attracted to.  I spent over two hours digging through one guy's 5¢ boxes and another guy's 10¢ boxes.


Purchase #1:  160 Baseball Cards $8

If you like newer inserts and rookie cards, then you would have loved this guy.  I was able to fill in plenty of gaps inside my insert binders... but was actually a little sad to see that most of these 2015 Topps inserts are pretty much worth less than a taco sauce packet from Taco Bell.

Since I'm way too lazy to scan even a tenth of these cards, I'll just share a few of my favorites:

By far... my favorite card is the Biz Markie First Pitch insert:

I've wanted this card since I laid eyes on it... and ironically... I had no clue that he was an A's fan until Topps released it.

If you're not familiar with Mr. Markie... his Just a Friend is one of those iconic rap songs that you just can't listen to without smiling and singing along.  

Purchase #2:  80 Baseball and Football Cards $8

There was one other dealer with cheap cards.  His prices were higher, but he had a larger variety of cards to choose from.  I spent most of my time digging through his football boxes, because two other guys were looking at the baseball box.  Sadly... most of the baseball singles were sloppy seconds... however I did managed to find a pair of cheap vintage cards:

And a boatload of inserts/parallels for my football inserts binders... plus a few new Hawks and Packers for my collection:

Purchase #3:  20 Junk Wax Packs $5

Do you know that purchase you kinda wish you could take back?  That's this purchase.  Do I really need commons from the 1991 Stadium Club set?  The honest answer is "no".  But at that exact moment when I was passing this guy's table... the allure of 25¢ packs was just too much to resist.


Purchase #4:  Robin Yount Autograph $22

2015 Topps Tier One Clear One Auto #RY

This card is sweet.  It's a reasonably priced card that features an on-card autograph (not really... but it's better than a sticker autograph) of a first ballot hall of famer.  But that's not the reason I bought it.

If you look carefully at the serial number, you'll notice that it has the number that Yount wore in Milwaukee for twenty seasons.  This is a huge addition to my Prime Number PC.


Purchase #5:  Rickey Henderson Manufactured Relic $3

2015 Topps Update Etched in History #EIH3

I've always had a soft spot for most manufactured relics... especially ones with chunks of metal that can be used as desktop paperweights on those windy days in the office.

Well... there's my card show haul.  There were a lot of nice cards I was interested in... including a couple of '56 Hank Aarons and a sweet Russell Wilson booklet card.  But I'm on a budget and there's one more card show this month.  Sadly... after that... there aren't any card shows in my area until April when the annual TriStar show arrives.

It's your turn...

Assuming you're bored and have nothing better to do... what's the furthest you'd drive to check out a small (40 table) card show?

Happy Monday and sayonara!