Flea Market Finds #166: Cards, Cards, & Chicken

I was able to take two quick trips to local flea markets the week before and the week after my trip to Hawaii.  Neither produced any super deals, but I did add a couple of items to my collection.

The first Saturday of the month is the De Anza Flea Market which is held in a community college parking lot.  This one has really boomed over the past year and is almost back to normal in regards to vendors and visitors.

Unfortunately... I only walked away with two purchases that day.  Both are card related... but one of them is currently missing in action.  It was a pair of cheap rookie cards of current players.  I've looked all over the place, but couldn't find them.

The other was this purchase...

Purchase #1:  Baseball Cards  $1

A vendor had a box with 9-pocket pages filled with baseball cards from the late 80's and early 90's, but this card was in the third or fourth page:

1983 Topps #163

I asked him if he was selling them by the page, the box, or individually.  He wanted $40 for the box, but said I could have any singles for 50¢ each.  I set the Ripken page aside... and flipped through the rest of the pages.  There were lots of hall of famers, but the only other card I pulled out was this:

1993 Los Angeles Dodgers D.A.R.E #45

It has perforated edges... so it must have been part of a sheet.  There were a few other Dodgers... but Pedro was the only one worth the guy's asking price.

If I find the two rookie cards from the other purchase, I'll write about them in my next Flea Market Finds post.  Until then, here are my purchases from last weekend's Branham High School Flea Market...

Purchase #1:  Southern Pacific Playing Cards $3

A lot of the flea market vendors in my area toss a bunch of random items into crates with no prices.  I don't usually dig through them.  I'm typically looking for sports memorabilia or other collectibles that shouldn't be stored in this manner.

That being said... I'll usually walk by them and peek into them... just to see if anything catches my eye.  That's when I saw this small box:

Inside was this deck of cards:

The deck features landmarks along the Southern Pacific Lines which ran along the West Coast and as far east as Illinois and Louisiana.  One of the first cards I saw was this famous Bay Area tourist attraction:

Golden Gate Bridge

I knew if the price was right, I'd be taking it home with me.  I flipped through the rest of the deck to make sure it was complete (and it was).

Here are a few of the other cards I found interesting:

San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge

This is the "other" major Bay Area bridge.

Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe

Growing up my family would spend a week or two up in Tahoe during the ski season.  We'd usually stay and spend most of our time in South Lake Tahoe and ski at Sierra Ski Ranch or Heavenly.  However we'd often drive up to Squaw Valley or Alpine Meadows at least once... and along the way, we'd see Emerald Bay.

These days I only visit Tahoe once every two or three years.

However... I drive up to Ashland every summer and along the way, I get a great view of this volcano:

Mt. Shasta

I'm also planning on getting back to my routine of visiting this famous "blogger" town on a bi-annual basis:

Portland & Mt. Hood

I could show off more cool places... but this post is taking up too much of our time.  I'll try to keep the rest of my purchase summaries short and sweet.

Purchase #2:  Star Wars Read Along Tapes $4

Empire Strikes Back (1997)

Classic Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1995)

Not much too say about this purchase other than I'm a Star Wars fan who likes crap like this.  If you want to see and hear these books read aloud, click on the links above.

Purchase #3:  1979 San Diego Padres Yearbook $2

One of the regulars at the Branham Flea Market will set aside Padres stuff for me.  Most of the time, it's stuff I already have or Junk Wax Era cards that I'm not really interested in.

But this particular yearbook was from the Brown & Gold Era and featured a four-pack of hall of famers:

There was also a cool photo of the San Diego Chicken crowd surfing:

Not much else to say about it... other than the price was right.  I usually have a price in my head that I'm willing to go up to... and two bucks was my magic number.

Well... that wraps up another round of flea market finds.  I hope to find the other two rookie cards when I clean my office.  When I do... I'll add them to a future post.

Until then...

Happy Thursday and sayonara!