Flea Market Finds #170: Typical 90's Nostalgia

It was cloudy and cold... but the ground was dry enough to encourage about 70% of the regular vendors to set up this past Saturday at the Branham High School Flea Market.

The cup guy from January was back.  He was my first stop... 

Purchase #1:  Fast Food Cups $5

1991 Kentucky Fried Chicken #NNO

1992 McDonalds Team USA #5

1995 McDonalds Looney Tunes #4

Honestly.... I have no interest in collecting cups, but I had never seen that MJ Looney Tunes cup before... and I figured that was worth the asking price alone.

Purchase #2:  Senior League Signatures $15

After I had paid for the cups, I started talking baseball with the vendor.  He's a big Yankees fan, so we talked about Gerrit Cole and the upcoming season.

Another guy was looking through his dollar boxes, so I told him I would come back and dig through them after walking around.  That's when he mentioned a collection of autographs he recently acquired.

Back in the late 80's/early 90's... his friend attempted to get every card in the 1989-90 T&M Sports Senior League set signed.  He lived in Florida at the time and attended a bunch of the Senior League games.

 

He fell five cards short, but also managed to get a bunch of duplicates signed.  I purchased all of them.  The lot was filled familiar names, but the one that inspired the purchase was Lowell Palmer:

1989-90 T&M Sports Senior League #86

It's good to know that fifteen years after pitching in his final MLB game, he still rocks the shades.

Purchase #3:  Sports Illustrated Mini Posters $40

There was a first time vendor with some cool 80's sets and unopened boxes.  I was interested in his box of 1981 Donruss golf and a stack of Laughlin Old Time Black Stars singles from the 70's.  Honestly... it's not the stuff you normally see sitting on a table at the flea market.  He obviously knew his stuff, because his prices weren't of the bargain variety.

He did have this stack of miniature (approximately 6" x 9") posters that resemble the ones advertised in Sports Illustrated back in the early 80's.

There were four guys from the 1981 Marketcom Mini-Poster set and six from the 1982 Sears Roebuck set.  They are almost identical in design on the front, but on the back it's a little easier to tell them apart:

1981 Marketcom Mini-Poster #35

1982 Sears Roebuck #NNO

There were more than sixty in this lot.  Joe Montana is a legend in these parts and was the key to this purchase.  There were eight of them sitting in this stack and I'm already working on a trade deal with my buddy who sets up at shows.

The 1982 Sears Roebuck set only has twelve to fourteen cards, so I might try and build this set.  If I do, I'll use the duplicates from this lot to help me with that project.

Purchase #4:  Captain Canuck Comic Book & Card $1

1993 Semple Captain Canuck Reborn #0

Found a guy with a bin of comic books.  Normally I don't even bother flipping through them, but I saw some Wizard price guides and was hoping they had promo cards inside of them.  They didn't.

But seeing this comic book reminded me of Waxaholic.

1993 Semple Promo #NNO

Inside of the comic book bag was this promo card which I thought was a nice bonus.  The vendor also pointed out that this particular comic was signed, but I'm not really familiar with comic book authors or artists outside of guys like Stan Lee, Todd McFarlane, and Stan Sakai.

Purchase #5:  San Jose Sharks Bobble $1

2014-15 Patrick Marleau Bobblehead

About a decade ago... I went through a phase where I was really into collecting bobbles.  These days, I will buy them if they're athletes I collect and they're cheap.  Hard to pass up a San Jose legend for a buck.

Purchase #6:  Dollar Bin $1

I eventually made my way back to the "cup" guy.  The guy who was digging through his dollar boxes was finished, so I flipped through them.  I ended up grabbing this Nolan Ryan that was part of an online exclusive product I was into a few years ago: 

2020 Topps 52-Card Baseball Game #8 (Cleat)

I still need the Rickey Henderson and Frank Robinson for my set build.

The vendor also had a box of random stuff he was selling for a quarter each...

Purchase #7:  Random Stuff $1

1987 National Sports Collectors Convention Media Badge

This badge is what caught my eye.  I didn't attend this show, but it is a piece of Bay Area history.  1987 was the first and only time the National Sports Collectors Convention was held in San Francisco.

Next up was this cool 70's Army pocket guide:

US Army Why We Salute Pocket Guide (April 1973)

Figured it was worth a quarter.

The last two items were two Pinnacle Mint coins from the 90's:

1996 Pinnacle Mint Bronze Coin #NNO

In addition to this Elway... I also bought a Brett Favre.  Unfortunately I seem to have misplaced it... which is a bummer.

I'm pretty stoked about the mini-posters purchase.  These are the kind of deals I'm hoping to find every time I go out to the flea market.  But realistically... the cups, coins, and bobblehead are more typical in this day and age.

Well that wraps up my most recent trip to the flea market.  I look forward to reading your thoughts down below in the comments.

Happy Thursday and sayonara!