Flea Market Finds #193: Older Periodicals, Cards, and a Stack of 45's

There were a pair of card shows in San Jose on Saturday, October 17th.  One was about 20 to 30 minutes away.  The other was less than 3 miles from my doorstep.  Both charged admission, so I hit up the Branham Flea Market instead.  Free parking.  Free admission.  Fresh air.  I'll choose that over a card show every single time.

The obvious downside to flea markets is the lack of card vendors... especially on the day of a local card show (or in this case... shows).  Thankfully there were a pair of regulars with cards and I purchased stuff from both of them.

Purchase #1:  Vintage TSN's  $5

If you collect sports memorabilia and you walk around Branham on the third Saturday of every month, then you know Rich.  I've purchased tons of stuff from him over the years.  His inventory ranges from bobbleheads to beer bottles to sports periodicals.

He recently purchased a collection of The Sporting News papers from the 60's and was dumping the excess for a dollar each.  Honestly, I'm not really interested in stuff like this... because I don't have the space to store them.  However the price was right and while flipping through his stacks, I immediately stumbled across this:

The Sporting News (4/4/70)

My father's favorite golfer was Arnold Palmer.

The third week in October will always be sentimental for me and my siblings, because it's the anniversary of my father's passing.  When I saw Arnold smiling back at me in the stack, I immediately set it aside in honor of my pops.  I spent another twenty minutes looking through stacks of these periodicals and pulled out four more:

The Sporting News (8/2/61)

The rest of the issues had cool cartoon drawings.  I grabbed this one, because it featured Ted Williams and Babe Ruth.

In 1961, Major League Baseball added four new teams:  Los Angeles Angels, Washington Senators, New York Mets, & Houston Colt .45's.  This cover features the updated MLB map:

The Sporting News (4/12/61)

If you zoom in on New York, you'll notice there's a "?" instead of the Mets.  According to Wikipedia, the team didn't officially announce their name until May 8th.

The Arnold Palmer issue would have been my father's favorite.  Here's mine:

The Sporting News (2/22/64)

I'll never own a 1964 Topps Pete Rose, but this will suffice.  The artist did a great job of capturing Charlie Hustle's likeness.

The final issue I purchased has some pretty big names on the cover:

The Sporting News (3/14/64)

Five pitchers.  Five hall of famers.  But the Rawlings ad on the back was the main reason I added this issue to the stack:

A Mickey Mantle ad from the 60's for a buck?  Yeah, I couldn't pass this up.  The protective sleeves I ordered on Amazon cost more than the issues themselves.

After putting the TSN's into my car, I started walking over the the other card guy who set up at the end of the first row.

Purchase #2:  50¢ Bin Cards  $3

This guy is another regular.  Sometimes he has dime cards.  Other times he has dollar cards.  On Saturday, he converted one of his dollar boxes into a 50¢ bin.  The Baby Jordan was the card that caught my eye first.  It's one of those Jam City inserts that are currently very popular among basketball collectors.  It's hard to tell from my scan, but they're popular... because they're attractive.

2005 UD Arena Football AFL Jerseys #RD-J

Anyone else miss the AFL?  The San Jose SaberCats spent nearly two decades as our local arena football team.  Tickets were cheap.  The game was fast paced and exciting.  And there are a handful of diehard fans who miss them... myself included.  I already have a copy of this card, but I couldn't pass up this piece of history at that price.

2020-21 Skybox Metal Universe Star Rubies Auto #PP-45

I've never heard of Mr. Quinney, but I've been meaning to start a small collection of Las Vegas Golden Knights in honor of my mother.  She enjoyed watching their games during their inaugural and sophomore seasons.

The guy also had dollar comics... so I grabbed a few of those as well.

Purchase #3:  Dollar Comics  $3

1991 Marvel Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey #1

I like picking up comic book adaptations of popular movies.  I don't remember seeing this comic book back in the day, but I remember going seeing this movie at the drive-in theater with some friends.

1987 Comico Star Blazers #1

Any one else watch Star Blazers?  Before Transformers, GI Joe, and Robotech came along... it was my favorite cartoon.  I can still remember the opening song.

1995 Dark Horse Star Wars X-Wing Rogue Squadron

I'll buy any 90's Dark Horse Star Wars comic in good condition for a dollar.  However after I got home I was surprised at how thin it was.  After some research, I discovered it was a special mail order issue from Apple Jacks.

Purchase #4:  Hawaii Mug  $1

This was another Papa Fuji inspired purchase.  My parents were born and raised on Oahu.  That's why I will pick up Hawaii related stuff when it's cheap.  Found this on a lady's dollar table.  

Purchase #5:  Stack of 45s  $9

I ran into a familiar face about halfway through the flea market.  Ten to fifteen years ago he was one of the largest toy vendors at the other monthly flea market I walks around.  At the time, I was really into collecting figures and bobbleheads.  A large percentage of them were purchased from him.

He had a bunch of random toys this time too.  But I locked in on his box of 45's which contained a bunch of songs I listened to back in the 80's.  After pulling out a few, I asked how much he wanted.  Two for a buck was his response, so I went to work and pulled out 18.  It's a mixture of stuff ranging from Ghostbusters to Styx to Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer to Welcome Back Kotter to Cyndi Lauper. 

After packing them into a bag, I started walking away when he asked me if I wanted this as well...

Freebie #1:  STARR Record

1980 Mattel Starr

I don't know much about the toy line, but this record (33⅓) was included inside of a Starr doll back in the early 80's.

It was in the box of 45's that I was going through and set it to the side.  It looked interesting and the flimsiness reminded me of a record you'd find in a magazine or something.  Anyways... I put it back on top of a stack of records.  The vendor must have known that I really wanted it, because he gave it to me for free.

Purchase #6:  A Halloween Magazine  $1

Sports Illustrated for Kids (October 1990)

There's a vendor who is a regular at both flea markets I attend that sells old periodicals.  His booth is always crowded, because people love rummaging through his boxes looking for cool stuff.  I usually walk on by, but every now and then there's a box nobody is looking through so I'll hop on in.  I found this 90's issue of SI for Kids.  The 9-card sheet had been pulled out, but the four card panel was left intact:

If this panel looks familiar, that's because I purchased two copies of this Halloween issue back in 2025 from by buddy Tony at the De Anza Flea Market.

I kept one of the issues intact.  I removed the sheets of cards from the second one.  I will be breaking down this sheet for my Jordan binder.

Branham is much smaller than De Anza, so I always walk around it at least a couple of times.  As I was about to head out, I stopped off at Rich's booth.  By this time he had completely unpacked his truck and had cards on his table.

Purchase #7:  Quarter Bin Cards  $3

Most of you don't care about football, but I was really excited to add that 1996 Topps Favre.  At some point, I will be working on his complete Topps base card run and this will be a part of it.

1990 Pepsi Canseco

He also had a big box filled with 1990 Pepsi Canseco sets.  I think he was asking a buck a piece on these sets, but he had hundreds of them.  So I asked if he'd let me grab three to round out the purchase at $3 and he accepted.

I might have missed out on two card shows, but choosing to walk around the flea market ended up working out for the better.  Until the next one...

Happy Tuesday and sayonara!

The Japanese Jackie

Back on September 1st, 1964... Masanori Murakami became the first Japanese baseball player to play in a MLB game.  His time with the San Francisco Giants only lasted a little over a season, but his place in baseball history will hopefully be remembered forever.

I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Murakami back in 2015 and I have slowly been building a collection of his cards ever since.  Last month, I purchased two autographed inserts of him off of eBay...

2025 Topps First Pitch #FP-2

This card captures Murakami throwing out the first pitch at Oracle Park on May 17th, 2024 in celebration of the 60th anniversary of his MLB debut.

2024 Topps Japan Edition 1989 #89J-48

This card features a cool koi border design and was inserted into 2024 Topps Japan Edition packs.  I'm not 100% sure, but based on the scoreboard it looks like Mashi posed for this photo at Wrigley Field either in 1964 or 1965.

Both of these cards were part of auctions that I won for a combined price of $64.09 ($26.19/$29 + $12 shipping + $4.74 tax).  Before bidding, I researched CGC x JSA pricing... which begins at around $15 per card if you're submitting items in bulk.  With that knowledge, I was very happy to win both of these auctions.

After playing for the Giants in 1965, he was ordered by the NPB commissioner to return to the Nankai Hawks for the 1966 season.  Thirty years later, Hideo Nomo became the second Japanese player (born in Japan) to cross the Pacific to play in the MLB.  Since then over seventy guys have followed their lead including one of the greatest contact hitters in the 21st century and one of the greatest players currently in the game.

Each year, it's exciting to see who will follow in Murakami, Nomo, Suzuki, and Ohtani's footsteps.  This past season fans watched guys like Munetaka Murakami, Kazuma Okamoto, and Tatsuya Imai make their MLB debuts.

Kenny (over at Torren' Up Cards) recently sent me ten pack of 2026 Stadium Club NPB.  It'll be interesting to see if any of these guys eventually come over to the states to play:

Some of you might recognize Tsuyoshi Shinjo (in the #3 spot).  He spent a few seasons with the Mets and Giants in the early 2000's.  These days he's managing the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters.

2026 Stadium Club NPB #139

Can't say that I recognize the other nine guys, but maybe one of them will be the next Hideki Matsui or Masahiro Tanaka.  Only time will tell.  Until then, I'll keep collecting cards of NPB players in hopes that one day I'll get to see them play at Oracle Park or Sutter Health Park.

Thank you Kenny for donating these Stadium Club cards to my collection.

Happy Sunday and sayonara!

The Eras Post

Heat waves suck.  Blog Bat-Arounds rule.

Yesterday Mother Nature turned up the heat in my area and doesn't plan to cool things off for at least the next four or five days.  My happy place is in the mid 50's to mid 60's.  I can tolerate temps into the mid 70's, but anything in the 80's becomes miserable.  Today the temperature will peak in the high 90's.  Not cool (both literally and figuratively).

But what is really cool is when bloggers support each other's Blog Bat-Arounds.  It's been awesome reading everyone's contributions to Kenny's which asked people to write about their proudest collecting achievements.

On Friday, Matt over at Cards Over Coffee started another one.

Taylor Swift had The Eras Tour.  Bloggers have The Eras BBA.

The challenge if you choose to accept it is to discuss your favorite era of card collecting and show off any recent additions to these collections.  I chose the word "challenge", because it was way too hard to pick a single era for my response.  On any given day, my favorite card collecting era will likely come from one of these three...

A.  The 80's

I'm going to start off with the decade where I officially dove into card collecting.  I absolutely loved opening packs and looking for rookie cards of guys like Ron Kittle, Vince Coleman, and Mike Greenwell.  When I was a kid, they were easily my favorite thing to collect.  These days you can add in regional issues like 7-11 discs, Granny Goose A's, and Mother's Cookies SGA sets into the mix.  Yup.  I love the 80's.

I couldn't think of any 80's regional issues that I've purchased recently, but here's a Roger Clemens rookie card I purchased on eBay back in April:

1985 Donruss #273

You may (or may not) remember the 1985 Donruss factory set I picked up at a flea market back in January for $15.  Unfortunately, it was missing the Clemens.  It took a few months, but I finally completed the set for $6.81 ($4.99 + $1.82 shipping/tax).

B.  The 90's

As Matt pointed out in his post, the most innovative cards were produced during this decade.  It was card companies competing against each other at its finest.  Thanks to the 90's we have cards made out of acetate, metal, wood, and leather.  The shiniest parallels came out of that decade.  And that was the decade that introduced pack pulled autographs and game-used memorabilia.  Plus there were things like holograms, die-cuts, embossed cardboard, Dufex technology, etched foil, tree ornaments, and a bunch of other things I'm forgetting in the moment.  Yup.  90's cards were innovative and awesome.

Unfortunately a lot of these cool 90's cards are skyrocketing in popularity and prices, so I haven't purchased any from eBay or at any card shows.  Luckily, I started reorganizing my collection over the summer and I came across hundreds of cool inserts that were hidden in boxes.  Here are three that I figured Matt might appreciate and fit this segment of the post:

1999-00 Topps Gallery of Heroes #GH6

1997-98 Skybox Z-Force Zensations #18ZN

1997 Fleer Metal Universe Marvel Metal #1

I did find some cool baseball inserts too, but I like to showcase some basketball and football every now and then.

C.  The 70's

One of my favorite things to collect are 70's lenticular Kellogg's cards.  I feel like my dream flea market find involves stumbling across a collection of non-cracked Kellogg's cards at a reasonable price.  It's not likely to happen, but this collector can dream.  Those cards alone make this era a personal favorite.

But I also love collecting 70's cards of athletes I grew up hearing about on television and reading about in magazines.  My two binders dedicated to 70's baseball are arguably the ones that I flip through the most on a regular basis.  I just love staring at classic designs like 1972 and 1975 Topps and flipping through pages filled with The Swingin' A's.  Yup.  The 70's rocked.

I rarely add any 70's Kellogg's cards to my collection these days.  Like 90's stuff... they're too expensive for my budget.  It's even less common for me to share a card I purchased at a flea market before I feature it in a Flea Market Find post.  However I picked up this lovely lenticular at the De Anza Flea Market yesterday:

1976 Kellogg's #19

I have a few Flea Market Find posts that I need to hammer out.  But the next one I publish will feature this weekend's haul since you've gotten a sneak peek.

Thank you Matt for starting another round of Blog Bat-Arounds!  I hope others will join in on the fun.  The more, the merrier.  Reading your responses will make this heat wave I'm suffering through more bearable.

Happy Sunday and sayonara!