Flea Market Finds #179: Cards, a Pennant, and a Glove

This post recaps the final flea market haul of my summer break which took place two Saturdays ago at the Branham Flea Market.  Although the deals weren't as stellar as some of my other finds in recent months, I did have to make a trip to the car to drop stuff off... so the bulk was there.

Let's get into it...

Purchase #1:  A Pair of Moss Rookies  $15

My first purchase of the day was from a vendor I've purchased from in the past.  The one that stands out the most is a basketball haul back in 2019.  He didn't have his usual display case this time, but he had a binder filled with basketball and football cards.

1998 Topps Chrome #35

Unfortunately there weren't any Kobe or Jordans, but there were some pretty cool cards inside.  The highlights were mid to low-end rookie cards of Allen Iverson, Tim Duncan, and Peyton Manning.  I asked about a few of them and $10 each seemed to be the magic number.  At that price, I figured the best bargain of the binder would be these two Randy Moss Chrome rookie cards.

Unfortunately both are a little off-centered... so he told me I could have the pair for $15.  One of my nieces is a huge Vikings fan... so she'll get one and I'll keep the other.

Purchase #2:  Another New VHS Tape  $1

Dances With Wolves (1990)

Not much to say.  It's a sealed VHS tape of a movie I enjoy.  Costner has a new home next to Travolta and Jackie.

The next four purchases were all made from another vendor from the past.  Remember the lady that sold me those Topps Magazines and cheap sets back in June?  Well she was still trying to dump her husband and son's card collection.  She's pretty much down to the bottom of the barrel, but I still found some stuff to buy.

Purchase #3a:  SJSU Pennants  $1

She had a stack of these San Jose State pennants for 50¢ each.  All of them were slightly stained, but I figured I'd grab one for my office and another for my classroom.

Purchase #3b:  Half of an Iconic Set  $2

1990 Leaf Series 1 Baseball Set

Remember when this set sold for over $100?  Heck the Sosa alone was worth that much back in 1998.

1990 Leaf #220

These days... Sosa is only worth a few bucks.  But there was no way I could leave this set behind.

Sadly... when I walked up... another guy had just purchased a set from her and I'm guessing it was the Series 2 set with the Frank Thomas rookie.

Purchase #3c:  Pair of Test Issue Sets  $2

1989 Action Packed Football Test Set

I have a hard time passing up dollar sets.  Grabbed one for my collection and figured I'd break the other one up if Greg (The Collective Mind) needs any of the Washington cards... and if Matt (Cards Over Coffee) needs any of the Giants.

Purchase #3d:  San Francisco 49ers Police Lot  $10

This is probably my favorite find of the day.  I'm sure most of you have little interest in 80's football oddball issues, but I'm all about them.  The lady had a stack of 1984 and 1985 7-11 San Francisco 49ers Police cards:

Here's a closer look at each set:

1984 San Francisco 49er Police Set

1985 San Francisco 49er Police Set

Ignore the $20 price tag.  Everything this lady had was 50% off.  I haven't finished sorting these strips, but there are multiple sets of each.

After picking up these strips of cards, I stopped off at my car and dropped everything off.  Here's the second half of my finds...

Purchase #4:  Star Wars Paperback  $2

1977 Star Wars Paperback (6th Printing)

Back in 1977, I was still reading picture books... so this wasn't an item I would have been interested in.  Forty-eight years later... I couldn't pass up the opportunity to add this to my bookshelf.

Purchase #5:  Magazine w/Cards & Postcards  $1

1992 Jan/Feb Legends Vol. 5 No. 1

A guy had a bunch of sports magazines from the 90's.  He was only asking a buck each, so grabbed this one because it comes with a sheet of cards.  I attempted to get a scan of it, but I started damaging the magazine, so I stopped.

If you're curious... the uncut sheet contains cards of Pete Rose, Frank Thomas, Cecil Cooper, Dan Marino, Jennifer Capriati, Emmitt Smith, Jimmy Connors, Jim Kelly, and Terry Norris.  

Purchase 6a:  More Laughlins  $10

One of the regular card dealers had this box of 1971 and 1972 Fleer Laughlin World Series cards.  Here are a few of my favorites:

The blue backs are cards from the 1970 set... and the black backs are the 71's.

The guy also had a stack of singles for a buck each, so I grabbed two...

Purchase #6b:  Dollar Stack  $2

2014 Bowman Chrome Refractor #CTP-37

You know things gotta be rough for Devers when his 1st Bowman refractor is in a dollar stack.  I figured for the price, the least I could do was provide him a new home. 

1989 Score Rookie & Traded #100T

As for Griffey rookies... unless they're damaged... there's no way I can pass these up for a dollar.

Purchase #7:  Dollar Comics  $4

After walking down every aisle... I started heading back and seeing if I missed anything.  The guy I purchased the Legends magazine from had a buddy with comic books.  I didn't notice he had Star Wars stuff the first time around, but then I saw this:

2000 Dark Horse Star Wars #23

The cover features a jedi named Quinlan Vos, who has a very complicated story arc that involved a relationship with Asajj Ventress.  Ventress happens to be one of my all-time favorite characters.

2000 Dark Horse Star Wars #24

2000 Dark Horse Star Wars #25

2001 Dark Horse Star Wars #26

I grabbed this set of comics in hopes of reading about their relationship, but when I got home and flipped through them... I didn't see her.  Oh well... it still gives me something to read when I'm bored.

Purchase #8:  Baseball Glove  $10

Rawlings Player's Series 10 Inch Glove

The first time I walked around, I saw this Oakland A's glove and asked the guy how much he wanted.  He was asking $15, which is a fair price.  When I got back to him, he asked me if I still was interested in the glove... only this time he dropped it down to $10.

I'm a sucker for Oakland A's memorabilia, so I couldn't pull out my money fast enough.

Like I stated at the start of the post... there weren't a lot of crazy deals this time around.  But for the price of a pair of blasters, I feel like I came home with some cool stuff.

This Saturday is the De Anza Flea Market.  It's going to be warm... but I'm planning to kick off my three day weekend out there.  Hopefully I have some interesting collectibles to share with you guys next week.

Until then... I apologize for the lack of posts.  The start of the school year is always a little hectic.  Give me a few weeks and I should be back into the one to two posts per week swing.

Happy Wednesday and sayonara!

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!