Flea Market Finds #186: Win Some, Lose Some

Spring doesn't officially start until Friday, but two Saturdays ago it was warm enough to wear flip flops, but not quite warm enough to make you sweat.  That's the perfect weather for a walk around the local flea market.

Unfortunately there was also a card show in the area, so I didn't see any of my friends who usually set up.  But I did find stuff from other vendors.

Let's check out my De Anza Flea Market haul...

Purchase #1:  Cheap Comic Books  $4

1985 Comico Robotech Masters #1

1992 Celebrity Comics Metallica #2

Comic books aren't really popular among my readers, but that doesn't stop me from flipping through bargain boxes in search of titles I enjoy.  Robotech was one of my favorite cartoons back in the 80's... and Metallica is one of my favorite bands of all-time.

Purchase #2:  A Rare 90's Hologram  $5

1991 Pro Set Winston Cup Hologram #NNO

Once upon a time, this card would have commanded triple digits to some collectors.  Today you can find them for a fraction of the price.

There was a gentleman with a small collection of Junk Wax Era cards scattered on his table.  This one immediately caught my eye.  The top loader had a $20 price tag, but before I could say a word, he asked me if five dollars was fair.  That's a price I could live with.

Purchase #3:  A Sweet Ticket Stub  $5

1963 Orange Bowl Ticket Stub

I found this ticket stub sitting on a five dollar table with a bunch of movies, McDonald's toys, and other knickknacks.  I decided to Google the game to see who participated.

It featured #5 Alabama and #8 Oklahoma.  When I dug a little deeper, I saw that Joe Namath was the starting quarterback.  No way I was going to pass this up for five bucks.

Purchase #4:  Pair of Hall of Fame Autos  $40

A gentleman bought a storage unit filled with football and hockey cards.  He had a bunch of top loaded cards sitting in two row shoe boxes.  My eyes lit up when I saw this:

1997 UD Legends Autograph #AL-15

I grew up listening to stories about the legendary Green Bay Packers of the 60's from my father.  Ray Nitschke was the anchor of Vince Lombardi's defense which won five NFL titles (including the first two Super Bowls) in a span of seven seasons.

Unfortunately he passed away in 1998, a year after Upper Deck included him in their iconic UD Legends set.  This is one of only a handful of certified, pack pulled signatures out there and for $20... it's a win. 

1997 UD Legends Autograph #AL-99

Eric Dickerson was the premiere running back in the NFL during the 80's and one of my favorite players.  In the moment, I figured $20 for an on-card signature of his was a steal... but that's about the going rate.  Win some, lose some.

Purchase #5:  Hockey Hits  $50

After going through his two football boxes, I dove into the hockey.  By this time there were several other people interested in his stuff, so I settled for sifting through one two-row shoebox.  Here's what I pulled out...

1999-00 ITG BAP All-Star Teammates Relic #TM-10

Back in the late 90's, Kariya and Forsberg were two of the hottest players in the hobby.  These swatches are from their 1996 NHL All-Star jerseys when they were teammates for the Western Conference.

Unfortunately, this card was stored in a screwdown holder made for thinner cards, so I damaged it (see chipping along edges) upon removal.  Win some, lose some.

2002-03 Stadium Club St. Patrick Dual Relics #SP-CAMCJ

Patrick Roy was even more popular than Forsberg and Kariya.  This card was part of a tribute set and inserted into packs during his final NHL season.  It features game worn swatches from Avalanche and Canadians jerseys.

2001-02 Pacific Titanium Double Sided Jersey #32

I was pretty stoked to find a Mario Lemieux jersey card sitting in the box and surprised to see another player on the back.  It's a shame Aleksey Morozov was the other player and not someone like Jaromir Jagr.  Win some, lose some.

1980-81 O-Pee-Chee #140

Ray Bourque is one of the greatest defensemen in NHL history and I have wanted his rookie card since the 90's.  I'm very happy to finally own a copy.  It's even cooler that it's the OPC version.

2001-02 UD Legends Milestones Jersey #M-WG

Finally... the key card in the lot.  It's not often you find Wayne Gretzky jersey cards sitting in boxes at the flea market.  As excited as I was to see this in the box, I was even more excited when he told me I could have all five cards for $50.

Sadly... this card was also squeezed into a screwdown too.  When I took it out little specks stuck to the holder.  Oh well... win some, lose some.

Purchase #6:   8-Track Tapes  $2

Johnny Cash Greatest Hits

The Partridge Family Up To Date

Can't say I'm a huge fan of either of these albums, but The Partridge Family was sealed and the price was right.  These go into my slowly growing 8-track collection.

Purchase #7:  Junk Wax Era Factory Set  $5

1993 Topps Toys R Us Factory Set

Back in 1993, I was out of the hobby and in the midst of college.  In other words, I wasn't hitting up Toys R Us regularly and never owned this set.  However for $5, I figured it was finally time to add it to my collection.

The plan is to open it up in the near future and write up a post.  I'm mostly excited to check out the complete set of Master Photos.  Stay tuned.

Purchase #8:  Bag of Legos  $3

2019 Legos #30624

In 2019 Lego celebrated the 20th anniversary of Lego Star Wars with a bunch of cool sets and special minifigures.  This Obi-wan Kenobi poly bag was originally a gift with purchase.  I missed out back then, but was pretty happy to find one in the wild at the flea market.

Purchase #9:  My Other Dream Car  $15

2026 Hot Wheels Car Culture Team Transport #86

Two weeks ago, I wrote about one of my dream cars.  In 2022, I bought my other one.

Since then, I've tried to collect as many diecast versions as I can find.  You'd think it'd be easy to find just about any mass produced Hot Wheel on pegs at Target, but I see less Toyota GR Supras than baseball card blasters.  In fact, I have never seen one in four years.  That's why I didn't even try to negotiate the fifteen dollar price tag.

Well that wraps up my latest trip to the De Anza Flea Market.  The Branham High School Flea Market is on Saturday, but I might be going to a card show in Danville with one of my buddies.  It'll probably be a last minute decision.

Thanks for hanging in there for another long winded post.  My goal is to produce shorter posts on a more frequent basis, but that plan seems to fly out the window whenever I start typing.

Until next time...

Happy Tuesday and sayonara!

Calm Before the Storm

Collecting sports cards can be relaxing.  Rooting for sports teams can be quite the opposite.  Today's a big day for one of my favorite teams and I've been stressing out about it for the past week.

I figured I'd try to distract myself this morning, but catching up with a pair of items from Ryan's advent calendar that could be classified as relaxing or calming.

Let's start with the helpful hint that he wrote:

This was one of the most obvious haikus from his package.  It refers to this miniature bonsai tree:

The planting portion was super simple and took less than a minute to complete.  Now the waiting game begins.  I'm planning on taking the pot into my classroom.  Maybe watching it grow will help some of my 8th graders relax too.

The other "calming" present was building block related.  Here's his haiku:

And here's the gift:

It's one of those blind bags that contains one "Space Collection" build.  Here's the one I received:

Building block sets are often pretty therapeutic, but this little sucker was a challenging build due to its small size.  Here's a photo that shows the size compared to the mini bonsai planter, a Lego mini-figure, and a Kenner SLU:

The astronaut will accompany the bonsai pot and join the other Lego builds I have displayed in my classroom.

While on the topic of building blocks, I wanted to show off one more Christmas related gift before discussing the storm that quickly approaching.

My friend's mom gave me this awesome Lego set:

2024 Lego Star Wars #75375

I've thought about buying the midi-scale Millennium Falcon for over a year, but I just never got around to doing it.  So I was blown away to see that this was waiting for me under their tree.  Unfortunately, I haven't had time to build it... but as soon as I do... I'll show you guys what it looks like.

Okay... now let's get to the sports section of this post.  In a couple of hours, the Seattle Seahawks will host the Los Angeles Rams in the NFC Championship Game.  Division games always stress me out.  Division games that involve the winner moving on to the Super Bowl is next level.

On one hand, I haven't been as impressed with the Seahawks defense since these guys:

2014 Prizm Red, White, & Blue #200

On the other hand, I'm not quite as confident in the Seahawks offense as I have been in the past.  I'm predicting a close game... but honestly have no idea who wins this game.  I've watched a ton of analysis and prediction videos... and I feel like even the experts are pretty torn.

At this point the only thing to do is sit back, watch the game, and see how things play out.  Let's go Hawks!

Here are today's questions of the day...

Do you ever get stressed out over your favorite sports teams?

Out of the four remaining football teams, are you rooting for any of them?

If so, who?

Happy Sunday and sayonara!

The Destroyer and Snips

What do Tom Hume and Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope have in common?  The both premiered on May 25, 1977.

1982 Topps Coca-Cola #9

Since most of you could care less about Star Wars, I had to lure you in with this oddball issue of former Cincinnati Reds relief pitcher.  Here's another baseball card for you:

1978 Topps #202

What's the significance of this card?  Well on the day Hume made his MLB debut, he got lit up by the San Francisco Giants and was forced out of the game after giving up four hits, walking one batter, and allowing five earned runs in one-third inning pitched.  He earned the loss and left the game with a 135.00 ERA.

On the bright side, the Reds fought back, but still lost the game by one run.  George Foster had a huge game... as he hit two home runs while driving in three.  That was the season he hit hit a staggering 52 home runs.

It was the first time someone cracked the 50 home run mark since Willie Mays hit 52 in 1965. And it wouldn't happen again until Cecil Fielder returned from Japan to hit 51 in 1990.  This might not seem that special, since twenty guys (three in the past five seasons) have done it since.  But from 1966 to 1989 (a span of twenty-four seasons), Foster was the only guy to accomplish this feat.  That's pretty special.

And in the spirit of May the Fourth, here are a few things for the Star Wars fans out there.

Let's start off with this Lego set I built this morning:

Meet Ahsoka Tano.  She was Anakin Skywalker's padawan during the Clone Wars.

Lego Brick Headz #150 (Set #40539)

I have a bunch of Lego sets waiting to be built, but I chose this one specifically because it's small.  At one hundred sixty-four pieces, this set took me less than thirty minutes to build.  Here's a look at the Brick Head next to a mini figure and standard size card:

Although I'm not the biggest fan of the Brick Headz line... I picked this set up because Ahsoka is one of my favorite characters.   This build motivated me to dust off and update my Lego shelf in the office:

I'll wrap things up with a few Star Wars cards that John over at Johnny's Trading Spot added to my collection:

1996 Decipher Star Wars A New Hope Expansion CCG #NNO

1999 Decipher Star Wars Young Jedi CCG #58

First up are a pair of CCG cards from the 90's that show off two of the franchise's finest females.  Who do you favor?  A New Hope's Princess Leia Organa or The Phantom Menace's Queen Amidala?

The next pair are two of my favorite characters from the original trilogy:

2022 Topps Chrome Star Wars Galaxy #7

2022 Topps Chrome Star Wars Galaxy #10

Who is your favorite Star Wars character?

Thanks John for giving me more blog post material.  By the way... any chance you have an extra 1995 Bowman Fernando Lunar card laying around?  He was an Atlanta Braves prospect in the mid to late 90's... and is the only MLB player to be born on the day Star Wars: A New Hope premiered back in 1977.

Happy Saturday and May the 4th be with you!