Cardboard Day Trip

There's nothing like a cardboard day trip to help you relax and take your mind off of things.

Earlier today, Ryan (aka SumoMenkoMan) flew into town for the day.  If things went as planned, we made the 100+ mile drive due east into Sactown for a hotel card show (Mr. Haverkamp is planning on being there too) and a few card shop visits.  And right about now we should either be back in the Bay Area or heading back there so Ryan can hop on his flight back home.

I'll definitely recap our cardboard day trip to the state's capitol sometime this week.  In the meantime, here's a card of Sacramento's own... Rowland Office:

1976 Topps #256

While digging through my box of 70's baseball cards... I only found two cards of Office.  This one and his 1975 Topps rookie card.  I decided to go with this one, because of his awesome facial expression.  If I had pulled this card as a kid, it would have been a favorite for sure.

Here's my evidence that Office is a Sacramento native:

I'm looking forward to writing up a summary of today's adventure.  In the meantime...

Have you ever been to Sacramento?  If so, what was the occasion?

I've only been there a handful of times.  One of my good buddies lives there, so I've gone to visit him a few times.  Plus I went to the same card show back in 2016 with another buddy of mine.  When I was a kid, my fourth grade class went there on a field trip.  Outside of those times... I've driven through Sacramento tons of times on my way up to Lake Tahoe.

Well that's it for today.  Happy Saturday and sayonara!

Flea Market Finds #144: Two Small Collections

Today's post is going to recap my three purchase haul from the Branham High School Flea Market last Saturday.  However before I show off the goodies... I just wanted to document that this particular flea market has really become popular among locals.  With each passing month, it seems like more and more vendors are signing up to sell their stuff.

There were at least five vendors with cards... and two of the regulars weren't even there that day.

One guy I had never seen before had a baseball card collection and a hockey card collection for sale.


Purchase #1:  Jeter Rookie Cards  $5

The baseball card collection was sorted by player's last name and the gentleman who was selling the collection wanted a dollar per card.  There were tons of cards from the 80's and 90's with plenty of hall of famers and future hall of famers.

These five Jeter rookie cards were the only cards I ended up purchasing.  None of them are in mint condition.  However I figured they were still worth a buck each since he's a lock to make the Baseball Hall of Fame next summer.

Sitting next to the baseball collection was a hockey card collection in plastic bins.  I wasn't really interested in these until my friend pulled out a few cards and asked me if they were worth anything.


Purchase #2:  Hockey Card Collection  $15

Back in the mid 90's, I really started getting interested in collecting hockey cards.  Part of it had to do with the baseball strike.  The other half of the equation was the arrival of Owen Nolan in San Jose.  It didn't take long for him to become my favorite player and I began chasing down as many of his cards as I could get my hands on.

As luck would have it, there was an Owen Nolan autograph sitting in this bin along with a few other notable Sharks:

But they weren't the reason I bought the collection.  These were:

Here's a closer look at some of the key cards I found sitting in those bins:

1993-94 Stadium Club First Day Issue #352

1994-95 SP #NNO

Back in the day, I opened up a lot of 1994-95 SP hockey trying to pull this card.  According to Beckett, Upper Deck inserted one of these cards per case... which explains why I never pulled it.  It took me twenty-five years, but I finally own a copy.

1997-98 Pacific Crown Collection In the Cage #5

1999-00 Pacific In the Cage #3

1995-96 Select Certified Mirror Gold #1

1996-97 Leaf Limited Gold #85

1995-96 Donruss Elite Painted Warriors #1

Die-cut, acetate, and beautiful mask art make a beautiful combination.

1996-97 Zenith Champion Salute #11

I was crossing my fingers that this would be the diamond parallel, which actually contains a real diamond embedded in the bottom lefthand corner... but it wasn't.  It's still a really cool insert though.

1996-97 UD Ice Stanley Cup Foundation #S5

This card is my favorite card in the collection, but it's not the rarest.  That title belongs to this card:

1996-97 Fleer Metal Cool Steel Super Power #9

This card was inserted into 1:480 packs.  It's not worth that much these days, but back in the 90's this card would have sold for triple digits.

In addition to these awesome 90's inserts, there were also these oversized cards thrown into the bins:

And for those of you who enjoy Stadium Club Master Photos, these were included as well:

I'll probably write highlight a few of these at some point.  If I'm not mistaken, they were box toppers and part of a redemption program back in the day.

Well that wraps up the hockey card collection.  I was pretty stoked when the guy said he only wanted $15 for it.  I didn't even bother trying to haggle.  There are a few cards in this bin that are worth that price alone.


Purchase #3:  Shoebox Collection  $13

Compared to the hockey card collection, this purchase is pretty bland.  Another dealer I had never seen before had this box of cards sitting on his table.  Inside  were a bunch of stars and hall of famers for my vintage football card binder:

One of them was a rookie card of my favorite football player of all-time:

1977 Topps #177

The condition of the Largent gives you an idea of what the other cards in the box looked like.  Rounded corners and off-centered cards were the norm.

Plus there were a bunch of Star Wars cards mixed in:

And a few other non-sports singles:

Like the football cards... these cards were well-loved by some kid back in the 70's and 80's.  He wanted $15.  I wanted to pay $10.  We settled on $13.

So what's your favorite/least favorite flavor?  90's Baseball Rookie Cards, 90's Hockey Inserts and Parallels, 90's Stadium Club Master Photos, 70's Football Cards, or 70's and 80's Non-Sports Cards?

Well that wraps up my recent trip to the flea market.   My next trip won't take place until Saturday, November 2nd when I hit up the De Anza Flea Market.  While the Branham High School Flea Market continues to grow... I feel like the De Anza Flea Market is headed in the opposite direction.  But it's pretty big... and that means I'll at least get my steps in.

Happy Thursday and sayonara!

Different Point of View

When my life gets hectic and tumultuous... sometimes I like to take a step back and look at things from a different point of view.

Back in December of 1968 the Apollo 8 crew became the first astronauts to reach the moon's gravitational field, orbit it, and successfully return home.  During the mission, William Anders took the famous photograph known as Earthrise which captures Earth and part of the moon's surface from lunar orbit on December 24, 1968.

Twenty-four years later, Space Shots produced a special hologram which they inserted into their 1992 Space Shots Series 3 factory sets and wax boxes that captured part of the famous photograph:

1992 Space Shots Hologram #1

Space Shots also had James Arthur Lovell Jr., the Command Module Pilot for Apollo 8, sign 1,000 of these holograms.

Over the summer, I watched Apollo 13 (one of my favorite movies)for the umpteenth time... and started looking for certified autographs of Lovell (who was played by Tom Hanks in the movie).  I found a few PSA/DNA slabbed copies, but none were within the budget I set aside for his signature.

Fast forward a few months and I stumbled across this hologram on eBay:

I started to do some research and unfortunately, it looks like the only difference between the unsigned holograms and the signed holograms is the signature itself.  That obviously made me worried, because anyone could take an unsigned hologram and forge Lovell's signature.  However after comparing his signature to certified copies, I decided to risk it and ended up winning this card for $89.95 (+ $4.50 shipping and $8.32 in taxes).  After applying my $52.98 eBay Bucks coupon, I ended up paying $49.79 for this card.

Assuming it's authentic, this is a huge addition to my non-sports collection.  When I was a kid, I remember getting so excited to watch shuttle launches.  And even fifty years later, it's still mind-blowing that we managed to send people to the moon.

A few years before Anders photographed the Earth and the moon, the Lunar Orbiter 1 captured this famous photograph:

1967 Henerle #110

This vintage card was generously donated to my collection by Ryan (author of Japanese Sumo Wrestling Cards and Menko) and after two years it's still one of my favorite non-sports cards.

What about you?

What are some of your favorite non-sports cards?

Well it's time to step back into the real world and move forward one day at a time.  I hope all of you are having a great week.

Happy Tuesday and sayonara!

Pack Fresh and Altered Vintage

This week is already off to a quick start.  Four of my classes had presentations today which were really cool... but at the same time were very time consuming and tiring.  The prep took much longer than anticipated and I ended up not having enough time to write this post.

So I'm going to keep the writing to a minimum and let you focus on the baseball cards that John over at Johnny's Trading Spot sent me last week:

1967 Topps #103

This is my third copy of this card... but it's by far the most beautiful.  It's not often I'm able to add high grade vintage to my collection.  The fact that it features Mickey Mantle's floating head makes it that much cooler.

1969 Topps #495

Campaneris is one of my favorite players on The Swingin' A's... and this card is in sweet condition like the Mantle.

Can't say the same for this card...

1957 Topps #128

I'll go out on a limb and say that Johnny is donating this card to my Damaged Card PC.  It's an oldie... and a goodie.

Rounding out the package are three memorabilia cards:

All three of these cards were produced during the peak of The Relic Era which works for me, because I'm one of those collectors who still enjoys adding relic cards to my collection.  The Sasaki is especially sweet, because it's numbered out of 100.

Thank you Johnny for hooking me up with another care package... especially since I already owe you for a couple of them.  I'll hit you back at some point.  Hopefully sometime before 2020.

Well... I got eight minutes to edit the text and hit the "publish" button.  If this post is published anytime past 3pm, then you know I failed.

Happy Monday and sayonara!