Card Show....yeah.

 

Summer’s gone.

            And there’s finally a bit of crispness in the air.

            I’m of too minds about the autumn. I love the weather but I hate the dark. That didn’t used to always be the case for me. I used to thrive in the autumn with both the weather and the lack of sunshine. I used to say I had reverse SAAD. But when you’re younger you used to say a lot of things. I’m not so much a fan of the dark now. Hate waking into the dark. Hate coming home from work in the dark. Maybe this happens with age: people you love die; people you love get sick; maybe life didn’t work out the way you wanted it to; there’s no illusions anymore.

            You spend more and more time looking for the light.

            In my case, it’s an afternoon reading a good book on the couch.

            A documentary that I’m into.

            Listening to a favorite album.

            Going to a card show.

            And I mean, a GOOD card show.

            That’s what I did last Saturday. After a dearth of card shows in my neighborhood this summer, it seems the card folks around here are waking up. 

            I don’t know if this is truly Brooklyn’s #1 Card show…but I like it. And going to this particular show has, sadly, been a rarity for me. Been at least over a year since my last time at this one. I don’t know if it was fate or the cosmos cruel joke, but seemingly every single time Brooklyn’s Best Card show had a show, I was working. The FOMO on those days, my goodness.

There were a lot of vendors (at least 80) at Brooklyn’s #1 card show. Most of them were dealing in sports cards and not Pokémon, and a good many had vintage. A good many of the vintage dealers deal in cards that are not graded, something that I appreciate. Cards not being graded allows me to buy something like this without feeling my usual sense of guilt.

It’s a little loved but a 1969 Henry Aaron is a 1969 Henry Aaron.

I happened to buy that card off a guy who has his own YouTube show. In his videos he’s usually just walking around card show filming the vintage cases, and making guys like me jealous. Took me a minute to recognize him too. Feel bad because all I could do/say when we made eye contact was to point and say, “You Tube,” like I was some kind of monosyllabic idiot, before walking away in shame and spending the rest of the show convincing myself to go back and get that Aaron. I mean what middle-aged man just points at someone and says, “You Tube” like that anyway?

One of the dealers that I remember really enjoying was a man who deals in vintage. He brings everything from graded to non-graded stars, a priced-as-marked bin, a dollar bin, and, excitedly for me, a big huge box of common cards that he sorts by year. I believe he had from 1964 to 1982. I was glad to see him at that show. What I wasn’t glad about was that there was a single set collector at his table, checklist sprawled all over, single 1974 Topps cards scattered on top too, leaving no room for any of the rest of us to go through the boxes.

But I waited him out.

And got myself these.

I never pass up an Al Oliver/Grave Digger rookie card…especially for $2.

Things of note:

Of course, there were the young Braxtons walking around with the metal, square box card boxes, playing let’s make a deal. There were an increasing number of vendors who did not have prices marked on their cards, but would look them up online when you asked. I guess this makes some sense now, considering I’ve seen tons of buyers do that when the suggested price is listed. I’m still not a fan of it. I appreciate a vendor who had his/her prices listed. I like to know where I stand when I’m spending money. One vendor table was all Topps online cards: Living sets and Topps Now. The one table that I really liked, it had a bunch of older sports and non-sports packs. The kid in me wanted to drops $4 on the absurdity that is Rambo: First Blood Part 2 wax.

            Maybe next time.

            And apparently no one at the show knew how Konnor Griffin was….gotta love New York fans.

            The rest of my card purchases weren’t terribly exciting but fit a nice niche for me.

            All in all, a good way to stave off the darkness for a few hours.

            Thanks for reading! Happy collecting!

 

...And Then There Was One

 

I’m doing this thing.

            Maybe others of you out there do it too.

            But I’ve decided to build my sets by hand. I know what you’re saying, anyone who chooses to build a set builds it by hand. Maybe I should say this: I’m building my sets by analog. What I’m doing is building sets solely by buying packs/blasters/etc., and then trying to find any remaining cards on my checklist via card shows, local LCS, or via trade with another human being.

            Does that count as analog?

            In the past, when I reached a certain number on my checklist, say, a final ten cards that I needed to complete a set; I’d go online somewhere like SportsLots and just buy the rest. I’ve decided to cut out that internet conduit. I’m telling myself that I’m doing this for fun, and not because I’m a technophobe who doesn’t like to make online purchases. I will admit that putting sets together, albeit a much longer process, has brought the thrill of the chase back into The Hobby for me in way it was there as a kid, but not so much as an adult when I got back into collecting with the entire world wide web at my fingertips.

            It also helps to have an LCS with kickass 25-cent boxes.

            I’ve been trying to put together the entire 400-card Topps flagship football set. I got myself down to needing three cards. The other day, after striking out in my LCS’s 25-cent bin, I decided to take a chance and I bought a $7 fat pack of Football cards.

            I kid you not…but all three of the cards that I needed to complete the set we’re in that box.

            It was hard not to squeal and stamp my feet like a child collector when I came across them.

            With that, the set that I’ve been working on the longest using this process is the 2025 Topps Update Baseball set. For at least six months down my checklist had been sitting at needing three cards to complete the set.

            U268 Ty France

            U312 Hyeseong Kim (rookie debut)

            U335 Colin Rea

            That same day at the LCS I found these.

            So…yeah…

            …and then there was one.

            I’m looking at you Ty France.

            This is where the process is going to get interesting for me. I’ve utterly exhausted my LCS 25-cent box. Unless the do another dump of 2025 Topps Update (unlikely at this point) I have to consider that source finished. There are card shows. But, in truth, I haven’t seen much in the way of 25-cent boxes at shows…or even $1 boxes. Most of the shows I’ve gone to in the City or in Brooklyn; the dealers there are really into bringing and selling their insert cards. I could go back to the packs/blasters route. The CVS in my neighborhood has a ton of 2025 Update in their little card nook.

            But for one card?

            There is the idea of a person-to-person trade.

            My local LCS does trade nights. But that would require a collector bringing along a 2025 Topps Update Ty France. And what in the hell would I even trade for it? My one caveat to this experience is that I won’t rule out trading with a collecting friend on social media. But since Elon took over X, my card community has really become splintered. So I’m not really sure what to even try and do there.

            The Ty France card is out there.

            That’s all I know.

            In some pack.

            At some show.

            In a 25-cent box that I have yet to comb over.

            …and the search continues.

            …or it doesn’t.

            I wrote the above earlier this week. This morning I finally had some time to devote to the good ol’ Hobby, and I was able to add the Kim and Rea cards to my 2025 Update Set.  When low and behold I came upon this page.

            There…right there…in the middle of the page…Ty France.

            I had the damned card all along. Sitting there in utter disbelief (although I shouldn’t have been as this has happened before…only in reverse…with me NEEDING a card I thought I had already), I flipped through the binder a good three or four times to see if maybe it was another card from the set that I needed. But there wasn’t. They were all there. All 350 cards.

            I guess the next blog post I write should be about senility in aging collectors such as myself.

            Anyway…

 

Thanks for Reading! Happy Collecting!