Heyas. Been a long time, huh? Nothing’s really changed since last we chatted, except for getting a few more of the sketch cards from the previous post finished (and a few new ones drawn up), and a seriously loudass person moving in upstairs pushing me to the end of my rope with this lousy place. Seriously, if anyone knows of a halfway decent place with no noise problems to speak of that falls within my modest price range, I’m so effing outta here.
Ah, but that’s not why you called. I happen to have some fun stuff I’m getting prepared to blog about. For the past several months, they’ve been holding a small monthly flea market at the shell of our once thriving mall. I asked my dad if they had any cards when the parents made it out there at the beginning of the year, and he said they did, but didn’t elaborate. So I’ve been wanting to go ever since, to see what was there myself.
On Saturday, I finally made it out there. I wasn’t expecting much, but I had $23 with me just in case. And am I ever glad I did. There was a guy there with cards. He didn’t bring the whole card shop (of which he apparently owns one nearby, according to the business card), but he had a very nice selection of cards to peruse. He had cards available ranging from the late ’60s to within the past couple years, in baseball, basketball, and football.
He seemed to be an old school Beckett-adhering type, but his cards were priced to move. He mentioned to another person there that wandered by that his philosophy was that if a kid saw a cool card they liked, they should be able to afford it, which sounds like an awesome philosophy to me. As such, the vast majority of his singles were $1, and almost everything on up seemed to be reasonably priced (I think I spotted a Felix Pie auto for $50 in the one little bunch hits behind glass, but that is easily forgivable when pretty much everything else was so reasonable).
He was also willing to deal, as you’ll soon see. So I picked out a few singles I liked (9 in total, I believe), all but one marked $1 or $1.50 (the two of which he gave me for $1), and two random 25 card grab packs for $1 apiece that had interesting cards showing. Then I came to the side of the table where he had several binders laid out, each with about a dozen pages full of cards in them. They were marked $1 per page, or $10 for a whole binder. As it happened, I managed to find a dozen random pages I like from the various binders. So he stuck them all in one of the binders, and gave it to me for $7!
So yeah, I spent all $23 I came armed with. In total, I ended up with about 170 cards, the vast majority of which I very much like. Needless to say, I completely obliterated the number of cards and enjoyment I would’ve gotten out of your average blaster (+ maybe one $1.59 pack), and will be heading out there again next month. There were many things I had to leave behind this time.
Anyway, the binder pages will make up the vast majority of the posts to follow in this little series. I’ll go over them card-by-card, one or two pages at a time, because there is just so much random coolness in each page.
I’ll also be getting a few packages sent out over the course of this month, and a few of the cards from the flea market may even find their way into some of them.
1/3 of of one of the most iconic basketball cards of all time, and a small preview of the craziness to come...
Flea Market > Blaster. It is a fundamental truth.
The fun has only just begun…
Life and Baseball Cards 