Let's Go to the Card Show: Big Spender, AKA the Dollar Box

I'll follow up my last card show post about the dark and mysterious back-alley slum-world of the dime boxes with an exciting conclusion: the pristine, shimmering sidewalks of the dollar boxes. But, really, the sidewalks can be just as dangerous. Check out what happened to Dick Kryhoski.

Dick's clean, smiley mug got all beat-up. But Walker got it worse:

This card has every bit of damage a vintage card could have: paper-loss, tape lines, creases, rounded corners, pen doodles, rat nibbles. Beckett would have to make a negative scale if they were to grade this card. I think I was actually drawn to it by how terribly this card was abused. That, and I thought the dealer would give me a good deal. These two Bowman cards actually didn't come out of the dollar boxes. They were in a pile of vintage cards with no pricing--I hate that. I ended up paying $4 for the pair, which was probably too much, but oh well.

Next up, my first-ever coin purchase in Boog, followed by my second-ever coin purchase in Mr. Santo.

I didn't really need either of these, but I thought someone else out there would enjoy getting them in a trade package.

Another two dollar box purchase here. Walt Dropo makes for my first 1954 Tigers card. Now I just need to find a good deal or a trade for a Tigers card from '53 and '52.

I also found this in the dollar box. I can't turn down these group photos from the 1960 Topps set, and in the same box I found my best deal of the show:

The most notorious card of the junk wax era. I found the black box in a quarter box once, and there seems to be as much variance on the price of this card as there are versions. But I didn't expect to ever see the genuine uncensored Fancy Face version in a dollar box. These are the rewards yielded from hours of scrounging through the cheap boxes. Do we need a closer look? Yes we do:

Card Show Vintage Through the Decades

Now that we've waded through the cheap boxes and had our fill, it's time to move on to the relatively higher-end cards. Relatively is the key word here. Most of this came out of dollar boxes, but with surprisingly good results.

Let's take a trip through the decades.

We'll start with 1951 Bowman. This is the best deal I've ever gotten on my favorite vintage sets: '50-'52 Bowman. For a buck, I'd pick up these puppies all day long. Here we have Tommy Byrne, who spent most of his 13 seasons with the Yankees and was an all-star. He holds the record for the most walks in an extra-inning game with 16 and once walked 7 Tigers in a row, so that makes me like him. The card is hardly flawed, which is rare for such bargain vintage.

This one was in this dollar box, too, and in just as great condition. Billy Johnson was also an all-star and had a halfway decent career. His pose is really cool in this card, and I like the way the pinstripes pop off the green stands. I'd be willing to trade these for some similarly vintage Tigers if anyone has them.

Next up, the 1960s. I love those Post cards, and who doesn't like Cash, especially when it's Stormin' Norman? I was kind of surprised, when trolling around Baseball Refernce, that he was only on the hall of fame ballot once.

Nothing goes with Cash quite like a 1974 Kaline. This came out of the same amazing dollar box as the Bowmans, one of those boxes where you just keep looking back at the rows to make sure they're really all a dollar.

This brings us to Night Owl's heralded year with a '75 mini of the Munster. Just a great card.

Now we hit those glorious '80s. As a young collector, I never thought I'd own this card, and as an older collector I never thought I'd own this card for a dollar. It's in great shape, too, except that Mattingly is missing his mustache. That must be why it was so cheap.

This isn't vintage, but it takes us to the end of our dollar journey with 2001. Another rookie card I've been going after for a while. The dealer had a couple of Reyes' Topps rookie cards for a buck, too, but I refrained. There was too much great stuff in here.