I recently made a trip to Boston for work. I ended up getting a hotel right by Fenway, which was awesome. I'm not a Red Sox fan, but what baseball fan wouldn't be excited to see Fenway? I celebrated the historic park by jogging a few laps around it at night, which was the highlight of my trip.
I also managed to find a card shop in walking distance from Fenway. It was overpriced on many things, as everything in Boston was (hell, the airports sold cheaper sodas than the shops in the city), but I found some great cards and a few sweet deals.
I'd been wanting this Wertz card for a long time, and this one was in pristine condition. I paid $6 for it. Usually too much for me. But that's the price of doing business in Boston, I figured. And this card is a masterpiece. I love the lone slide going on here and Wertz's goofy looking smile.
The people who worked at the shop were completely polite and kind, and one of the guys kept pulling boxes of vintage for me, even though I couldn't afford the slabbed Hank Greenbergs and Al Kaline rookies. Once I told him I was a Tigers fan, he started digging up some unique stuff for me, including this:
A 1967 Norm Cash. Nothing special here, you say, besides that penciled mustache some cardboard vandal decided to give Norman. Well, you're wrong. This is a first for the Vealtones Tigers collection. We're going international! This is a Venezuela 1967 Topps card. The main difference is that these cards have a slightly green tint.
No stats and a bunch of Spanish on the back. Neato, right?
Now, I did nail a few sweet bargains. The shop mostly had vintage and high end hits, but the shop owner did pull a box of newer bargain stuff that was all half off, which made each one of these cards cost about a dime.
These are just a few of the highlights. I dig the Best cards which are super thick and numbered, and I didn't know this Straily guy was actually starting to do some solid pitching in the majors. Best of all, of course, are the Avisail Bowman cards. These are my first Avisail cards of any kind. I've been trying to find them for a decent price, hell for a buck or two, and I snagged two of them for a dime each. Not bad. So, I did find some bargains in Boston.
All in all, it was a productive trip. Fenway was nice, the city is beautiful, and I love that accent. The only thing that would've made the trip better would've been if I would've had a beer with Carl Crawford Cards.
This post comes to you from one of my favorite local card shop's, All-Star Sports Cards in Grand Rapids, Michigan. If you're ever in the area, visiting this place is a must. The workers are the nicest people you'll ever meet, the store is clean and organized, and there are tons of great bargain boxes. So, OK, onto the loot.
Speaking of dime boxes:
I wasn't collecting in 2006, so I missed out on this set, which I think was maybe one of those hobby shop giveaway type deals. Anyway, these are from Topps Rookie of the Week, and they're all Archive-style reprints. Well, I'm sure you've all seen these.
I've seen them before, but they sure look nice together. I only snagged these 13 out of the dime box. I'll probably try to eventually finish this set. You can't really beat it, if you're a rookie/archive collector.
The best part of my last trip, though, was by far the discount packs I found. I had to do a double-take when I saw they had 2007 Bowman Heritage packs for $1.50 each. That's a crazy good deal for hobby, and an even crazier good deal if this happened to be your favorite modern set, which it is.
I think I bought 8 packs, for the price of a discount blaster. I'll spare you the whole thing. These are the short prints. These were all doubles. In fact, almost everything I got was a double. Here was the only base card that I needed:
I needed this Varitek for the set I'm still trying to finish. What a great card this is, though. The catcher's gear looks awesome, especially with the thick black outlines characteristic of this design.
These were my favorite one-per-pack rainbow parallels. I'm still not sure if I'll go after this parallel set. Probably not. But these are great-looking cards regardless. Snagging the Mantle was a good find.
I even managed a hit in these packs. A Curt Schilling jersey isn't too bad. As much as I love this set, the Pieces of Greatness GU set never really blew me away.
So, one measly card closer to finishing my set. I loved opening those packs, but they didn't help me make much progress. Maybe you can? Check out my set want list if you have any 2007 Bowman Heritage cards to trade.
Yesterday I posted about my conflict with collecting Cobb, how I have trouble simply forgetting about Cobb as the person and just admiring the amazing way he played the game. Really, I don't know if I admire the way anyone played more than I admire Cobb's scrappy, aggressive, hustling style, but I don't know if I despise any Tiger player's off-field behavior more. It's the extreme racism, especially, that makes it hard for me to forgive and separate.
Anyway, you readers should go and check out the comments other bloggers left on yesterday's post, that offer great insight into this collecting quandary. And, Nick over at Dime Boxes wrote a truly eloquent post picking up this topic. Read it here.
A few Dodgers collectors chimed in yesterday, and to you guys, I imagine how nice it must be to have such a rich history of admirable humans playing for your team. My favorite, a man I can admire for both his playing and off-field heroics, is Pee Wee Reese.
I don't collect him extensively, but if I find his cards at a decent bargain, I snag them up, because this guy was amazing. How he embraced Jackie from the start, that took a lot of courage, but I don't think he even looked at it that way, as being brave, it was just a thing that you do, treating a human as a human, respecting a great player for being a great player. So, how can we not all love snagging cards of a guy like that where there's no conflict between on-field and off-field behavior?
Here's my newest Pee Wee acquisition. I found it in my LCS' beat-up vintage box, which they keep in the back room and I make them drag out for me each time I'm there. They don't have any prices marked, so I pull the most destroyed cards I can find and we haggle. I usually hate doing this, but they're fair and funny about it. And with this card, the guy looked up the book value, $200, and shook his head. He said he would feel bad charging me 10% or even a ten-spot on this. I said, Yeah it's pretty trimmed. He said, Trimmed? This card is hacked! He asked me for a fiver, and I said, Hell yes.
When I got this home, I showed the wife, who usually rolls her eyes at my cards, although she says she can understand vintage, even likes Diamond Stars and tobacco cards. I thought she'd dig this, but she couldn't believe I paid 5 bucks for destroyed cardboard. Creases, brutal trimming, a hole punch. I say awesome deal, because it's Pee Wee, and no one can say he didn't play the game the way it was meant to be played or that he wasn't a hell of a human being.
I envy you Dodgers fans for having fellas like Pee Wee. At least we have Kaline, maybe. More on this later.
So, would you guys pay $5 for this card? And maybe you don't have issues separating assholes from astounding careers, but how about the reverse? Are you more inclined to collect players that were good people?
