My card room is a mess and I also dragged my feet putting together this post because I kept looking at both, thinking of the amount of work that needed to be done, and went off and did something else. Did I chip away at each a bit at a time to make things easier on myself? HA! Nope, but I finally lowered my standards enough to snap some bad pictures (no scans here!) so I can finally cover my last June pickup (here in early October).
So briefly, a family posted a garage sale in a city not far from me on Facebook, and the amount of card stuff piqued my interest. I couldn't make it out there the first day but the following day I got there mid- or late-morning. The husband saw me eyeballing the card stuff (fortunately a good amount of what I saw in the photos was still there), and told me he'd be happy to take $100 for everything left. I don't think I even pretended to think it over before I said "Yep, let's do it."
The guy helped me fill up my car, and let me tell you, it was a HAUL. As usual I had a blast sorting through everything, and most anything of interest to some of my most common trading buddies has been mailed out. But in this post I'll show you some of my keepers and also leftover stuff to give you a small taste of what I took home here. I'll be leaving a lot out because it was that or pretty much never get to this, and it was holding up the rest of my posting. So here we go.
First, my keepers:
A bit of baseball.
A basketball trio. Campy!
A football foursome.
Lots of Wings, especially the Russian Five.
There was a box of cut up vintage baseball stuff for $10, which I was going to grab regardless of whether or not I took everything home. I'm not counting any of these in my collection because they're so incomplete, but I'm extremely happy to have playing days cards of the likes of Carlton, Clemente, Koufax, and others.
A couple large HOFers I happen to collect.
There were a
bunch of factory sets in the lot, and here's two I kept for myself: 1990 Sportflics and 1992 Donruss. That's my first Sportflics complete set, though I do own Pinnacle's 1996 Sportflix (not to be confused with these). The '92 Donruss box has the shrink-wrap removed but the cards themselves are still in their bricks.
See? Also, the Sportflics cards include a bunch of trivia holograms.
Here's some other sets I kept. The discs are particularly fun 80s oddballs, and in one or two cases I believe I own full sets represented here that I'm upgrading to boxed form.
Have you ever seen all 20 Topps Screenplays from 1997? Now you have! This was one of the main draws for me and I was thrilled they were still available.
All of them include the tin, informational disc, packing foam, and cards, and some of the cards (like the Gwynn above) still have the protective peel on them. I may give these their own post in the future, and either way I'll probably peel all of them to enjoy them that way.
Here's a couple near sets. The '92 US Playing Card Co. Tigers Playing Cards set is missing only PC guy Mickey Tettleton (King of Hearts) and Scott Livingstone (3 of Spades). The '21 Topps 1952 Redux set came with a near set of '21 Topps Series 1 that you'll see below, and it was short just Dylan Carlson's card (#T52-33), which I'll likely procure in the near future, and then I'll probably keep the set.
There were a couple tubs of magazines and similar items and these were my keepers. The Legends Sports Memorabilia issues were extremely cool since they included sheets of cards and postcards you could collect. I tore a bunch of them up trying to get those items out safely and then cut them by hand, relatively poorly (as those of you who received some of these from me already know--sorry!). More on those shortly. You'll see more examples of the magazines below, but besides those, sticker books, and Becketts, there were some Topps magazines and I pulled cards (individual and panels) from those as well.
Here's a look inside the two Topps sticker books and the two Legends Sports mags from above.
These are the Legends Sports and Topps magazine sheets I'm keeping intact.
Here are the postcard sheets and individual postcards I opted to hold onto.
I also scored a fun mix of individual (if poorly cut) cards of some of my favorites.
This Cal Ripken Jr. streak newspaper, nicely preserved, was a fun find! Meanwhile the mini pennant is one of a bunch also found in the lot, and some of you were lucky enough to get one of one or more of you favorite teams.
As for stuff I'm less likely to keep and more likely to trade or get rid of somehow:
More factory sets! I left the price stickers on some of these for some reason. The four Topps sets on the left are all pretty much unopened (slightly torn shrink-wrap in some cases), and are from 1988, 1989, 1991, and 1992. I may decide to keep the factory sets I don't have (all but '91) and ditch the hand-collated sets I have, we'll see.
Meanwhile, the 2006 set was opened but it did include the bonus pack of five rookie inserts (the first five in the set, so nobody good). 2008 didn't include any bonuses and a note indicated it was missing Paul Konerko's base card for some reason, which I've since acquired. Lastly, '21 Topps Series 1 was missing a total of four cards; I had two from previous pickups and landed the other two in a recent trade. That's the box that came with the '52 Redux insert set missing a single card. Yeah, I'd pay $3 for that!
Here's the rest of the low-condition vintage stuff, which, as I mentioned, was all of $10 if I bought it by itself. I gave a few of these out but may be willing to donate more depending on interest.
There were a few of this Topps Mini set, and I kept one for myself and included a few in trade packages, but I still have four left.
A box that said "vintage basketball" on it included a mix of 1981-82 Topps cards, with a lot of dupes.
Speaking of vintage, how about some cool old hockey cards?
Here's some other small complete or near complete sets from the lot.
I was able to consolidate the remaining magazines down to one tub after keeping what I wanted, sending some out in trades, and sacrificing some for their card/postcard content. Leftovers include some Sports Illustrateds, Becketts, Legends Sports, and more.
This small stack of Legends Sports mags mostly still have their card sheets and/or postcards intact.
But like I said, I did cut a lot of them up and ended up with some leftover card sheets, postcards, and individual cards.
Here's the baseball mini pennants I didn't send out, plus the tiny selection of football (with way too many outdated Washington flags!) plus a Joe Montana Starting Lineup.
One of the most useful items that came as part of the deal was this beat-up but still fine to use sorting tray. Cool!
Items not pictured include a few albums with empty pages, a random sheet or two of stamps, a few comic books that weren't really notable, and I believe a couple other boxes of random cards.
This is about the best I can do covering enough of what I came home with to give you an idea, but regardless, it was a blast as always and I came away happy that I basically bought out the card portion of the guy's garage sale for $100.
I hope those of you that received some of these items enjoy them as much as I did digging them out for you!
I believe next time I'm back (hopefully much sooner this time) I'll be back to covering trades from July until I catch up on those, then you'll see other pickups from the month.
Until then, EAT 'EM UP, TIGERS!