Another cool thrift store find

Stopping at a local church thrift store on Saturday mornings is becoming a ritual for me.

I have one just a couple blocks from my house, and easily walkable at that. It opens from 10-1 on Saturdays and 10-2 on Tuesdays, I believe. My daughter finishes dance class at 10am, so once my wife arrives home, I usually had out for a quick morning stroll.

Most days, I'll go to the post office first, which is also walkable. And on the way back, I'll swing by the thrift store. It's basically what you'd expect. Mostly junk in the basement of the church. Only once have I found cards worth buying, a large binder for $5 you can read about here. Since then, I've only seen cards once, and it was a bunch of utter junk in plastic cases for $.25 a card. Not worth it.

I've bought some other stuff here and there. I found a cool electric slot car track there back in December. I've also found a few Wii games for my son, as all games and DVDs are $1, regardless of how new or old.

Anyhow, this past Saturday, I went to the post office at 10 to mail a package to Kerry over at Cards on Cards. On my way back, I swing by the thrift store, and immediately spotted two binders of cards!

I made a beeline past a guy who was looking at comic books and grabbed the binders. There were marked $1 each and in good condition. Each had maybe 20-25 pages, also in good condition. At quick glance, I spotted mostly junk, but did see a few cards of players of note, so I decided it would be worth the $2.

I also saw eight PS4 games on a very bottom shelf, and snagged them all. (Side note, but I sold them the same day on FB marketplace for $35 total. That's how you turn $8 into $35.)

Overall, I paid $10 ($2 for the cards + $8 for the video games), which is exactly the amount of cash I had, and headed home. I knew I wasn't going to find anything too great in the binders, but for 40% of the price of a Walgreen's repack, it still felt worth it.

I was right there was mostly junk, but I did find a lot of fun cards. I'd say it was 80% baseball, 18% basketball and maybe 2% hockey cards.

The first page(s) that jumped out at me were a bunch of 2000 Newark Bears cards. That makes sense to me, as I live just about 15 minutes from Newark and pass where the Bears once played everyday on my commute to work.

A few names jumped out at me, especially this guy:

Ozzie Canseco! I've got this card headed to Mario at Wax Heaven, a Canseco brothers completist. Apparently this quite a hard card to find for Canseco collectors. I probably could have gotten a few bucks for it on the open market, but Mario will appreciate it more, so off to him it goes.

A few other interest names: Bobby Bonds! I had no idea there was a Bobby Bonds, the son.

And Joe Borowski actually won a game for the '98 Yanks!

The oldest card in the binders was actually tucked into one of the font pockets, this Pete Rose/Steve Carlton Phillies Leaders. Kind of cool.

There were  a few MLB Showdowns, including a couple HOFers.

And some new and old HOFers:

Hey, I know this guy!

The only Yankee I found was a cool Topps Total of Jorge Posada.

This card was very interesting, a promo card to find local card shops. It no longer works. I called the number and and an automated voice asked if I was over 50. Actually, maybe it was working, now that I think about it.

There were some fun art cards too! I remember the Charlie Ward card from when I was growing up.

Among the basketball cards, a lot of Pippen and Rodman. No MJ, unfortunately.

And a very sweet Penny Hardaway.

This card was cool to see. King Rice was from my town, and went on to play at UNC. That is a pretty big deal. He's currently the head coach at Monmouth.

While I know little about hockey, I do know that none of them were massive names other than who I recognized.

There was only football card as well, but it was of a good name!

So that's it. Worth the $2? I'd say so. Fun times, and hopefully I find another treasure at the thrift store soon!

Contest winnings from Fuji

San Jose Fuji stole (well, he paid a little money) for some sweet 1996 Pinnacle Denny's sets from a dealer at his local flea market. He was nice enough to hold a contest for one of these sets, and somehow my name came up first. It usually comes up last in contest drawings, so I was definitely happy to win this one.

I had a lot of these cards growing up, as we had an old lady family friend who went to Denny's quite often. She's bring these cards over for me. They were always a blast to open, but I never collected a full set.

The 28-card set is full of big names. The hologram actually is a small video-type clip too. You can see a players complete swing, slide into a base, or in Ozzie Smith's case, complete back flip. It's a little different than their holograms of year's past.

I tried to scan so that you could see a snippet of the photo. Regardless, a truly awesome set from a truly awesome blogger. Thanks, Fuji!

Adding the newest HOFers to Joey's HOF binder

Well, that was an easy way to add to Joey's HOF binder. Last night, I added Greg Maddux and Frank Thomas to my son's HOF collection. I know I have a few Glavines around (including his 1988 Topps RC), but I couldn't quickly find one last night. No biggie, I'll look this weekend.

Congrats to these guys on fantastic careers. I've got cards of Biggio, Big Unit, Pedro, and Smoltz set aside already for next year!

Repack remorse

A few days ago, the wifey and baby and I hit up Target. I decided to treat myself to some cards. I was hoping for either a Bowman or Archives blaster, but they had neither. Boo. I settled on a few of those repack boxes, figuring I could get 10-14 packs and still spend less than I had budgeted. Plus, I always read about nice scores from a lot of bloggers from repacks.

Well, these sucked. I was so disappointed. Most of the packs were from 2010-2012 Topps, which is fine, but we’ve all had our fill of those. I was hoping for a few more mid-00s Upper Deck or Fleer Ultra packs.

I still busted the packs of course, but really got nothing interesting. I won’t lie, here are the three best cards I got:

Do you ever buy a repack box, and then immediately regret it?

Trade Review: MadGlavSmoltz

I've been meaning to post about this trade. I reached out to Chris at Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz about a 2011 Topps card he needed. Turns out he had the card, but we still worked out a trade. I sent him a handful of cards off his Braves want lists of Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz (appropriately), as well as a few Chipper Jones inserts I had.

Chris sent me a truly awesome package of cards. It was a blast to open! Chris did a fun packaging job too...cards just kept falling out. I'd take two out of a top loader, and a mini would fall out from between the top two cards. It was great.

My favorite cards from the trade were probably the Cano 2010 Topps Chrome Refractor, an ARod SPX die-cut, Oscar Gamble 1980 Topps (because who doesn't love an Oscar Gamble card?), and a 1981 Donruss Yogi Berra Coach card. There were still plenty of other sweet cards, including some more Topps Moments and Milestones - Jeter and ARod. The Jetes was numbered to 29, by far my lowest #'d card of him. To cap off the trade, there were two 1980 Topps 5x7s - Reggie Jackson and Graig Nettles.

Here are a few of the cards:

Great stuff, thanks Chris!

A Piece of the World Series - O'Neill and Maddux

I love the 2000 UD HoloGRFX A Piece of the Series set. For those of you who haven't seen it, it's an 11 card insert set featuring a piece of a game used base from the 1999 World Series. The first card I got in this set was the Tino Martinez. I had wanted that card from the moment I saw it, and I liked it so much, I've decided to try and collect the set.

Now, 11 cards seems odd for a set, no? That's because John Rocker was originally on the 12-card checklist. And then we went crazy and UD pulled him from the set, rather than replace him. A few weeks ago, I picked up the Chipper card, and I'm proud to add two more of these cards to my collection, both courtesy of my eBay addiction.

First up is Paul O'Neill. Paulie only hit .200 in this World Series, but contributed 4 RBIs, including two in Game One. I got this card for just under $3, with another $3 for shipping.

Next up is my second Brave in the set. One of the best pitchers to ever take the mound, Greg Maddux. It's hard to believe that Atlanta only won one World Series with their great pitching staffs. Anyhow, Maddux got the ball for Game One, and went 7+ innings - giving up four runs (two earned) and striking out five. It wasn't quite vintage Maddux, but he was still pretty damn good. The problem was, El Duque was better, going 7 innings, only letting up one run on one hit (a Chipper homer) while striking out 10. I got this Maddux card for $6.54 plus $3 shipping. A little more than I wanted to spend, but the opportunity was there so I pounced.

Four cards down, seven to go in this set.