Oh BOY! I did a bad thing today.....

Not really. I did make my way to one of the local flea markets today, and get this I was out of there in 1 hour. But an extremely good hour it was.

After reading a fellow bloggers' rants or should I say RAVES about his flea market finds in several of his posts this summer, I decided to quit procrastinating and just go dig through some boxes myself. At least that was my intention. Didn't find any to look through, but what I did find were two tables with some cards. (I only went though 3/4 of the market).

At the first table of all kinds of misc. stuff I see some sports cards thrown all around. They were in horrible condition, and yep they were all crap cards too, you know the ones. There were some misc baseball items too, but none worthy of a dig. I ask the man how much for all of this sports stuff? He replied $50.00, I laughed and told to have a nice day, he immediately dropped down to $30.00. I again told him no thank you and he asked what I was thinking, and I said maybe $5.00 but that would be pushing it, he laughed. He then proceeded to tell me he has over 1 million cards (not there of course), but he did have some in his truck, and pulled out a storage box of pretty much all Yankees, with one exception...... a box of 100 unopened packs (6 stickers each) of 1997-98 Upper Deck Basketball stickers with Jordan on the wrapper or package and the box too. I asked how much for that? he said $5.00, done. I have them, I don't collect basketball although I do have several thousand for trade. But couldn't pass that up.

Onward I go, not much in my hand but the one small box which was actually in a bag. I stumble on another table where an older gentleman was sitting with all kinds of flea market stuff, and right in front of him were 6 binders all open of sports cards. He was actually going through what looked to be a 20 year old price guide. I had noticed that the binder in front of him had 1985 Topps baseball, so I looked at him and said what card are you pricing, he pointed to a Pete Rose Record Breaker card, and thus started what turned into a 30 minute conversation on baseball memories. I quite enjoyed that. His memories of catching a Mantle foul ball, then a few innings later at the games' end asking him to sign it, and he of course said no.... funny thing though Whitey Ford was behind Mantle and said "I can sign it for you", he did and went on to get Yogi Berra to sign it and another Yankee too!  Now that's a memory.

I glanced quickly through the binders, 1 was full of vintage, which I wanted. The others were near sets with pretty much all the key cards, but 1 89 set didn't have the Griffey. Of course I didn't know what all was actually there until I got home and spent 6 hours pulling the cards out of the binders. They were not in any type of order, or even by sets. Whoever "binded" them put the cards according to player. At let me tell there were a lot of super stars. I will provide details later in this blog. Obviously, we negotiated a price and I now have all 6 binders and a 800 count box too.

Before I spill what I paid I want to let you know what I got. My hands were now full so I headed back to my truck to get home so I could go through what I just bought, and here is what was in there......

I'll start out with the light stuff.
I got 3 Elway cards including his 1985 among 50ish football cards several were from the 70s. Nice.
I got about 2 dozen basketball and 4 of them were from the 74-75 Toppss all in EX-NM condition.
Even some vintage Hockey from the 70s about 6 in all.
I got about 50 or so Braves whereas 4 were 1957 Braves and 1 1960 and some 70s including Neikro. Nice again! This is why I bought the cards to begin with.
I got a factory sealed Upper Deck HOF first edition stamp 12 (card size) set! I so want to open it but I dare not. The player checklist on the back contains: Ty Cobb, Dizzy Dean, Bob Feller, Whitey Ford, Lou Gehrig, Rogers Hornsby, Mel Ott, Satchel Paige, Babe Ruth, Casey Stengel, Honus Wagner, and Cy Young. Apparently these stamps are official legal postage stamps as the box states if you are mailing from St Vincent or the Grenadines. Still very NICE!
I got 2 sealed 1996 Flick Ball sets: Dallas Cowboys * Minnesota Vikings.
I got 4 1983 Donruss oversized (post card) cards of Nolan Ryan, Yaz, Steve Carlton, and Eddie Murray.
I got several 8x10s.
I got about 3000 baseball cards which I have almost sorted into sets, I will then need to put them order and such. But to sum those up there are many Ryans, Rose, Ripkens, Schmidts, and the like. Even some Griffey Jr, Bonds, all the super stars are in the lot for sure.

Now on to more specifics, like the VINTAGE BASEBALL CARDS.There are 65 1957 Topps, 15 1959 Topps, 25 1960 Topps, and 13 1976 Topps. All of these cards have been sorted and looked up! Wait to you see who was in there!

I will start with the 1976 Topps: All EX/MT-NM
1 Brett/ Madlock, 3 May/ Foster, 8 Campbell/Eastwick, 70 Johnny Bench, 200, 216, 234 Nolan Ryan, 265 Mark Fidrych RC, 387, 504, 510, 600 Jim Palmer, and 635 Yount.

Do you think I got $35.00 worth of cards yet???????????  Just wait.

1960 Topps : 15 runnels ex-mt, 30 francona gd+,89  brown ex+, 106 nm, 118 nm, 119 ex-mt, 121 nm, 218 ex+, 245 yost nm & ex-mt, 287 alou ex-mt, 288 ex-mt, 337 ex-mt, 401 ex-mt, 406 ex-mt, 441 Bell ex+, 449 brosnan ex-mt, 451 ex-mt, 452 ex-mt, 458 nm, 460 ex-mt, 463 ex-mt, 471 ex, 507 stigmon nm, 517 Charley James RC NM, and 521 Mike Lee RC ex-mt.

How about now?? The cardboard angels were shining on me today!!!!

1959 Topps:
56 nm, 85 ex-mt, 148 ex, 201 ex-mt, 206 gd-vg, 214 RC nm, 229 ex, 236 RC vg-ex, 263 nm, 325 Ken Boyer EX+, 378 ex-mt, 393 nm, 405 vg, and 483 ex-mt.

Now for the jackpot 1957 Topps.
3 long x2 p-fr & pr, 11 ex+, 16 fr-gd, 17 vg, 42 vg, 52 gd, 64 James Runnels Ex-MT, 77 RC gd, 89 ex, 94 gd, 96 RC fr, 104 ex, 106 fr, 113 Mizell EX-MT, 121 Clete Boyer RC EX-MT, 128 fr, 134 pr-fr, 137 gd, 140 Frank Thomas fr, 150 friend gd-vg, 151 gd157 ex, 159 RC ex, 165 Ted Kluszewski gd-vg, 168 gd, 182 pr-fr, 184 RC ex, 186 gd-vg, 209 vg+, 211 ex-mt, 225 ex, 234 gd & ex, 235 ex, 244 vg, 247 ex, 267 RC vg, 273 gd-vg, 281 gd, 285 gd-vg, 304 Cunningham GD, 327 Pendleton EX, 345 fr-gd, 346 vg, 351 RC vg-ex, 358 gd, 359 RC vg, 362 RC ex, 363 RC ex, 368 vg, 371 vg, 373 RC pr, 379 RC fr, 382 EX, 393 RC pr-fr, 396 RC ex, 404 RC ex. Plus a few cubbies I set aside for someone they were all pr-fr.

Now to think I spent just 1 hour at the market 30 minutes of it listening to someone share their baseball memories. Which I will say again I enjoyed very much. BTW some of the 70's cards I didn't list or talk about had stars too like Billy Martin. I only mention him as the guy tried to find his card while I was at his table, he couldn't. I found two!
 I will eventually get these cards added to my trading website and into my org at Beckett (ID jfmjr1)

https://sites.google.com/site/johnnystradingspot/home

Until later.  

jfmjr1@aol.com