My first trip to the Clearwater card show.

 Last month (especially the first two weeks) I was all over the place and one of those stops was my first trip to a card show in Clearwater, FL. It is a decent sized show with apx. 100 tables. The paper promotions I picked up at probably the Tampa show said Friday and Saturday with start time of 9 am on Saturday. The listing online also said 9 am for Saturday. (I was at that Leesburg card shop all day Friday). I left so that I would get there a wee bit early, I usually do. However, I guess the later night on Friday had several dealers/vendors whining (me no like that). Apparently, they talked the host/promoter of the show to delay starting Saturday til 10 am.  I know this because a few dealer were pissed that the customers started showing up at 9. Duh, that was what the time promoting the show said. They were ticked off, and many dealers didn't show until close to 10 am anyway. Those particular whining vendors were not happy they let us in. Needless to say when you can hear them griping (not a dealer I will look at their tables) people could steal our stuff, I said really? How about we just sue the host for false advertising, really? I wanted to flip this one guy off so bad. I didn't. 

Okay with all of that said it was a great show. Even though I never left the one group of tables I sat down at for the entire day. Digging I was. The first dealer had 1 table with some boxes (the guy I'm sort of trying to train), and the 2 tables on the corner side of his table was an empty dealer who had on Friday night sold everything to one of the other dealers. I spent my whole time digging right there on those 3 tables. The show had three former NFL players signing for free as well as free 8x10 photos to get signed. That is pretty cool. The first two guys that afternoon were former Gators, and the last guy was a Seminole. No, I did not get their autos. I'm a baseball guy and besides I had a lot of digging to do. 

I did spend that first hour walking around watching dealers set up, many were ready at 9 am. I also grabbed breakfast during this time. I did see a small shoebox that was marked two for $5.00. I perused that box while I waited for the show to get fired up. I found TEN cards I wanted and I offered the guy $20.00 and he accepted.

Yeah, those first two are autographed Braves prospects. Very nice. You will see them later too. No way could I leave that Michael Jordan in the box either. 

Now let's get looking at Justin's stuff. I basically made three deals with Justin. I had to rehash with him about what he thought was a good deal for me at the May Jax. show, reminding him that he was paying 5x more than he should to get the baseball cards he was getting. I also reminded him that he was supposed to make it up and that would be today. Jumping forward, he took my advice and made a GOOD smaller bulk purchase from another dealer. He had me check it out told me what he paid I told him very good. I bought half of them for what he paid for all of them. I was happy, so was he. Now he had inventory that didn't cost him anything.

The Puk auto was one of the nicer pieces on this portion of the 3 in 1 deal. The scan above and scan 3 are one portion of the 3 in 1 deal. (3 separate stacks if you will).

The Fingers auto and the pair of Snell's were sweet too. A Five Star and one numbered to 20! The Mancini was a throw in. I don't collect him. But this scan is part of the 2nd portion of the 3n1 deal.

This scan was with the first scan are the first portion of the 3n1 deal.  The Puk still the highlight for me.

Enos Slaughter game used card also nice. A whole lot of wood in the above two scans including the Wade Boggs Tribute triple relic.

Longoria made up most of what he bought from the other dealer. He paid $105.00 and what you see here in the 3 scans is just half of it. I made my package deal on the grouping from Justin and this portion was the largest part at $105.00. He still (after seeing him in jax last weekend) thinks the Longoria's I snagged were the best cards I got from him. They are nice, but I beg to differ that they were the best cards he bought or from what is posted above for that matter. 

Moving to the next and last portion from him. Dime cards. 

The Torres is the cloth sticker.

Those two 1996 Topps Chrome Power Blasters an absolute steal at a dime.

The Kaline mini is the foil parallel SP.

I could put that Gator Bader with my Gator India, but I have PC of both guys, so.

Nice rainbow foil cards.

Okay I hand picked the dime cards above to scan to keep me from getting behind again. I grabbed close to 500 dime cards and paid $35.00 for that portion, and $30.00 for the first portion making the grand total for all 3 groups $170.00, and I wrote a check and didn't use my actual pocket cash.

Tomorrow I will show off the cards from the "empty dealer tables", and be done with the Clearwater show.

And the winner from last night was TDK for back to back wins.