The first ever "Dime Boxes" card show post, Pt. 1: What a day!

It's my pleasure to give to you the first ever card show post here on "Dime Boxes"!

So, yeah, I went to a card show today, like I said I would in my last post.

It was everything I was expecting it to be, and much, much more. It was fantastic, if you're into the whole brevity thing.

Also, I would've had this post up a lot sooner, but my friends called me to play an impromptu game of pickup basketball right after I got home from the show. The game lasted about three hours, and my legs are killing me.

I'd never attended this particular show before because it's a bit of a ways away from where I live. One of the card guys at the flea market I go to during the summer mentioned that he sets up at this show during the winter months. My mom gave me fifty bucks for the "card show fund" and even drove to and from the card show this afternoon as an early birthday present.

So before I go any further, I'd like to thank my mom so much for the great birthday gift. One of the greatest presents ever! I ended up spending $53.50 at the card show (I brought along a few bucks of my own) and came home with 408 cards.

That's about 13 cents a card. One of the cards I bought was a whopping six bucks, but that's a card for tomorrow's "Part 2" of this post, which will feature my vintage pickups. It's just too much to squeeze into one post!

I'll focus on the more modern cards I bought tonight, and we'll begin with the odd Nolan Ryan card at the top of the post.

I was expecting the show to just be a couple small rooms, but it was actually about the size of a school gym. I'd guess there were around 30 to 40 tables.

The first table I saw had a dime box, which was a great sign. I'll feature a couple cards I got from that later on in the post.

The guy also had some cards displayed on a table, all priced at fifty cents each. The Nolan Ryan was one of them. I just recently decided to start collecting Angels cards of "The Ryan Express". The picture that Upper Deck used for this card is just so odd. They couldn't find a picture of him with his shirt on?

As I said, the first table had a dime box, which had a bunch of random cards that ranged through all different eras. Some current stuff, some '80s stuff, everything.

Those are the best kinds.

Just a couple days ago, I was kicking myself because I somehow didn't own either of these two cards from the 2001 Topps Archives set. (I'd done a "Checkoutmycards" search for the set.)

The Parker is cool because it's a "short term stops" card, and the Bobby Thomson is neat because, well...it's Bobby Thomson.

Thankfully, the guy at the local flea market that I mentioned before was there today with his usual smorgasbord of dime boxes for me to peruse through. Even more than usual, actually.

It's like the guy knows exactly what I collect. It scares me sometimes.

I love the 2009 OPC set, and he had a big stack of the black-bordered parallels in the box. Topps Total is another of my favorite sets, and he had a bunch of the Silver parallels mixed in with all the other dime cards.

Needless to say, it was my favorite dime box of the day.

The "flea market guy" also had some other assorted non-dime cards.

I had to pay a whole quarter for this one. (That's sarcasm, in case Sheldon Cooper is reading this.)

A fantastic card commemorating one of the major events in Wrigley Field history.

All in all, I had about 170 cards from the guy's dime box (they're 100 for $7 if you can find that many), and some other various quarter and fifty cent cards. The guy also had some great vintage, but we'll save that for tomorrow.

With all those cards, I was expecting to pay around fifteen bucks, if the guy cut me a deal like he usually does.

He only charged me five bucks for all those cards. He usually cut me deals for the stuff I bought at the flea market, but never anything that huge.

I couldn't thank him enough.

That's another great thing about dime boxes. The vendors are usually great people, always willing to cut you a deal.

Cards like these are always neat to find in dime boxes. The Jocko Conlan is the first umpire card I've bought in a long time.

Plus, who's going to turn down a Jimmy Piersall card for a measly dime?

One of the dime boxes had a bunch of newer base and insert cards.

I don't really care about sets like Bowman Platinum or Finest. I just wait for all the dealers to open up their boxes and throw all the base cards into a dime box.

From there, I can get a lot of the cards of the guys I collect without opening a single pack or making a single trade.

I bought about forty or fifty Platinum/Finest base cards for my various player collections. That's about the price of one pack from either of those sets.

It's definitely the way to go.

A couple of absolutely fantastic additions to my John Olerud collection here. The one on the left is numbered to 10,000 copies. Do they really make much more than that anyways?

And as far as the Pacific Prism card goes, I've just got one question.

Disco, anyone?

One of the guys from the last card show I attended in November was at this one. I bought a few hundred cards from him the last time. (I'm sure I was a valued customer that day.)

I came away with about 75 cards from him this time around.

My dad and I called him "Milosh" after the last card show because he had almost the exact same accent as Milosh from "Seinfeld".

I'm surprised that he recognized me. He even said, "You're that guy who found all those cheap cards from me the last time, aren't you?" (Or something like that.)

He didn't have the dime boxes on display, but I saw that he had them in the back where the vendors were. He was nice enough to let me go "backstage" and let me look through them behind the counter.

I got all four of the "Father and Son" Griffey cards you see above from his dime box. And that's a dime for all four, not a dime each. They were all grouped together in one sleeve.

I'll usually come back with a few cards that I bought for the sole purpose of trading at every card show. These are my two "dime box tradebait" cards from today's show.

"Milosh" must not have looked through that box beforehand, because these two cards were just a dime a piece.

Yep, I got rookie cards of Matt Kemp and Darryl Strawberry for just a dime a piece.

Ninety-nine percent of the cards I buy from card shows go straight into my PC. But it's always nice to find something like this that could net me some neat cards later on.

I found not one, but two new Wilbur Wood cards for the good ol' PC!

I love Wilbur Wood.

The one on the left is one of my personal favorites from today's show. It comes from the 2004 Topps Fan Favorites set.

I've decided to take on a new collecting philosophy this year.

If I see a card with a cool picture, I'm buying it. I used to just say, "Oh, that's a really neat picture. Too bad I don't collect that guy."

In the long run, a great picture is worth much more than a dime.

That wraps up part one of this two-part post. I'll show off the vintage I got tomorrow, there sure were some great ones! (Beware: Mini alert!)

Few things beat coming home from a successful card show and just admiring all the new pieces in your collection.

It's a great feeling.