Dime Box Heroes: Time for something new

2002 Topps Archives #131 Tom Seaver

I love every opportunity I have to blog.

It's something that I don't ever see myself getting tired of.

That being said, Sunday nights are probably my favorite time of the week to blog. I've found that my highest amount of readership comes at that point, probably because people are winding down the weekend at that point.

And I've found that reading blogs is a great way to "wind down".

Even with all that, I didn't get a chance to blog last night. In fact, it didn't even cross my mind once yesterday. Why?

I tried something new. I went to Six Flags.

Taking the trip to Six Flags is an annual tradition amongst my group of friends. Since I didn't really get to know most of them until late last year, this was my first chance to make the journey with them.

Trouble was, I'd never ridden a roller coaster in my life before yesterday. I'm the polar opposite of a thrill seeker.

While I didn't ride any of the hair-raising rides (like the "Raging Bull"), I did go on a few of the smaller ones, which turned out to be pretty fun. 

I surprised myself when we got to the waterpark portion of the amusement park, going on a few slides that I never thought I'd try.

All in all, it was a great experience and I'm glad I went.

It's pretty easy to become complacent when it comes to baseball cards as well.

Same players, same teams, same sets. (It's one of the reasons I love digging through the little $1.49 packs they have at some Target stores. The variety of sets doesn't get much better.)

For a long time in my card-collecting life, it was the same card shows.

I was happy with attending the gigantic bi-annual show and coming back with six or seven hundred cards twice a year. For the first year or two after my re-entry into baseball cards, that was it.

I never thought to look and see if there were any other card shows in my area.

Finally, I decided to at least check one day. To my surprise, I found that there were actually a few shows a short drive away. Even more exciting was the fact that one of them fell a day after I was planning on attending one of the big bi-annual shows.

Two card shows in two days! Now that's a baseball card extravaganza. (I'm not quite sure how I managed to scrape up enough money for that, though.)

The first show was just as great as it always was. I found my usual six hundred cards and left with a huge smile on my face.

But the show I was to attend the next day was even more intriguing. As I've since found, there's always an odd sense of anticipation before setting foot in a brand new card show. If it's great, then you leave with a sense of accomplishment, proud of having a new show to add to the repertoire.

Then again, if it turns out to be a bust, coming home empty-handed usually results in a huge feeling of disappointment. 

Thankfully, the former was true in the case of the "new" card show.

At first, I was a bit disappointed after I found that the show was comprised of just two small rooms in a hotel. But those feelings were soon quashed.

The first room had a table with a couple big dime boxes of early/mid '80s singles. At the time, my collection was extremely lacking in that department, and I ended up adding over 100 cards as a result. The rest of that room was mostly packs, boxes, supplies, etc, so I moved on to the next room.

While there were only seven or eight tables, I found that every single one had a dime box for me to dig through, much to my pleasure. One even had two giant stacks of singles from the then-newly released 2010 A&G set, all for a dime a piece. I couldn't find them cheaper than 3/$1 at the show the day before. (One of the advantages of smaller shows, I've found.)

The last I looked through at the show had a stack of 2002 Topps Archives inside (often overshadowed by the legendary '01 Archives release). 

Cards I need from dime boxes are usually one here, another one there, another one there. However, I pulled about fifteen consecutive cards I needed from that stack, as well as dozens of other miscellaneous cards spread throughout the box. 

Tom Seaver was probably my favorite of the '02 Archives I found, as he's one of those players that tends to turn up in a lot of dime boxes for whatever reason. (He's a member of my "hundred club".)

After all was said and done, I found almost as many cards from those two little rooms as I did in the big bi-annual show from the day before, which is held in a giant convention hall.

It was a pleasant surprise, to say the least.

Since then, I've eagerly looked for new card shows in my area on a periodic basis. You never know when a new one will pop up. After all, that little show taught me a valuable lesson in the world of collecting.

Don't be afraid to try something new.