Mysteries of the universe

There are many great mysteries of the universe, one of which is the question of why I still have a Twitter account. 

I rarely use Twitter. I don't interact with people on Twitter. I don't want to see most of what comes up in my feed on Twitter (I refuse to call it "X"). Even the vast majority of the baseball card content I get is the usual sales/breaker stuff I don't care a lick about. 

But every once in a while, a light at the end of the Twitter tunnel appears: like, in this case, a message from @raiderjoe that simply says something along the lines of "I've got a big box of cards to send you."

He's done this to me before, and this most recent offering was a particularly glorious mix of unpredictable madness.

Case in point: my first and second cards from the 1960 Baseball Hi-Lites set (and both Senators!), the oversized precursors to my beloved '61 Nu-Scoops. 

Couple that with a Maury Wills autograph and a pair of Topps Supers, and you have a heavy-hitting start to what was a wild romp of cardboard.

These conventional '82 Topps singles had a very unconventional twist to them - as you can tell from the oblong edges and varying sizes, they look to have been hand-cut from a sheet (or the product of an inebriated Topps employee?). 

I'm not great with a pair of scissors, but even I could do better than this.

If you wanna put a smile on my face, send me miscuts, send me scribbled-on cards, send me evidence of glorious imperfection.

Minis of many shapes, sizes, and nationalities - among the many great things about Kellogg's cards is that even receiving ones I already have (like those two, sadly) is still a treat.

I don't specifically chase those '70s discs - keeping track of the 846 different variations would make my head explode - but I certainly won't refuse any that fall into my lap (especially Vida Blue!). 

More miscellany that warms my heart - I've spent the good part of my collecting life ignoring vintage team cards, and I've often wondered if it's time to change that.

This box was a fitting parallel to my Twitter life in general, in that I can't explain a lot of what was in there (don't even begin to ask me what that frightening clown is doing on a baseball card). 

Took until now to learn that Campbell's Soup released a handful of Richie Ashburn reprints in the late '80s - this, of course, led me to purchase the rest of the set (which was surprisingly affordable).

Vintage League Leaders have never been high on my priority list, but my God has there ever been more star power on a single baseball card??

I may be showing a '61 Fleer Greats Hughie Jennings here, but please don't tell anyone because I feel like these are among the better-kept (see: cheaper) secrets in the vintage universe. 

I also can't give a good reason why I love hand-cut cards so much - but you better believe my head almost hit the ceiling when I saw this slew of box bottoms...THAT I GOT TO CUT!

I went to a burger place once where the fries were served in a taco shell, thus meaning that the container was itself edible - I think of that whenever I see box bottoms.

One particular box bottom caught my eye: at first I was floored because I didn't know these Cramer Greats were ever issued as box bottoms, but then, upon closer look...

...hark, that's a Hoyt I need!

I'm proud to say I don't secure many new Hoyts these days because I already have so many. But every so often I'll find one that slipped through the cracks, and in this case it was attached to three other cards (that I also needed!). A few short scissor snips later, and voila, there's a rare new Hoyt!

Maybe, after such a staggering cardboard romp, I don't mind saying something I once thought was impossible: to admit that, yes, I'm glad I have a Twitter account.

10 reasons to wait out the cash registers at Goodwill

I popped into the local Goodwill yesterday with the hopes of finding some binders, perhaps a book or two, or maybe that pair of jeans I always seem to need.

I found none of that - but I did find baseball cards! Buying cards at Goodwill is a mythical event (you can count the number of times it's happened to me on one hand), but this time, waiting innocently on the pegs near the checkout aisle were a heap of tightly-packed bags of cardboard, a mere $2.99 a pop. I grabbed seven of the most promising ones and just about ran to the cash registers.

The moment I got there, some kind of global company error made Goodwill's entire electronic system collapse. They couldn't take any payments. The fellow retail worker in me felt terrible for the employees - the worst of humanity comes out in a lot of people when they can't buy that $4 trinket - but the fact is I really wanted those cards because how often do I find these at Goodwill?? So I decided I'd wait it out. And I waited. And waited.

After a while, a manager decided they'd take exact change since the credit system was still on the fritz - I didn't have any cash on me, but I found an ATM not far away, got back into the spiraling line, and soon enough the cards were mine! Of course, that's quite an ordeal for a few bags' worth of baseball cards, so the question remains: was it worth it? 

You better believe it - and here's 10 reasons why it was!

#1 - I found cards I needed

The sheer thrill of digging through that big of a treasure of unexpected cardboard is worth the $20 I spent on its own, but fact is there was a nice heap of stuff in there I actually needed.

I left behind a few of the packs that looked to have nothing but '88 Donruss & '89 Fleer because I've seen enough of those for a lifetime. But a bunch of them seemed to have a good amount of not-as-junky mid '90s cardboard, which I figured would result in a good amount of material for my binders.

Against all odds, I even discovered a neat throwback card I'd never seen before with this spiffy Matt Williams!

#2 - I finally conquered 1994 Fleer

I don't know if it's just me, but I seem to have a harder time finding stuff from '94 Fleer than most others of the era.

It's not a particularly notable set, but it's achieved a bit of notoriety with me because of how little I see of it in the wild. That changed, somehow, with this random trip to Goodwill - two of the packs I bought were all '94 Fleer! I was over the moon. (Has anyone ever been this excited over '94 Fleer?)

About half of the cards I ended up needing from this buy were from '94 Fleer, and I'm particularly excited about that Greg Colbrunn because wow that's a beautiful card.

#3 - 1996 Score (and its wonderful horizontals)

I've always thought mid '90s Score gets a bad rap - they were doing stuff just as exciting as Topps and the other heavy hitters of the era.

The horizontals in '96 Score are particularly nifty, and thanks to Goodwill for providing me with a bunch more!

#4 - I gave a home to cards from a fellow collector

Whoever owned these cards before me was obviously a collector because all the cards in each bag were in numerical order - I don't need much more from '88 Score these days, but it was nice to see all the green-bordered cards arranged together.

I often think about what'll happen to my collection after my time is up - please no horror stories about it ending up in a landfill - but it's nice to know that I was at least able to give a good home to this batch of outcast cardboard.

#5 - Tough '90s inserts?!

I could tell through the plastic that one of the bags had a few cards that didn't seem to fit in with the rest of the  - imagine my surprise when I opened it and found a nice stack of weird, cool '90s inserts!

Everything in this scan besides the Clark is numbered, and that "Knothole Gang" is a wonderful set I'd never seen before.

#6 - Cool '90s inserts I forgot I liked

I hadn't bought one of these "Slideshow" inserts in a while, and this Raul Mondesi reminded me of how awesome (and very, very '90s) they are.

#7 - The sheer act of randomness

If I've tried to impart one thing in the history of this blog, I hope it's the joy that can be had in digging through a trove of random, mysterious cardboard.

Was anything I found in these bags a huge, pressing need? Not really. But only buying cards that fill a great gap is boring, and if I did that I'd probably add about three cards to my collection a year. There's pleasure in the randomness!

Nothing in this scan fills a particularly massive gap in my collection, but don't mistake that for me not loving them, and smiling at the delight of sliding them into my binders.

#8 - I get to talk about guys I never mention on this blog

I only have so much airtime on the blog, and unfortunately that means I've omitted a few guys who occupy prime real estate in my binders - so Jeromy Burnitz, Terry Mulholland, Mark Loretta...here's your moment in the limelight.

Mike Sweeney is an especially egregious omission - he's one of my biggest and long-standing player collections, and I feel like I've never said that in over a decade around here.

#9 - Early '90s Score oddballs

Score put out a nice little smattering of smaller box-set issues in the early '90s that are largely forgotten today.

One of the bags was exclusively filled with these lovable oddballs, which was good because - as became glaringly apparent as I dug through them - there's still so many of these I need!

#10 - Sombrero Bip

Because Sombrero Bip makes everything worth it.

I spent more in a village hall than I did at The National

A couple weekends ago, I took a Sunday off work to attend the local village hall card show, the first time I'd been there in about three years.

I've said many times before that smaller, calmer shows like this one fit my personality a whole lot better. That said, the money involved usually isn't in the same ballpark. I save more for The National, I bring more to The National, I spend more at The National. That's just how it is. How can a small local gathering about 1/50th the size of The National expect to compete with such prodigiousness?

Yet somehow, against all odds, I actually spent more money in the two moderately-sized rooms at the village hall show than I did in the entirety of last year's National.

I think one of the reasons this is even remotely possible is that vendors don't have to sell as much to pay for their table, thus opening the possibility for me to find more fun cheap stuff.

Granted, I did see a couple dime box vendors I used to love eschew the cheap stuff for five, ten, twenty-dollar cardboard at this show - a lot's changed in the hobby in the three years since I've been able to go. But overall there was still more than enough gold in the discount bins to satisfy this low-end fanatic.

Take that three-card panel issued by the US Department of Transportation at the top of this post that cost me exactly $1 (of course I've already cut it up), or this weird T206-style oddball set that may well feature the earliest appearances of throwback jerseys on cards.

A smaller show also simply allows me more time - time to soak everything in, time to comb through entire tables, time to hit some vendors two, even three times throughout the day (try doing that at The National).

This show lasts until 2 PM, and I arrived at the village hall around 10 AM. I'd made a lap through all the tables by around 11:30, which allowed me the chance for some treats I usually don't have time for when I'm in a time crunch - like 50-cent boxes. 

I snatched that Johnny Washington auto for a couple quarters even though I knew absolutely nothing about it - I'm glad I did, because it turns out Mr. Washington played in the Negro Leagues in the late '40s & is still kicking at 93 years young!

I'm glad to see more current singles for sale at shows these days - there was a little while there where I was finding nothing but wax, wax, and more wax.

Why spend $30 on a 32-card blaster of Platinum Anniversary when you can get a massive stack of hand-picked needs for a quarter a pop?

There weren't a ton of dime boxes at this show - maybe two or three in the entire hall - but the few I found managed to make quite a splash.

Found this quartet of toughies for my big player collections - Vlad is a Heritage SP and the Lofton is from the tough '92 Fleer Update set - but Dime Box Find of the Day honors has to go to that excellent Topps TV Tony Gwynn.

A&G minis are usually in good supply at shows, but it's not every day you find a Shakey's Pizza card in the wild!

Your usual helping of shiny stuff, including a card that reminded me how beautiful those '04 Gold Refractors really are.

More miscellaneous discount bin fun (how often do you see Mike Piazza at first base?), and this is probably the first time in a decade or two that I bought an autograph and a game-used card at the same show.

Eric Munson is high on my list of Failed Prospects I Collect, and I figured I'd toss a couple quarters at a bat card of his for the novelty if nothing else. 

A few cool pre-fame glimpses of future stars - certainly didn't think I'd find a Topps NPB Seiya Suzuki in a dime box here in the greater Chicago area.

More things I can't resist, like food-issued oddballs (Twizzlers!) and Starting Lineup companion cards.

I am, admittedly, also in the market for any non-obnoxiously-priced Michael Jordan baseball cards (that one was a dollar). 

Smaller shows like this make me wonder what I'm missing when I'm otherwise forced to skip over quarter and fifty-cent boxes at bigger gatherings.

While they might not be dime boxes, there's still a lot of gold hidden in these things - take that masterful Mickey Mantle play at the plate, for instance (fifty cents!).

You'd think a relatively small village hall show wouldn't have much in the way of vintage, or at least nothing that could even remotely measure up to The National - but you'd be wrong.

Some of my most prized vintage finds have come at this particular show, and even with a three-year gap since my last trip, it's a trend that I think you'll all agree in due time continued this time around.

For starters, how about a couple absolutely massive names from my beloved Kellogg's - Reggie was a mere $10, and I've gone up the wall trying to find a semi-affordable copy of that '70 Clemente for years now (a very reasonable $35 price tag put that to bed!).

Cheap, fun vintage is a continued thrill for me at shows - these four combined cost less than a single pack of modern cardboard.

Love the rare manager-carrying-bats shot on that Kasko, and for the love of the cardboard gods how have I never seen that '73 Blue Moon Odom before??

In my experience, I've found that smaller shows are generally better for finding vintage bargains - where else am I gonna find a '60 Topps Orlando Cepeda for two bucks?

(And in the latest episode of Nick Has Too Many Cards, I somehow forgot that I already own a copy of that Drysdale...)

These were among my final purchases of the day, made during my third separate trip through the archives of a particularly fruitful table - that '67 Palmer completes my run of his Topps cards.

In a bit of sad happenstance, Orlando Cepeda passed away in the time between buying these cards and writing this post...

...which is particularly odd because my trip to the village hall unwittingly turned into The Day of Orlando Cepeda at some point.

The '60 Topps, '62 All-Star, and '63 Post Cepedas are all fine and good, but they can't light a candle to this '58 rookie I scored from one of the first tables of the day, a card I've wanted for my entire adult collecting life. I fished out a whole $70 from my wallet to put this "Keep Dreaming" need to bed - not a particularly massive steal, but still a good price for a card that's been an unattainable prize for so long.

All in all, you couldn't ask for much more out of a fine day at the village...wait, hold on...what's this...

[record scratch]

One simply does not attend a village hall card show with any intention of walking out with a '58 Mantle, for God's sake. But here we are.

How does this happen? The vendor I bought the Clemente & Reggie Kellogg's from off-handedly showed me a '58 Mantle he'd just picked up about ten minutes prior, more out of affability than with any intention of seeing if I wanted it. He then said something like I think I'll price it at $175. I thought he meant $1,175, because in my experience that seems like a more expected price for a '58 Mantle (probably the most marked-up ballplayer in cardboard history).

But no, I watched the man carefully pen $175 on the tag. I panicked because this was massively cheaper than any '50s Mantle I'd ever seen...but I didn't quite have that amount of cash left at that point in the day. I asked if I'd take $150 (the entirety of my remaining funds), and he said the lowest he could go was $165. Sadly, I told him I didn't have that much cash on me. At which time he said: I take PayPal, too.

I usually try not to venture out into the world of virtual purchases at shows - cold, hard cash keeps me to at least the illusion of a budget - but in this case I think you'll agree it was justified. And somehow, with a few quick taps on a phone, the '58 Mantle was mine. It's the kind of card you shake hands with the vendor after buying.

And that, my friends, is the story of how I spent more money at a local village hall than The National.