Card Show Cards - Dollar Box Grandma

A few weeks ago now I had the good fortune to attend a local card show.  I posted the first portion of my spoils earlier this month, time to wrap it up with the rest today.  Today's round of pick-ups is brought to you by the woman I've begun to affectionately refer to (at least in my head) as the "Dollar Box Grandma".

I've purchased cards from her at least once before, so I probably should know her name at this point, but I don't.  All I know is she's easily 70 years old, and she's got some discount boxes.

Usually I stick to her dollar boxes, but at this particular show I had a bit more time so I started with her quarter cards and worked my way up.  At 25 cents I probably overpaid for this Hanley Ramirez, but at the time it was my very first 2015 Bowman's Best card so I went for it.

Same with this one, but again this was back when 2016 Topps had only recently been released so I didn't mind shelling out a quarter for this Brian Johnson rookie card.  All of the other quarter cards I picked up went out in trade packages, let's move onto some 50 cent pick-ups...

This Wade Miley is a Rainbow Foil parallel.  Amazingly, I received the exact same card in a PWE from Dimebox Nick this week.  No worries though, that copy will be passed along to a good home soon.

I grabbed a couple of other 50 cent Rainbow Foil parallels as well with Hanley Ramirez...

...and one of the most talked-about cards of 2016 so far, the Jose Bautista bat flip card.  I don't plan on buying any 2016 Topps wax so I was pleased to find a copy of this one.

Got my very first Sky Blue Refractor with this Manuel Margot.  These look pretty slick in hand if you're a fan of shiny.

Grabbed a couple of new Matt Barnes cards, first a Heritage Minor League release from his time with the single A Salem Red Sox...

...and then this little acetate number from last year's High Tek set.  The sheer number of these things is ridiculous, and I believe this one is a "Confetti Diffractor" or something silly like that (not kidding).  Either way, an acetate card serial-numbered to /99 was too good a deal to pass up at 50 cents.

Deven Marrero is still with the organization, and actually saw his first 50 or so MLB at-bats last season.  Even hit his first home run!

One more Salem Red Sox card for today, this one featuring a nice awkward photo of outfielder Jackie Bradley Jr.

These next two I was particularly happy with.  For 75 cents each I was able to pick up a nice new pair of Mookie Betts cards, the first being this Red Framed parallel from Panini Diamond Kings...

...and the other a classic Gold parallel from 2015 Topps.

Of course, I hit the dollar boxes as well.  There are only a couple 2,000ct monster boxes of cards priced at a buck per, but there are some real deals to be had.  Again, the majority of what I picked up are cards destined for others but I did okay for myself too.

This one was kind of dumb honestly.  I guess it was the allure of the serial-numbered parallel, or maybe the lingering memories I still have of that no-hitter early in Clay's career.

I've posted a few Trevor Gretzky cards before, and couldn't resist this Blue Refractor (/250) of the Great One's son.

Here's another Manuel Margot, this time a Bowman Silver Ice parallel.  He is now in the San Diego organization, having been a part of the trade that brought Craig Kimbrel to Boston this off-season.

Picked up a couple Rockets from 2004 Diamond Kings.  This one is the Sepia variety...

...and this one is the Bronze Framed Sepia.  I wasn't collecting at the time, but this seems like one of those sets with entirely too many variations of each card.

I'm not normally a huge mini guy, so why on Earth did I spend a buck on this David Ortiz?

Well, it's a "no number back".  I believe these are supposedly limited to 50 copies each, or something along those lines.

There were a few of those no number backs to be had, so I ended up with Mike Napoli...

...and Dallas Keuchel to accompany Ortiz in my mini binder.  I like this one in particular since it's from Dallas' Cy Young season.

These Gallery of Greats inserts from last year's flagship set are absolutely beautiful in my opinion.  There was a version in the Topps Chrome set as well, but from what I can tell the ones from the flagship release are slightly more expensive/desirable.  That may only be because the flagship cards contain retired stars, and the Chrome version has current players.

I ended up with five of these, Clemens because it's a new Red Sox card, the other four because they're players I just enjoy collecting.

It's a little hard to tell in the scans, but the borders on these are a raised frame.  That, combined with the way that they used foil on the backgrounds but not the players themselves, really gives them some pop.

This is definitely one of the more attractive of the scant few Clemente cards that I own.  A dollar well spent!

My favorite of the bunch is Nolan Ryan, a player I collected heavily in my first go-round as a kid.

Getting near the end here, just two cards to go.  Both of them are variations from the 2015 Topps set.  I'm a total sucker for the variations Topps has been issuing for years now.  I don't really care for a difficult-to-see sparkle variation, and things like stat variations on the back don't really do it for me.  If it's photo variation like this one though I'm sold!

Last card for today, another nice image variation of the new Red Sox closer from last year's Update set.

I'm very pleased with the cards I came home with from this last show, and even more pleased that I ended up with a ton of good stuff to share with other collectors.  Some of that has already made its way out, others will be shipped in the near future.  Hopefully I'll have a chance to dig through these boxes again soon!