Will Work for Cards

This past week I made it to my local hobby shop for the first time in nearly 6 months I would guess.  The reason for my stopping in was to help the owner, my buddy John, with a computer question.  Since I was there though, and had an hour or two to spare, I took an opportunity to poke around a bit.

In the brief amount of time that I had, I picked out $20 or so worth of cards, plus another $10 in supplies (toploaders, shoeboxes, etc).  John was nice enough to charge me just $10 for everything, which means I basically paid for the supplies and got the cards for free in exchange for my time in looking at the computer issue.  It's not the first time I've worked for cards, and I hope it's not the last either!

With one exception, all of my pick-ups came from some new dollar boxes that he had out, and that one exception was the legendary 1989 Fleer "F*CK FACE" Billy Ripken card you see above.  I guess it's my juvenile/adolescent side, but I've always wanted to land a copy of this card.  Just never came across one at a reasonable price.  John had a couple of them out on the counter, and when I found out he was asking $5 a piece into my stack it went!

As for the dollar box picks, I was all over the map as usual.  Though I don't typically collect in-person autographs, this Kevin Bass was too tempting to pass up given my love of the ugly set that is 1990 Topps.  This card is actually from the Traded set, but still goes nicely with the pair of '90 Topps autos I showed off here a couple of weeks back.  Also, I don't think a lot of folks are forging Kevin Bass autographs, and even if they are I'm invested in this card for all of a dollar.

There was one card that I picked out with another collector in mind, and that was this Felix Pie Cracker Jack autograph.  I owe Tony of Wrigley Roster Jenga a PWE, and since he's a Cubs collector who also just so happened to do a recent post on Cracker Jack I figured this would be a nice throw-in (should have that out to you by early next week Tony!).

The 2007 Goudey HOF short prints are tough to come by in my experience.  This was the set that got me back into collecting almost 10 years ago now, and I'm still missing 10 of the 88 short prints all these years later.

I was certain I had both of these Johnny Bench cards already, but a buck is a good price on these SPs and these will be very solid additions to my trade box.  If any of my regular trading buddies are interested leave a comment!

From there, one last autograph.  Picked this one out just because it's not everyday that I see a Portland SeaDogs autograph.  This is from a time when the SeaDogs were affiliated with the Marlins, not the Red Sox like they are today, but I don't mind.

If you've been following along here for any length of time, you've probably heard me gushing about the 2011 Topps Chrome Atomic Refractors.  I was very pleased to find Austin Jackson here in the dollar box.  I don't have my want list together for this 220-card set just yet, but I took a chance.  I'm glad I did because when I got home and checked Austin was indeed a card I needed.

I'm an absolute sucker for any and all Starting Lineup cards.  While the 1988 release is far and away my favorite, I pounced on the opportunity to pick up my first two '89s in the form of Kirby Puckett...

...and a young Mark McGwire.  The green border works especially well for an Athletics card if I do say so myself.

Still hard to believe he's gone.  $1 seemed more than fair for this blue refractor, #'d to /150.

A nice minor league card here of one of the game's many bright, young shortstops.  Also, I just like random minor league teams generally speaking, and I am fairly certain this may be my first River Bandits card.

I probably overpaid for this one at $1 (then again, the cards ended up costing me nothing), but 1961 Topps is growing on me in recent months, and this card is in "will never need to be upgraded" condition.

1971 Topps #86 - Mike Kilkenny

Probably not a huge surprise, but to me the most exciting cards I encountered while digging through the dollar boxes were some buybacks for my franken-set!  The only thing I can think to say about this Mike Kilkenny card is that I had a wonderful time in Kilkenny when my wife and I were over in Ireland a few years ago.  Smithwick's has a brewery there, and their Kilkenny Irish Cream Ale is pretty damn tasty.

Mike's got some competition for card #86 though in the form of a 1978 Topps Dave Tomlin.

I know next to nothing about Tomlin, and prefer '71 Topps to '78, so even though Dave has my initials on his ballcap here he's out!

1961 Topps #101 - Bubba Phillips

The second 1961 Topps card of this post, and both players are actually wearing hats!  Bubba Phillips hit the only two grand slams of his career in '61.  He makes the franken-set uncontested as the only #101 buyback I've gotten my hands on so far, and is already nestled inside the binder with his compatriots.

1958 Topps #415 - Bob Bowman

This one really had me smiling.  Buybacks from the '50s seem a little harder to come by in my experience, in fact this is the first pre-1960 buyback in my franken-set!  Funny having a Topps buyback of a guy named Bowman, too.  At #415 Bob makes the set without question, and I highly doubt he will ever be replaced in that slot.  The final buyback I grabbed was even more significant than this one though...

1982 Topps #551 - Reggie Jackson

I nearly flipped right past this one, but noticed that silver 2016 Topps buyback stamp at the last minute.  I'm pumped to be able to add a nice All-Star subset card of one of the greatest clutch hitters ever to step up to the plate to my little ol' franken-set.  Nice landing a sweet buyback of Mr. October in the month of October, and bonus points for the card being from the set that was released the year I was born.  I can never seem to find HOFer buybacks like this for less than a few bucks at the very least, so this was probably my most satisfying dollar box pick-up of the day.

Not a bad little lot there, like I said at the outset, getting paid in cards is cool with me!

Franken-set Progress:  128/792 (16%)