Card Show Pickups: Very Little Baseball

Earlier this month there was a card show in my local area. I wasn't originally going to go, but in the grand tradition of running into opportunities to get unique autographs for my blogging chums (like Bob Walk The Plank and Red Sox Fan in Nebraska) I lucked into a unique opportunity to give P-Town Tom something special. You can read more about that on PTT's blog.

I'm finding that another minor benefit of attending a card show is that I'm always going to bring my trade bait (or at least the "good stuff") in the event that something I WAAAANT pops up. It rarely ever does, but it's a fantastic motivator for me to take inventory of my better trade pieces from time to time. And guess what, this show was one of the few times doing such a thing worked out pretty well for me.

I arrived at the show around the time the line for the autograph had dwindled to merely like a single family being in line before me. Because I got it for Tom, that Gregg Olson autograph isn't going towards my IP total.

After the autograph I beelined for the supplies. I needed a big 11x17 toploader for the big Detroit Lions cheerleaders autographed poster I got last year, as well as a few smaller 4x6 toploaders and one of those count boxes.

I looked at various tables and bins but at this point in my collecting life $1 per sounded like an awful deal to me for cards I didn't necessarily have much use for beyond being throw-ins. Especially if I was expected to pay with cash.

Then I found the one dealer I deem as my go-to for hockey cards. They use Beckett and they specialize in east coast teams (especially the New York Rangers, New York Islanders, Buffalo Sabres and New Jersey Devils). Both of these attributes suggest that their stuff is a bit overpriced/inflated compared to eBay prices and while that's true, they're my go-to because this vender usually ends up giving me a big discount anyway because I actually go the bundles (buy more to save more) route with them. This vendor also gives me the option to pick up nearly everything I want Rangers-wise in a single swoop, which not even eBay can do to be honest. And above all else, they do baseball too so I can trade my Yankees trade bait and get back some Rangers stuff. After all, the last time I met them they traded me their Henrik Lundqvist autograph for my Derek Jeter autograph. I always get significant cards from them without having to give up any cash. I consider that a win.

The card that started off the trade this time was this Russian card of Rangers goaltending prospect Igor Shestyorkin. I had this card in my eBay wantlist for basically forever but the fact that it was going to come from venders out in Eastern Europe made me uneasy for reasons that boil down to paranoia instilled inside Americans after the Cold War. And I say this as someone who's dated Eastern Europeans, they're wonderful folks, and as someone who wasn't even alive when the Soviet Union dissolved!

Still, my go-to hockey vendor came through and had this.

I can't read a lick of any of this. But at the very least I can now say that a SKA Saint Petersburg (Sports Club of the Army) card has blessed my collection. This is my first card from Russia and woof, it's a damn nice one! Now to add one from Finland, Sweden and various other countries with their own independent hockey leagues.

My go-to pulled this out of a massive box of nothing but Rangers. This was the first time they showed me this box and I took a look through, hoping to beef up a certain collection.

Yurp, my Chytil collection. Even though I have Chytil's Young Guns rookie card, I didn't really have too many of his other rookie cards.

In a matter of minutes I plucked out 10 I needed and immediately worked them into a bigger deal.

Also I was in a bit of a splurgey mood (this is what happens when you give me the option of trading as opposed to buying) and I went for this Mika Zibanejad Young Guns rookie. In the world of hockey you can never go wrong with a Young Guns.

In the world of hockey cards you can definitely go wrong with an autograph, but since I declared that Zibanejad is the star of the 2019-20 Rangers, I put my cards where my mouth is and went for his awesome Future Watch autograph. The bad part is that it features him as a Senator. The good part is that Zibanejad doesn't have any certified Rangers autographs anyway so it doesn't matter.

After the Zibanejads were thrown-in a deal was agreed upon and I ended up throwing the go-to a fat stack of Derek Jeter cards as a thank you. They responded by throwing this Kevin Hayes autograph my way. Hayes is a former winger for the Rangers who now plays for the Philadelphia Flyers. Hayes was a great player for the Rangers when he played but as of now his legacy is being the guy who got sent to the Winnepeg Jets for Brendan Lemieux and a first round pick (as well as a conditional fourth round pick), of which the first round pick got traded back to the Jets anyway in exchange for Jacob Trouba.

So half a season of Hayes and one Neal Pionk, for Lemiux and Trouba. Yes that's a fantastic trade, 10/10, would do again. The conditional pick never materialized BTW because it was contingent on the Jets winning the Stanley Cup, which... lol.

This haul pretty much made me happy with my decision to go. I got a top Rangers prospect, lots of rookie cards of my favorite Rangers and two Rangers autographs for zero cash and instead for cards I'd been looking to move for basically forever. I'll take it.

After this trade I walked around the place looking to see if I could maybe jumpstart my Knicks collection by adding a nice cheap Kevin Knox autograph since his value is nil. Unfortunately there were zero of the Knox Prizm autographs I was after, but there was this.

This is the only card I bought with cash that day that was specifically for me. Cost me a whole $3, which isn't ideal but I'd been after this a while and I can tell you for a fact that while the card itself might be available on eBay for like $2, the shipping fee's and the taxes will bring it closer to $6, so $3 it is.

So this is what happens when a card show fails to deliver Luis Torrens, Kevin Alcantara, Osiel Rodriguez, Garrett Whitlock or Michael King cards to me. I opt for NHL Young Guns and NBA Prizms instead. Go figure.

All in all I spent $35 cash at this show. I know all of you are thinking you'd blow through that at the first vendor alone. But one big difference is that I've spent way too much money on eBay (as the FOMO posts I've been blogging about didn't fucking give that away) and oooh boy does my spending spreadsheet make me more depressed with every glance.

Now I shudder to think about if I started a spending spreadsheet for what I spent on GrubHub.

As always thanks for stopping and witness me deform into a cheap bastard.

Take care.