After making my initial purchases at the card show yesterday, I decided to look around at a few more vendors to try and get some more cards to add to my player collections. I came across a vendor with bins of cards marked at 25 and 50 cents each, so I began to look through them.
I quickly found 4 cards of Hanley Ramirez from 2015, his very first year back with the Red Sox. The cards included a Heart of the Order insert card, a high-end Topps Museum base card, a Gypsy Queen card that looks very nice, and a refractor base card from Bowman's Best. Hanley has been and always will be a favorite of mine no matter what happens in the next 2 years he has under contract. His historic 2016 season is what helped bring the Red Sox to the playoffs, and I will always recognize him for that. These 4 cards bring my total of Hanley Ramirez cards to around 90, which I am hoping to get to 100 very soon.
I also found 2 cards from his first stint with the Red Sox where he had just 2 at-bats. I now have 6 cards of his first stint in Boston, which is unbelievably 3 times the amount of at-bats he had with the Red Sox before coming back in 2015. These cost me a bit more as they were 50 cents each, which is still worth it in my opinion.
But even after going to yet another vendor to find a larger variety, I was still able to find 25 cent cards like these 2014 Bowman Chrome mini cards of Billy Hamilton and Kolten Wong. Both of these cards are rookie cards which are pretty cool to have, especially Billy Hamilton considering how well he has been playing over the last few seasons that has made him one of my favorite players to collect.
Sticking with the 25 cent cards, I was able to find a couple of Alan Trammell cards from 1979 and 1980 Topps respectively that I hadn't acquired yet. I'm trying to find more cards of him and Jack Morris since they were (finally) elected to the Hall of Fame via the Modern Era committee. However, the 1979 one may turn out to be a need for my 1979 Topps set, and since sets have the priority over player collections in my eyes, it will have to go there.
However, since I don't collect the 1983 Topps set, I will be able to put this 25 cent gem of George Brett directly into his player collection. Brett is another one of my largest player collections with a total that was around 110 cards the last time I counted. This was one that I hadn't gotten yet and is also one of my favorite Topps designs ever. It's a win-win.
As I continued to wander the show looking for cards to add to my collection, I stumbled upon yet another card available for an amazing price. This 2010 Bowman light blue parallel of former Red Sox star first baseman Kevin Youkilis is numbered to 520 and was available for just 25 cents proving once again why this show quickly became one of the best shows I've ever attended.
And while I hadn't found any Craig Kimbrel cards at this point, I did find a few Jackie Bradley Jr. cards. JBJ is one of my dad's favorite current Red Sox, and he has been strongly considering starting to super collect Bradley. So, in addition to these 2, I decided to pick up a few Bradley's for him.
Like his 2013 Topps Chrome rookie card for just 25 cents. Seriously, you really can't beat card shows.
After which I moved on and purchased not 1, but 2 graded cards of JBJ, something I never thought I'd do. The first one is from 2012 Bowman and it is Jackie Bradley's very first Bowman card. It was priced at $10, but the vendor sold it to me for $8, a bargain if you ask me.
So I picked up another graded JBJ card, this one is the refractor parallel from 2013 Topps Finest, another rookie card of his. This one was also priced at $10 but was once again sold to me for a cheaper price, this time $7. So all in all, I was able to add 5 Bradley cards including 2 rookies and 2 Beckett graded cards for a whopping $15.75, a perfect example as to why card shows are the best.
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