First Up, Dime Boxes; Card Show Recap #14

In what turned out to be the largest sports card show I have ever attended with the exception of The National, I'm pleased to announce that I made the 30-minute car ride up to Wilmington, Massachusetts earlier today to attend the Greater Boston Sports Collectors Club show at the Shriners Auditorium.

You may recall that I attended a show at the Shriners Auditorium back in April, but it turns out that was a different card show, not the once-a-year card show that takes place the first week of April. Although this wasn't my first show at this facility, it was my first time at this particular show, and I have to say I think I did pretty well.

As soon as we arrived at the show earlier today and entered the building, my Dad and I decided it was best to separate so that we could each do our own thing and eventually meet up in a little over an hour. As long as I'd been planning on attending this show, I knew the very first booth I wanted to stop by.

A vendor from the show I usually attend made a point to tell me he was planning on exhibiting at this show when I last went to the show a few weeks ago. Given how fabulous his dime boxes were then combined with the promise that they'd be even better, I knew I had to stop by and see what he had in store.

Per usual, a couple sets began to jump out at me and seemed to just appear in an abundance out of nowhere. This time around, one of those sets was the vibrant 2001 Fleer EX. Consisting of bold colors and chock-full of players I collect from the early 2000's, this set helped boost over 5 of my 100-card player collections as well as assist my Ken Griffey Jr player collection on route to 200 cards. 

Going into today's show, I needed just 5 new cards of his for that player collection to be the 4th to reach 200 cards after Nolan Ryan, Manny Ramirez, and Greg Maddux. Since I'm not entirely sure how many cards of his I picked up, it'll be a couple days before I know for certain.

Another set that was everywhere, and I mean everywhere, was 2017 Topps High Tek. Out of the 15 cards or so that I brought back from this high-end product, it's hard to know for certain how many different pattern designs there are considering how similar some of them look to one another. One thing's for sure, I'll be relying heavily on COMC when entering these cards in on my online spreadsheets. 

In addition to all the modern High Tek cards, I spotted an original Topps Tek card of recent Hall of Fame inductee Chipper Jones. Like the modern version, the very first Topps Tek cards also featured an extensive number of pattern designs. Once again, COMC will be more useful than you'd think as my eyes will have to work extraordinarily hard to spot the whichever specific parallel this is, made even harder to tell when these cards are scanned.

Of all the Topps Gallery sets, the best one for the art alone would have to be 2003 Topps Gallery; Hall of Fame Edition. Not only is it a set solely for Hall of Famers, but it also featured some of the brightest colors and most detailed images you'll ever see on baseball cards in any set of cards.

Thankfully, someone put the variation cards from 2003 Gallery Hall of Fame Edition into penny sleeves and labeled them "variation" in big bold black letters. Due to the sheer quantity of cards I typically have to enter in online, I don't usually have enough time to check COMC for what exactly the card is, leaving slight room for error. 

This time, I know in advance these cards are variations, so a few quick clicks online will let me know what in particular makes this card different from the regular version, and I'll make sure to note that on my online inventory.

This rainbow foil-type parallel of Tom Seaver came with the rest of the HOF Gallery cards, though I'm not exactly sure what this parallel would be called. However, when I took the time to enter in some cards online a few days ago, I discovered Tom Seaver was just 1 card away from 100. So despite not knowing what exactly this card is, I do know I have yet another player who's officially reached the 100-card mark.

It's very fitting that I found a rather strong selection of Willie McCovey cards in today's dime boxes given his passing at the age of 80 back on Wednesday as well as the tribute post I did for him yesterday.

RIP Stretch.

I suppose what I did today for McCovey is similar to what I've been doing for Roberto Clemente at the card show all my life; buying his cards as a way to pay tribute to his life. We all know the tragic manner in which Clemente lost his life, and I've made it my goal since I started collecting cards to continue adding to his collection to pay my respects to him.

On a lighter note, there were still some other players who were quite common throughout the dime boxes, one of those guys being Tigers legend Al Kaline. After a few months of having the autograph of him and Bob Gibson from The National around my house, I finally decided to get it framed a couple weeks ago. I'll make sure to do a quick post about it after I pick it up later this week.

Finally, Harmon Killebrew closes out the plethora of prominent players in the dime boxes today with more than meets the eye in terms of what I brought back. In addition to a duo of All-Time Fan Favorites/Topps Archives and 2 cards of Killebrew on the Senators, there were an additional 4-5 cards of his at least that I grabbed for the ever-growing Harmon Killebrew player collection.

Moving on to one of the more "interesting" parts of these dime boxes, for lack of a better word. It has to do with a large group of numbered cards from 2 years of the Topps Co-Signers set, 2006 and 2007.

As you can see, this card claims to be of Roy Oswalt and Andy Pettitte, though I collect only Pettitte so where I put this card won't be an issue anyway. However, the back tells a different story.

The back of the card implies that this is a card solely of Pettite with no mention of Roy Oswalt's name anywhere. Given that the front of this card seemed to equally emphasize both players, I was genuinely surprised when I turned the card over.

The same thing happened with this duo of Yankees cards from the same set, and that's not including the different colors parallels of the 2 images on the right of each card that brought some confusion. The gold one of Johnson and A-Rod is numbered to 115 on the back while the Jeter/Cano is out of 150.

Besides that smaller detail, these 2 cards do the same thing as the Pettite which I, unfortunately, didn't realize until I got home. While I collect both A-Rod and Randy Johnson, the subjects of card #1, I don't collect Robinson Cano while I do collect Derek Jeter. Alas, Cano is solely featured on the back making this "his" card despite it including both names and thus, it would seem a bit odd to place this card in my Derek Jeter player collection.

Same problems, different set. That was the case for the next year of Co-Signers which delivered similar results to the cards from the 2006 set. In the case of these cards which are part of a set that's become so confusing that I don't even know what to call them, they both happened to be of the guys I collect on the card and not the guys I don't. This means that my Miguel Tejada and Chipper Jones PCs got lucky that these cards weren't of Brian Roberts of Tim Hudson.

The same goes for Jimmy Rollins and, once again, Miguel Tejada only, in this case, the blue and gold players in the backgrounds lead to these cards having different serial numberings than the first 2. The blue of the 2 Phillies players is numbered out of 250 while the 2nd card of the 2 Orioles is numbered to 225.

I guess the best way to describe these before searching COMC is "orange foil" as this set becomes even more elaborate than I once believed it to be. Now, we have an example of these 2-player cards tricking me once again as the 1st card, numbered to 175, actually features Gary Sheffield, someone I don't collect, on the back instead of Ivan Rodriguez, one of my larger player collections.

Lastly, in what eventually became the last of these slightly-confusing dual-player cards, the Chipper Jones and Brian McCann card on the right numbered to 75, is actually McCann's as I learned from a quick glance at the back and not, in fact, a new card for my Chipper Jones PC. With that, I ended up with 3 cards of players I don't actually collect, all of which are up for trade if anyone's interested.

Moving on, I have some gold cards to help get me back into the normal 1-player per card swing of things. Including 1 from 1992 and 3 from 1993, Topps Gold cards from the 1990's will always be some of my favorite cards from the junk wax era.

It's always nice to find rookie cards for the right price, especially when these cards are from the dime bins. Additionally, while I was originally going to use the Devers card to talk about the Red Sox, I instead want to take notice of why Evan Longoria's rookie card from 2008 Upper Deck Goudey says "Ken Griffey Jr. says..." while showing a picture of Derek Jeter.

Since Longoria was in the AL, it's supposed to say "Derek Jeter says..." instead. Either I've found some magnificent error card with a fortune, or it's a mistake Upper Deck made for all of these cards, decreasing the overall value and resulting in it ending up in the dime bins.

I have a feeling it's the latter.

I must say, I have never seen a card from this set before nor do I understand why Panini wouldn't at least attempt to photoshop Craig Kimbrel into a Braves jersey for his rookie card. Despite all that, I'm more than happy to add this card to my Kimbrel Collection given that it's not every day I find one of his rookies.

It's also not every day you spot 2 unique Corey Seager prospect cards in the dime boxes either which serve to further boost what's already a pretty special Corey Seager collection of prospects, rookies, autographs, and relics. I'm starting to have a feeling that these dime boxes are pretty damn special.

I don't know if other collectors feel the same way, but I don't think there's anything more satisfying than finding a card in the dime bins that you saw online for $10 a couple weeks ago that you desperately wish you had but refused to pay that kind of money for.

Also, this stained glass card is absolutely stunning when scanned and in-person. No wonder I wanted it so much.

At the rate I'm at, you might as well throw in a collection of special Topps Heritage cards from the last few years that will either go to player collections in Adam Jones' case or towards my special cards of 2016 and 2017 Topps Heritage respectively, including a Stephen Strasburg mini numbered out of just 100 copies.

Though all 4 of these cards are silver pack cards to commemorate 35 years of 1985 Topps as stated on the backs, I'm not quite sure why the bottom 2 look different than the 2 on top. It could be that the top 2 are from Series 1 and the others are from Series 2 or Update, but I don't necessarily know why Topps felt the need to change up the design.

Speaking of changing the design, or not, I found it intriguing, if nothing else, that Topps decided to go with the same set design for Yogi Berra's Topps All-Time Fan Favorites cards 2 years in a row (2003 and 2004). Though the sets are virtually the same, the photos used are very different, one showing a much older Yogi than the other. With that being said, I like the 1st one a bit more than the 2nd.

I don't know that I've ever seen a full-blown pennant appear on a baseball card before until spotting this All-Time Fan Favorites card from 2005 around the same time as the 2 Yogi Berra cards. It appears that Bench is being asked to sign a few items, including the pennant, and the slightly-confused look on his face says it all from there.

Many years and well over 150 cards later and I finally have my first ever card showing Ryne Sandberg as a member of the Philadelphia Phillies. Considering that it's an art-based card from 2010 Topps National Chicle with clear showings of attention to detail makes this card everything I wanted it to be and then some.

But as far as dime cards go, you can't get much better than a TCMA Satchel Paige, even when you take into account as many numbered cards or shiny refractors as you can. Adding to the Satchel Paige player collection for a dime is virtually unbeatable, let alone the fact that this card is from the 1977 TCMA set. Out of the hundreds of dime cards I picked up, it's safe to say I have an easy winner right here.