Sunday, May 2, 2021

5-1 Jacksonville card show

 Yesterday I was able to go to my first card show in probably 2 years. After getting the vaccine 2 months ago, it felt safe to go out to a show and see what I could find. 
I was able to meet up with John from Johnny's Trading Spot, and I had a box of Braves/PC guys for him, and he had 2 big boxes of Rays and Tigers for me. It was probably a good 250-300 cards that he had for me, and combined with the ones I found at the show, I probably had close to 500 new cards to add to my Rays/Tigers/PC binders. 
I basically dumped all the cards together and took pictures, not really bothering to separate ones from different sellers or show ones from John's ones. There were just so many cards. 
I did a good job adding some Rays cards to fill in some older sets. 
John helped me put the 2021 Donruss set to rest as far as the Rays were concerned. He also introduced me to Fred, the dealer who hooks him up with great deals. I had a good stack of cards from Fred's table, probably 60 or so cards from a dollar bin, and he charged me 40 bucks for it, but when I found John (who was at another table), he figured he could've got a better deal than that. Not to worry, though. I thought I had a good deal, and I know to have John with me next time. John got some stuff from Fred's table, including the '20 Archives Arozarena rookie, 21 Donruss, 21 Donruss Blue, and '21 Opening Day Arozarena's, and hooking me up with them. The Archives, Donruss base, and Opening Day cards were all ones I had hoped to find at the show, and the others I had hoped to find ('05 Topps Verlander and '18 Bowman Casey Mize) weren't there. There were a number of nice Rays cards I found, including a Shane McClanahan autograph, and a '21 Topps Gold Adames card. 

There were a ton of OPC Tigers that John hooked me up with. I believe the '67 Horton and '69 Patterson were from Fred's table. 
More cards from John, lots of Bowmans I needed. 
Did I mention the John gave me a ton of cards?
The '02 Bowman Grandersons were show cards. I remember when that card was super hot. 
I was happy to find the Tony Giarratano autographed card. He hit for average in the minors, and I hoped he would stay in the Majors longer. 
Newer Tigers, all from John, save the Blue Garcia Bowman rookie. 

Stuff from when I didn't collect very much. 
I think my favorites from these are all of the Chromed up cards. I looked at some of these, and they were just dripping with Chrome (I believe Dime Box Nick came up with this term). My absolute favorite was the Christin Stewart relic/auto. It was listed for 17, and I tried to get the guy down to 10, as it was my last 10 left, and he was solid on 12 bucks, but John gave me the 2 bucks I needed to get the last card of the show for me. 



Favorite Player guys. The Stadium Club Chrome X-Fractor was from John. He had it in one of his previous posts, and I was super jealous of the card when I saw it. Just a spectacular looking card. I found a Dee Gordon autographed card at Fred's table for only a buck. Many of the Andruw and Chipper Jones cards were from a table of a guy in the 2nd room of the show. The guys running the show basically split it up into 2 rooms. The first room was the main one, and it had the the 'true' dealers. The second one, you could tell had 95% flippers. Tons of blasters, graded crap, no quarter boxes, and you could just sense that the guys there were trying to make a buck from the sick mojo hitz. One table had a box that looked worth digging through, and that's where I found the Jones cards. The guy at the table next to him was a freaking freshman in high school selling NBA stuff. I hope our hobby can survive the crap that came from the pandemic. On the bright side, the one flipper table had some cool '90s inserts like a Pinnacle Epix card, a Myster Finest card, and a Pinnacle Spellbound card. 
The flipper also had a '98 Topps Minted in Cooperstown Jayson Werth rookie. I got the card for the other guy on it, Dan Reichert, a Type 1 diabetic. I found a ton of Casey Mize cards. The Profar card is either a base or a SP. I have another version of the card in my binders. I believe the Weaver autograph and the Tebow rookie were another purchase from Fred's table. I believe the Weaver was 15, the Tebow was 5, and I had one other card with it, and he let me have it for 10. 
Just look at all of those cards dripping Chrome! 
I cannot wait to put these cards in my binders. The problem is that I need to get a few new binders and probably at least a 100 ct box of pages. I had a few more card I got that I didn't take pictures of, some autographed rookie cards that I'm going to have to re-adjust my RC binder for, a Carlos Beltran jersey card, and a '98 Pinnacle Epix Maddux, among others. Also not shown are 1 or 2 cards for other bloggers that I found which should be in packages soon. Haven't found time to get everything in envelopes, and I only have 2 days until I'm flying to Atlanta for an award ceremony for my wife. She is nominated for an award at work, and I get to go along with her for all of it. We will be out of town from Wednesday to Friday, and I have my work schedule, I just haven't looked that far ahead. I promise I will mail stuff out soon. I'm sorry I've been bad about getting stuff out.  
Next binder on the list will be the shiny/game-used and refractors, followed by the Tigers, Rays, and Favorite Players. I will probably run out of pages by the time I'm partially done with Detroit, but I'll probably get some ordered in the next week.
Overall, it was a great card show, it was fun talking with John and having him answer some questions, tell stories, and work his magic with the dealers, and I hope to get a Saturday off again that coincides with the Jax show so I can go again.
Thanks for checking out my latest post.
-Jeremy

5 comments:

  1. There's nothing better than going to a card show and bringing home a haul.

    There should be some standards met before you can rent a table at a card show, so bros with ill-gotten gains can be weeded out.

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    1. I think these guys did a great job by putting the flippers in a separate area. I think they kind of stuck it to them because midway through the show they had to get on the intercom and ‘remind’ people that there was a second room and the room they were in must’ve been 60 degrees cause I was freezing and the flippers at the tables were complaining about it.

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    2. I like the fact that all of those "newer" dealers (flippers) were shut I mean put across the hall. Takes me about 60 seconds to tour that room. Glad you had a good time.

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  2. Card show with a blogger meetup sounds like a heavenly day!

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  3. Johnny's a standout guy from all accounts...glad you got some good stuff!

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