A very exciting Saturday Part 1: The Icon

I went to the card show in Raleigh and also went to the Durham Bulls game. The Bulls game was rained out the night before and David Price was pitching. So he pitched Saturday. Which I thought was a great treat although Price didn't fair so well against a scrappy Norfolk Tide team.

But I'll start by talking about the card show in Raleigh. It was pretty good. As a Yankee fan and a fan of vintage cards, I'm easily amused when it comes to cards so it didn't take much to peak my interest. There was a pretty decent range of cards, there were a few vendors who had the same stuff other vendors had but for the most part there was parity between the dealers.

One thing I was a little disappointed about was the lack of reasonably priced newer boxes. There was a vendor who had a box of 2008 Allen & Ginter for $90 and some other boxes of new stuff but they were all priced way higher than what you can get it for on the internet PLUS shipping. There was another guy selling the same A&G box for $60 right by the front enterance. I could never understand how someone could grossly overprice their boxes when competion IN THE SAME ROOM is undercutting them significantly. I would assume you gauge the competition and maybe adjust prices accordingly. Now you can't do that for every card but when your main display is a stack of wax boxes and your prices are obviously inflated, how do you expect to move product?

But I found a couple of dealers that had some stuff I was looking for. One dealer had a very large stack of Yankee cards and I rummaged through it looking for Mattingly and some other things that may catch my attention. I pulled a fewJoba cards and got a Jeter relic and a really nice Pettitte relic.


I also found some Mattingly cards that I didn't have which is rare.



The cards were decently priced but I would have to say that I was expecting more of a discount since I bought a stack of 12 cards. But the prices were written on the cards and they were already "discounted" so I guess it was a WYSIWYG kinda situation. He threw in a card for free but a free 75 cent card is hardly a discount.

Then I moved back to a vendor that I knew was going to be trouble for me. He had a ton of Yankee cards both vintage and new. Mostly autograph cards including this one:

It's an on card auto and it just looked like an awesome card. There's even an embossed stamp stating "Authentic Signature" which I like for some reason.

So I had that card in my pile and there were a bunch of other card I was debating. One card contained 2 of my most favoritest players to grace the field and one of the greatest players to ever set foot on the field.

(sorry about the blurred image)

I'm a big fan of Roger Maris and Al Kaline and to have them on a card with Mickey Mantle is just plain awesome. The only Mickey Mantle card I own is his 565ft blast card which only shows a picture of the stadium and a dotted line showing where the ball traveled and landed. So there isn't an actual picture of Mantle on there. So I've been really wanting a real Mickey Mantle card.

But I don't consider this a true Mickey Mantle card. While it is a great card, it's a secondary card in the set and features a bunch of players. I really wanted a card that was just Mickey Mantle.

Enter:

This is officially my first true Mickey Mantle card. The card itself is actually in great condition with some wear on the bottom right corner but the card is really off centered. I'm not complaining at all though. I was also looking at a 1966 but he was asking a bit more for it and I got a pretty decent deal. $200 for all three cards. Now I normally don't drop that kind of coin down but I make exceptions for vintage cards. I really wanted a Mantle card and I was looking for an affordable one and this was it. I checked these cards on eBay and found the Mantle goes for $120 PSA 5 BIN and I saw the Mantle/Maris/Cash/Kaline card for $100 PSA 5 and the Mattingly auto I could probably land for around $30-40. So I think I got a pretty good deal.

Before I left I went to a guy who had some late 90's early 2000's boxes for cheap. I picked up two boxes of "a product" for really cheap. One box is for me, the other is for John from OldSchoolBreaks. He's sent me some really nice stuff and I've been meaning to find him a box of something he could break on his blog. I just searched on his blog and realize he has broken this box before but he gave it a very favorable review so I hope he'll be pleased with another one. He may even pull an auto.

After I picked up the boxes, I turned to Kim and said "let's get out of here before I spend anymore money." While I uncharacteristically spent a sizable amount of money I'm pleased with what I got. I can proudly say that I own a Mickey Mantle card. I don't really care much about the grading of the cards because the number itself doesn't mean much to me. I picked the card up and scrutinized its condition looking to see if it had any flaws that I didn't like. The only flaws I saw were the corner and the centering and both were negligible to me so I didn't care. But the card is in a protective slab that will never expose the card so I don't have to worry about damaging it. And odds are high that the card hasn't been trimmed which is something I'm always worried about when buying ungraded cards on eBay. Although, I'm assuming the people who are grading the cards are checking for trimmed cards so that may be a wrong assumption.

Anyhow, I think I got a good price on the cards and got to add an icon to my collection. I've grown quite fond of going to the Raleigh show. Considering the very small local shows I've been to in Kearny, these are pretty cool.