Last week was a pretty busy week for me. It was finals week for my summer semester classes, and my grandmother somewhat unexpectedly died, so we had to travel to Portland, Oregon to attend the funeral and visit some friends. So if you have commented on my blog and/or sent me an e-mail recently with no response, I will be getting to all of that soon. This week should be less busy for me on the life side of things, which will hopefully open up some hobby time for me before the Fall semester starts up next week.
While in Oregon I stopped by one card store, The Sportsroom at Mitchell's, located in Beaverton. The selection was pretty good, far outmatching the size of my wallet. I had to be somewhat selective with what I bought. I was wearing my blue Kansas City Bo Jackson Nikes, so I had to pick up at least one of his cards.
It's a bit beat up and barely worth the cardboard it's printed on, but I love the 1990 Topps baseball design, so I bought it. The shop had a shelf covered with wax boxes from that era. If there had been a box or two of this set I'd have picked it up in a heartbeat, but it was not to be.
They had a bunch of relics and autographs sitting in a clearance box, so I grabbed this Allen & Ginter bat relic of Adam Jones. It was the only thing that really caught my eye, although I didn't sort through all of the stuff that was there.
I pulled a few Randy Johnson cards out of a box of Mariners cards. When first looking at this card, it appears that Johnson is jumping to make a catch, but then you realize that he's standing on the ground. At least that is the illusion I have. He's a tall dude.
I grabbed the Upper Deck card mostly for the picture on the back and the Score card because I like the picture on the front for whatever reason. I can't explain it like some of the other folks in the blogosphere can. Maybe it's just because he looks kind of funny all folded up sitting next to the bat rack. At first glance I though he might be wearing a fanny pack in the picture, but it is just a fold in his jacket.
The back of the Upper Deck card shows Johnson behind the camera, a subset of cards championed over at the Dime Boxes blog. It also showcases his jersey number 34, which happens to be my absolute favorite. Surprising that so many of my favorite players from multiple sports wear that number.
My big pickup on the day, though, was this 1975 Topps Nolan Ryan. It's not in great shape and the centering leaves a lot to be desired, but I don't tend to notice those things all that much. I have no idea if I overpaid or underpaid for the card. Apparently it's a pretty popular issue from that set. I like the bright colors and the fact that the card is 6 years older than I am.
The price tags on the cards came out to something like $15.50, with the bulk of that tied up in the Ryan card. I also picked up a Jumbo pack of 2013 Topps Football and a copy of Beckett Sports Monthly because it is the annual Supercollector issue and I like to read about other folks' collections. The guy at the shop rang up the singles above at $9.00, so I got it all for the asking price on the Ryan card.
I am pretty happy with my buys. I don't know much about vintage cards and I am pretty wrapped up in trying to fill out my 2012 and 2013 sets, so older cards aren't something I would tend to search out online. It was fun to browse through the shop and look at all the stuff in the cases. They had a game wheel that you could spin to try to win different prizes, mostly autograph and memorabilia cards, with some super card as the grand prize, but I decided not to try my luck with that.
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