General Forum

Back in high school I used to work at Colby College in one of their dinning halls and I was taking the garbage to the dumpster.  I saw a cigar box on the ground and kicked it and 1964 Topps #150 Willie Mays came flying out.  

Trade On!

6 years ago I hadn't been very active in cards besides buying singles at a flea market, was getting educated on how the junk era existed etc. Few months go by of seeing how cheap cards can be found for and I come across a garage sale that has a TON of cards! 3 six foot tables worth of cards, unopened boxes, binders, just tons of stuff. So much to process, my knowledge is just not there on the products (at that time). The guys around the tables are talking how it's all junk era and worthless. I ask the lady how much she would like for all of it. She was shocked I was interested in it all, had to be 100k+ cards. I told her yeah I'm interested I love sports and would love to just dig thru the stuff worthless or not. I love bulk commons!! She says, (you sitting down??) How about $20? (No I didn't miss a zero, she wanted one 20 dollar bill for ALL these cards!)  I said for everything?! She said yeah, get it out of here. SOLD!    Now here's the kicker. I get it all home and now I'm totally in love with this hobby and slowly learning about it all. Its the summer of 2014 so everyone is talking about Jeter as he's retiring. I find a silver foil Jeter in a penny sleeve with a $1 sticker on it and looked on Ebay thinking maybe it's a few bucks now. $200! What?! But its the junk era! It's a 1993 sp jeter, I'm confused everyone says the junk era is worthless. So I talk to my local pawn shop, I've never used Ebay before im new to cards, im probably seeing this incorrect. Nope, he tells me all about this card. Now im really interested in seeing what all I have in this bulk buy for $20!  I come across a box full of unopened boxes of this 1993 sp Upper deck baseball and I rip em all! Yup, I had no clue how much more valuable they were unopened but every box pulled a Jeter Rookie. And I continued to find more of those Jeters in penny sleeves in random boxes of this bulk find. Now I doubted how worthless this junk era was everyone talked about so I bought myself a Beckett to educate myself. I started making lists of the cards I had and the values, mostly 5 cents commons ya know? It became really fun for me. Then about 3 weeks after this big bulk purchase (I hadn't made a dent in it barely) I had what I can only describe as the world's worst panic attack. (I deal with anxiety since a kid). My dad and sister tried calming me down, nothing was helping. My sister said how about you open some of these cards, and we opened up an entire hobby box of 91 leaf baseball. I remember laughing to my dad and said who is oil can boyd! Is this really this guys name. (I wasn't born for the junk era so I look to my dad for a lot of the history). That day I realized how Opening those cards had brought me out of the worst panic attack and an addiction to cards was sparked in my brain. 6 years later and I'm still picking up every thing in bulk I can find. Even if its junk era commons because I use them to sort when I have anxiety. I sort by team, by set, by card number, anything. Anyway, I'm WAY off topic now and making a major long post. But yeah, that's my best find ever because not only did I grab 100k+ cards with tons of Jeters for $20, I grabbed an addiction to the best hobby ever! 

Years ago my younger brother,  took his very first  paycheck and went to Woolworth's  to buy baseball cards.  On the end of the aisle, he noticed a couple of boxes of basketball packs scattered about.  All labeled 10 cents each.  He grabbed all that was there, about 40 packs and the two boxes.  For four dollars, my brother got 40 1986-1987 Fleer basketball packs.

I've never had much luck finding gems, but my ex-wife and her mother were garage sale experts. One day, when we were still married, she brought home a cereal box stuffed with cards and she got it for a couple of bucks. One of the cards was a 1969 Topps Roberto Clemente and a playing days Topps Dick Butkus card. 

WOW.

Back around 2010 or 2011, I was checking out a binder with a few pages of baseball cards in it at the Rose Bowl flea market. It was mostly typical 80's-90's stuff but there was also a Ruth UD card with a piece of bat that caught my eye. Now I've never been a fan or collector of UD and had no idea of it's worth but I thought that it would be a cool card to have so I offered the lady $5. She had to go ask her husband who was busy talking with someone else. He just nodded and waved her off. I soon had myself a Ruth bat card for only $5! When I found out what I actually had, I was shocked. Here's my card (that's my actual card here on TCDb):

https://www.tcdb.com/ViewCard.cfm/sid/11816/cid/1966381/1999-Upper-Deck---A-Piece-of-History-PH-Babe-Ruth-?PageIndex=1

Soon after, I had it graded and it came back a BGS 9.5. Back in October, a BGS 9 sold in an eBay auction for $1.999.00. Needless to say, I was very fortunate and I'm very happy to have this card in my collection.

You should submit your $5 purchase in the pricing info.

All these stories are really cool! I'm glad to have read them!

I love these stories too!

I popped into a little consignment shop many years ago, and they had a single Tom Seaver autographed card (a 2004 UD Timeless Teams certified auto, as it turned out) in a glass case among a bunch of random items. I couldn't see the price tag that was on the back clearly, but it looked like it said "$10," so I asked the guy who was working there. He came over, pulled it out, looked at the tag on the back, and said "ten dollars."

I couldn't get the money out of my wallet fast enough. I stopped in any time I was in the area in case I got lucky again, but I never saw another card there.

I found this card in the Target parking lot today.  It doesn't appear to be listed in TCDB:

https://www.cardmarket.com/en/Pokemon/Products/Singles/Darkness-Ablaze/Skitty-Drawup-Power-Cat-Kick

It's not the best card I've ever found in a parking lot, though.  Ten years ago I found this one at Potbelly:

https://www.tcdb.com/ViewCard.cfm/sid/9609/cid/403397/2009-Topps-206-140-Jeremy-Sowers

Gotta keep your eyes open!