Card Show, Day 2

With the weather absolutely crappy here in Chicago today, I decided to go back to the card show and spend the day checking out all the booths that I didn't pay much attention too last night. I pretty much shopped out of the $1 bins all day, and came away with a pretty nice haul.

My absolute best find of the day belongs to Lou Whitaker again. I have never even seen a '93 Topps Finest until I found this one in a $1 bin. I thank the card grading revolution for this find. It's off-center enough that I can see why it would be shunned, but given the fact that these things are impossible to find I'd think it would sell for more than a $1. No complaints here that it didn't!


I found some SSPC cards that I'd never seen before either. I've never done a lot of research into these, but the copyright date on the back reads 1975, so I'm going to assume for now that these are from 1975. I got cards of Ralph Houk, John Hiller, Ben Oglivie, and Gene Michael, who I never knew played for the Tigers before. I love the "no design" design, but the photos are atrocious. They all look like mug shots, except in color!


I knocked out all but one card in my '82 Fleer team set. (The checklist card) Like '83 Fleer, I collected a bunch of these as a kid to be missing so many of them. Raise your hand if you think that Jack Morris card might rank as one of the worst looking cards of all time. Exactly what were they trying to get in the frame there?


I snagged this Cobb HOF Heroes card thinking it was the real one, not noticing that it was a reprint from a 2003 Donruss set. Hell, with the glossy finish and thick card stock, this card is actually much nicer than the original.


I didn't know that Upper Deck made a set based on the 2008 Olympics. I found this card of Tiger phenom Jacob Turner. I haven't seen any other Turner cards yet. Would this one be considered his rookie?


The day was not all fun and games though. I learned a very valuable lesson today while digging through the $1 bins. You know that warm, tingly feeling you get when you open a pack of cards and lo and behold there is a chrome insert inside? Or better yet, a refractor, or x-fractor, or blue border, or black border, etc.? And the feeling that you've pulled something really cool out of the pack?


Well I no longer have that feeling after today. Eventually EVERY SINGLE ONE of those cards will make it to the $1 bin. Ok, maybe not every single one, but damn near most of them. I probably only searched a tenth of all the $1 bins that were there today and came away with 22 different Tigers refractors. Everybody ranging from Kyle Sleeth and Mike Maroth to Justin Verlander and Miguel Cabrera. I found 6 different '09 Bowman Chrome and 5 different '07 Topps Chrome. Once upon a time these things were the cat's meow. Now they've gone the way of the jersey card and autographed card. Ho-hum.


It's been a great two days of collecting. Usually I only hit the shows on the first night but from now on I'm going to plan a second day back to dig through all the $1 boxes to see what other Tiger treasures I can dig up. Now when is that next show?!?!