Card Show and Cardinals Game Recap

Now that my son's travel baseball season has started, my free time on the weekends is almost non existent.  He plays 2 or 3 weekends each month, but at least most games will be within an hour's drive.  This past weekend we had a Saturday only tournament close to home.  I had thoughts of going to a 3 day card show in St. Louis on Sunday because of the free admission and 100+ tables.  When my brother in law offered free Cardinals tickets for the same day, that made up my mind pretty quick.  Along with 2 of my nephews, my son and I made the 2.5 hour drive to the card show first.

We got there when the doors opened at 10:00.  There was not much of a crowd at that time, which was good because I planned on spending only an hour or so at the show before heading to the game.  We browsed half of the tables before I found a dealer with a ton of quarter and dime boxes.  There must have been at least 10 5,000 count boxes with nothing but cards from the last 3-4 years.  I spent a good hour at his table digging for gold.  It would have been more, but my nephews were getting bored and I did not want to risk getting to the game late.

I was not expecting to find many Cardinals in these boxes.  There were a ton of base cards from Finest, Bowman's Best, Archives, Bowman Platinum, and Allen & Ginter.  I was able to find these 2 2016 Platinum I needed for a dime each.

All the inserts were in the quarter boxes.  Once again not many Cardinals to be had, but I found these 5.

Everything else I bought was for trade bait.  I tried to keep team collectors in mind when pulling cards, but eventually just started taking whatever grabbed my eye.  Once again I could have bought a ton more, but did not want my nephews to be so bored.  All of these cards are for trade except the McCutchen.

The same dealer also had some game used and autos for $2 each.  These are also up for trade.

 The Duffy auto is numbered to 250.

Both of these are numbered to 50.  All total I spent $16 with the same vendor.  I did a quick run through of the rest of the tables but did not buy anything else.  There was another vendor with a ton of quarter boxes, but the cards were not separated by sport.  I do have to share my first negative experience with a dealer in all my years of going to a show.  The dealers had 8 foot tables.  My son and I both had chairs in front of the dealer with all the dime/quarter boxes.  At one point I made room for another collector to look in the same boxes.  About 5 minutes later, the dealer next to the one I bought from griped at us because we were taking up about 1 foot of his space, or the equivalent of half a display case.  A simple request to move would have worked, but he said us penny spenders needed to move so the high rollers could get to his cases.  It was nice to see him make only 2 sales while I was digging.  Both were under $20.   

After a quick bite to eat, we headed to Busch Stadium.  It was promo day for adults and kids.  Adults got a Cardinals reusable shopping bag.  My wife will use mine every week at Wal-Mart.  Kids received a Yadier Molina replica players weekend jersey.

A nice looking jersey.  Brady if you can squeeze into a Youth XL my nephew has a jersey he will sell you.  Kids also received a ticket voucher for a future Monday-Thursday game.

These seats will most likely be in the third deck, but free is free.  Not sure when we will use these.  As for the game, the Cardinals beat the Reds for the 7th straight time 9-2.  It took a little less than 3 hours.  It makes a huge difference time wise when there are no in inning pitching changes.  Before leaving I hit up the Authentics team store to sell what was on sale.  I ended up buying a seat back from Busch Stadium 2.

These were $100 at the Winter Warm Up in January, but marked down to $50.  Of course I chose Ray Lankford's number with the intention of having him sign it sometime.  He was the all time home run leader at Busch 2.  McGwire and Pujols would have passed him, but Lankford played there more years.  All in all we had a great time.  It was nice to get some bargains and see a Cardinals win on the same trip.