My schedule for this past Saturday was open for a change. No household chores that had to be done, and no ball games to attend. A quick check of the Beckett online show calendar showed 3 different shows with in a 2 hour drive. I have been to 2 of them before with some luck, but I chose the new location. It was in a mall that we have shopped at before. I figured this would give my wife and daughter something to do while my son and I browsed the 50 tables.
We arrived about 30 minutes after the mall opened. We did a quick walk through of all the tables to scope out where the bargain boxes were. We ended up buying cards from 4 different dealers. I will go in order of the purchases. First up was a father and son combo that had 3 monster boxes of $1 cards. At first I was not going to spend much time at their table, but the father was very friendly. His boxes were a mix of sports, but he said there were some good Cardinals and a few bargains to be found if we spent the time digging.
We found 4 Cardinals that I needed. The Carpenter is numbered to 150. The Molina 2019 Archives purple numbered to 175 has a slight bend in a corner, but not too bad. I will gladly take any Cardinals autograph I need for $1 even if it is a sticker and has no logos.
I also pulled these 5 cards for a $1 each. The dealer was not lying when he said I would find some bargains. 3 autographs including 1 numbered to 199, a relic card of the NL MVP, and a nice Chipper Jones insert numbered to 99.
Our next stop was a dealer who had his card separated by player. I did not find any Cardinals I wanted for the price he was charging, but my son did find 5 Altuve cards for $5.
Included in this lot is 2020 Topps Foilboard numbered to 264, a 2020 Bowman Platinum Teal numbered to 299, a 2021 Bowman Chrome, a 2021 Prizm Fearless, and a 2021 Prizm Fearless Red Wave numbered to 99. I was thinking closer to $3 instead of $5, but did not want to haggle over $2. I printed out my son's Altuve have list that he checked to make sure he needed all these. He had pulled 3 others, but put them back after checking his list.
Our next purchase was by far the best. I have dug through many dime boxes over my card show adventures, but never a 12 for $1 box. This dealer had a 5,000 count box full of 2020 and 2021 cards. I told my son pull anything that was numbered, colored, or looked like a shiny insert. We pulled 72 cards in about 30 minutes. Here is what $6 bought.
My first 2021 Bowman Platinum cards.
A handful of colored parallels. The 2021 Fuschia Shimmer card is numbered to 199.
2020 Topps Foilboard cards numbered to 229.
Topps Gold cards from 2020 and 2021.
2020 Optic Green parallels including 2 Cardinals for the personal collection.
2020 Prizm Red, White, and Blue parallels. I had both Cardinals, but should be able to trade them pretty easily.
These were the last 3 cards I pulled to make an even $6. I always seem to have people wanting to trade for Red Sox cards.
We found a huge run of 2021 Topps Chrome refractors. There many have been some base refractors, but those can be hard to spot.
Pink refractors. That is the same Goldschmidt I paid $1 for early in the show.
Prism Refractors.
Xfractors.
Sepia refractors. I did need both of these Cardinals. Quite a few big names over all the refractors. Last but not least were some Bowman Chrome Mojo refractors.
All of these except the Liberatore are from 2021. It is from 2020. I did not need it or the Gorman for my pc. Once again some big names like Volpe, Kelenic, and Rutschman were had for less than a dime.
The last card we bought was the most expensive for $13.
There are not many Templeton autographs in a Cardinals uniform. He played 6 seasons in St. Louis before being traded in the Ozzie Smith deal.
That wrapped up our shopping. We spent $33 in about 2 hours. The females actually finished shopping before we did. They spent a lot more than us.
