It’s a simplistic way to look at things.  I mean in theory it sounds like it should work.  A 1-inch thick lucite case should better protect you against common dropage than a card saver or top loader.  And surely a plastic box would provide more protection than your mother’s shoe box, right?

But things are not always as they appear.

Thick screw down cases often put too much pressure on a card, causing the surface and corners to be damaged over the years.  And plastic boxes mass generated for a novice collector surely are no way to protect your cardboard icons.  They wind up being plastic card coffins.

The beauty, though, is that these coffins can sometimes turn out some nice treasures when they are excavated from the depths of the lowly thrift stores.

At first glance you probably see a bunch of crap.  You’ve got a 1993 Score card on the left, a John Kruk 1994 Triple Play base card in the center, a few game cards that most of us don’t care.

But if that is all you see, then you lack vision.

The box has a $5 price tag, and there are roughly 700 cards in the box, so surely there has to be that much fun in here.  Plus, the amount of game cards here make it worth while because … people actually do buy these things in bulk lots. 

And so for $5, the coffin came with me and I became a tomb raider.

As it turned out, of the 700 cards in the box, there were FIVE HUNDRED MLB Showdown cards from years 2000-2003. Yeah, 500.

And then there were a few pretty neat 2003 Upper Deck Vintage cards.  I was never a huge fan of this set — which is a total rip-off of the 1965 Topps design by the way — but I always found the retired stars in the set interesting.  Yogi is a classic.

But that was not all.  Here is where my location — the San Francisco Bay Area — paid off.  There was 80 percent of a 2010 Topps Emerald Nuts San Francisco Giants stadium giveaway team set.

And amazingly the key card to this set was still here and not badly damaged.

That’s World Champion Catcher Buster Posey.  Love it.

You can see additional Thrift Treasures posts HERE.

There are a few I want to point out at a later time, but this one made me smile.

Perez was the person responsible for breaking up then-Oakland A’s pitcher Guillermo Moscoso’s no-hitter on Sept. 7, 2011.  Who cares, right?

Well, me.

I was at that game with my daughter.  It was her first game, a journey that I detailed right here.

The fact that Perez’s gem-spoiling hit is chronicled on this card is pretty damn cool.  I might just have to add this to my daughter’s scrapbook.

Listen, I’m no proponent of alcohol or substance abuse.  In fact, I downright loathe both.  But the one thing that I continuously take away from the stories about Josh Hamilton and his “demons” is that he is human; that ball players are human.

So often we like to look at these players like they are of another species.  Like they are athletic gods whose sole purpose in life is to entertain us, sign our items and live up to the contracts that some feel we the fans are paying.

But Josh’s relapse this week in a Dallas pub serves as a reminder that no matter how many home runs he hits in a Home Rub Derby, no matter how much he quotes the bible and praises Jesus Christ, that he is a human being.

We often forget that these players are fathers, husbands, brothers and friends.

Sure, they make money hand over fist and really should not have a financial care in the world. But still, they are human.  They are subjected to the same issues that we ordinary citizens are: temptation and addiction.  And at times — heck, most of the time — we forget that.

What we want to see in these self-professed “times of weakness,” is the ability for the offending person to own their mistake, seek corrective measures, and move forward.

Josh has already shown signs of the first two items on this list.  And maybe as time passes and the 2012 season inches closer, Josh could move forward.

I’m just hoping that there isn’t a plethora of displeased fans who feel it is their place to chastise Josh at the ball park for his mistakes.  None of us are perfect.

As luck would have it, I found another baseball item a few weeks later also related to a Baseball Hall of Famer.

Sitting in a dusty, scratched showcase at a Fremont, Calif., thrift store was an Oakland Athletics baseball with some pen marks that would seem unreadable to the uninitiated.

But to the trained eye, we all know that the ink was placed there by hall of fame closer and Oakland A’s legend Dennis Eckersley.

This is not a Rawlings Official Major League Baseball; it’s one of those slick coated fan balls that has the team logo emblazoned on the sides. The kind you buy your kid. Usually these balls are notorious for faded signatures. But the ink from Eckersley’s signature managed to adhere and age nicely on this one.  Pretty cool considering that I think this ball was signed at least 10-15 years ago.

Gotta love that score for $4.

That deserves an official Dennis Eckersley fist pump.

You can see additional Thrift Treasures posts HERE.

There have been reports of big name superfractors coming from the Bowman Chrome hobby packs embedded within these boxes.  This news has sent some people to store shelves searching for these packages.

Beckett.com recently had a piece by Chris Olds, who stated in the piece that he purchased 10 of the value boxes and pulled two autographs.

Long before this buzz I purchased a few of these and mine were hit and miss.  Nothing major, but each of my Chrome packs had an insert or parallel.

But the recent talk sent me back into stores to see if there has been a new stock of these supposedly “loaded” boxes.  I found five of them.

I actually recorded my break using my iPhone, but my video was 17 minutes, which is too long to host on YouTube.  So I’ll spare you the time and show you what came from the boxes, specifically the Bowman Chrome packs.  Definitely had some interesting pulls, beating the odds with some refractors.

2011 Bowman Chrome Refractor Nathan Eovaldi /500

2011 Bowman Chrome Blue Refractor Jean Segura /150

2011 Bowman Chrome Orange Refractor Jordan Swagerty /25

None of these is going to get someone to break the bank and make me a rich collector, but there is no arguing when you actually pull some colored refractors from just a few packs.

But do these pulls mean that these Value Boxes are loaded?

Not sure I’d say that.  I mean I definitely beat the odds, but I have opened and seen my fair share of duds.  Surely you have as well.

Well, when I pulled the cards from the packs, they looked absolutely perfect.  The Harper was pulled the same day that a major case buster pulled one and posted a picture of it.  His copy was horribly miscut.  I decided that day to have mine graded.

And so I did … along with my Brett Lawrie and nine other random cards.

Well, both the Lawrie and Harper came back Gem Mint 9.5.  I was stoked about the Lawrie because traditionally XFractors are tough to get in top shape.  The sub grades on both are stunning.

But this was like three months ago.

I haven’t written about this grading batch, so the other night I prepared to write about them and decided to do a quick population on both.

Here is the “stunning” statistic:

As of Jan. 20, 2012, I had the ONLY cop of these cards that have been graded Gem Mint.  And to that point, these are the ONLY copies to even have been submitted for grading by Beckett Grading Services.

Really?

Wonder why this is the case.

Lawrie is a top prospect who has a pretty decent following in the hobby.  This is a version of his first Bowman Chrome card.

And Bryce Harper is still a top draw in this hobby.  It would see that ANY of his cards would be submitted for grading.

**Note, there has been one additional Harper graded gem mint.

– Jan 27, 2012.

My 1981 Topps Joe Montana rookie card

It’s been a long time since Bay Area football has been this good.

For about a decade, football fans in the San Francisco Bay Area have been subjected to sub-par football on both sides of the Bay in the San Francisco 49ers and the Oakland Raiders.

Raiders fans have been Raider fans.  Every year calling their shot that they will return to the Super Bowl and each year they fall short of even making the playoffs.  Good drama for sure, but still horrible ball.

And the Niners? People hated Alex Smith.  They wanted him gone.  He was no Joe Montana.  Or Steve Young.  Or even Jeff Garcia.  Hell, he was barely one rung above Jim Drukenmiller.

But then things changed.

The Niners hired Jim Harbaugh.  They began to win.  Alex Smith stopped throwing dumb passes for pick sixes.  And the defense started knocking fools out.

And suddenly everyone is wearing the red and gold with pride again.

It’s interesting to see what winning can do to a fanbase, no matter how serious the fans are.

But even though it has been 10 years since San Francisco has even made it to the playoffs, this feeling is not something I have forgotten.

THIS is how things were when I was growing up here.

I’ll say this right now:  I don’t call myself a Niner fan.  I don’t pretend to be.  I don’t go around puffing my chest out saying “I have been there from the beginning.” 

When time came to choose favorite teams when I was 10 or so, I chose the Buffalo Bills.  I loved Bruce Smith, Jim Kelly and Thurman Thomas.  I loved their status as perennial Super Bowl contenders who always got their asses handed to them when it was crunch time.

Hell, I even had a bitch-ass physical education teacher — a huge Cowboys fans — make fun of me in front of the entire locker room while I wore a Bills hat a day after the Cowboys defeated the Bills in Super Bowl XXVII.  He proceeded to say “Bills, huh?  You know what “BILLS” stands for right? Boy I Love Losing Super Bowls. HAHAHA”

Dude, I was 12.

Jerk.

Anyway. While I claimed the Bills as my team, I distinctly remember the atmosphere here when the Niners were king.  Kids, parents and even teachers were into football.  In elementary school we actually spent an entire class making posters in favor of the Niners as they prepared to play the Cincinnati Bengals in Super Bowl XXIII.  Of course they won.

And years before that, I remember having my first ever Big Mac with a Coke. Joe Montana was on the cup, and Ronnie Lott was on my first true trading card, which hailed from a set given away at McDonald’s.

The Niners were EVERYWHERE. Proof that football is a big deal here … when the teams are winning.

And from an outsider prospective, they call this Bandwagon Fanaticism.

There’s probably some truth in that.  But what you have to realize is that lots of people my age (31) grew up here in an era when the Niners were second to none.  Whether they were true fans or not, the people here always ended up cheering for San Francisco anyway.

And as the Niners prepare to take on the New York Giants in the biggest 49ers game in probably 16 years, they are all cheering for them again.  Even Raiders fans, who probably wouldn’t admit it you asked them.

I leave you with this. A gem from the 1980s.  A song I heard A LOT when I was  a kid but completely forgot until earlier this year when my wife — who is not a sports fan — started singing it one day after we watched a game.

2006-07 Topps Full Court

I was clicking around my favorite site on the ‘Net the other day and came across one of the coolest cards I’ve seen in a long time.  I figured it was nice enough to share with all of you.

Check out this 2006-07 Topps Full Court Dennis Rodman Photographer’s Proof card.

I don’t do much in basketball, so this five-year-old card is new to me.

Great job by the photographer capturing Rodman in mid-air, parallel with the court.  Very Cool card.

I dig through the shelves and racks at thrift stores, garage sales and the like looking for something that I can keep for myself or flip for something awesome for my baseball card collection.

One day this summer I discovered a game-used jersey belonging to Hall of Fame Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver.

I tweeted a picture of the uniform, and a few months later, I was asked to write a piece for Beckett Sports Card Monthly documenting the incident, and this extension of my hobby.

The magazine hit my local hobby shop shelves on Tuesday and should be in your stores now.

Whether you decide to buy the magazine or just read it is up to you, but I do encourage you to pick up the magazine and give the article a read. It’ll give you a taste of what kind of success I’ve had thrift store hunting.

Many people see second-hand stores as a place where poor people shop.  I see them as bearers of history and sometimes treasure.

You can see additional Thrift Treasures posts HERE.