Can you believe it’s been three weeks since I last wrote a Thrift Treasures post? Me neither. Just goes to show how little I’ve actually been dealing with baseball cards lately.

Anywho, I had a father-daughter day with my 3-month-old on Saturday and we (I) decided to check out a local high school flea market. These things are held monthly, and I was hoping to chase down the guy from whom I purchased THESE CARDS from last month. After searching, I found him hiding in a poor location. I was hoping he still had some 2004 Bowman cards left and indeed he did. The same price applied 6 cards for $1. I decided to spend $4. The results are within:

Let’s start with the rookies. Last month I snagged a Felix Hernandez Bowman rookie from this box, and while thumbing through the cards I saw two Carlos Quentin cards from the same set, but I forgot if they were true rookies. I balked and left them there. Turns out they were indeed true rookies. Well, lucky for me, the Quentins were still there this month so I bought them. In addition to those, I found a Topps Heritage Quentin rookie, two Kevin Kouzmanoff Bowman rookies, Zack Duke and Yadier Molina from the same set, a 2001 Bowman Heritage Travis Hafner rookie and a 2004 Topps Chrome Paul Maholm. None of these cards are going to be mistaken value wise for anything more than bargain bin finds, but I love these cards at this price, particularly the Maholm.

When I exhausted my search for decent rookies, I turned to inserts. Value wise, inserts are pretty much worthless these days, but for purposes of bargain purchases, I’m all about chase cards that I do not own. Here we’ve got 2005 Donruss Greats “Hall of Fame Souvenirs” inserts of Frank Robinson, Eddie Murray and Don Mattingly and a 2004 Donruss Classics “Legendary Lumberjacks” Eddie Murray (#’d 1000).

Then a few random cards: 2005 Fleer Platinum Bobby Jenks “rookie” (#’d 1000), 2005 Fleer Platinum Kerry Wood parallel #’d 199), 2003 Bowman Draft Andy Marte, 2005 Donruss Greats Dwight Evans parallel, and two 2005 Donruss Greats Alex Rodriguez Mariner cards, which I thought were short printed.

I was going to stop after those cards, but decided that I could not pass on the few Albert Pujols cards that were in the box. I’m really starting to wonder if I’ve taken Pujols for granted. I’ve got about a half dozen Pujols rookies — Bowman, Topps Gallery, Upper Deck, etc. — but his base cards still intrigue me. Here I found a 2004 Bowman, 2005 Fleer Platinum, 2004 Flair, 2005 Donruss Greats and 2002 Leaf.

Final Comments: These type of cards are the reason I love bargain bins. Most of these cards wouldn’t appeal to me if the price was any higher than a quarter each, but collectively they make for nice additions to my collection at a price point equivalent to that of two packs of 2009 Topps. And to make things even better, there are a few rookies in here with a little upside.

This entry was posted on April 18, 2009 at 10:41 pm and is filed under Thrift Treasures with tags Albert Pujols, baseball, baseball cards, Carlos Quentin, Don Mattingly, Eddie Murray, Hall of fame, Paul Maholm, rookie, sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.