It’s been six months since I’ve ventured to a pair of card shops that are almost 45 minutes away.  The weather sucked and the traffic was bad, but I’d  issued an informal $10 card shop Twitter challenge on Friday and I had to hold up my end of the bargain.

For those unaware, the Twitter challenge is essentially designed to send collectors to their card shops to find a single or singles for the designated amount — in this case $10 — and see who can come up with the best value.

There are no prizes, just bragging rights.

In the end I wound up hitting both card shops and walked away with eight cards, none of which are vintage.  Kinda shocking, if you know how I typically collect.

First things first, these are the two cards I am “entering” into the challenge … and it only cost me $8 for the pair:

I’m no football collector, but I tend to know a deal when I see one. And when these were staring me in the face for $4 each, I knew they had to be mine.  Again, I’m no football guru, but I played enough fantasy football last year to know that Steve Johnson was a pretty good play down the stretch, taking over as the Bills leading receiver.  How does that translate to this challenge and these cards?  These exact cards are selling on eBay for $25-$30 each right now. LOVE it.

Now that that is out of the way, I’ll show you the rest of the loot.

At the first shop I found three other autos and relics that intrigued me, cost on these was $4 each.

I’m a sucker for flannel jerseys.  In hind sight, I kind of wish I stayed away from this because it cuts into my profit, but there was pretty slim pickings for things that actually interested me.  Truthfully it came down to this card or one featuring a small solid gray modern swatch of Bob Gibson.  I think I made the better decision.

I saw this after I found the Steve Johnson rookies and the only reason I wanted it is because Lowery went to San Jose State, which is my alma mater.

One of the Royals young pitching prospects, figured it was worth a shot at $4. Looks like I can come close to doubling my “investment” right now.

***

After buying the aforementioned five cards, I was pretty satisfied and was ready to just head home.  But I was only five miles away from the other shop (and 35 miles from home) and figured that I should complete the journey since I had already traveled so far.  Turns out it was worth my time.

This card is not exactly going to light the world on fire, but I like these jumbo swatches, and the fact that this is numbered to 25 also makes it appealing. Cost? $5.

Paul O’Neill may not be a hall of famer, but he has a pretty solid following in the hobby.  And when his cards are short printed AND autographed, they tend to have even better appeal.  This beautiful looking card cost $5, but has sold for $20 recently on eBay. Gotta love that.

And lastly …

Just as I was about the leave the last shop, I started looking through the show cases.  I usually shy away from the show cases because they feature higher price tags.  But this card was peeking at me from behind a stack of pretty common autos and game used …

Oddly enough, the last time I was at this card shop, one of the store workers noticed that I was wearing a Red Sox shirt and offered to sell this EXACT card to me for $80.  He called it a deal back then and I just laughed.

Today? $20.

The guy working today did a double take at the price tag when he pulled it out of the case for me.

This entry was posted on February 25, 2011 at 4:04 pm and is filed under Newspaperman with tags baseball, baseball cards, Bills, Dustin pedroia, sports, Steve Johnson. 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.