While much of the east coast was blanketed in snow on Saturday, the sun was shining here on the West Coast, which of course meant there had to be some sort of garage sale of flea market somewhere. My wife had plans with some friends, so I grabbed the kiddos and headed to a nearby town where a community college was holding it’s monthly flea market.
I’d hoped to unearth some awesome treasure like a Major League Baseball signed by former Vice President of the United States Dan Quayle, which is an item that a local here — who also follows me on Twittter — found at a flea market near my home last weekend.
No such luck today, but some treasures were found and here I shall share them.
I found quite a few cards today, which was kind of odd, but most of them were not worth my time, or were simply priced too much for what they were. But I wound up making two purchases on the day, which are depicted here:
What you see here is a bunch of packs and a sealed 1991 Topps Micro set, which is essentially the super small version of the 1991 release.
Whose buying these 1991 sets? Well, no one really. They’re cards are small and hard to store, so collectors are not clamoring like crazy over them. But, this set does have some great photography and a rookie card of one Larry Wayne Jones, you know, the recently retired and future Hall of Famer Chipper Jones. I’ve seen them before and have passed on them every time, mostly because the seller wants like $20-$25 for them. On Saturday, the guy who owned this wanted $5 … I walked away and then offered him $3. I win. And it’ll stay sealed, thank you very much.
So yeah, those packs. People aren’t buying packs of 2004 Topps like mad either. But did you notice what these are? These are Home Team Advantage (HTA) Topps jumbo packs. You know, like the ones your card shops are charging $10-$15 each for these days. Well, needless to say, 2004 was not full of hot rookies. But they had relics, autos and a shot — a super long shot — at some presidential cut signatures.
The seller who had these packs had three 5,000 boxes full of sealed packs. Most were pretty common stuff, early NBA Hoops and 1988-1992 Donruss. The price tag was $1 each pack or 8 packs for $5. Well, there were seven of the 2004 Topps Jumbos. I hunted for an eighth pack to complete the $5 deal. I ended up finding two 2000-2001 NHL Topps Heritage Hobby packs — the seller threw in the extra pack for free. Score!
So, what was in the packs?
The NHL Heritage packs were pretty bland, but I did pull a rookie card, which was short printed and actually serial numbered to 1,955. You know that was still pretty “rare” in 2000-2001. This one is 500/1955. Neat serial number. I think the card books in the neighborhood of $10, so I’ll send it to COMC and see if I can get half of that from someone working on the set. That’s how I roll, son!
So, obviously the Topps jumbo packs didn’t have a presidential cut signature … you all would have heard about that first of course. But there were a hand full of inserts, some golds and even a relic.
Here’s something cool about the golds though. In one of the packs I pulled a Tony Armas and it was number …
That’s the lowest numbered gold Topps card I’ve ever pulled. That is until I opened the next pack and pulled the Mark Ellis. Check out THAT serial number!
Total cost for these treasures: $8
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