40 for $20 Card Show Mojo

As a coach, Saturday card shows are something I usually don't get the privilege of enjoying. But, this time of year things tend to slow down and I can afford to sit myself down at a dealer's boxes and let the rest of the world do its thing.

Yesterday was one of these days. I stopped by the monthly show in Normal, IL on my way to a wedding in Chicago. Even though there is usually only a handful of dealers present, this show is one of my favorites because I've come to know two of the dealers fairly well. Their inventory doesn't overlap too much, so I have no problem purchasing from both, but more importantly they are fun to chat with and good dudes overall. One of them hooked me up with a bunch of Packers for a return trade package and the other one sold me a 1981 Topps set for a very nice price.

This purchase actually comes from a third dealer, whom I don't know very well at all. I did get to know his "40 for $20 - Today Only Special" boxes though. He's had these boxes before, but I've never purchased much from him because they didn't contain anything I really needed and the prices were consistently more than what I'm comfortable buying for single cards. For instance, all the cards had price stickers on them and the cards I'm going to show off in this post totaled $162. No, I can't justify that, but at fifty cents each?  Yeah, I can do that! (FYI, not all 40 cards made this post because some are earmarked for surprise future mailings to my blogging brethren.)

I could only find about 25 cards that I wanted to add to my Cubs collection, so I started plucking out relics of notable players to add to my stack.

 The Molitor is my favorite of this group. White jersey swatches are very bland in my opinion.

Here are some early cards of some guys who will fit nicely in my stars box. The card in the upper-right is of Jake Arrieta.

I have no idea if these two autos are legit or not, but at fifty cents apiece I couldn't afford to not gamble on them.

Plus, I love the powder blue jersey and Buckner's thick facial hair.

Here's the last of the non-Chicago cards:

The Manny Ramirez jersey swatch actually is a dark forest green. I'm not sure where that came from. The other card is a Josh Vitters auto that I remember chasing after the Cubs drafted him in the first round. #Bust

Football?  I never buy football cards for my own collection, but I made an exception this time. The card of Walter Payton is from Roger Staubach's NFL Football set, which was made by the Ted Williams card company in 1994. I love that it has his nickname on the front, but the smile is even better.

I didn't have a Gale Sayers card in my collection until now. A fifty year old card with rounded corners and four pinholes make this an easy steal at fifty cents.

Some nice Cubs including an eTopps card from 2004:

Bring on the relics! Two Kerry Woods for my player collection:

DLee, Soriano, ARam, Big Z and The Hawk. Great stuff!

And we finish this post up with another Dawson and Amazin' Grace:

Dropping a twenty at one dealer's table, for this dime-box diver, is not an easy thing to do. But, I didn't think twice this time around.

Thanks for stopping by!