A Favorite Card Show Moment

Tony at Off Hiatus Baseball Cards is having a contest. Here is my story, I mean, entry.

But first, I'll answer the multiple card show questions originally from Sooz at Topps.

Q1 When is the last time you went to a card show?

I went to a small local show last Sunday.

Q2 How many card shows happen in your area throughout a year?

Define area. I'm willing to travel.

The local show runs monthly, but I think they take a couple of months off in the summer. I don't know of any others. I try to swing by each month.

About a month ago, I made the three hour trip to Syracuse to a great show. I'll probably do that again in November.

Q3 What are some of the benefits of a card show?

Not having to pay shipping.
Immediate gratification of getting the cards right away.
You get to see things that you might not normally see in person without a show.
You can talk to other collectors and dealers about cards and they'll understand you.
Just how cheap you can find some interesting cards.

Q4 IF you could revamp card shows, what would you change?

It really isn't anything about the format, or set-up or anything, but more to do with what I would like to see, especially here at home.

I want to see football cards, and I get so little at shows here in Canada. I'm really not interested in the hockey cards, other than to look at cool designs, and I'll flip through baseball to look for neat stuff for friends, but I have so little football to choose from. And then, and I understand why, when I do find some it is primarily only hits. The hits are from sets that I want base cards from. I'd love to see the base cards too. I want to fill my collection.

Q6 What is your best ever card show find?

Such a subjective question, and I don't know if I really have an answer, or one that won't change over time. At this point in time it might be going through a dealer's monster boxes in Syracuse last month and finding about 70 autographs, memorabilia cards, oddballs and inserts at just under $1 each. Remember what I said above about wanting to fill my collection?

But Tony's contest has asked something a little different. He wants to know our favorite card show find. Mine isn't necessarily a find, as much as a favorite card show moment.

In college, in the early 1990s, the card explosion had football cards coming to local shows. A roommate and I would head out to those shows and pick up boxes, sets, and team singles - me with my Browns, and him with his Raiders. With the explosion, we had started football card collections after both collecting hockey cards through our teens.

The card that would have topped my wantlist at the time would have been the 1986 Topps Bernie Kosar rookie card.




 



It wasn't even a huge value card at the time. It sat behind the Jerry Rice and Boomer Esiason rookie cards, and the Reggie White and Steve Young NFL rookie cards, but I really wanted the card and couldn't find it.

At a card show held at, I believe, the Nepean Sportsplex in October, during football season and right around my birthday, we found a dealer selling wax packs of 1986 Topps. My friend would remember the prices, he has a better memory for things like that, but knowing there could be an elusive Kosar rc in there, I was intrigued. Even with the price being a little more than I wanted to spend, broke college student that I was, I decided I would buy a pack. My friend decided that he would as well.

I opened my pack. No Kosar. However it did have two of the cards I mentioned above:

1986 Topps #374



1986 Topps #161

I was pretty happy with those. They were definitely worth the cost of the pack.

My friend opened his pack, flipped through them one at a time reading who he got, and sure enough soon there was Bernie Kosar looking to throw the ball. He finished looking through the pack while I was trying to figure out what I was going to have to trade him for the Kosar. He then turned, handed me the pack and wished me a happy birthday. A great present, and what is probably my favorite card show moment.