Virtual flea market

A couple of months ago, I went to the flea market and made several smaller purchases of cards, enough that before I realized it I'd spent a bit more than I expected. I did the same thing on eBay recently. There was a seller who had hundreds of auctions at once, and pretty good combined shipping, so I made a whole lot of bids and ended up getting some good individual deals, but it added up to a fair amount by the time I was all done. Still, it was fun and I don't regret it.

In football I beefed up my Giants collection with a few lots, including one that was LT only.

The rest featured a bunch of stars from the Simms/Hostetler era, the Collins/Barber era, and the Eli Manning era. Fun stuff. Also kicker Joe Danelo with his hands down his pants in one of the funnier cards I've seen in a while.

Some highlights from a lot of 50 stars that I got for just $6. Some cool vintage, and some big stars, including Payton, Karras, and even OJ!

Most of my focus was on baseball. Like the Giants, I picked up some cheap Yankee lots. They were less junkwax-heavy than I thought. I was particularly attracted to the cards from the Renata Galasso '61 Yankees tribute in the design of the '61 Topps set, and the '89 Score Yankees set, neither of which I had owned a card from before. To my surprise, the Catfish Hunter '76 SSPC was not a standard card from the set, but a promo card with instructions on how to order the set.

Like Lawrence Taylor, I was able to snag a lot of Jorge Posada cards. Today's Yankees could use players with the kind of intensity Jorge brought to the game.

Some minor league sets that will be fun to open.

Eighteen random autographs. I'm not an autograph collector but I do get the appeal of an on-card auto, particularly of a card that was not issued as an autograph card.

I was able to snag some vintage, of the "parallel" kind. All of these came to about 15 cents a card. Here's a lot of '75 Topps minis.

And some more vintage O-Pee-Chee's! One lot was a mixed group from throughout the '70s. There were a lot of 1970, which thankfully were mostly different from the 1970 lot I bought a couple days earlier. There were also 10 1976's, one 1977 . ..

. . . a bunch more 1978, and six from 1974. There were the first '74, '76, and '77 OPC in my collection.

Here are the backs of the '74s. I'd never seen '74 OPC backs before! I love the dark green backs of 1974 Topps, but these are pretty nice too. Unlike most bloggers I like yellow baseball cards.

Speaking of alternative yellow backs, here's one more lot I won, 1971 O-Pee-Chee.