An expensive car repair

I had to take my car in unexpectedly this weekend, and that left me with a couple of hours to kill on a Saturday afternoon. I walked around and decided to check out a thrift store that I'd been in a couple of times before but hadn't bought anything. This time was different. I found a wooden box filled with matchcovers from the late '30s-early '40s. I hoped it would have a lot of Long Island matchbooks, though it didn't, it did have a lot of NYC ones. I was able to get the whole box (about 200-300 matchbooks) for $20. Since I was buying something anyway, I decided to buy some baseball cards too. There is a huge card area in the back of the store, literally just boxes and bags stuffed with cards. There was a LOT of nonsports (the owner is more of a comic book guy than a baseball card guy) and what was there was a lot of junk wax. Plenty of basketball, hockey and football. The football was mostly stuff like Pro Set. The baseball was 99% junk wax, but I spent two hours digging through it and pulled about 500 cards, which cost me $15. Plus on the way out I picked out two 1970s 7-UP cans that were $0.50 each.

I'm not showing the matchcovers or soda cans unless someone is interested (maybe relevant is one matchcover with a 1942 Detroit Tigers schedule). Here are some highlights from the cards I pulled. Most of what I pulled was early 2000's stuff, of the maybe 500 cards I ended up needing roughly half. Lots of stuff from the random sets that Fleer or Donruss or Topps was putting out at that time. I found other interesting cards too though. Mostly though not all commons.

1991 Bowman is one of the few junk wax sets I still need a lot of. I found a few, which turned out to be all Pirates. There were lots of sets where I found a few useful cards. Stuff like 2003 and 2004 Fleer, or 2003, 2004 and 2005 Topps Total. 

1990 Leaf is another set that is hard to come by, especially the second series. I was able to make a serious dent in that set from what I found in the boxes.

Lots of Pacifics which I always seem to need, highlighted by a shiny Canseco.

I love finding 80's Sportflics needs!

I found a pretty large stack of '92 Topps Gold cards, almost all Gold Winners.

There were a lot of Allen & Ginters and A&G minis, mostly from 2008. I maybe should have taken more than I did, but A&G doesn't excite me a whole lot.

I've had a few Action Packed cards before, but this particular set was new to me - it was an Amoco/Coca-Cola giveaway from 1993.

 

I found a few other cards from sets I'd never seen before. I have so many late '80s Fleer boxed sets, it surprises me to find something from one that I don't have anything from. I really like that black-and-white border.

Speaking of Fleer, there was one box which had a lot of 1984 Fleer Star Stickers scattered through it. I picked out every one I could, as I need most but not all of the set. The stickers were mostly but not all from the last half of the set. I'm down to needing just 10 more, all from the first half (2, 7, 18, 21, 27, 28, 36, 48, 49, 53). The cards on the bottom were the new ones for me, the top is a rather large trade stack. Lots of Hall of Famers and stars in there.

Speaking of stickers, the same box had a lot of Topps yearbook stickers. I grabbed all the ones I could find. They were from the '84, '86 and '87 sets. It will be fun to put these in, especially the '86s, most of which I had when I was a kid but are long gone.

I did pick up a little football. I found the Giants cards from the 1991 Pacific set all at once, with the Super Bowl XXV champs. I also picked up any '80s Topps football I could fine, mostly '87.