Flea market finds

I went to the flea market this weekend, same one I went to last year. I made a few low level purchases and picked up some fun cards.

There wasn't anyone this time with a cards-only table, but there were lots of tables with a few cards. One guy had a variety of 80's boxed sets. I picked up the 1985 Fleer Limited Edition set for $3. I love mid-80s Fleer. These were some of my favorite photos.

One table had a whole lot of boxes of junk wax sets, baseball and hockey. (There were a LOT of hockey cards at various tables. Also lots of stamps, comic books, hot wheels . . .) There was also a box with a lot of loose random cards. I picked up 60 cards for $6. Lots of shiny cards here.

Some fun non-shiny cards too. I'm considering the Willie Randolph Rawlings tag to be a card.

Another seller had boxes of junk wax. One 600-count box was mostly junk wax but there were over 100 modern cards. The guy said I could have it for $7. Not bad, plus the junk wax was mostly star cards. Here are the non-junk wax cards from the box. There were some cool modern cards of vintage players, and my first Donruss Fractal Matrix parallel.

Finally, on my way out, I saw a large plastic box crammed with random junk wax. I eyed it quickly, and saw there was a little bit of interesting cards mixed in. I half-seriously considered offering $1. The guy must have read my mind and said I could have the box for $2, he didn't want to take it back home. Sold! There were easily over 1,000 cards. Most were junk wax and many were in bad shape, but I was able to find plenty of keepers. Keepers like - a Mattingly I didn't have (plus there was a 1991 Topps variation of his that I needed, not sure which box it came out of now), a sparkly blue '13 card, an awesome Whataburger Nolan Ryan oddball, and some 2010 Heritage cards with some fun inserts.

Lots of Pacific legends cards, most of which are new to me. Willie Wilson was still an active player when he was included in this set!

These look like junk wax, but they're actually the '89 Donruss Baseball's Best set, and I needed almost all of them. And that custom '94 Donruss card is too fun to not show. Kid's got a longer mullet than George Steinbrenner let Don Mattingly have!

There was a unopened pack of 1986 Topps Rub-Downs. Unlike the Rawlings tag I don't consider them tags. I considered leaving it unopened, but with the Mattingly visible I couldn't resist opening it.

Here is what was inside.

One other oddball in the box (other than random lego pieces, a playing card, a few cards from other sports, and half of the metal box for some Elvis cards), was this 1990 Topps Team USA patch. I know nothing about it, but happy to trade it for cards if it fits someone else's collection. Photographed next to an actual 1990 Topps card for scale.

I took these photos before sorting. After sorting and combining with my big eBay purchase from the other day, I ended up with about 600 new cards and about 2,000 to trade. Highlights of the trade pile, other than lots of junk wax stars (need to finish off a set?), include 1991 Donruss Rookies and 1992 Pinnacle Rookies, each set appearing to miss only one common card; most of the 1982 and 1990 Kmart sets, and a lot of Blue Jays from late 70s and early 80s Topps, including a '79 Bump Wills error.