Newest Acquisitions

Yesterday was Trade Days at the local collectables store, the Yankee Clipper. This is one of those stores that is exactly what you want in a place to find good cards at fair prices: it's a mess! It has plenty of singles to buy, from three cents up to a box of autos and relics for three dollars each. Cases of valuable cards. Atari video games. Star Wars figurines. Videos. Every kind of collectible that you can imagine is there. 

(If you are ever in Rochester, it's on the near-east side of the city, near the Memorial Art Gallery, in the Village Gate, a converted factory, and is right across from the Bop Shop, one of the best record store I've ever seen, especially for hard-to-find jazz albums.)

I did plenty of trading, picking 50 or 60 cards for my A&G set, including 5 SP's, in a trade for an 08 A&G Les Miles relic, a '77 Nolan Ryan, and another low-end relic. I traded some 2000 Fleer EX for some of these cards, too:

I really like all these cards. An Ichiro Blue-back. A Chipper rookie insert. A Ripken refractor. A Feller K-record. And a Frank Robinson-Manny Ramirez card. (I don't care so much about that other guy on it. Give me two Indians any day.)

But the prize for the best pick of the day wasn't even mine, nor was it a trade. My son, after much bugging and pleading, used some of his own money to buy some 08 Topps Chrome, and this is what he pulls from it:

He is getting pretty good at this trading thing, and his luck is much better than mine! Not bad at all: A Clay Bucholz Chrome RC Auto. It won't cover his college tuition, but it will look good on his shelf. Good for him.

One other note of interest to autograph collectors: at this particular trade days, one of the raffles, at $1 per ticket, had a Triple Threads pack among the five or six packs. We didn't win, but when the winner opened up that pack (at least I think it was that pack), he pulled a once-in-a-lifetime card: a Lamar Hunt cut signature, 1 of 1. WOW! 

For all of you who don't know who Lamar Hunt is, he was the owner of the Kansas City Chiefs from the inception of the AFL, along with the Ralph Wilson and Barron Hilton, and is considered to be one of the most influential owners in the game ever. He unfortunately passed away several years ago, but the Lamar Hunt Trophy for the AFC Champions honors him every year, and his son's carry on his legacy in Kansas City.