Opening Day is Here!

I never really get excited. I was excited about a lot of stuff as a kid, but things kind of mellow out as you get older.

This year seems to be different. Maybe because I'm more involved in the baseball community, by writing this blog and reading so many others. Maybe because I have more time to think about things other than work.

I haven't been excited about opening day in, well, forever. Baseball seemed to be more of an afterthought the past few years. But after going to the A's-Giants pre-season exhibitions on Tuesday and Wednesday, and securing a ticket to Friday's home opener in Oakland, I'm excited.

I think the constant almost-but-not-quite performance of the Braves for the last 15 years had removed the excitement. But this is a different town, with different fans and a different team. There is baseball talk in the air here. It's fun, and it's exciting.

So enjoy these "not-quite-game-time" pictures I took earlier this week as you take a break from watching today's opening day festivities. Or maybe while you are watching!

After all, it's the baseball game that brings you the baseball cards!

Card Show Trade Bait

While I was at the show this weekend, I picked up some stuff to offer as trade bait.

All the cards above are nicer hits that I found. Well, depending on your view of nicer. Not rarer, necessarily. I do like the looks of these cards. Chris (Cardsplitter) gets first dibs on the Red Sox cards - I think he might want the Rice. Tejada's back in the Bay Area, but maybe some fans are still interested in this card. Otherwise I might try to trade it around town. I was looking for some Reds hits for Dominic (BuckeyeState), but I didn't find anything. I did find some base stuff though (there are three Reds cards in there somewhere):

The images above and below are also available for trade! Just poke around my lists (linked on the right side). I'm actually pretty easy with trading, I think. I dunno. Any comments from the small (but growing) peanut gallery? I think all the T206 are variation backs. I'm not familiar enough with the Chicle and T206 sets to know which are special or not. If you care to know which back is on a card, just ask! That Bowman's Best of David Ortiz up top is a nice shiny. I almost want to keep it and frame it.

I really like the National Chicles. I already have a set. The pictures are nice - a bit different. That kind of art would be great on a Topps version of Diamond Kings, bold basic colors, simple backgrounds. It's a shame Chicle didn't take off. Compare that to the T206 art, which generally has a more detailed, realistic, old photos-turned-to-paintings look, which I suppose throwback sets should have.

And one last side note. I'm horrible at saving things. If it wasn't for the auto save feature on most programs, I would lose documents-in-progress every time my computer restarts for one of those automatic updates. And as for blog posts - well, I just closed this window by accident. All could have been lost (as if this is such a lengthy post), were it not for that fabulous auto save feature Google/Blogger uses.

What's a guy gotta do to get a dime box up in here?

I feel like a broken record, but every time I go to a SF Bay Area card show, I realize that I really miss the Atlanta card shows. Every month there are at least a couple good ones - usually with the same dealers, but there's always some different stuff. And quarter boxes, dime boxes, all kinds of fun cheap stuff. And pretty much every table has cards - in fact, I don't remember not seeing cards at the usual tables. Sure, some people also have some memorabilia, but around here at least half the tables are just action figures, photos, and other non-card stuff. Maybe that's why shows aren't so successful around here. Cheap stuff is usually what makes a dealer's bread and butter - I've heard multiple dealers at many different shows say it.

At the show this past weekend, I found one dealer with a small 50-cent section, and another dealer with some 2010 stuff at good prices. I happened to have bought from the 50-cent guy at the last show, and (without knowing who I am) he bought the one card I had on COMC.  I got a decent stack from him. The other dealer, I had bought from before - he's not the nicest guy in the world, always seems kind of angry, but he's okay I guess, and this time there was some old guy basically hoarding the cheap boxes. I went through about one row of a 5000-count box and picked up some stuff for my Awards and Leaders collection. I also picked this up:

I needed this for my Sampling Collection (maybe that's what I should call it). It was still sealed so I didn't know which cabinet card I was getting - not that there was much to look forward to in "player" selection (at least I've been to this one). I like oversized cards. I'd like this card a LOT more if the "overlay" cards were maybe put on the back, and the front dropped the Parthenon-esque waste of space to showcase a better art piece of the bridge. (You can keep the title at the top, just shift the painting down a bit.)

These are some of the cards I picked up from the angry guy. They too went into the Sampling Collection (the Griffey is one of those Throwbacks from a couple years ago). And then I picked up maybe 50 or so cards that ended up in Awards and Leaders and some trade bait stuff. I like the '92 Bowman design and ended up with several of these throwback cards in my stack. 

The 50-cent guy sold me these for like a buck each or so, and they too are headed for the Sampler. I also picked up some cheap packs from his stack (that's a post for later) and some additional trade bait. And of course some cards for the Awards and Leaders collection. I couldn't believe I found a red Team USA auto for a buck. The jerseys and autos are the most expensive part of the modern collection, usually, so it's always good to find some cheap stuff!

I was shut out on boxes. Nothing interested me. Signature Stars was about the only thing there that I hadn't seen. Any thoughts? I see this guy all the time, so I could pick up a box whenever the next show is. Would you be a part of a break with that in it? Or if you opened it, was it a decent product? What would you pay for a box?

I have a bunch of trade bait that'll be coming in my next post. And I have a bunch of other new stuff to tell you guys all about! All in due time I guess.