Card Shop Auction Night: "Oh Great, More Crap"

Those tender words of support came from the lovely wife Tuesday evening as I came floating in from the LCS auction with two 1,600 count boxes full of joy under my arms and a big dopey grin on my face.

Wait, have I not shared with you the awesomeness that is the weekly sports card auction I often attend?  No?  Well, let me fill you in.  Every Tuesday night there is an auction at Cleve's Sports Cards in Springdale, AR.  I discovered it a few months ago when I went to his shop for the first time.  The shop has been around for a long time, but I am rarely in Springdale and didn't know about it.  The owner, Cleve, told me about the auction and showed me the cards that would be up that week.   It was a pretty darn impressive selection.   For a small shop in Northwest Arkansas, the auction is pretty legit.  In fact, about once every 6 weeks he'll hold a "big" auction and sell some REALLY nice stuff.    There usually is anywhere from 15 to 30 people at these auctions and it usually lasts about 30 minutes to an hour.  Short and sweet.

I've gone to several auctions now, and always come home with something.   My best win was a 1958 Roberto Clemente for $15.    I rarely spend more than $30 total.   For the past two months, my boy's T-Ball games have taken priority (rightfully so) over the auctions and I've been absent.  But his season just ended and I was excited to go back last night for the first time in a while.

Here are my most recent Tuesday night treasures:

Vintage cards are the main draw at his auctions, and I was happy to get all of the above for about $8.  The Bench card is in great shape other than the centering, and I got my first vintage Aparicio. 

I have a weakness for goody boxes like these above.    I didn't have time to search them, but I saw a lot of penny sleeves and thought I might be able to fill some sets or at least come up with some trade bait.  What was in the boxes?  Thank you for asking:

Whoever sold this box collected Frank Thomas.  There were about 80 Frank Thomas cards inside.  There were about that many Raul Mondesi cards too.

There was also a handful of Mike Piazzas that will beef up my Piazza pages.

Any Nomar collectors out there?  My guess is that whoever put this up for auction used to be a dealer, or at least tried to sell these at a card show or something.  Notice the prices on all the Nomar cards.  If anyone wants to pay me $2 or $3  (or $9) for any of these, you have a deal.   I remember Ted Williams saying that he thought Nomar had a chance to hit .400.   These cards used to be hot! 
There were also football and basketball cards in these boxes:

 These 2003 Topps All American Foil cards are really nice, and probably my favorite finds in the boxes.  No big stars, but nice cards nonetheless.  And looking at sportlots.com, not common or cheap!

The boxes also had about a half a complete set of this nice 2009 Playoff Contenders set.  Looking at sportlots.com, very common, and very cheap.  It's still a nice looking set, and the cards I got had some good names.


Wow, there actually was a lot of good stuff in these boxes for the puny amount ($4 per box) I paid.  I will need to extend this into two posts to cover everything.   Tomorrow I'll show more football and the basketball portion.

And, this is all up for trade if anyone is interested.