A 90's Set Building Kit

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to clean out my office and organize a bunch of card related stuff.  That's when I discovered a box from John (over at Johnny's Trading Spot) that I originally opened up last year.  Yup.  That's not a typo.  Last year.

According to the postage label, it was shipped back in August... but I think I opened it up in November.  Don't really have a good excuse or explanation on why it sat in my office other than that it was sitting under some other stuff.

Well it's been sitting in the back of my mind the past few weeks and yesterday I opened it up and started organizing the contents.  Now if you've ever received one of John's flat rate boxes, you know he packs a lot of cool stuff into them.  This time around he sent me several starter sets that I'll be sharing on this blog over the next month or so.

Today's post is going to focus on the 1997-98 Upper Deck NBA sticker starter set that John gave me.  Out of the 228 stickers in the set, he sent me 223 of them.

Plus he tossed in seven unopened packs to help me find the final five:

Each pack contained six stickers, so I had thirty-six chances.  I ended up pulling one of the stickers I needed:

Not sure if anyone is interested, but here's a closer look at the front and back of the sticker packs:

Depending on where you look, this set goes by a bunch of different names:

COMC:  1997-98 Upper Deck European Stickers

TCDB:  1997-98 Upper Deck NBA Stickers (European)

Beckett:  1997-98 Upper Deck Italian Stickers

The bottom line is they're stickers designed to be placed in a sticker album like the ones Topps produced in the 80's.  I don't have one of those albums, but thanks to John... I'm close to having a complete set of stickers.

The good news is these stickers aren't very expensive.  I've already picked up one of the Jordans on COMC and it only cost me a buck.  I'll be putting together an order on Sportlots in a few weeks and hopefully I'll be able to cross off the other three for a buck or two.

Thank you John!  I'm always looking to add new sets to my collection... especially when they're oddball issues like this one.  I look forward to writing about the other starter sets you sent my way in the very near future.

Until then...

Happy Monday and sayonara!

Flea Market Finds #170: Typical 90's Nostalgia

It was cloudy and cold... but the ground was dry enough to encourage about 70% of the regular vendors to set up this past Saturday at the Branham High School Flea Market.

The cup guy from January was back.  He was my first stop... 

Purchase #1:  Fast Food Cups $5

1991 Kentucky Fried Chicken #NNO

1992 McDonalds Team USA #5

1995 McDonalds Looney Tunes #4

Honestly.... I have no interest in collecting cups, but I had never seen that MJ Looney Tunes cup before... and I figured that was worth the asking price alone.

Purchase #2:  Senior League Signatures $15

After I had paid for the cups, I started talking baseball with the vendor.  He's a big Yankees fan, so we talked about Gerrit Cole and the upcoming season.

Another guy was looking through his dollar boxes, so I told him I would come back and dig through them after walking around.  That's when he mentioned a collection of autographs he recently acquired.

Back in the late 80's/early 90's... his friend attempted to get every card in the 1989-90 T&M Sports Senior League set signed.  He lived in Florida at the time and attended a bunch of the Senior League games.

 

He fell five cards short, but also managed to get a bunch of duplicates signed.  I purchased all of them.  The lot was filled familiar names, but the one that inspired the purchase was Lowell Palmer:

1989-90 T&M Sports Senior League #86

It's good to know that fifteen years after pitching in his final MLB game, he still rocks the shades.

Purchase #3:  Sports Illustrated Mini Posters $40

There was a first time vendor with some cool 80's sets and unopened boxes.  I was interested in his box of 1981 Donruss golf and a stack of Laughlin Old Time Black Stars singles from the 70's.  Honestly... it's not the stuff you normally see sitting on a table at the flea market.  He obviously knew his stuff, because his prices weren't of the bargain variety.

He did have this stack of miniature (approximately 6" x 9") posters that resemble the ones advertised in Sports Illustrated back in the early 80's.

There were four guys from the 1981 Marketcom Mini-Poster set and six from the 1982 Sears Roebuck set.  They are almost identical in design on the front, but on the back it's a little easier to tell them apart:

1981 Marketcom Mini-Poster #35

1982 Sears Roebuck #NNO

There were more than sixty in this lot.  Joe Montana is a legend in these parts and was the key to this purchase.  There were eight of them sitting in this stack and I'm already working on a trade deal with my buddy who sets up at shows.

The 1982 Sears Roebuck set only has twelve to fourteen cards, so I might try and build this set.  If I do, I'll use the duplicates from this lot to help me with that project.

Purchase #4:  Captain Canuck Comic Book & Card $1

1993 Semple Captain Canuck Reborn #0

Found a guy with a bin of comic books.  Normally I don't even bother flipping through them, but I saw some Wizard price guides and was hoping they had promo cards inside of them.  They didn't.

But seeing this comic book reminded me of Waxaholic.

1993 Semple Promo #NNO

Inside of the comic book bag was this promo card which I thought was a nice bonus.  The vendor also pointed out that this particular comic was signed, but I'm not really familiar with comic book authors or artists outside of guys like Stan Lee, Todd McFarlane, and Stan Sakai.

Purchase #5:  San Jose Sharks Bobble $1

2014-15 Patrick Marleau Bobblehead

About a decade ago... I went through a phase where I was really into collecting bobbles.  These days, I will buy them if they're athletes I collect and they're cheap.  Hard to pass up a San Jose legend for a buck.

Purchase #6:  Dollar Bin $1

I eventually made my way back to the "cup" guy.  The guy who was digging through his dollar boxes was finished, so I flipped through them.  I ended up grabbing this Nolan Ryan that was part of an online exclusive product I was into a few years ago: 

2020 Topps 52-Card Baseball Game #8 (Cleat)

I still need the Rickey Henderson and Frank Robinson for my set build.

The vendor also had a box of random stuff he was selling for a quarter each...

Purchase #7:  Random Stuff $1

1987 National Sports Collectors Convention Media Badge

This badge is what caught my eye.  I didn't attend this show, but it is a piece of Bay Area history.  1987 was the first and only time the National Sports Collectors Convention was held in San Francisco.

Next up was this cool 70's Army pocket guide:

US Army Why We Salute Pocket Guide (April 1973)

Figured it was worth a quarter.

The last two items were two Pinnacle Mint coins from the 90's:

1996 Pinnacle Mint Bronze Coin #NNO

In addition to this Elway... I also bought a Brett Favre.  Unfortunately I seem to have misplaced it... which is a bummer.

I'm pretty stoked about the mini-posters purchase.  These are the kind of deals I'm hoping to find every time I go out to the flea market.  But realistically... the cups, coins, and bobblehead are more typical in this day and age.

Well that wraps up my most recent trip to the flea market.  I look forward to reading your thoughts down below in the comments.

Happy Thursday and sayonara!

Bread, Chocolate, and Cookies Oh My!

Mondays have pretty much been my least favorite day of the week for as long as I can remember.  Most of the time it signifies the start of the work week which is tolerable at best.  

But I've been planning a blog series known as The Monday Munchies where I review cards, collectibles, and treats.

The idea was inspired by Ryan (@SumoMenkoMan) and all of the Japanese snacks he included in his advent calendar this past December.  I meant to start it back in January.  However sometimes I get a little distracted, so better late than never.

Today's snack packs are these two bags of chocolate treats that are Disney themed:

The Beauty and the Beast chocolate had sort of a "honey" flavor to it, while The Little Mermaid tasted more like fruit.

I thought each bag would contain a card or sticker, but neither did.  Instead they included seven individually wrapped pieces of chocolate.

Each wrapper had a different character(s) printed on it:

I highly doubt that these were meant to be saved and collected, but that's exactly what I did with them.  Here's a look at all fourteen wrappers:

As you can see, they fit nicely into 9-pocket pages and are now part of my non-sport Japanese binder.

This binder doesn't receive a lot of attention, but yesterday I actually just added a new card to it.  Bob over at The Best Bubble sent me a PWE that contained this card:

1997 Amada The King of Braves GaoGaiGar

Never seen or heard of this show, but it appears to have been an anime television series from the late 90's.

Anyways...  I realize Japanese snacks may not be everyone's thing, so I'll try to relate them to sports or sports cards that hopefully you can appreciate.

Luckily Bob tossed in a pair of really cool food issues.  First up is this seventy-five year old card of Eddie Malone who played for the Oakland Oaks:

1950 Remar Baking Oakland Oaks #NNO

Malone played two seasons for the Chicago White Sox, but spent most of his baseball career in the minors.

The back of the card features part of his statistics with the Oakland Oaks in 1950.  Based on his numbers on Baseball Reference, he had a strong second half to the season.

You might notice the radio advertisement for Bud Foster and KLX-AM.  I wasn't familiar with his name, but after some research it appears that he was inducted into the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame in 2007 for his radio work with the Oaks, San Francisco Seals, Oakland Raiders, San Francisco 49ers, and Oakland A's.

The other food issue technically isn't a food issue... but it's still really cool:

1985 Mother's Cookies Oakland A's #3

At first glance, you'll probably recognize this glossy, rounded corner card as a Mother's Cookies card... which were sometimes issued in bags of their cookies.  However this Don Sutton was given away at the Oakland Coliseum back in 1985.  I've written about these stadium giveaways on a few occasions, because my brother and I would target the baseball card giveaway games at the Coliseum and Candlestick Park each season.

I'll wrap up this post with one more goody from Bob's PWE...

1969 Milton Bradley #NNO

Dick Green was a lifelong Athletic who was part of The Swinging A's that won back to back to back World Series titles in the 70's.  As for the card, I only have a handful of these Milton Bradley cards that were once part of someone's board game.

Thank you Ryan for the Japanese snacks... and thank you Bob for some really cool additions to my Oakland Oaks and Oakland A's baseball card collection.

Happy St. Patrick's Day and sayonara!