One Cincinnati Weekend; Two Card Stores!

This past weekend, as a few of you know, my girlfriend and I headed to Cincinnati to sell her wares at a craft show. But the weekend was especially fun for me as well, because I got to do something that I never do in Indiana - I went to some card stores!

Now as I've often lamented, Bloomington has but one card store within reasonable driving limits, and it's really just a coin shop. Cincinnati, on the other hand, has something like 10 card stores within city limits, which is nice.

So on day one, post driving from Bloomington to Cincinnati and post IKEA (such a great place), I headed out to Funtime Sports Cards, which Google Maps said was only 10 minutes from the hotel. It was, which was great - more time to browse! Unfortunately the store didn't have a ton to offer a singles seeker like myself besides local teams or "star cards" of Bonds and Griffey Jr., so I spent the as much time in the store as I spent on cards - 10 minutes, $10 - and ended up with 3 pretty cool cards.

The first is a Michael Jordan RC!! OMGZ!
Okay, it's only a baseball RC...and it's actually not his first card (that'd be from 1991 Upper Deck)...and it's actually a Promo card (which actually makes it doubly cool). Regardless, a nice pickup that's actually worth a few bucks, so I like it. Also gotta love the classic Jordan tongue-out-the-mouth pose, whatever the sport.

Now that Jordan card was a random pickup, but I went into the store looking to knock off some cards from my random wants portion of the blog. This next card satisfied my want for a Kordell Stewart "hit," and did so in spades, as I think it's gorgeous looking:
I really don't like the Steelers now given my Browns/Patriots fan-dom, but back in the 90's it was hard not to like a team led by Slash and the Bus. I've seen this card for sale on other websites as a simple white swatch, but I like to think that I did much better with the beautiful 3 colors on this card. Beautiful card, very glad I purchased it.

The final card from Funtime certainly boosted up the price of my purchase, but I think it was well worth it. To appease another random want, I picked up this Mayo Cut Plug (on card) RC autograph of 49ers WR Josh Morgan:
Pretty nice, no? Like the Topps Silks/Ginter Autos/etc., it's a mini inside a frame thing, which at first bugged me (just give me the freakin' card itself already!), but which I am now beginning to enjoy since it guarantees I won't wear down the auto with my card handling. And it's a pretty nice auto, even if he does only sign the first letter of his first name.


So that's it for Funtime. A day later my girlfriend had the actual show and was selling nicely in the early going. So nicely, in fact, that I realized she didn't need my help selling anything. So I borrowed her Mom's droid and googled area card shops since we were in a very different part of town. A few card stores were close, but I went with the closest one, Maverick's Baseball Cards. I arrived to find it was mostly a comic store, but was happy to find a very nice selection of newer singles and hits in the front corner of the store. So nice, in fact, that I would say Maverick's had more selection in this tiny corner than Funtime did in their entire store (dayum, right?). I still didn't end up with a lot - not many cards or players that I needed despite the good stuff. But I did end up with 3 cards for a sweet $3, thanks mostly to the store owner's decree that all marked hits were half off - gotta love that!

My first 2 cards came from a quarter box. Number one is a Topps Finest RC of DeAngelo Hall, who was on my random wants list:
Now he's not, as I love this card. It's already bending, as chrominess does, but I could really care less since he's going straight into a binder page anyways!

The other quarter card is an oddball that doesn't fit my collection, but which is nice. It's a 2003 Topps 205 Triple Folder Polar Bear of Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson:
I used to own an Ichiro/Klesko one of these, but I traded it a while back. The concept is that there is a photo on the back (which I forgot to scan) or two guys. The two guys are then on these flaps, and when you fold the card open, you can read about the guys and the photo inside. Interesting to me was that the flaps are originally stuck down with some glue-y stuff - I didn't realize that, and they're actually kind of tough to unstick!

The final card was the best of this group, and fulfills another random want - it's a relic card of Marshawn Lynch, aka "Beast Mode," aka former Bills standout:
His flame has fallen far (he's now a Seahawks short yardage guy), but the memories of his early successes remain, and so I was glad to pick up a card of his for real cheap ($2.50). It also feels really cool in comparison to most relics - it's slick instead of fabric-y, which is neat.

And that was that. 3 days, 2 cards shops, 6 cards - none too shabby! I guess next time we're in Cincy I'll have to hit up the other 8 card shops - you know, for blogger research purposes...or something...