I hadn't been to a large card show in about 10 years, and I was actually quite disappointed. I'd been to quite a few TriStar shows during the 90's, and a remember them being a lot larger than the one this weekend, and it's not just because I was a lot smaller at the time.
I'd estimate that over half of the dealers specialized in pre-1950's cards, with another large percentage focused mainly on high dollar modern inserts and autographs. There was not one dealer that had any Rickey cards set aside. But, it wasn't just Rickey, but base cards in general, as it would have even been hard for A-Rod and Iricho fans to add to their collections (for under $50 a card at least). If I remember correctly, Beckett lists at least 2,500 (correction: it's actually 2,997) different Rickey cards produced from 2002 to the present. Since I've been out of the hobby for awhile, I only have about 50 of those, so I came to the show with high hopes of increasing my collection. Boy, was I wrong!
The card on the left is the ONLY non-autograph or game-used Rickey card that I was able to find at the show. There were a handful of pre-2002 cards that I already had (which I found by searching through a few stacks of "A's player" cards), but this 2005 Donruss Diamond Kings Legend card was all I could come up with. I did come across probably a dozen or so game-used cards, and decided to add these two relatively cheaper ones to my collection.
The middle card is a 2004 Donruss Timelines "Boys of Summer" #21, serial numbered 4 out of 100. The card on the right is a 2004 Donruss Diamond Kings "Flashback" #153, serial numbered 12 out of 30. These cards both featured dual game-used pieces, including a bat chip and swatch of gray jersey. I have a few game-used Rickey cards, some featuring bat pieces, and others jerseys, but none featuring both, which is why I decided to add these to my collection.
Although I struck out on the card front, I did manage to add a few nice oddball items to my collection.
I have about 10-15 postal cachet's featuring Rickey, but all have been postmarked and stamped from inside the United States. I therefore found this cachet from the 1991 All-Star game in Toronto, Canada rather intriguing. The cachet was stamped in Toronto on "9.VI.91," which I'm assuming is Canadian for July 9, 1991.
I also picked up a few 1980 Topps cards that I had been wanting, the backs of which I've shown here. On the left is the A's team card for the year, which I already have, but someone had already "checked off" the cards that they had. On the right is the Topps checklist for cards #364-484, which includes Rickey's rookie card, #482. I don't normally collect checklists featuring Rickey's name, but wanted to make an exception for his rookie card.
I also picked up two magazines that I'd never seen before, and am really excited to have, as well as a couple postcards, but I'll save those for my next post.
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