The Football Shoebox Part 1: 49ers to Buccaneers

It being the middle of baseball season, I'm nowhere near ready for football to start. I'm also not the biggest football fan in the world, I'll watch Bengals games and the occasional Sunday night or Thursday night game. I guess you could say I'm a casual fan. 

When it comes to football cards, I'm pretty picky. Typically I'll only buy singles of Bengals players I like but when a giant shoebox full of cards comes around, I can't really pass it up. As I mentioned in a previous post, this box came to me by way of a yard sale down the street two months ago (and yes, I'm just now getting time to write about it).

I don't know how many cards were in the box but a quick rummage through it gave me a general idea that there were cards from the 90s all the way up to Topps cards from just a few years ago. Some cards, maybe a half dozen or so, were bent and creased beyond recognition and were unsalvageable, other than that, everything looked to be in really good shape. I sorted the box by teams then went through the team stacks to look for cards to keep. I found a decent handful for each team that was in there and the rest either went in the trade box or in the Goodwill donation bag.

Since there was so much, I've decided to split up my findings over a multi-part series of posts. Each post will have roughly 6-7 teams and will show off the cards I'm keeping for each team. So here's the first in the series, the 49ers to the Buccaneers

San Francisco 49ers

I only kept some of the 49ers cards but as you can see, these are from the 90s. I specifically kept Ken Norton because I'm considering starting a side collection of football players (or anyone from any sport for that matter) who also participated in wrestling. Also, a nice succession of 49er QBs from Montana to Young to ... Elvis Grbac?

Chicago Bears

This is mostly the Rashaan Salaam show here with four of the five Bears cards being of his. The other, Rick Mirer, is technically a Bears card as that's the team is lists him with despite being shown in a Seattle uniform.

Cincinnati Bengals

I only gained seven new cards for the Bengals collection out of the box but since they were mostly Pro Set cards I never would have bought out of a five or ten cent box in the first place, I'm fine with it.  I like the Jeff Blake "transactions" card for the fact that it's sort of an update card in which he went from the Bengals to the Saints.

Buffalo Bills

Some pretty nice cards here, mainly of Jim Kelly, but a few others as well. One day, I'm going to to a comparison piece on 1995 Fleer baseball vs. 1995 Fleer football as they used the single division crazy design on it too.

Cleveland Browns

I'm sure running the gamut here with Vinny Testaverde, Bernie Kosar, Eric Metcalfe, and even a Topps Total card.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers

To be honest, I'm not sure why I kept some of these. Regardless, I love the mix of the old school orange and white uniform with the new red and gold uni. Also, look on the bottom left .... it's a kicker card!!

For the first set of teams, not a bad haul and, sorry Broncos fans, there weren't any cards of theirs in the box. Zero, zilch, nothing. Still, I'm pretty satisfied with this batch and there's lots more where that came from.

A Vintage Yard Sale Haul!

One of my favorite things about spring is that it marks the official beginning of yard sale and flea market season. I don't have a lot of time on weekends to hit a lot of yard sales but a long standing tradition in the town I live in is what everyone refers to as "yard sale weekend". The third weekend in May every year is when people come from far and wide and descend upon the town like locusts seeking deals on rusty tools, clothes that are 20 years out of style, and hoards of other things. Much like last year, I went in search of cards, with my wife and son in tow.

Saturday was cool and damp as it had rained hard overnight and into the morning and didn't let up until about 10:30. After the rain finished, out we went.

Cars lined up on Clara Drive

Downtown traffic

More craziness in a newer part of town

Corner of Miami Street and Roger Drive

Unfortunately, after walking about nine miles around different subdivisions and neighborhoods, my search for cards came up empty. However, I did pick up Oz the Great and Powerful and Ides of March on Blu-Ray so it wasn't a complete bust. When I got home, I turned to the community Facebook page and asked if anyone would have cards on Sunday and got three leads.

Sunday was bright and sunny and near 80 degrees. So after a breakfast with friends at a nearby Cracker Barrel, we headed out in the car to track down the three leads from Facebook. The first stop had a decent amount of cards but they wanted 25 cents per card for early 90s junk, or five dollars for a 100-count box of the same. No thanks. Stop #2 on the other end of town was a dud, there was nothing resembling cards but there was plenty of general crap to be had. It was all down to the third and final stop.

Pulling up to a run down, brick house in a shady part of town, I had little hope and pretty much resigned myself that my search would be in vain. Oh well, at least the prospect of an M&M Master Blast from Sonic after this stop kept me motivated.

As I approached the sale, I saw nothing but odds and ends strewn about on tables but towards the back, there was a lady sitting behind a table that had cards on it! And vintage cards at that! Woo hoo! She called her husband/boyfriend/whoever over as she didn't have the slightest clue about any of the cards. I asked the fellow where he came up with the prices for the singles. He said "the vintage Beckett" and "online" to which I shuddered. He mentioned he had boxes he was wanting to get rid of too and pulled out a shoebox, a cigar box, and a random cardboard box filled with cards from the 70s and early 80s.

I asked how much for all three boxes, thinking he would come up with some ridiculously high number to which I would scoff and walk away. However he said "make me an offer", as he spit out tobacco juice into his flower bed. So, after some though I said "how about $25?" to which he accepted, much to my surprise. I asked about the random singles, he said it'd be an additional thirty for those, which I passed on. So, I forked over the $25 and proudly became the new owner of the boxes full of cards below.

What was in the boxes you ask? Well, you'll just have to wait to find out as there were more cards in there than I imagined and its going to take some time to do some sorting. Stay tuned.