I found a Nolan Ryan Rookie at a tag sale
 

I went to a tag sale yesterday and saw that they had some baseball and basketball cards in a case...they wanted $15 for Pete Rose's 1970 AS card and $15 for a 1978 Julius Erving..et cetera...too high for what they were...When I went downstairs I noticed a plastic box filled with cards wrapped in rubber bands that they had $1 and $2 on each little stack..I figured they were just the commons since they had the star cards in the case upstairs and I didn't even look through them..and as you can see in a photo below there were no 60's or early 70s cards showing...there were also three shoeboxes filled with Strat-O-Matic cards that seemed too high priced to me...so I left without getting anything...when I got home I looked up the Strat-O-Matic cards and saw that I probably should have picked them up, but it was too late as I had to get to work...flash forward to today and I figured I'd go back and pick them up for half price if they were still there...well they were and I snagged them all, but this time I decided to look through some of the small rubber banded stacks of cards and the third pile I picked up had the 1968 Nolan Ryan rookie in it. I got it for a whole $1...after that I didn't even look through the rest I just grabbed the whole box and bought them all...there were a few other good cards in there like a nice 1970 Tom Seaver and some pack fresh early 1970s commons..a 1974 "Washington" Padres team card, but nothing else huge like the Ryan. How in the world does that card last until the second day of a tag sale...there had to have been 100's of people through there yesterday.

Here's a link to the sale...no baseball or basketball cards listed, but the Strat-O cards are the second thing on the list.

http://www.thosegirlstagsales.com/6601_Flintridge.html

Wow, very nice. I've always thought about going to tag sales, but I never seem to have a chance to on the weekends.

How sweet was that when you saw the Ryan Rc ! The Seaver is awesome as well, in our first ever mail order in the early 80's my brother bought a ex 1968 Seaver for $2.00, they must have been out and instead sent him a mt 1970 which he still has, he put the whole set together in nrmt and it is gorgeous, one of my favorites which is funny because most people hate it but the crisp image and grey background is so 1970 cold warish......anyways congrats on your find awesome !!

Nice pick up!
Similar but not as dramatic story. About 20 years ago I was in a local card shop. He had the usual current stuff on display in the front cases and a small side case with not to much interesting things in it. There was a 50 count box with a price tag of "$2.00 each" on it. I'd seen it many times before but never cared to look trough it. When I finally did I found a 1968 Roberto Clemente as well as a 2nd year Wayne Gretzky. I asked the owner if this was a mistake and he said not he knew they were there, he just wanted to see how long it took for someone else to bother to look. That Clemente was my 1st "vintage" card.
Drew

Dan..Any chance you'd be interested in doubling your money on the Ryan?

Heh! :D

Personally, I think you got a steal on the 1984 Topps Rick Cerone!

In all seriousness, great find Dan...just goes to show that sometimes it pays off looking through everything.

Best deal I have ever got was a t206 Cy Young PSA 5 at a sale for $700 bucks a couple months ago, not the same % gain you got on that Ryan but a huge $ gain. They also had a 56 Mantle PSA 6 for $500, I wish they had more cards.

Nice snag Dan! :D

Ricky Y

Ryan
 

Wow, nice pickup! I keep dreaming one day I will make that type of find...

A few years ago I was walking the kids to the park and we passed a garage sale with some toys so we stopped to look at them. I noticed a box that had some basketball cards in it marked at $1 and it had the Magic, Bird, Irving rc and with many others but the problem was they had all been torn apart, I still got them and definately like them.

http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u...yBirdRC713.jpg

Gotta be pretty close to a collector's ultimate moment, Dan. Big time congrats!

Best wishes,

Larry