What's the best item you've ever pulled from a dealer's bargain box?
 

One of the things I miss the most about card shows (which are far less numerous than they were in the pre-ebay era) is the dealer's bargain box. You know, that big box of items prices at a dollar or so, filled with oddball items or mainstream items in off condition. If you like collecting unusual stuff, these boxes could be a treasure trove. Occasionally, you could find something really, really good.

So, to those of you out there with years of experience at card shows, what's the most impressive gem you've ever fished out of a bargain box?

I'll start. There was a dealer whose name I don't recall who was a regular at the White Plains show from the Nineties onward. He had separate bargain boxes priced at $1, $2 and $5. At some show about twenty years ago, I was rummaging through his $5 bargain box. He had a bunch of off-condition 1949 Bowman and I was looking for some condition upgrades, in spite of the fact that these cards were pretty rough. A few of them had uneven edges, indicating they had either been trimmed or had been cut from a sheet. It took me a moment to realize these were not 1949 Bowmans, but rather were 1949 Bowman PCL cards. I walked away with four of them, at $5 each.

This may trigger a debate regarding whether or not I should have brought this to the dealer's attention. My attitude is that this is not akin to some SOB cheating a clueless little old lady out of some rare cards. This was an experienced dealer. Any card on his table was priced for what it was, and I had no obligation to point out to him that the cards may have been worth more.

I realize I sound a bit defensive. But those 1949 PCL's are in a binder on my shelf and they're not going anywhere...

Alan

Alan,

If the dealer was a known good person and dealer, I'd probably have brought it to their attention. I hope you don't feel bad about it because the dealer should know what they're doing.

If the dealer was a jerk, then definitely, no way I'd tell them until after the cards were purchased. :p

This would be a good poll question, but I'm going to guess most people would indicate the dealer should have known what they're selling.

Just curious, about how long ago was the purchase made and what was the value for those cards at that time?

Dealer was kind of a hard ass, not a jerk but not a nice guy either. Many years of experience. He may have overestimated the discount arising from the cards being hand cut, but I suspect he didn’t realize they were PCL’s. This was at least 20 years ago, and 1949 PCL’s were just as insanely rare and expensive as they are today. I’ve been a dealer and I’ve screwed up too (although not that badly). My attitude is that once it’s on the table, it’s for sale, and there’s a mistake, it’s on you.

As Delmar said in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, I'm with you fellers.

It's kind of cool to make a find like that, whether to tell the dealer depends on your personal relationship, I think.

If I remember, Jolly has a pretty good story to tell on this subject.

For my part, I once bought a card for $5 that turned out to be the coveted gold parallel version, worth $100!

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Not exactly a 'find', since I paid about what they were worth, but I used to enjoy digging through the commons binders of 1950s-1970s cards for ones to send TTM. The old players were wonderful signers, and most of them have passed on now, but I've still got those cards in my collection.

I've picked up a couple raw 1949 Bowman PCL cards over the years that were not identified as PCL cards.

I once pulled 7 1940 Play Ball color proofs out of a dealers' bargain bin for $5 a piece at a show at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. Here's the one I kept ...

That's pretty cool.

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Not a bargin bin but a binder on his table 1977. The binder had some postcards early exhibits that I had no interest in (mistake) ..but he had a Connie Mack that was signed priced at $30. I pulled it out said I would take it and kept looking. On back page he had an odd sized card that was definitely 1800's but I had never seen one before. Written in light pencil on back was $175. I muttered to myself the price and dealer said did I want to buy it for $75? I said yes..he said fine. I needed to go back to my table for the cash and he let me take cards. Showed them to my Dad as I took cash from our little metal cash box. He asked what it was.. I said I don't know, but would ask some dealers about it on my way back from paying for it. Paid and saw John Ramirez who I had met a year or so ago and I was pretty sure he would know. He looked at it said it was from 1890 part of a set of Clevland Spiders the name of the tobacco company was on the bottom Just So Tobacco. He asked where I hot it and told him 2 tables away. He shook his head and told me it was a good one. Held on to it for 25 years.

Not sports related, but about 20 years ago I was on an antique trip with the wife and we found an shop in Kentucky. It listed as an antique store, but it was more of thrift shop and after about a two minute walk I decided it wasn't worth the time. I told her I was going to wait in the car and by the front door I saw a box of books with some modern history textbooks on top. I stopped and asked the guy at the register how much the books were and he said they just came in and he hadn't priced them yet. I said "okay thanks" and walked out the door. He shouted and stopped me and told me I could take the whole box for $30. I hadn't seen anything except for the history books so I just replied back "I'd do $15." He nodded, I paid, and took the box out to the car.

An hour later we were at a drive in having lunch and I went to the trunk to see if there was anything worth reading on the drive home. At the bottom of the box under about 20 random history books and autobiographies no older than the 60's was a weathered old book. I took it out and saw it was dated to 1840's. At the time I had a friend who worked for a book dealer in Nashville. I made a call and she said she would call me back.

On my drive home I got a call from the BYU library asking for as many pictures as possible. Once home I took all the pictures they asked for and emailed them. 20 minutes later someone else called on behalf of the University and made a low 5 figure offer for the book with half up front and half when it was received. He ended up sending the whole amount up front and I shipped it the next morning. All in it was $15 to $15k in about 8 hours. A couple months later I saw my book dealer friend and asked if she ever earned a broker fee for the sale and she just smiled so no idea what she got.

I'm pretty sure this is the exact book I sold to the University: https://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/digita...0-1846/id/3718

I later saw another copy sell during covid for six figures.

Scanning COMC nonstop for the past few years feels like going through dollar boxes. I've found 4x 1952 Topps Gray backs over the years, 3x raw priced at $5-10 each, and 1 KSA graded VG-EX Yogi Berra that was priced at $200.

Dealer emptor
 

Seems to me it's a seller's responsibility to know what he's got. If he's priced it, I have no problem buying it at that price... It's not nearly the same as ripping off grandma for dead grandpa's Honus Wagner card.

My best find of this type was my first two Star Player Candy cards from a longtime dealer's $5 box. He mostly dealt in postwar Topps/Bowman and couldn't be bothered to look these up. I was happy to take them off his hands :)

(PS: They were raw when I bought them. I later made the genius move to have GAI grade them, LOL.)

I was about 12, circa 1981, and there was a flea market dealer with binders -- not bargain, just regular -- where I found a 1970 Johnny Bench, priced like the other, non-high number stars. A couple or a few bucks. I thought I was pretty hot shit for finding that. (I have no idea if the 1970 Bench is still as prized as it was back then.)

On the other hand, in '82 I was selling at shows and somehow I had mistakenly put a 1971 Garvey in a sheet with a $.50 price tag, and someone tried to buy it, I said no, that it was a mistake.

Plenty of bargain box postcard and book stories but those are different and a lot easier.

Joe Coleman and Ed Brinkmann 1968 Milton Bradley cards. And I did not even know it at the time. I was just picking up Washington Senators cards.

This was over 20 years ago too. I did not even know that Milton Bradley cards existed.

Nothing major but around 1999-2001 I was in Indianapolis with nothing to do on a Saturday and found a small card show at a Holiday Inn. While browsing through a dollar box (something I never do) I pulled and purchased a few sharp 1969 Topps hockey cards for a buck each. When I got home I realized they were actually OPC cards, not Topps. I ended up sending the the best card (Derek Sanderson) to PSA with some other cards about a year later and it graded a 9. I sold it on eBay a year or so after that in an auction and it sold for $125.00 if I remember correctly. Not bad for a $1 purchase.

Depends on the definition of best.

I was going through a box of miscellaneous automotive PCs and pulled the last card I needed to complete the 1962 Racing Pictorial Daytona International Speedway postcard set, which is basically the first NASCAR set. Joe Weatherly (a NASCAR HOFer):

https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...therly%201.jpg

Really, really HTF. Not very valuable, of course, but finding it at random for $0.50, well, that was a heck of a stroke of luck. As it turned out, there is still one more card I need to finish the set, Buck and Buddy Baker. Been looking for that one for about two years.

That's really cool. Does Junior have a card in that set?

I found a good stack of 1962 Jellos in a Dollar box at a show a few years ago (actually thought they were Post until I got home), spent like $14 for 18, flipped for like $9800 total.

3 e94 commons for $2 ea...in the mid 90's.

Not a card show, at a flea market in Michigan. This guy had many different items, mostly books in a large see thru case. Saw a Mickey Mantle Mini bobbing head in the case. Ask to see it, hard to get out of the case. He said if you are going to buy it I will take it out out of case. I said ok, sold to me for $35.00.

Cool
 

I can read stories like this all day long and never get tired of it.

And oh, by the way, John Ramirez is a Baller among Ballers in our little world of card collecting

Lonny was a friend of mine and such a wonderful fellow to be around. Nearly made it to 100!

Junior Johnson? No. So far as I know, the set is composed of:

38087F Roberts, Fireball
38088F Lorenzen, Fred
38089F Petty, Lee and Richard
38090F Jarrett, Ned
38091F White, Rex
38093F Weatherly, Joe

I am guessing the Bakers are 38092F

The Pettys:

https://www.sportscollectorsdaily.co...1962-Petty.jpg

Jonathan, have to ask. Was Cy Young pictured among the Spiders?

Over the course of many years during the 80's and 90's, I would rummage through dealer's 1957 Topps commons looking for the Baker error card. As to scarcity, after two decades I only found 2. Paid the price of a '57 common each time.

A bit of a curve ball for this board but several years ago I entered a vintage toy store with my (then) young son. While he picked out a few toys I saw these sitting on a shelf - totally raw, not even in penny sleeves! For those that don’t know the 1986 Carnation Wrestling set is extremely rare. The Road Warriors card in this condition goes for approximately $600 while the Martel would fetch around $200. Guy threw ‘em in at no charge when I purchased some toys for my son. Not too shabby!

Not card related but rather coins. I bought a $9 bag of a hundred wheat pennies for my son as he was trying to complete his wheat penny books. We were both shocked to find a 1909 S amongst them. Not big money but it easily filled the spot he had in his book. I later ended up buying a graded S VDB for him, that one is a toughy.

I complain about the completely worthless search engine they have and how the majority of the cards on COMC are insanely overpriced. Saying that like John I I spend a lot of time on there looking for cards. I have found easily 10 cards that I paid less than $5 each for that I sold for several hundred to a few thousand each.

Hi Chris,

Is that a color proof or a regular 40 PB that had some red color added aftermarket by someone? I ask because I have a W572 that has similar red colorization on it and always assumed it was just added after it was issued.



.

In the early 1980's I was looking at binders with T206's for $1.00 to $3.00 each. I pulled one and the dealer said $1.00 because it was written on. It was an autographed Rube Marquard. Sent to PSA and it is authentic.
Bob

At the National a few years back in Chicago I was going through a “bargain box” of a dealer that was seemingly only into grading and was finding a bunch of good items that weren’t going to grade high but were still quality just not PSA 5+

Most items were 1950 to present so I was not expecting to find a skinned N28 King Kelly for…$1

It wasn’t the banner/album card either as it had the blue “Allen & Ginter” ad on front.

Probably the best $1 bin card I have ever found.

A 1952 Topps grey back for $1 or $2 circa 2002. Got it from a big dealer I bought a lot from as a kid, just picking through low grade commons I didn't have. I did not realize for several years until I put my master set checklist together that it was a special card.

I got a 1964 Philadelphia Jim Brown for $1 a few years ago from a baseball dealer. It was in his random dollar box of vintage. I pulled it out and told him it looked like he had a card in the wrong box, and he looked at me like I was an idiot and said no, he did it right. So I just bought it for $1. Apparently he did not know literally any of the football stars.

This year I got a 1954 Johnston Cookies Bob Thompson (the SP card) in EX-MTy range for $5 in a bargain bin at my local show. Found a bargain for a lower grade one on eBay later, so I will put the nice one in my trade bait box. Seller also had a 1961 Bazooka Jim Perry for $1, which isn't a very valuable card or anything but it was really cool to pickup for a buck.


I have gotten better bargains, but not from a dealer at a show. On eBay circa 2005, I found a horrifically listed lot in the wrong category with none of the words one might look for, with a T206 3 Finger Brown, a T205 Old Mill SL miscut, and 3 T220 silver borders. Won it for less than $10 shipped when nobody else bid, and still have all the cards. I won a bunch of uncut panels of T220 proof cards for under $100 each, listed wrongly as reprints. I got the panel with 8 Mike Donovan proofs for $90 - that card has only 5 extant production copies known and the last two went for in between $2K and $5K. I messaged the seller to discuss the sheets, and he replied with "just bid", so I did. Probably never going to beat that. Just picked up a T219 Red Cross Jeffries for $30, that was nice. Worth about ~$300.

I had a similar experience with a big seller on eBay. They had a Kaline RC up for auction, categorized as "Poor/Marked". While the card wasn't winning any condition contests, it was "marked" with a career-era autograph. What's really interesting is that it's particularly rare to find that card signed with anything but a latter-day signature. It was up for auction, so it should have rightly caught a lot of people's eyes since the seller has a large audience. I won it for under $150.

A 1963 Topps Bombers Best, (Tresh, Mantle, Richardson) in about VGEX-ish shape in the $3 box at the LCS. When I got it home, I noticed it was autographed by Bobby Richardson.

My LCS has a lot of mostly lower end vintage, but they don't know a ton about it. (It's a typical shiny stuff / breaker store these days).

Sometimes I get lucky.

At a nonsports table, I came across a packet of postcard sized cards that looked like Mick Jagger by Warhol. The backs were unmarked except for a number. Since the whole packet was $3, I picked it up with a pile of other stuff. Turned out it was a 10-card edition made by Warhol's gallerist to promote the Jagger series of prints and it is worth about $150. Signed cards go for many times that, and for a minute I freaked until I realized I had the unsigned version. Still, a heck of a three bucks.

This one is so old that I had nearly forgotten about it:

Early days of eBay, which for me would have been probably 2000 or '01. Maybe even before I got married.

I ran across a lower grade '59 Mantle #10 that looked strange to me, so I zoomed in on the pics. It was a Venny, listed as a regular. It was there for all to see in the pics, but I guess I was the only one who picked up on it.

Bought it for like $40, which is what the regular Topps card in G-ish condition went for then - and a few months later sold it for more than $500. I would hate to see what that card would go for now, but at the time I was very glad to take the profit.

A while ago, a seller on eBay listed four signed 1953 Topps cards, including one of the tougher ones that I needed for my project, Fred Hutchinson. The photo in the listing was terrible; I could barely see the signatures, much less assess their authenticty, but at the listing price I was willing to take the risk. They arrived a week or so later, and I unpacked four beautiful, career-contemporary signatures, including a Hutchinson that myself and several other board members agreed is good.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...08dd1830_z.jpg

At a NYC show about 1975 someone had a box of Kelloggs 3-D baseball cards for $1.00 each. At the bottom of the box were 7 1968 Topps 3-D cards which I bought. I left a cracked Perez.
I also found a 1972 Topps Test set (like repros of 1953 Topps) for $5.00 (I think 8 cards).

1960 Jim Kaat rookie card for 10 cents each. The dealer had 5 in the box at that price. My friend and I each bought one, and I informed the dealer that these cards should be at around $10 each (at that time). He thanked me for letting him know, and removed the other 3 from the bargain box.

DING-DING!!! I think we may have a winner!

Alabn

I've told these stories before
 

But they are applicable to this thread

1) Back in the day, a friend of mine would bring a big box or two to one of my LCS. My friend who owned the store always gave me a shot to take the box home and go through them or do them at the store for a very reasonable price point. Pulled about 5 Fergie Jenkins RC's (they were probably $5-10 each at the time) and thought that was good for each of us. There were another 115 of those Jenkins RC's in that box. We told the dealer who was in town to visit his folks and he let us keep like 5 each and we gladly gave him back over 100 Jenkins RC's

2) At the 2019 NSCC one of my friends had a 68 Topps White Letter Mike McCormick in his $1 bin. I went back and forth with self-discussion before telling him. We ended up sending the card to PSA and split the proceeds.

Doing the right thing, especially with friends, pays off not only in the short term but in the long term as well. Now if either of those people were schmucks, well that can be a different subject

Not sports related but..

Had a table at a paper/movie memorabilia show in NYC in the late 1990s. Before the show started i was going around to other tables. Guy had a box of folded movie posters priced at $5 each (i guess that meets the $5 box criteria of this thread). The posters were from the 40s and 50s so I figured it was worth it to have a look see. About half way down the word "Laura" was written in pencil on the folded side of one poster. I figured it had to mean one.of the stars of the film. Couldn't be the movie by that name. Started to unfold it and got about 1/4 of the way and realized it was indeed the movie Laura. Original release.

Still have the poster. Worth a few thousand even back then.