best vintage card buy you've had under $5?

[ctownboy]

Back in the 1990's, I bought all 16 of my Star Player Candy cards for less than $5 dollars each. Before that, I bought a group of T205's and T206's at a country auction for an average of $3 dollars each.

Just this past Summer I missed out on a T206 with a brown Hindu back that sold at a yard sale for $5 dollars. A few years ago, this guy had a sale but didn't have any sports items. I asked him if he had any baseball items and he opened his garage door and showed me a pile of sports cards that his Father had collected. His Father had recently died and this guy didn't know what to do with the cards and didn't have the time then to go through them. I asked to look through them briefly and he let me.

Most of the cards were 1990's junk. However, there were some older cards and a complete set of 1982 football cards. In a small box, I found three T206 cards. All were commons and one had a large chunk torn out of it. One card was in Good to Very Good condition and when I turned it over, there was the brown Hindu back. I asked if any of this was for sale and he didn't know much about the cards and would have to do some research. He never got back to me.

Flash forward to this Summer. My Mom's neighborhood was going to have a community sale. I thought about going to see this guy (I didn't even know if he even still lived there) but couldn't because I was helping my Mom get her yard in better condition (she wanted it to look nicer) and also was helping her get things out of the attic, closets and garage to sell. By the time the sale started, I was too tired to get up and go to see what he had and also I was outside helping Mom set up her stuff when I did get up.

By the time I made it to his house, he had the cards out and priced but somebody had already bought the brown Hindu card and the complete football set. They hadn't, however, gone through the big box of cards that the guy had separated into Glad sandwich bags. I went through that box and bought about 20 bags of cards (for $1 dollar each).

From that group I have put together about half a 1977 Topps football set, have at least a couple of hundred more football cards (with stars) and also bought some baseball. Included was a 1958 Topps Musial All Star, 1968 Topps Tom Seaver, 1967 Topps Tony Perez and a complete set of 1968 Topps game cards.

Now these cards are only in VG shape but considering I paid only two or three cents each for them, I am not complaining....

David