What I got at the Midtown Sports Card Show: 6/13/09

Hey kids? Do you like shiny baseball cards with autographs of obscure minor league prospects, most of whom will never make much of an impact in the Big Leagues? Do you yearn for manufactured letter patch "cards" with barely legible autographs? How about gobs and gobs of current year inserts scattered around higgledy-piggledy around an eight-foot table, all hopelessly disorganized? Have we got a card show for you! The monthly Midtown Sports Card Show at the Holy Cross Catholic School in Manhattan!

I found an ad for this show in the Beckett show listings. It sounded like a good day out; so, why not? Upon entering the school, I felt like I had stepped in a time machine. It was like I was at a card show in the late-80s/early-90s -- about 20 tables in a postage-stamp sized school gym. But size and location is where all similarities end.

This is no exaggeration, but literally every dealer had stacks of 2005-08 Bowman Chrome singles. Not regular Bowman, but BowChro -- and very few of them base cards. If you're dying to finish off that '06 Bowman Draft X-Fractor set (And who isn't? Am I right?), you would have hit the jackpot. There was some vintage, but not much; and 90s and mid-00s stuff, forget it. That is, unless you want to pick through the massive piles of scattered top loaders that seemed to be on every table. I think I saw only one dealer who properly displayed his cards in a showcase and a couple in cardboard boxes. Since I didn't arrive until 2:30, and the show closed at 4:00, I had no interest in picking through 15 table's worth of random cards.

Only one dealer was selling wax of any kind, and once again, it was Seymour the Wax Man. I told you about Seymour last year during my visit to White Plains; he's a regular on the New York card show circuit, and occasionally makes his way down toward my neck-o'-the-woods. Seymour came prepared with four tables of new wax, and some old stuff as well ('93 UD for $25, '95 SP for $25, '97 Ultra Series Two Hobby for $95). He also had HTA boxes of Topps Series Two and Bowman for $85 each, and regular Hobby wax for $50 each. I was tempted with a box of '09 UD Series Two for $65, but given my recent experience with UD, I wisely took a pass.

I left disappointed with the selection, and in the end the only thing I bought was an HTA box of '09 Bowman for $85. But, if you've got nothing planned for Saturday afternoon, July 11, and are a train ride from NYC, go check it out -- if only for the novelty of seeing what a card show used to be.

Tolls, Parking, and Train Fare: $24.95
Admission: $1
Total Spent on Cards: $85

Grand Total: $115.95