LCS, Ebay and Trade Bait. All in 1.

As mentioned in an earlier post, I hit my 2 LCSs to find some cards for a couple of traders that have emailed their list of White Sox cards.  I desperately want to find cards of certain players or teams for these traders but I’m not having much luck.  One LCS isn’t technically a LCS.  It’s called “Media Madhouse,” they buy and sell games and movies for the most part.  You know the kind of stores.  Everything they sell is used.  They do have a sports cards section as well, but since they only buy from people who bring stuff in, it doesn’t get a lot of new stuff in very often.  The good side is, it has a 5/$1 box.  So I can usually get some older or oddball cards out of there.  He does have a showcase of his “hits” but like I said, not a very high turnaround so most of it doesn’t change.  The other good side is, I can sit and talk with a few of the employees about sports and sports cards and they at least know a little about what their talking about.  Now my other LCS shop, is just a small store at the local mall.  Not very friendly service, high prices, and really not much in the showcase for “hits”.  The only positive is he sells packs, boxes and supplies.  The bad news is, I’m not fighting the mall just to pick up that stuff.  But I did hit it in search of some trade stuff as mentioned.  He had a box out on his showcase.  I asked what the price of that stuff was “$1 a card”, so I started to go through it.  About 1 handful of top loaders and I was putting the stuff down.  It was basically 2011 base cards, for $1.  No thanks, I can get that stuff off ebay/shipped cheaper than that.  I started to head out and saw a 5/$20 box of “hits” so I skimmed through it.  There was only about 20 or 30 baseball in it but I did grab a few, even though I didn’t find the actual teams I was looking for.

Anyways, here’s what I came away with that day, minus the few cards I grabbed for fellow traders.  I did grab a few cards for myself.

I grabbed the Tom Seaver out of the first LCS for $.20.  Seriously, $.20.  I don’t know if he misplaced it, put it in the wrong box, I don’t know but I wasn’t passing that up.  I realize that it’s not a major high dollar card but he would normally have thrown this in the showcase for a $1 or $2 at least.  It has a small crease, barely visible in the top left corner and the corners aren’t spectacular, but who cares, freaking $.20 cents.  The other card I grabbed at the 2nd LCS out of the 5/$20.  I normally wouldn’t have paid $4 for this but I needed to grab 5 cards and do you think I’m going to turn down a White Sox relic, I didn’t think so.  Even if the guy did move on to the Tigers.  Not an overely huge fan of Ordonez anymore.  I was while he was with us.  I guess I just have trouble rooting for a guy who complains about his salary when he’s making millions.  If he had left like Buehrle did, just played out his contract, and left via free agency for more money, that’s fine.  But to tell your team you need more when you signed the contract that your making now, screw you.  Just shut up and do what your paid to do.  But I digress.  Here’s the reason I had to find 5 cards.  I came across these 2 and couldn’t pass them up.

The top 2 cards were in the 5/$20.  So now you can see why I wanted to find 5 cards, those are some nice looking cards.  And yes, they are both available for trade.  I’d keep them if they fit into my collection.

The bottom card is not for trade as I have a Mets fan asking for a trade already.  But I wanted to share the story on how I got it.  I actually purchased a 1973 Topps card for the set collection.  I hadn’t received it in yet but it had only been less than a week.  To be honest, I had forgotten about the card coming because I had a bunch of other stuff coming at the same time.  Anyways, he sent me a message through ebay saying he had thrown out his back and was having trouble getting to the post office.  So he was going to include an autograph card when it shipped.  I replied back not to worry about it, as long as he kept in contact so I knew it was coming.  I also told him not to worry about the auto, it was appreciated but not necessary.  Apparently he decided to send it anyways.  I’m generally pretty easy to deal with as a buyer, as long as I receive it and it’s in the condition said, I’m happy.  As a seller, I’ve had people email a day or two after they paid for it asking where it was.  Some people are just assholes that way.