How I accidentally became a Boomer Esiason super collector on purpose.

I love strolling through the aisles of my local Value Village.  I have one fairly close to my house.  I've been avoiding the place like the plague that past couple months as Halloween is a terrible time to try and enjoy yourself treasure hunting.  I have a path I usually follow.  I stroll down by the books to see if there is anything worth adding to my library.  You'd be surprised how many 1st editions and sometimes autographed books show up.  I work my way around the nik-nak aisles and glassware.  Eventually I stroll past the glass cabinet that the store locks up anything of remote value and eventually I find myself in the toy section looking for legos to stockpile for my son.

More often than not all I end up leaving with is a little exercise, but every now and then I find something.  You may remember years ago I blogged about picking up a bag of baseball cards that all turned out to be of Darrell Evans.

I'll be honest Value Village has sacks of cards all the time.  Most being stacks of junk wax like 89 Fleer and Donruss baseball.  If it wasn't for the fact that every card in these bags were stored in top loaders, snaptites, or screwdowns, I would have kept on walking, but not only was every card well protected, the $1.49 price tag is cheap even for loose junk wax.  I figured for that price I'd stock up on top loaders and see what was worthy of being stored in a screw down card case.

Most of the packs contained Boomer Esiason, but there were also a few with Dennis Rodman and Bret Boone.  I did pick up a couple Rodman packs, but I left the Boones alone.

So shall we see what I got?  Prepared to be underwhelmed!  Overall the assortment was pretty good and there were some very cool cards mostly from the mid-90's.  Which while overproduced  was the era of card innovation.  No rookie cards to be had in the packs I picked up, but that doesn't mean there weren't any.  I targeted all of the bags that had the screwdowns and snaptites.  The oldest cards in the batch were a couple 89 Topps.

I have to assume that these cards have been encased for decades, but the previous owner was smart enough to put most of the snaptites and screwdowns in team bags to prevent them from getting scratched up.

I'd love to be able to find a Beckett from the late 90's to see what these cards were going for especially to see if they warranted being encased.  A great variety overall with plenty of doubles in the mix.  You can tell the previous owner was a pretty serious collector who know what they were doing and really liked Boomer.

I also picked up a couple Rodman bags because 90's basketball inserts can be pretty valuable and also are pretty cool.

Nothing earth shattering in the stacks, but a neat collection none the less.  In all I picked up 103 toploaders, 13 Snaptites, and 8, two screw, screwdown cases. All of the storage products are in great shape which is great since they were the driving force behind the purchase.