TriStar 2017

This past weekend was the annual TriStar show at the Cow Palace in South San Francisco, just yards away from SF city limits. As Usual, I left my house early, fueled up grabbed some Mickey D, and drove the hour twenty minutes arriving an hour early-yes a hour-never know what traffic issues could arise. I love the Cow Palace that magnificent work of concrete.

Last year the show seemed more focused on vintage, which it typically is, in comparison to the previous year-in other words dime boxes were few and far between. I can’t say for sure this year because there seemed to be a bounty of dime boxes-though I consider dime boxes to be anything less than a $1 per card-hey this IS the Bay Area.

I stood in line a few minutes early and eavesdropped on a conversation between a Dodgers’ and a Giants’ fan regarding grading and PSA strategy. PSA and Beckett were both in attendance-and they were there to drop some cards off and to look for vintage-one of the guys is trying to finish the 1948 Bowman Basketball set and he is apparently close. Next year I will bring some cards to submit.

I walked in turned the corner and ran in to two tables of monster dime boxes by team-a few minutes in I remembered I went through these last year. I picked up 300 cards-a good many I ended up not needing.  From there I hit some 5 for $1 boxes that had many Topps paper parallels. Then a picked up some nice autos for 3-$5 per-and hit more boxes. Ran in to Mr Fuji-legendary blogger of San Jose Fuji, who had emailed me the day before asking I could use some pages-indeed I could and I let him know. Alas, he had a big paper bag filled with goodies-I am saving that for last. I love chatting with him while we look at cards. The last table had some nice dime boxes and I picked up some decent cards. Bummer is I didn’t look at any vintage-the oldest card I picked up was a 1981 TCMA Football card.

In large part this is because I have a source for vintage cards on the Bay-and when he says NRM they are-so I have been picking off a few cards here and there.

Also, like last year a player signing got on stage and talked baseball which was really cool-last year it was Reggie, this year Will "The Thrill" Clark-I hated him when he was on the Giants-and liked when he was on the Redbirds-yes he was on the Redbirds.

When I hit a show or buy a lot I “process” the cards by checking my Excel spreadsheets then pick a few nice cards to show off-but alas I must of deleted the TriStar recap-so all I can show off are the Yadis, Autos, relics, and Non-Topps and Bowman cards. Which I hope do in two-three more posts.