I spent some dimes and overpaid

 

I like to think of myself as judicious, shrewd, prudent, and all those other synonyms for smart and rational collecting behavior.

But I have my moments. Sometimes I can't help myself when someone is offering cards for 10 cents apiece.

I mentioned my most recent baseballcardstore.ca purchase a few posts ago and showed off some 1986 Fleer. '86 Fleer is right on the cusp of the era when every card should be a penny ... or less. I have no problem spending 10 cents or a quarter for cards from '86. But cards from '87 all the way through '92? You're going to have to convince me.

So how do I explain this?

That's a stack of 1987 Fleer from the dime box store. There are 120 cards there for a dime each. That's really overpaying.

I can go online right now and buy a complete '87 Fleer set for 10 bucks. So what is wrong with me? Why would I blow extra money on '87 Fleer?

Well, I don't really have any good reasons.

I do admit I'm not that thrifty with my money. I'm not going to quibble about overspending on anything when all I've done is shell out a few dimes. But, other than that, I don't know: I just saw everything was a dime, and I wanted the cards, so I bought them. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

I can't even use the excuse that I like to collect my sets instead of buying them all at once. True, I do like to do that -- it feels more like collecting to me -- but that's for sets for which I hold a connection. Admittedly, I don't have much of a connection to '87 Fleer. I never bought any in 1987. Never saw any. Didn't care a whole lot about collecting in '87. They weren't selling cards at the local college tavern.

So if I'm trying to get the whole set and am not fascinated with every last card, I probably should buy the whole set.

But at least I didn't spent 25 bucks on a 2021 blaster, right? That's when you really have to explain what you did to yourself. What am I doing with all these Marlins? Who is this guy? This design is horrible! WHAT DID I JUST DO??????????

Yeah, I don't feel too bad about the baseballcardstore purchase anymore.

 

That's good, because I threw some dimes at some 1989 Score, too.

I don't know what is with me and overlooked '80s sets lately. I actually probably want to complete '89 Score someday. I do have a connection to this set. I did buy some of these cards in '89. They actually create some warm fuzzies for me, which is a feeling very few sets can produce.

But that's nothing I'm going to bother with now.

 

I did venture briefly into some hockey to pick up a few cards of Brush With Greatness player Craig Conroy.

Conroy, for those of you who haven't been reading, is from my area and I've interviewed him several times going way back to the early '90s. He's one of the most personable athletes I've ever talked to. I picked up the Flames card, which you see at the lower right, on the occasion of doing my BWG post on him.

So I decided to add a card for the other teams he played with, the Canadiens, Blues and Kings. Conroy turns 50 in a couple months and that's downright scary.

 

I probably overpaid for these 1988 Topps Buffalo Bills. But these guys are straight from that period when I was covering the team. I've interviewed all of them except Ronnie Harmon, who was known as a malcontent at the time.

 

Here is where I probably got some dimestore steals. You're not going to find too many decent-looking cards from 1983 for a dime.

I love the 1983 Topps football set design. It's one of the best. If I was watching football much at all during this time, I'd probably try to collect the whole thing. Football, and the Bills, at that time was something I paid attention to only when I was visiting my relatives in Buffalo. They were all about that team and I couldn't figure out what the fuss was (it took me living there to see the light).

But I know all these guys. They remind me of that time and what a great look. All for a dime each.

 

I added this card for a dime, too.

I heard more about Dave Jennings in my house in the early '80s than any Bills. My dad was a Giants fan and they were on TV a lot. I heard all about Dave Jennings -- probably because the Giants were usually bad and they punted a lot and Giants fans were like, "ooooh, at least our punter is good!"

Then I found out he was a graduate of St. Lawrence University, a college my newspaper covers, and I couldn't believe it had produced an NFL All-Pro.

RIP to Dave Jennings. Those were some good times. And some good cards.

Definitely worth a dime. Even if I overpaid for some of them. At least I'm not paying 50 cents apiece for a glossy cards of 2021 Diamondbacks, Astros and Mariners.

Oh, and the whole total -- including those '86 Fleer cards from the other post -- equaled the cost of a blaster.