Tuesday, January 8, 2013

1958 Topps #230 Richie Ashburn

Thanks to a tip from a family friend and my Mom, we found ourselves at the baseball card show scattered throughout the Deptford Mall on Saturday afternoon.  Jenna and Ben went in one direction while Doug and I set out to find some cool stuff.  And I'm happy to say, some cool stuff was found.

Armed with $40, a six-year-old, and all my want lists on my iPhone, I made my way to the first table.  Within 30 seconds, I spotted a cheese box jammed with top loaders and this sign sticking out the top:

"VINTAGE PHILLIES $ CHEAP $"

The card at the front of the box was the very 1951 Bowman card of Dick Sisler featured in the banner of my blog.  I took it as a sign and I also made a point to show the card to Doug.  "This was one of your Pop-Pop's favorite baseball players," I told him.  "It was?  Cool!", was his response.  He wanted to buy it, but I explained that we already had it in our collection.

The box was loaded with Phillies cards in decent shape spanning the years 1951 through 1969.  I went to work and added the following 9 cards to my collection for the grand total of $30.  The gem of the bunch was the 1958 Topps Richie Ashburn card featured at the top of this post.  Well-centered, with four nice corners and only a slight crease in the top right corner, the card set me back only $8.

1953 Topps #136 Ken Heintzelman
1954 Bowman #143 Willie Jones
1954 Bowman #223 Steve Ridzik
1955 Topps #46 Ted Kazanski
1955 Topps #167 Tom Casagrande
1958 Topps #230 Richie Ashburn
1959 Topps #452 Chico Fernandez
1959 Topps #546 Al Schroll
1962 Topps #550 Art Mahaffey

It was one of my more successful vintage baseball card hauls, and the whole thing took less than 10 minutes!

1954 Bowman #143, 1953 Topps #136 and 1954 Bowman #223