Baseball Card Show Report - Valley Forge 3

Dutch and Doug

Doug and I attended the Philadelphia Sportscard & Memorabilia Show, affectionately known as The Philly Show, this past Saturday in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.  We prepared our check lists, discussed our plan of attack, and had a fantastic day!

The tide is definitely turning, as it should, since we spent more time looking for cards for Doug's collection than we spent looking for cards for my collection.  Doug gravitated towards the newer stuff, and he was drawn to the various bargain bins to be found scattered throughout the convention room floor.

1994 Phillies Team Issue #10

By far, the highlight of the day was getting to meet Phillies great Darren Daulton.  There were a number of current Phillies signing earlier in the day, but Doug's mid-morning soccer game meant that we didn't arrive until most of the current Phillies had already left.  We scanned the list of upcoming autograph signers, and decided we'd like to meet Daulton.

Dutch could not have been any nicer to us.  He took his time to talk to Doug and he graciously posed for several pictures.  As we were walking away, Daulton called Doug back over and said, "Now listen, here's the deal.  When you make the big leagues, you have to remember that you owe me an autograph."  Doug smiled from ear to ear, and shortly thereafter he announced that Daulton had joined the ranks of his favorite all-time players along with Chase Utley, Shane Victorino and Mike Trout.

I'd show off some of Doug's spoils, but he's already sorted them in with his growing collection.  Here's a summary of his purchases:

• Doug completed his 2014 Topps Opening Day set, and the last two cards he needed were Cole Hamels and Andrew McCutchen.
• He picked up the rest of the 2014 Topps Opening Day Mascots set, save for The Oriole Bird.
• He added cards of Trout, Mike Schmidt, Ken Giles and Maikel Franco.
• We also bought his first factory set, as one of the dealers had the 2012 Topps set on sale for $18.

One of the other cool things that happened is that all of the dealers we interacted with were more than willing to give him cards.  At one table, Doug had easily accumulated $20 worth of Trout and Phillies cards and the dealer charged us just $3.  The dealer's comment to me was, "It's not every day you get to make a kid's day."  Another dealer handed Doug a pack of random cards as we walked by.  Yet another saw that Doug was going through the quarter bin looking for Trout cards, and he produced two or three Trout cards from behind his table and handed them to Doug.

Less importantly, here are some of the highlights of my acquisitions:

1983 Tastykake Phillies

• For the sets I'm trying to finish off, I added several cards from the 1971 Topps set (mostly some high numbers) and the 2014 Topps Heritage set (again, all high numbers).
• I spent a lot of time with one dealer's vintage Topps binders, picking out Phillies I needed from the 1965, 1966 and 1967 Topps sets.
• I added vintage Phillies cards from 1940 Play Ball ("Hans" Lobert), 1952 Bowman (Connie Ryan) and 1952 Topps (Howie Fox), along with a few Exhibits cards of Jim Konstanty and Dick Sisler.
• I added several more 1983 Tasktykake Phillies to my collection, and now I only need four more cards to complete that set.
• My biggest thrill was finding a complete 1990 Phillies Team Issue set, which I had never seen before.  The dealer explained that this set was only available at the ballpark in packs of four or five cards per series in 1990.  It was never actually sold in complete set form.

Memory Lane
Valley Forge 1 - September 2010
Valley Forge 2 - October 2012