Tips on a budget/ Part two: Buying from places you may never have thought of and retail buying

Well, it’s time for me to spill the beans. Giving you the secrets to buying success and when to make the purchase. All that I ask in return is that once my secrets are given, you save some of the deals for me.

In part one, I told you some places that you can buy online. Now, I am putting you in places that you cannot use the internet to buy from. First, let’s start at retail stores. Target is a great retail store to buy from, but since I don’t have one locally I buy from Wal-Mart.

Most retail boxes, also known as blaster boxes at Wal-Mart will run you about $20 bucks with most carrying a guaranteed “hit”. Now whether that means a jersey or a manufactured patch or sometimes an autograph or jersey that is up to you to choose. I always make sure that I get the box with the hit. If not, you most of the time, excluding Chrome products that a good percentage of the time give you your money back, will not make the $20 back. Most of the jerseys or patches will be valued at half of what you pay for the box so you just need a few other inserts or rookies or great players to make up the remaining balance.

But, I have heard of people who have hit it big time. I have done it only twice. Once back in 2002 when Upper Deck made Prospect Premiers I bought two Blaster boxes that guaranteed a rookie autograph, which the first box had Jeremy Hermida now of the Red Sox and the big pull was Prince Fielder of the Brewers in the other box. This card started out at fifty dollars and peaked at two hundred fifty but now has settled in at $125. But is the best pull I have ever gotten from Wal-Mart. The other big pull, though not a name player but something that was hard to get, was a 2002 Topps football David Patten Super Bowl Tix card that I pulled from 6 packs of Topps. It is a beautiful card, not worth very much in value ($25) but is a great pull anyways.

However, there comes a time of the year, mostly right after Christmas, that Wal-Mart will bring in old product from the previous year or a couple years back of boxes and packs that you can get for fifty percent off. This is a secret that was hard to tell being someone who tries to get there first to take them. These are great prices either way. Especially for the boxes that give you the hit for only ten dollars. You will always make out very well. Even with purchasing the packs. And the best pack pull story from the mark down ones I have is my nephew went to a local Wal-Mart and bought 3 packs of 2008 UD Heroes Baseball for 99 cents a pack and got a Derek Jeter parallel jersey card numbered to 25 that even had a pinstripe on the jersey piece.

Wal-Mart isn’t the only one who runs deals like this. Olympia Sports also puts whatever inventory they have leftover on sale a couple of weeks after Christmas. And I have done very well there as well. I bought 13 packs of 2009-2010 Panini basketball for $1.25 a pack and got an autograph of Marcus Thornton and rookies of Blake Griffin and Tyreke Evans to name a few. The value well exceeded what I paid. You also have to check places like Rite Aid as well who put them on special after the holidays.

So, I told you my retail secrets…except one. There is one place you might have never thought of as a sports card carrying place. Your local dollar store. That’s right. Now whether you shop there or not (I didn’t til my nephew discovered the wax they carried) you should take a look at your local dollar store. The one near myself is forty-five minutes away, but some of the product they have is good.

I thought my nephew was pulling my leg at first. I kept telling him it must be prepackaged junk that a company must have taken a bunch of no name players that were sitting around and they threw them together in a package. But, they were not. They were real retail wax packs either from a year ago or as of now. It was incredible!! My nephew tried some Upper Deck MLS 2008 cards and actually pulled a jersey. I bought eight packs of the 2009-2010 Prestige basketball and got four SP’s!! Including the Tyler Hansborough from worth $25. And I got two Blake Griffin rookies and a Tyreke Evans one as well. That’s quite a value for paying a dollar for the pack.

There is also one more place to purchase cards. It’s not a retail store. It’s not a dollar store, even though you may be able to purchase items for that price. It’s a yard sale. Every summer I look in the local newspaper to see if any of the yard sale ads mention sports cards.

At first it sounds a little absurd, but believe me, some of my best cards have been found at yard sales. The one thing you have got to realize about yard sales is that they are places where people are trying to get rid of stuff. Some of that stuff can be junk, some of it can great items, and some of that stuff can be sports cards that have been sitting in their attic for the past fifteen years and they are sick of it being there collecting dust.

I have bought plenty of huge lots of cards for around or under twenty dollars at yard sales and they have brought me huge return value. There was one yard sale where a guy had two 1991 Stadium Club and one 1991 Upper Deck football complete sets with the Brett Favre rookie that I got for only $20!! One of the Stadium Club sets alone if around $60 value. Not to mention they have one of the greatest quarterbacks in histories rookie included.

Then there was what I would call “THE YARD SALE”. My wife and I (and the kids) were driving around checking out one towns town wide yard sale making a lot of stops along the way and were about to call it a day when we drove by a huge one.

She looked at me and said, “Do you wanna go to it?”

I was hesitant at first being tired from going to a lot of others and coming up empty handed. And I think the kids were also ready to call it a day. But, something in me said, let’s do this!! So I said, “Yep. Let’s go.”

We parked a good distance away and I went alone. I walked up the long tiring driveway and there was a 2 door garage that had the sale in it. When I walked in I immediately felt like a six year old at Christmas time when there were a lot of presents under the tree. All I could see were 4000 count white boxes upon 800 count white boxes upon unopened boxes of cards. A rough estimate of at least 50,000 cards if not more.

After wiping the drool off from my wet chin, I walked over to the person holding the sale and inquired about them.

“I see you have quite a few cards for sale,” I said.

“I sure do. This isn’t even all of them. I have complete baseball sets back in the eighties that I am not selling. I am sure that most of what’s over there are just common cards.”

“I immediately responded, how much for all of it?” I questioned myself at first for asking knowing that they probably were just commons and he was probably going to ask a lot for them. But, the way I looked at it, if each card was worth a half-a-penny I should be able to get my money’s worth back.

“I don’t know…” the man said as he looked at his wife, “about a hundred bucks.”

It still sounded like a lot of money, but I said I told myself there were a lot of cards. And not to mention at least 20 boxes of unopened 90’s cards from a variety of sports. I have to do this deal.

“I will be back in a minute. I have got to talk to my wife about it first,” I said and slowly jogged, actually I skipped, back to my vehicle where my wife waited. When she saw me, she knew I must have found something.

“What did you find?”

“The most cards I have ever seen at a yard sale!!”

“How much?”

“A hundred. And you have no idea how many there actually are.”

“Are they worth it?”

Hesitantly, “I think so.”

“Alright. That will be your Christmas present way early.”

“Ok. You will need to back the vehicle up the driveway though,” I responded. I quickly went back up the driveway and told the man I was taking it all.

As I was loading, I didn’t realize how many there actually were. I filled our van trunk, the driver’s side backseat, and in-between all of the other seats and actually had some in my lap.

After getting home, my wife and I started to take it apart and were amazed. We found Michael Jordan inserts, a couple complete sets, older cards from the 60’s-early 90’s of some great players like Nolan Ryan and Pete Rose and Hank Aaron, and the oldest card being a 1953 George Kell card worth $80. We found a Mark McGwire Topps rookie. At least 15 Barry Bonds rookies and a good 20 Derek Jeter rookies including 13 Upper Deck ones. There was an 1989 Donruss Jim Abbot autographed card. And some other unique inserts. And this isn’t even the tip of the iceberg. I just wanted to give an example of a few. And the George Kell card alone almost valued the whole lot.

The boxes of unopened packs didn’t yield a lot of great pulls, most I traded off to a friend for some good cards, but still got a couple of Michael Jordan inserts and quite a few hockey rookies. Most notably Chris Pronger’s Upper Deck one times four.

The moral of these stories are that anyone of any budget can collect. You can find deals and great cards in the oddest of places. Just keep looking around. You will find that taking the extra effort you can find the greatest rewards. For my final tip, check your local gas stations as well, you will be surprised what you could find.

I hope all of this helps and that we can continue to grow our hobby back to strength. And in my final part of the three part series I will explain how to get the most out of your cards. I will explain sorting, what to do with doubles, and especially what to do with those annoying white filler cards that come in packs. Also some creative ideas with empty packs and boxes.

Til next time, keep busting wax.