Gary Carter and Warren Spahn, From the Card Show

I am a very lucky collector. I can attend baseball card shows every month here in Atlanta. There are at least three that I know of on a monthly basis. It makes it easy for me to find something to write about for at least a week after the show too.

The trade bait I bought at the show already has made an appearance here, in fact. Many of those cards have been claimed, as you can see if you click over. Go ahead. I'll wait.

It seems like the easiest cards to find at this show fall into one of two categories -- the last 3 years and the 1950s and 1960s. Otherwise, it's all pretty much star cards. 

That works when you're looking to fill in player collections of Hall of Fame members Warren Spahn and Gary Carter, though.

Now, the only Spahn I picked up at this show was an oddball of sorts. It was a promotional card for the Action Packed ASG set in 1992. 

There were a lot more Gary Carter cards available than Warren Spahn. Or, rather, there were many more Carter cards on which I could spend a quarter to buy than there were for Spahn. First off, there were some Canadian-ish type cards from Leaf and O-Pee-Chee:

And, a Studio card from 1991. This would be a great look for an unlicensed set, though I disagree with the guys on the Trading Card Preservation Society podcast: there really is no need for an unlicensed set of naked baseball players. 

I mean, Pablo Sandoval does not need to go full Fielder-ESPN Magazine body issue on us, does he?

This Studio card was along side a couple of other early 1990s cards of Carter -- a 1990 Leaf and a 1991 Donruss.

A fun pickup for me was this 1987 "Boardwalk and Baseball" card. I never knew what this Boardwalk and Baseball thing was until literally today when researching this post. Apparently, it was an actual theme park in Florida south of Orlando and south of the Mouse along I-4. If you've ever been in this part of Florida, "south of the Mouse" pretty much means "swamp hell."

Apparently, the park (owned by publisher Harcourt Brace Jovanovich) thought putting out a card set -- and having the Kansas City Royals move their spring training home there -- would be a good introduction to the park. The park was a financial disaster for HBJ, which sold out to Busch Gardens. Busch Gardens pulled the plug on the park in January of 1990.

But hey -- at least I have a Gary Carter baseball card from them!

The final two cards I picked up of Gary Carter are of a more recent vintage. One of them is from the 2004 Topps All-Time Fan Favorites set. It's not a bad card, but the way the photo is cropped is just off to me. In all seriousness, this is another card that could be used in an unlicensed set these days. 

The other is an insert from the 2014 Topps Update set.and it is Carter's "World Series Heroes" card.   

It's a nice card. Nothing overwhelming, nothing spectacular. Just "nice."

Thanks for reading this nice post.