Football Grab Box at the LCS

A while back, I went to one of the local card shops with my boys.  Yes, there are 2 brick and mortar card shops in my county.  Surprisingly, I rarely step foot in either one of them.  One of them is enormous, but it is mostly a music memorabilia store.  There is a substantial sports section with lots of cool autographed jerseys and bats and such, but there are fewer cards than at most smaller shops.  The big disadvantage, however, is that this store is located in the mall, and is pricier than I would like.  The other card shop is smaller and more affordable, but I really only deal with proprietor when I have a table at his bi-annual card show.  Most of the time, I find he's a little unpleasant to work with and quite condescending.  I would like to think that he knows me by now, but he still just assumes that I'm one of those guys who collected as a kid in the 90s and is under the impression that my collection is a cash cow.  I would also like to think that I understand the hobby a little, but when I try to talk cards or ask questions, I feel like he treats me like a naive kid who has to have things explained slowly to him.  That's two things I would like to think.  I guess I would like to think too much.

Anyway, I walked into the LCS in the mall looking for a specific card for a trading partner.  I thought I had it, but I was having a hard time finding it after promising it in a trade.  (Side note: I ended up buying it off of COMC so I could honor my deal, then I found it in another box 2 days later.  D'oh!)  They didn't have what I was looking for, but I wound up picking up a football grab box for $5.  It said "Loaded with Stars and Rookies," but I knew that "loaded" would be an optimistic term.  But, I thought that a 400-count box full of cards for a fiver was a good deal regardless, so I took it home.  It wasn't a bad buy; I have gaps in my collection  between 1996 and 2012 and many of the cards were from that era.  I was a bit disappointed that there were zero Packers in the entire 400-count box.  But I did get to add to some PCs.  Here are the highlights of that haul.

First up is Steven Jackson.  I feel like a Steven Jackson magnet.  I should probably just start a PC because I always seem to pull his cards.  This box netted me five various Steven Jackson cards.

 

Another Jackson, Vincent, seems drawn to me like a magnet.  I pulled few of him in this box as well.

 

Here are some 90s junk wax gems.  The Pro Line Portrait on the left is former Lions lineback Michael Cofer.  I could be totally okay never adding another shirtless player to my collection, but that 1991 Pro Line Portrait set was filled with them.  The middle card is not only a punter, but a World League punter.  Such an interesting card to me.  And of course, the original dual threat QB, the inimitable Randall Cunningham.  I know that guys before him, like Fran Tarkenton, could scramble, but Randall was just as much running back as quarterback.  Did you ever play Tecmo Super Bowl with the Eagles?  I rest my case.

Next up are the rookies.  It was loaded with them, remember?  These rookies actually weren't bad pulls.  Chad Pennington was a solid, underrated QB for a time in the NFL.  This is the first Pennington rookie and first Skybox Dominion card in my collection, and I like the look of it.

 

Kevin Lockett never made an impact in the NFL, but I still remember watching him dominate at Kansas State.  His son Tyler has already made a splash at the pro level.

This 1990 Fleer is Rich Gannon's RC.  It took him a long time to come around, but what a stretch he had at the end of his career.  I really like this set, with the team colored arch and silver football.  It's a classic, in my book.  Michael Crabtree has had an up-and-down pro career, but who could forget his iconic tight-wire walk into the end zone against Texas when he was at Tech?  And a rookie of a guy who would become just the 6th guy in NFL history to rush for 2,000 yards is a nice addition.  This card is pretty beat up, though.  You can see the major ding in the corner.  The corners were part of the story for this box, unfortunately.

Some sets were well represented in this box, and most of them I had little to no cards from the set already.  I'm deciding whether they will be used as trade bait or as the jumping off point for building those sets.  2012 Topps Prime, 2013 Topps Archives, and 2009 Topps Chrome are among those sets.  I especially like the Topps Prime, with its thick cards and focus on action photography.  It's a bummer those Chromes scanned in so dark, though.

Despite the absence of Packers, I did manage to pull some PC guys.  First up are some All-Decade guys.  Anthony Munoz and Carl Banks (playing basketball!) represent the 1980s.

Cornelius Bennett represents the 90s.

And Curtis Martin represents the 2000s.  There was a Torry Holt as well that apparently I failed to scan, and I'm too lazy to scan right now.

Topping it off was a PC guy that I may be the only guy in the world to collect: Brad Sorensen.  I'll have a post about Brad Sorensen another time, but this box produced a SAGE card for me.

I'll probably venture another grab box from the LCS some time.  Most of these cards are going to be trade bait, but it's always fun to obtain something new, right?