The Shriners Show in Boston | Just Collect Blog

It was another successful trip for us this past weekend, as we ventured up into the New England area looking to buy vintage cards and collections. We were able to meet up with a few people privately throughout the trip, along with visiting some local card shops. But, the real bread-and-butter for us, was when we visited the Greater Boston Sports Collectors Convention (Shriners Show). Many people knew that we would be attending the event, so we had a few leads already lined up before we even went. Aside from those planned leads, we were able to buy over $10,000 of material from dealers at the convention. Although we would have liked to spend more, we bought "smart", and acquired what was right for us. One of the coolest pieces that we bought at the convention was a Nap Lajoie card. Now, to the casual collector, that doesn't mean too much - but to the avid collectors out there, you can see why this was huge. Nap is a Hall of Famer who played in the early 1900's, and had quite the career - 3000+ hits and 1500+ RBIs. He was also a solid defenseman, holding down the position at second base for the Phillies, Athletics, and Naps. The card we purchased hails from the sometimes overlooked 1915 E106 American Caramel set. The set features all of the era's stars, and is quite similar to it's sister set E90 - with the only difference being the glossy front. Now let's put some perspective on to how rare this card is. There are less than 25 known examples of this card throughout the hobby (PSA/SGC graded), with most grading out at POOR, and none being graded higher than VG-EX. So, yes, this card is pretty incredible, and actually quite rare, as no examples have hit the auction block since early 2011  - until now.

We also made this other fantastic purchase at the show. And believe it or not, it was non-sports rack pack. Why is it so cool? Because neither myself, nor our card specialist, have ever seen a 1958 Topps TV Westerns Unopened Rack Pack. It's a pretty incredible piece, that's in great condition, so we're not even sure what we are going to do with it yet. Can we hold off the temptation of opening the pack to see what's inside? Let's hope so. We know there are a lot of TV Western collectors out there who would love to get their hands on this, so check it out: And to be honest, I think we hit the non-sports jackpot in Boston, as the majority of our purchases ended up being from the non-sport realm. We were fortunate enough to work out two different deals, one with a long-time collector who had these sets for over 25 years, and another with a dealer who just got the inventory in recently. Here are the complete sets that we bought:

• 1963 Topps Astronauts
• 1964 Topps Beatles Color
• 1964 Topps Beatles Movie
• 1965 A&BC Civil War News
• 1966 Topps Superman
• 1976 Topps Star Trek w/ Stickers

Another awesome note about these sets, is that three of them came with wrappers! I think we'd all agree that it really wouldn't be a card show without some football cards. Football seems to be real hot in the hobby right now, so we sought after some football cards to fill the demand of our customers. We were able to buy a 1935 National Chicle set, which included Notre Dame's finest, Knute Rockne - one card that everyone will be after. We also purchased a 1956 Topps Football near-set, a 1967 Philadelphia Football complete set, and a 1976 Topps Football complete set with Walter Payton's rookie. We will definitely be breaking up these sets and selling the cards individually on both of our eBay accounts this winter. Two other great purchases we made were a 1939 Play Ball set and a 1987 Fleer Basketball set. Unfortunately, the Play Ball near-set did not include the Joe DiMaggio or Ted Williams, but it did have the Hank Greenberg, so we were happy about that. We actually bought this set graded, and have started to list the singles in our weekly eBay auction. Now we can all agree that '39 Play Balls are superb, but you might be asking yourself, why the 1987 Fleer Basketball? Well, this set was a gem with a ton of gradable cards. We will be sending these out to PSA over the next couple of weeks, and we expect a lot of 9's and 10's. If history hold true, we should have success with selling these cards individually

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So all-in-all, it was a good trip for us, and we hope to be making more of these "buying trips" in the near future. Do you have any vintage sets that you are trying to sell? We'd be happy to take a look and give you a free appraisal.