Picked up by the wife

For the record, I am not a frequent flyer when it comes to posting due to the amount of travel I do for the j-o-b and other personal reasons.  But you know, I have stated before that I am a lucky man as my wife, for the most part, tolerates my habit.  She definitely sees the insanity in the collection I've accumulated over a number of decades.  But she has also participated in the addition to the insanity by making some purchases for me both with my knowledge and without.  About a month ago, I was out of town and she decided to take the little ones to a flea market in the Chicago area, which is where we call home these days.  She asked me if I wanted her to look for anything for me and of course baseball cards was the first thing out of my mouth.  She knows that as a given but it still is stated every time she asks. 

So anyway, I'm a hundred plus miles from home when I get a call from her.  She said she is in such a rural area that she's been trying to contact me for 15-20 minutes to no avail and the vendors are shutting down for the day.  She knows my wants start with vintage as I have plenty of post 1970 cards to go around and duplicates/triplicates/etc are not part of the plan when buying cards.  She proceeds to tell me about a binder she saw and she wasn't sure if the cards were real or reprints.  So she told me a little about what she saw (all White Sox with a smattering of Cubs) and they sounded legit so I asked her to buy them for me.  Hey, for the price of a mere blaster and hanger box filled with todays million dollar .200 hitters, I figured I'd go out on a limb and take a chance.  So I'm in my car maybe an hour later and she starts sending me pictures of what were in this binder.  Now mind you, I'm driving and looking at what she sends in almost disbelief.  The pictures below are a brief summary of what was found in the binder.

I'm loving this.  I have a few cards from the 1953 set (of course Rivera is a duplicate but who's complaining), more from 1954-1956 and adding these bad boys to the box made me a happy man.  They may not be the best conditioned cards, but in my mind, have been well loved and will fit well into my collection.  This is basically page one of 60+ pages filled with cards from 1953 through the 1990's.  On to the next page....

Who doesn't love a random Norm Cash rookie card among these other 1959 beauties.  I have few 1959 cards but have grown fond of the design.  I hope to see more of the late 1950's cards filling out boxes in my collection in the future.  Moving on, my largest vintage collection is of the 1960 set.  I have been fortunate enough to find these in quantities that put me at a greater than 50% completion rate.  I remember back in the 80's when I was a much younger lad and there was a dealer that would send you five 1960 cards for a mere 50 cents including postage.  I wish I had sent him triple what I did but I'm sure he knew my name well enough as I couldn't put two quarters into an envelope fast enough to see those hit my mailbox regularly.  That lasted for all of a summer way back when. So to find a few of that set also gave me joy....

So basically, I'm finding Topps cards (and a few other companies in later years) from almost every year starting in 1953.  Not every year but enough to know that I was happy she saw them, thought of me and decided to drop a mere $30 on a binder filled with Chicago White Sox and Cubs cards.  Roughly 600 in total.  1953 through 1994.  Mainly Topps, a few Upper Deck and Donruss but the majority are by far the flagship brand.  Yes, there were some lovely 1986-1989 Topps overproduced cards to fill the massive amounts already in my possession but a small price to pay when adding the cards shown here.  Below are a few other highlights but I could have scanned and posted so many more from the 1970's as well.

Needless to say, if she's out at another flea market, I can only hope she stumbles across another find like this.  I repeat, I am a lucky man to have a wife that tolerates me and my love of the cardboard in baseball fashion.