What Happened During My Last Trip to the LCS

My favorite card blog post is the lookie-what-I-just-got post. It's how I find out about cards that I myself might need to have in my possession, and it's how I'm best able to subjectively judge the preferences of the purchaser. I hope that my posts serve as something of a similar salve for you.

Recently I visited my local card shop - Lefty's Sports Cards in Burlingame, CA. They still haven't opened things up all the way, despite Northern California's lowest Covid rate in the nation, but then again, I knew this time period was going to be purgatory, and I accept it. I'm not able to request a box of, say, 1965 Topps to be pulled from the back, and there are many precautions being taken to keep people from lingering. Didn't stop me from pulling some humdingers, though!

When I hit the card store, I've usually got a goal in mind: a set to build, a player to dig into. etc. This time, given the circumstances, it was more a "I dunno, let's see that they have" approach, so I came home with a bunch of cheap custom packs that they made - mostly for trading purposes - and these 12 cards I've scanned here. The 1982 Topps Stolen Base Leaders card was $1.25, and I thought that sounded about right to get these two legends on one card (I also have the '84 stolen base leaders card with the same two guys on it).

Lefty's tends to specialize in Giants and A's cards, which you might expect. I picked up this 1961 Mike McCormick for a low price, due to its not-so-great condition:

A little closer to present times, a 2018 Leaf Joey Bart that I'd never seen before:

So here we are in 2021, and Shohei Otani has just registered the fastest pitch thrown in the majors; the hardest-hit ball; and the fastest measured speed on the basepaths. One man. A lone human. It is a tragedy that he and Mike Trout have to play on the Angels, a team that just seems to think that good pitching is optional. Every year, I think they'll figure it out. Maybe next year. Anyway! Check out these Otani cards!

Speaking of players that are good at baseball, I picked up one card each from these 3 guys:

Finally, any visit to my LCS is going to have Pablo Sandoval cards as a main reason for being there in the first place. I now have so many Sandovals that I'm reorganizing my collection of his into one giant, stuffed binder, with cards broken out by year. He's the gift that keeps on giving. There were 4 that I did not have that I saw at Lefty's, with this first one, a 2012 Topps Finest Chrome, being just outstanding.