Local card shop in Normal IL

Since it was my wife’s birthday, I took the day off from work to hang out with her. We like to get out of town for her birthday so we ended up in Bloomington/Normal, IL. After visiting a few places she wanted to go (bookstores), we scoped out the local card shop.

My GPS app on my phone (Waze) usually does a great job getting me to places, but it was really having trouble getting me on the right road for this shop. Luckily we finally spotted it and made our way into the parking lot. Sadly it doesn’t show up on Yelp when you search for baseball cards which is odd since it’s in the same category as other card shops in the area.

The name of the place is Collectible Corner. I believe they just moved here not too long ago as the guy working there told me it was a lot more spacious than their old place. They have tons of tables which I assume are for either playing Magic the Gathering or sorting through cards.

I thumbed through the singles but didn’t see anything that I immediately had to have. They had a few Kris Bryant RCs, but I didn’t want to spend all our money on one card. (wasn’t my birthday!) 2017 Topps Series 2 had just come out so we bought a couple jumbo packs as well as a few Bowman packs. I also bought a couple cardboard boxes (maybe 3000 count?) to put my ever growing singles into. The guy gave us a handful of sleeves and top loaders which was pretty nice.

I didn’t get too much exciting stuff but the Anthony Rizzo Bowman Chrome was pretty neat. I also got a Salvador Perez Memorabilia Relic card which was pretty cool. Sadly it’s so thick it won’t fit into a regular penny sleeve or toploader. (time to order some supplies!)

It was nice to visit another local card shop. Without internet sales, I believe a lot of card shops would not be able to stay in business. I always wanted to open my own card shop but definitely would have to have multiple income streams to make it profitable.

Ripping early 90s packs

The nice lady at work brought me more baseball cards today. Along with some sets, there were several boxes of packs from the early 90s. Most of them aren’t worth much but I love opening packs.

1990 Score
1990 Upper Deck
1991 Upper Deck
1992 Topps Stadium Club Series 2 & 3

I landed a Sammy Sosa and Frank Thomas RC! (I’m a big Sosa fan!)

Here’s a few more Ryne Sandberg cards for my collection.

Anyone need any 1991 Upper Deck Chipper Jones RCs? 🙂 I also landed the 1990 Upper Deck Sammy Sosa RC so that made me happy too!

The Stadium Club cards were the most frustrating of the bunch to open. Due to the type of finish on the card combined with years of storage probably in a uncontrolled climate, all the cards were stuck together. So it was a very time consuming process of separating them while not damaging the cards. I’m not sure I would want to buy any of those as it was not a pleasant experience. Since they were free though, I shouldn’t complain too much. 🙂

The last of my stash

When I used to collect baseball cards back in the day, I would always try to hold back a few packs hoping they would be worth something. Sadly none of the packs I hung on to increased in value. I ran across them going through the closet so figured it was time to bust these bad boys open.

1990 Topps Traded
1991 Topps
1991 Topps Stadium Club Series 1 & 2
1992 Topps
1992 Fleer Ultra
1993 Donruss
1995 Topps Series 1
1995 Upper Deck Series 2
1996 Topps Stadium Club Series 2

Talk about some sluggers here! Sad that these cards are worth almost nothing.

A few Jeff Bagwell 2nd year cards. Barely worth a quarter! 🙁

More dominating players from that era: Nolan Ryan, Randy Johnson, Tony Gywnn. I even found a Chipper Jones RC!

It was fun ripping wax as they say. It brought back memories of the days I used to buy and sell cards at flea markets.