Card Show Top 20 - #12 '55 Finishers

Ok, it's time for me to stop being a schmuck and to start posting again. Ok, so the hobby landscape is a vast oppressive desert in a monopolistic world. Ok, so exclusivity has given us K-Mart products with Tiffany prices. Ok, so I'm still coming to terms with the fact that I'm down to one decent card shop in the Metro area. Ok, so I'm still having withdrawal symptoms after going to a card show with vintage out the wazoo and knowing that I'm not going to see that again for a couple of years at least unless I decide to take a weekend off and drive for 13 hours. Doesn't mean I can't still post about the cards I got! I'm gonna actually finish something I started and complete my card show posts! Mainly because I scanned all the cards weeks ago and it's less work to do that! YAY FOR LAZINESS!

At the show there was one dude with tables full of boxes. Dime boxes, quarter boxes, 50 cent boxes, dollar boxes, all kinda boxes. I picked through a 50 cent box after I had scrounged through all the rest. I almost missed the thing, I didn't even know that box was there until I came back a second time. It was full of a lot of insets and rookies mostly. Cards that were at one point the most interesting thing that came out of some freshly ripped wax, but now is an afterthought. Mixed in amongst the shiny mess was this:

A 1955 TOPPS STAN MUSIAL CARD?!?? IN A 50 CENT BOX??? GARGYLES! SLYKICKS! WHAT IS THIS WITCHCRAFTERY???

Card #175 Doesn't. Even. Exist. Look, see for yourself. Does not exist. DARK-SIDED.

oh god there's a whitey ford in there too jesus take the wheel

Card 186. Doesn't exist on this planet. I must have fell into a space/time rift straight into a parallel universe where not only do these cards exist, but vintage '55 star cards are so common that they go into cheapo boxes. I am in the Twilight Zone. Or maybe the Outer Limits. Not the good one, the recent re-make that was cheesy. Well, more so. Nothing left now but to wait for the inevitable twist ending where I unwittingly wander into the Topps processing plant where they make all those leather parallel cards. GYPSY QUEEN IS PEOPLE

Bob Feller too?? Ray Jablonski or Norm Zauchin I could understand in a two for a buck box. This think is in mint condition too! It can't be a reprint, or else it would say reprint somewhere. Wait, actually the card doesn't exist, so it's not technically a reprint. Maybe there's a copyright date on the thing.

Ahhh, copyright 2005 The Topps Company, Inc. I done goofed. What the heck are these things anyway??

Ah, here's a Herb Score rookie card to finish out the set of phantom '55s. Turns out this is a promo set that was given away at the 2005 National. VIPs got to finish up their 1955 set, while us poor ordinary schmucks got to wander the aisles looking for a '55 common they could afford.

Of course, treasure one minute is junk box fodder and I completed my '55 set for two bucks. Or I would have if I had the other 216 cards. Which I don't. And won't. Ever. Doesn't mean I can't put 'em in my '55 binder! Take a gander at a real and a fake next to each other in the binder!

Whitey's trying to escape the binder but Charlie looks pretty happy about the whole thing. Time to finish that 1955 set! After the 1953, 1956 and 1954 sets since I like those much better of course.

Here's the Top 20 List since the show was three months ago and no one remembers anything about it, assuming of course I still have readers to remember anything:

#20 Reds' Heavy Artillery

#19 Blue MadDog

#18 Lil' Jimmy

#17 Real Fake '52

#16 First Topps

#15 Bogus Boog

#14 V103 Tree

#13 Sertoma Rico

#12 '55 Finishers

#11 Hey Shiny

#10 What the Dickens

#9 '60 Spahnnie

#8 Lonely '53

#7 Super Chief

#6 Original Frank

#5 Hoops Inspiration

#4 Rocket Robin

#3 Wizard Off Kilter

#2 Shenanigans Were Called

#1 The Holy Grail of Commons