Cards, caching and cameras

This past Saturday, a couple of us ventured to the White Plains area for a card show (also, of course, did some caching along the way!)

The show wasn’t bad. We stayed for a few hours and got some decent items, however, three cards I had specifically looking for, I couldn’t find, unfortunately. For those who don’t know, most of the cards I collect are autographed or game-used and are usually one of the following: Phillies, Phillies prospects or prospects who I have covered/seen.

This weekend, I had been chasing after a couple of my all-time favorites I’ve dealt with — Matt Joyce, Casper Wells and Clete Thomas. Of course, any good Phils cards I could pick up, I’d be interested in.
Anyway, the first table we went to had one of the ones I was looking for, so I opted to pick it up right away in case I didn’t find others.

Thankfully, I got a couple of his cards — this one, which was numbered — and a regular-edition autograph. Each for $5, which wasn’t bad. I tried to grab another guy I covered, but the one guy kept insisting on $10 for it. Considering Beckett doesn’t come close to listing to that price, I passed.

No luck — all day — on Joyce or Thomas. A show with like 200 tables didn’t have those two. I couldn’t believe it! Ahhh well, eBay awaits, I imagine.

I did pick up a Cole Hamels jersey for a decent price, too:

Finally, we spit a box of the Donruss Elite Extra Edition. It’s a prospects-based set, which was nice. The box guaranteed four hits (we got five — four autos and a jersey card) and there were several refractors and parallel cards, which was nice. It’s a pretty sweet set. Here’s a couple of the hits I got out of my “half.”

The set also comes with chances for other sports. I know there are Cat Osterman (softball) cards, but I didn’t land one. I did get an O.J. Mayo 75/75 refractor, which was nice.

The card show was pretty nice, for sure. I like to hit these every once in a while. I’ll keep searching eBay for the other cards I had wanted.

Caching

With going to a show like that, I had to hit some caches, right? After all, we’re traveling down! But with it being so cold, I was looking for some easier ones. Our first was a smaller travel bug hotel in Middletown. It was in a nice little area — an old garden, apparently. I swapped some trackables and all that good stuff. When we first got there, a heard of deer were in there. Pretty neat to see them all in that setting. Didn’t have the camera out, unfortunately.

We then headed toward the show for a virtual. This one, for baseball fans, is pretty wild. It brings you to the grave of Babe Ruth. Arguable the best — and most influential — baseball player of all time, Ruth is buried in a magnificent cemetery that has thousands of graves. Impressive setup. There are many other famous people buried in the Gate of Heaven Cemetery. Unfortunately, there were two or three funerals going on that day, so we just went to Ruth’s burial spot and left.

It’s pretty impressive there, though.

After that, we drove about a mile to another cemetery, where another all-time great is buried. Seems fitting that Ruth is so close, though.

After that, we hit up one more travel bug hotel and then the card show. After the show, we found five more. Mostly quick grabs. However, I also had to DNF two more, likely because of the snow. Unfortunately, it was a bit annoying. Anyway, ended up with eight total on the day and a card show.

Camera

Even though everything else is closed for the National Holiday, the UPS still came.

And today? My new camera! A Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS.  At first glance, this is a really nice camera. I have to play around with it and really check it out, but it’s pretty much everything I was looking for in a point-and-shoot camera. And the price was nice, too. Also, when I ordered, a 4 gig memory card was thrown in, which was nice. I’ll be able to do a little extra video with it now, too.Hopefully that means I’ll be making the blog here a little more colorful and photogenic!

This week

Off Wednesday, so plotting a caching trip. The temps are slowly climbing, so outside of the snow, it shouldn’t be too bad of a day to cache. I think we’re heading to the Ithaca area, which is new territory for me.

Saturday, a couple of us are heading to Rochester for the opening of the GPS Maze. I went to the one in Connecticut and it was pretty cool. This will also hopefully allow me to get a day of caching, fill in some New York Delorme Challenge squares and some other counties for that challenge, too.

There’s a way to double-dip, too, with the “opening” event on Feb. 7, but pretty sure I won’t be able to go up that weekend, so the opening weekend looked pretty good. For you cachers (and even non-cachers) out there, the Maze is pretty cool. If it’s near you ever, it’s worth taking a peek. I’m sure I’ll have photos when I get back this weekend.

More later!