Garage Sale Season Has Sprung

There are many quintessential signs that spring has finally and permanently sprung.  The flowers start blooming (or weeds start sprouting), the birds begin chirping, ants start to invade my basement, etc. etc.  However, my favorite sign, by far, is the garage sales that begin to pop up throughout the neighborhood.

Luckily for me, on this lazy Sunday, the first garage sale of 2016 sprouted up a few blocks over:

Even better, it had a nice stash of trading cards!

I balked at their initial offer of $15 bucks for the whole bin - while it unexpectedly contained very little junk wax cards, it was mostly made up of Bowman cards from 10 years ago with all the key names picked out.

Instead, I opted to weed through the Rubbermaid tote and pick out a nice handful of singles that I could slot into my collection:

Mike Parisi made the Major Leagues back in 2008 as a member of the Cardinals bullpen and sported some pretty awesome socks along the way up the ladder.  The next year, he was selected in the Rule 5 Draft by the Cubs and spent the next few years in their system.

The pitcher was released in 2011 without having made it back to the Bigs.  So, while he never was an official Northsider, he still fits in nicely with my Coulda Been a Cub collection - MLB'ers who were once property of the Cubs org, but never made the parent club.

Speaking of guys who never made it to Wrigley, here's a couple of failed prospects for my... failed prospects collection.  I have yet to come up with a clever name for that binder.

Jeremy is, of course, the twin brother of Jonathan and was drafted by the Cubbies in 19th round of the 2006 draft.  He dominated in the low minors, but was hit hard during his stints in AA and AAA, leading to his release in 2010.

Collins was a 24th rounder in the 1999 draft who stuck around the system for 7 years, never making it above A ball.

Alex Burnett was a Cub for all of one game in 2013 and Berry only wore Cubbie blue for 8 games last year; however, Cubs they still are.  Both are already represented in my main project, the Cubs All-Time Roster Collection; that said, these will fill a couple of gaps in my Cubs of Different Color binder (Cubs players in different uniforms).

This Futures Game card of another brief-stint Cub in Brent Lillibridge will qualify for my Baby Bears binder (Cubs in the minors), although I usually shy away from using Bowman cards for it.  Since this one shows him in a clear MiLB uniform, I'll accept it.

Wrapping up the Cubs portion of my dig were these eventual Cubs all hailing from the 2007 edition of Bowman.

While that was it for my Cubbie portion of my purchase, I did add one more baseball card to my stack:

While the expression found on Mr. Mejia's face here might have been enough for me to pull the trigger on this card alone (such intensity!), that's not the reason I grabbed it.  No, I picked it up because Gilberto spent several seasons playing second base for our hometown Independent League team:  The Windy City Thunderbolts of the Frontier League.

He looks much more photogenic in those SGA cards.  Anyway, I picked that up purely for nostalgic reasons.

While I was there, I found a few Bulls cards too:

I've been contemplating starting up a full-fledged Bulls roster collection, to go along with my Cubs, Bears, Blackhawks and NASCAR efforts; so, I've been picking up a few stray singles whenever I can find them.

That Horace Grant card might show him on the Magic; however, I assure you he played in Chicago from 1987 through 1994.

At this point, the heat of the day was kind of starting to get to me - we damn near hit 80 degrees and it's only mid-April.  So, with one final card, I called it a day on the first garage sale of spring:

I love UD's MVP brand, so this was a nice Duncs to wrap the afternoon stroll up with.

So, one garage sale so far and one successful trading card dig - resale season is off to a good start here at Wrigley Roster Jenga headquarters.  Hopefully that's a good sign; the village-wide annual Garage Sale Day is coming up in less than a month and I'd love to be able to uncover more hidden gems.

In the meantime, I'll just enjoy the rest of this beautiful, sunny weekend (which has already included beer, bonfires and baseball cards) and try to ignore the fact that the Cubs just lost a series to the Rockies as I was typing this post.  I guess 9-3 isn't so bad though.

Yay for garage sales!