This beautiful machine is four blocks away from me, in the grocery store between a CoinStar and a Dunkin. I've made several trips to harvest its bounty, and I've shared some of my pulls with some of you.
As you can see, it has the most random items from current year Topps packs (one of five places within minutes from my house that has had Topps baseball cards for sale this summer) to encased Eric Lindros inserts to cards from a defunct football league.
The most random and unexpected item of all can be found at the bottom right corner.
Anyone want a Bruce Bochte Topps Super for $2?
I'm not sure who's buying oversized cards that are older than I am, but someone must be -- there was a Randy Jones facing front last time I was there.
I've bought a couple old packs before but my go-to is the mix of loose cards in the team bag. The last time I was there, more than a month ago, football and basketball repacks were available.
Now there's only baseball bags. I bought two of them, and I might go back for one more by the time you read this.
I won't scan up everything inside, since some of these will be available on my Free Cards! tab in the near future. Though I will say they are much more recent and much less mixed than previous packs.
Perhaps I'll set that 'Advance Stats' Joey Meneses aside for a Nationals collector. There are a couple bloggers who might have interest.
I've got a couple cards set aside for Johnny, who finished off my 2023 Topps set this past weekend:
He even included a '92 Donruss Diamond King. Now I just need Baines and Bell (Jay, not George or Albert)
John, thanks very much for these! I hope you'll find something you can use when I add the new batch of freebies - right after my next 1956 Topps post.
Have you seen or used a sports card vending machine before? If so, what did you see or buy?
Thanks for reading!
No problema amigo
ReplyDeleteBefore I got back into collecting, around 2013 or so, there was a card vending machine at an A&P near me. (A&P went out of business in 2015.) I used to buy a junk wax pack from it from time to time, probably before I knew what junk wax even was. I'd buy both baseball and hockey packs from it.
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ReplyDeleteThis is definitely a cool idea. I saw one in Jersey City once, but haven't run into one since.
ReplyDeleteThat's really cool. I remember seeing one at a PathMark on Long Island around 15 years ago. Never bought anything from it, but might have bought a repack like the ones you did if it was available. PathMark's been gone for a while now, too.
ReplyDeleteThat does seem like something from a time gone by. Yeah, I'd be there a lot even though I just picked up that Bochte Topps Super (and the Jones)!
ReplyDeleteI recall sometime in the 1990s? early 2000s? in a video game arcade. It had mostly Skybox Marvel Super Heroes and X-Men cards.
ReplyDeleteMy LCS years ago used to have some cool gumball machines for trading cards. A quarter woulld only get you one card but they used to fill it up with vintage commons. So you would get a gumball (if they had filled the machine with the gumballs) and a single trading card, that was in a cardboard sleeve to add to the anticipation of what you got. I think at one time they had a second one that was 50 cents per card.
Can't say that I've ever seen anything like this. Pretty cool.
ReplyDeleteThat would be a good place to use up some spare change!
ReplyDelete$2 for a pack of 1990 Score?????
ReplyDeleteNever seen a vending machine like this... but the card shop I worked at when I was in college had one of those machines where you would push two quarters in and you'd pull out a cardboard sleeve with a few cards in between. I think there were four different options in one machine: baseball, football, basketball, and hockey.
ReplyDeleteVery cool idea, I haven't seen one before. I wonder if that Advanced Stat parallel was put there accidentally. I also wonder if the cards get damaged from the fall.
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