It’s funny how things work out. I went to a big card show at the Convention Center in Rosemont last week. My cousin was in town visiting. He is in college, and came to Chicago to visit us and a cousin on the other side of his family who also lives near Chicago. I dropped him off at their house Sunday morning – they were 5 minutes from Rosemont. The discussion with my wife earlier in the week went something like this:
Wife: “Are you going to church Sunday?”
Me: “I have to drop Sam off, remember?”
So I did, and, what do you know, the convention center got in the way of my drive home. After about 10 minutes, I kind of regretted the decision. Not because I was missing church – I couldn’t have made it home by the time I’d dropped my nephew off anyways. More that I had spent money on parking and admission, but probably wasn’t going to have enough time to filter through everything that was there. I did find an honest-to-good dime box, and picked up 50 inserts. They were mostly from 2015 Topps, with a few 2016 cards sprinkled in. So that was 5 bucks, and I got a Mike Trout ML Debut insert for $2. A total of 51 cards for 7 bucks (14¢ per card). Not bad, but when you factor in the $15 parking and $10 admission – not nearly as good. 63¢ per card. I guess that’s not awful, but I bet I could have gotten a similar deal on COMC or Sportlots and saved the time.
I almost left before hitting a few last tables in the back. Glad I didn’t. Because I found another cheap box – this one was a quarter box. 3 quarter boxes actually. And as I was flipping through those boxes, I was actually a little sad because there were so many cards in the boxes that I now had but had experienced a lot of trouble tracking down over the years. Cards like 1995 League Leaders. 1996 Topps ProFiles. A few other cards from 1996-2002 Topps. But I had all the ones I was seeing. Until I got to the 3rd box, I only had about 4 cards. And I had a buzzing phone from my wife wondering why I wasn’t home when they got back (she’s fine with my card escapades – what she’s not fine with is me not communicating them!).
But the 3rd box was something of a jackpot. I found quite a few cards I needed, and there was 1 card from the 1996 Topps Power Boosters set. It was this card:
1996 Topps Power Boosters #18 – Tony McKnight
I need just 1 more card from this set, and I have an eBay search for it. The rookie portion of these cards are just really hard to track down. They aren’t valuable or anything, but I just can’t seem to find them. Probably because they’re all buried in dime boxes like this. These cards have sat on my wantlist since I opened my 1996 boxes in 2012. So almost 4 years. That’s a long time! And the luck that this specific one was the one here? Well, it made the trip worth it!
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Here’s the updated Elusive Eight, just in case anyone has these cards available! Remember – the pictures are the photos I have of other cards in the set. Since I don’t have them, I don’t have actual photos yet!
2012 Topps Archives Combos – #58-CK – Cabrera/Kaline
2012 Topps Archives Combos – #58-YE – Yaz/Ellsbury
I’m 2 cards away from the Combos set that was a retail-only insert in 2012 Topps Archives. These 2 cards have been added after I got the McKnight and the Juan Lebron card below over the past 2 weeks.
1996 Topps Power Boosters #21 – Jim Scharrer
2012 Topps Archives In Action #82IA-JE – Jacoby Ellsbury
1998 Topps Focal Points #11 – Chuck Knoblauch
2013 Gypsy Queen #218 – Adam Wainwright
1996 Topps Masters of the Game #15 – Kirby Puckett
1995 Topps Pre-Production Spectralite #PP5 – Travis Fryman
Here are some other cards that would be knocking on the door to make the list. 3 of them have been on the list at some point in the past, but were bumped to make room for the Power Boosters cards.
2001 Topps MVP redemption set – a very expensive set, I have about 10 of the 25 cards
2003 Topps Nolan Ryan Record Breaker – 5 very difficult cards to go
2003 Topps Traded – 5 cards to go
2004 Topps – 5 cards to go
2012 Topps – the Bryce Harper 661 card
2012 Allen & Ginter Giants of the Deep #14 – Bottlenose Whale
Lifetime Topps project 
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