Long Beach Flea May 17th, 2009

[Rickybulldog]

I woke up early this Sunday to go to the Long Beach Flea. I was excited considering what everyone picked up last month. Today was a little different and had me pondering: “Did we overfish the spot?”
Well, I got there at 6:40 in the morning and did my usual rounds. I saw some gloves, but they were nothing that would go in my collection and were only good for parts. One thing I did pick up was a 34” LS Jackie Robinson bat with JR4 on the knob. I really like these bats and it is probably the 3rd Robinson bat that I’ve picked up there. They must be making them there under the grandstand. The last thing I did pick up was a neat dark stitched baseball for a cheap buy. One cool item I did see, but didn’t buy was a Rocky Colavito dart game that I had never seen before. There were great graphics on that game. As you can see, the pickins were slim. One little bright note was that there was a very well decorated sports booth out at the flea today. This booth was filled with sports memorabilia from all sports: boxing, football, baseball, and basketball to name a few. Very neat items and VINTAGE to boot! The booth belonged to Ryan Simms, a SoCal collector from the hills of Anaheim, who every now and then works the LB flea and Rose bowl. His booth screamed olde tyme sports and was attended by many buyers and looky lous. Just like the lion at the watering hole looking for gazelles, I stayed near his booth so I could find any of my collector friends to see what they had found today. As I predicted, the booth brought many sports enthusiast, but I didn’t see any familiar faces. NO JD, NO STEVE, NO ROBERT, and definitely NO NINJA! I was about to throw in the towel when low and behold my prayers were answered. A bearded fellow with a spring in his step (must have been the Vans he was wearing) came to the booth. I snapped a photo of the bearded one who was looking at trophies and then checking out some old leather gloves. I covered his face to protect his identity. All in all, it wasn’t a total disaster. Ryan and the guy with the soul patch’s booth (more on him next time) made the trip worth the 1 hour drive.

Here are 2 pictures of our mystery collector.





Pictures of Ryan’s booth.





Colavito game

[GloveCrazy]

That handsome mystery collector fellow doesn't look like he is carrying much in his hands either ... darn it! Didn't see you taking the pictures ... were you afraid of a some sort of anti-paparazzi camera-knocked-out-of-hands Keiffer Sutherland or Amy Winehouse type incident?

[Rickybulldog]

Naw, more Kanye West!

[ebbets55]

Oh I get it now. You guys were so jealous of my Import Mantle GJ99 find of the century last month that you forgot to tell me about this one. I see.

Good shot of Batman.

JD

[vintagebrett]

I think I remember meeting Ryan at John Kanuit's booth at the National last summer - he had a good taste in vintage gloves!

[Rickybulldog]

Yes Jim, I for one was very mad and jealous about your finds! You know that import would have fit nicely in both Rob's and my collection easily. Take a look at last month's photo at you with your devilish grin. Laughing and gloating about your better finds. We can't have guys like that coming on our hunts! It's not a competition.

[softball66]

The H&B Jackie Robinson store model bats were VERY popular with the thicker handle (as were the Nelson Fox thick handle store bats). The guys in the 1950s who preferred the wider handle bought these by the droves.
I was a thin handle man myself and started with the Ted Williams models and later to the Ed Mathews style. Yes, there are a lot of Jackie Robinson
store models out there.
I asked question of a bat guru one time if the store bats reflected the style and taste of that player's gamers and the reply was "generally."

[GloveCrazy]

I don't know if I'm going to any of the flea markets until I am actually in the car, because until then the little voice in my head is persuasively wooing me to go back to bed. Even if I was 100% certain, though, I'm not always so inclined to invite friendly competition who usually beats to to the good stuff. I like you guys a lot, but ... Anyway, consider yourself lucky that you didn't go this last time ... tumbleweads were rolling across the sports collectible horizon.