A card show, a museum, and more seagulls than I've ever seen!

 This past weekend was a busy one! Saturday saw my brother and I attend a small card show, then head to a museum, then visit the waterfront. Sunday saw another museum and a Welcome Center, but they will get their own posts. Saturday's museum was a small one but interesting, so all of Saturday gets it's own post. 

Speaking of small, this was a very small card show held at the VFW in Newburgh, NY, but although it was small, it was good. Unlike the show I attended in Poughkeepsie last month, there was actually a good supply of vintage at this one, although all baseball, so of course nothing for me there. I did get some modern cards, and some very good ones at that. 

It's funny. when you collect a sport rather than a specific driver, it really doesn't matter much who you find, if the price is right. This card was priced right, so I bought it, even though I'm not in any way shape or form a fan of Chase Elliott. It's SN25, autographed, and a really large piece of sheet metal, and a booklet. So I ended up getting it, as it's a pretty spectacular card. You may recall I've mentioned in the past that sheet metal relics are my favorite relics to get...and this is now the largest one in my collection. 

Despite the price tags, these both came from the dollar box.

This photo came out super lousy but since I've reinjured my arm, no scans yet. The orange Dazzlers aren't as nice as green, but green is my favorite color so I'm a bit biased. 

I picked up two other autographs that day as well. All of the single cards I purchased came from the same dealer, believe it or not.

I picked up these two sealed packs of DC cards, I didn't have any of the Wonder Woman version of the pack. These don't open easily so hopefully I will be able to preserve one for my collection. 

Not pictured. I also restocked my team bags and graded card bags, AKA big team bags. I was really low on them, because I lost them again. I have a terrible habit of losing my Team Bag bags. Even though I make the effort to store them with my trade stash, or my mailing supply stash, they still go missing. This is actually the first bag of big team bags I've ever purchased. 

After that, we went back to the Karpeles Manuscript Museum. You may recall from my previous post that my brother and I walked down to see if it was open, but it wasn't. This time it was. While there is not a lot of museum exhibits, the building itself is spectacular! 

Picture from last week

The building was built as a bank in 1923, and it's spectacular!

Look at that intricate carving on the ceiling

The building is so large it actually echoes when you speak.

Each of the hexagons show a bas relief on local history. These are Henry Hudson and Robert Fulton.  The image over the door was the president of the bank in 1923.

The doors in the middle are a  later addition, made by HBO, when they were filming here recently.

For the first time in my life I got to into a bank vault. While I rarely talk about it, I am a coin and currency collector, and I wonder if anything I've ever collected was ever in this vault? The bank was in operation as a bank until 1999. 

While we were in there we heard a lot of sirens and assumed it was a fire that the fire engines and police cars were headed to. (the fire station and police station are just down the road from this building, maybe 3 minutes walk). Not quite, because then my brother spotted Santa go by out the window! It was Newburgh's Christmas parade! 

For an architecture nut like myself the building itself was more interesting than the museum aspect, but that was pretty cool, too. This time the museum display was Disney art. Actual, original Disney art. 

They also had some model ships on display. This is a British ship from the 1580s. (there's also what appears to be a genuine letter from Queen Elizabeth I)

Donald Duck is my favorite Disney character, and has now appeared in two consecutive posts, amazingly enough! 

That's about how I feel a lot of the time...

a Roman bireme

the USS Constitution

One last look with the lights on. 

The Karpeles Musuem is a chain of 12 museums throughout the USA. They rotate the collection throughout the 12 every couple of months so this will end up being one of the most common museums we visit. It's literally about 35 minutes away from home so visiting it is not hard at all. 

After that we walked the lower half of Broadway...

And saw Newburgh's Christmas Tree, which oddly enough is set up in the middle of the road. There isn't much going on at this end of broadway. The building in the background here is the last building. You can see the parking lot for the Police station and fire station as mentioned before. Across the road, behind me in this image, is just a parking lot for a college. 

Looking up the road back at the Karpeles.

After that we drove back to the waterfront...

and saw lots of ducks and seagulls.

More seagulls than I've ever seen in my life! 

Off in the distance is the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge, which we took to get home

This seagull turned his head just as I was taking the photo

This was actually not planned but check out how this came out. Same seagull, now looking at me, but the water and the gulls on it are in focus instead.

Portraits of seagulls

I brought my camera with the extended zooming capabilities and this is actually the Beacon train station across the river. 

The antennas atop Mount Beacon

Just looking at the houses across the river. Keep in mind these are over two miles away as the river is more than two miles wide at this point. 

More gulls

I know this is slightly blurry but this is when they were just taking off

A non-mallard! I think

Just as we were getting ready to leave a barge came through

Just offscreen is a woman feeding the ducks and seagulls. They swarmed over and even followed her car as she left, before losing interest. 

I didn't think to take any overall views of the water and looking south, I was so busy taking seagull pictures (I took a lot more not shown) but this shows it pretty well I think. 

You can see all of the pictures HERE although not the card show pictures, but they are all shown here. Thanks for reading and stay tuned for Sunday's adventure, which will get two posts.