Yeah, the scanners are pretty expensive when you only go to one race a year. I used a small pocket radio with tight-fitting earbud headphones. Only drawback on that is turning the volume way down as soon as a caution comes out! Noise-canceling headphones would help a lot, but I never think about them until it's really close to the race day.
I could easily go to more races if I wanted to spend the money. I'm thinking of bucking the new tradition of going to Martinsville in October (past 3 years - 1st year was a CWTS race) to go to the October race in Charlotte for the "roval" race in 2018. I haven't been to Charlotte Motor Speedway yet b/c all of the races end late at night. Charlotte is just too close for me to think about wasting money on a hotel room, especially for the Saturday night races that would force me to also request off from work to go to the race. Traffic out of the Charlotte area after any sports event or concert is just horrible and I wouldn't want to deal with that after watching cars going extremely fast for a few hours.
I do buy singles (and occasionally boxes) on ebay too. I have no card dealers anywhere near me, which really sucks b/c I'm just outside a major city in NC. There is one store about an hour drive away, but they seem to mostly deal with gaming cards (Pokemon and such). So I've never taken the time to check out the store. I buy my boxes online or at Target. I have made some internet friends over the years that allow me to purchase hobby boxes of NASCAR cards for wholesale prices though. That's really helped me with getting boxes of Panini racing cards.
I completely understand your leariness of online trading! I was originally highly skeptical too. I was on Beckett.com for about 3 years before I decided to make a trade there. That was more than a decade ago and I'm over 330 trades completed now. Most of my trades there were initiated by the other person too. I rarely hunt for trades. I just wait for offers to come to me.
NO PWE's EVER!!! PLZ PM me 1st before sending any offer. ONLY selling cards as of March 2024. No trades or purchases right now.
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Largest total PC card collections by Team, then Athlete (as of 3/22/24):
STL Cardinals (MLB) - 8810; Carolina Panthers - 2888; GB Packers - 1790+ cards
Mark Martin (NASCAR) - 2038 cards; Jimmie Johnson (NASCAR) - 1875 cards; Jeff Gordon (NASCAR) - 1594; Ricky Rudd (NASCAR) - 839; Ozzie Smith (MLB) - 707