I was lucky when it came to 1992 Bowman. I was a fan of ‘91 Bowman and was looking forward to the release of 'the ‘92 set. I grabbed a box the first weekend it was out and pulled a Piazza out of my box. I was also able to find one dealer who was willing to sell a Piazza for the $3 that it was listed for in the first Beckett that had Bowman pricing. Every other dealer informed me that they were holding the card until the next book came out. Remember, Beckett is only the bible for dealers when they like what is says.
I wasn’t as lucky when it came to the Fleer Update Piazza. By the time that set came out, Piazza was well on his way to winning the NL Rookie of the Year Award and his Bowman rookie was the hottest rookie card in the hobby. Many dealers took a bath on 1991 Fleer Update sets and orders were lower for the 1992 sets. This happened a lot with update and traded sets in the 90s. One year would be overproduced and the next would be scarce. I remember back when 1999 Fleer Tradition Updates were the hot set due to rookie cards of Rick Ankiel and Josh Beckett. You can get those sets for a few dollars these days.
I don’t remember seeing a lot of the 1992 Fleer Update sets when they were released and the ones that I did see were overpriced from day 1. Both the Piazza card and the set continued to climb as there was a perceived scarcity in regards to this set. So, it was a set that never got added to my collection.
These days, many of the sets that were formerly considered scarce in the 90s are now thought of to be overproduced. You can find plenty of unopened 1992 Fleer Update sets online. The same goes for the once red hot 1992 Topps Update that contained Nomar Garciaparra’s rookie. I’m still waiting for the day that they discover cases of the 1992 Stadium Club Dome set in somebody's basement.
The 1992 Fleer Update set has been on my eBay watch list for a while now. Some good auctions ended while I wasn’t paying attention and others ended higher than I was willing to pay. A week ago, I finally won an auction at a great price. The winning bid for the 1992 Fleer Update Set: $25 with free shipping. It looked like the seller had a case that they were trying to get rid of. They originally had the sets listed with a Buy It Now price of $29 which was already good, but they had offers on so I figured why not take a shot. I offered the $25 and it was accepted. I got the set Monday and now this card is finally in my collection where it belongs. The card is pretty ugly compared to the classy ‘92 Bowman, but as one of only two Piazza rookies out there, I had to pick one up.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
The Right Card for the Right Price
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Traded: Cards from Thoughts and Sox
I posted on the Thoughts and Sox website regarding the Mike Piazza card that someone’s mom threw out because it’s not really worth anything. It still seems strange to me to have reprints of cards that sell for a quarter, but it’s a Piazza card and so I had to have it. Along with the Piazza came a nice stack of cards from my want lists including 2009 Chrome, 2007 Masterpieces, 2009 T206 and 2009 X. Those cards were great since I seem to have stalled on set completion as of late.
I’m still going through my Red Sox cards to find a few more cards to send back in return for this great package. It can be tough at times finding cards to trade of the team that you also follow. Luckily, Adam has a handy, dandy checklist of what he needs making it easy to see what he needs.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Mail Day: Digging out
I forgot to include this card when I posted about my Jorge Garcia through the mail autograph success. I also included a card to be signed which came out nicely as well.
Now that I’ve seen them, I’m wishing that I had one of the Rittenhouse cards signed and I may still try to get one signed, but I don’t want to be greedy. Also, things are ramping up with the filming of the Lost finale supposedly and Mr. Garcia may be busy with other things after that and not have time to spend answering fan mail.
Big Baby seems to be the only guy on the Celtics who grabs any offensive rebounds at times. The one thing that does seem to hold him back is his maturity level. He earned a spot in Doc Rivers’ doghouse a few games ago after committing a stupid flagrant foul. Hopefully he can overcome these maturity issues by the time Boston is looking for him to step into a starting role or it may never happen.
I think that I’ve been having the most fun with my Glen Davis collection because I’m able to pick up some cool cards at great prices. That’s not the case with Paul Pierce, Mike Piazza or David Ortiz. Piazza cards especially climb way out of my price range quickly. I don’t have any Piazza autos while I have multiple autos of Davis and Pierce and now one autograph of Ortiz.
In typical eBay ridiculousness, I ended up paying less for the black refractor than I did the green and this one is rarer.
Brown is now coaching the NBA D-League team in Springfield. I don’t know if the team was on the road, but it would have been cool for Panini to get this Celtics fan favorite to be a part of their Adrenalyn promotion in Springfield.
There’s no way that I could pass up this lot for a dollar. I’ve been coveting the Larry Bird from this set ever since I bought one for my wife at a card show last year and this lot contains the refractor. I would have paid a dollar just for that card, but I also got the regular Pierce and Parish cards from that set, a Pierce Finest rookie, a Garnett Finest card and three other Pierce cards.
I know many collectors hate manufactured patches on principle. These are great looking cards though. I don’t mind at all that the B in this card wasn’t ever touched by David Ortiz. Somewhere down the line, nice looking cards started taking a backseat to ugly cards with bits of crap in them or a random serial number printed on them. These are great looking cards. ‘Nuff said.
The Lumberjacks card is numbered to 5000 and the Great American Heroes card is numbered to 2500. Big deal back when they were released, high print run by today’s standards.
The good thing about that is that I can now pick up insert cards that sold for $20 back when they were first released for a fraction of the cost. There were a lot of cool Donruss/Leaf and Fleer Ultra inserts that I couldn’t pick up then that I can now add to my collection.
Last, but not least, another Jeremy Piven letter. I only grab these when they’re listed cheaply so I may never finish off this phrase. Many people don’t want to list these cheaply after getting one of these as a hit in their Icons box, but they don’t really sell for more than $3 or $4. On the letter front, just the second H from Kent Hrbek that I’ve ever seen showed up on eBay and went for a ton of money just like the first. That’s another word that I may never complete.
That’s all for now. Time to get the room together and things put away before I starting bringing in a bunch of new singles.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Mailday: Dude, where’s my cards?
Dude, Lost is back on the air and I couldn’t be happier. I’m a full fledged Lost fanatic and really get into all of the mythology and details of the show. My favorite character on the show is Hurley. So, when I saw that Rittenhouse Achieves was offering this Hurley promo for free with SASE, I had to have it. Their recently released Lost Seasons 1 – 5 set looks pretty good. I definitely think that I’ll be busting open a box of that in the near future, but first I’m going to get myself a box of 2010 Topps Jumbos.
This was a great lot that I won on eBay. The cards themselves only cost .99¢ and shipping was the usual $3. Now I’ve got a Pierce for the set and will need to pick up another one for my player collection. I’ll keep plugging away on this set as I find cards that I need at great prices.
This is another sweet lot that I picked up on eBay. I picked up the base, refractor and Xfractor cards from 2005-06 Finest. I like the design of this set and all three of these cards are sharp looking. The refractor is numbered to 349 and the Xfractor is numbered to 139.
I also added another Big Baby autograph to the collection. As long as he’s coming off of the bench, his cards will probably be available cheaply, but I think that’ll change in a couple of years when there’s no longer a Big Three in Boston.
Davis was a big factor in the Celtics’ last win over the Nets. There’s no way that the game should have been as close as it was, but the Celtics were without Paul Pierce and still don’t have Garnett at 100%. The game finally turned around in the 4th quarter with the bench players in the game. Davis played some tough defense on Brook Lopez and had some huge offensive rebounds that allowed the Celtics to pull away behind the hot shooting of Eddie House. Oh yeah, he also scored in double digits off of the bench.
Here’s a jumbo swatch from a Mike Piazza Padres jersey. I didn’t have any Padres relics of Piazza so I figured that I would pick this one up. Since this isn’t a sick mojo patch, I think that I’m safe in trusting Upper Deck when they say that this is accurate. Pot shots at Upper Deck aside, this is a nice looking card with a fairly low serial number.
I wouldn’t have known that this card existed if I didn’t have an eBay search set up for Fenway Stamp. There were some items made with this stamp’s image on it that I was interested in as well as the Dwight Evans Leaf Century Collection autographed card with the Fenway Stamp.
This is a nice looking card featuring an actual stamp and not something manufactured on Stamps.com. The low numbering and high number of Red Sox fans made this cost a little more than I would have liked, but at least I didn’t pay the price that the first 2 or 3 of these sold for.
These were two separate lots from the same seller, but the discount on shipping made it worthwhile. I’ve always liked the oversized Donruss Action All-Stars sets and I thought it would be cool to have unopened packs with Dewey showing on the top. This set is so small that it is probably easy to find any card in the set showing on top and I’m glad that someone had done so and was now selling those packs. I’ll keep these sealed in my collection because I already have both of these cards loose. I may upgrade them if I ever find them in better shape since these are still the original card that I had from when I was younger and these was nothing good for storing cards these size in back then.
This is a card that I had been chasing for a little while now and when you look at it you can see why. This is a great looking card that leaves plenty of room for Evans’ beautiful signature. I have a lot of Dewey autographs including two that I’ve gotten in person and this one is my favorite that I didn’t obtain in person. I could do without the silver TeamTopps Legends stamp, but that’s about the only downside to this card.
I couple of these cards sold for more than what I wanted to pay. The strange thing was that I was willing to go a little higher on this card when it was listed, but I ended up not having to. Sometimes being patient can pay off. That’s important when you’re collecting on a budget. If this card never came down to a price that I was comfortable paying, then I just wouldn’t have the card in my collection, but I’m glad that it did.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Mail Day: Piazza Party!
I tend to add things to my collection in phases. I’ll go through an unopened wax phase and then I’ll go through a singles phase and sometimes a set completing phase.
This time around a raided the .18¢ bin on Sportlots. It can take a couple of tries, but I’m usually able to find a seller on Sportlots with a decent amount of Piazza cards for the minimum price. This guy even had a quantity discount and very good shipping prices. Look at all of these beautiful Piazzas that cost less than a quarter a piece.
I’m not quite sure why, but the second Leaf Piazza card on the top row has his 1993 Leaf card on the back. When Topps combined the unpopular 2008 design with bright red, you ended up with one of the worst card designs ever.
Here’s some more cards that use the same design in two different sets. I’m really liking the Bazooka comic and the Cracker Jack card. I already had the Cracker Jack mini, but I needed the regular sized card.
It’s become the popular thing to rally against these days, but Topps has been doing variants for a while now. Those are both 2004 Bazooka cards numbered 198, but you can find the card with two different pictures.
Here’s cards from two different sets that look like they are using almost the same picture. Some Ginter and some shiny round out this page.
Here’s the last few cards. There’s some great sliding shots here as well as a picture of Piazza throwing the ball, something he wasn’t all that great at doing. 51 more Piazzas added to the collection.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Mail Day: Check My Cards Out
This post might be a doozy. I’ve been letting cards pile up in the CheckOutMyCards warehouse for a few months now. I finally decided that it was time to have them come home and now that they’ve arrived I’m going to show them to all of you. There’s a nice mix here of random cards, cards for my various player collections and cards to finish off sets. Finishing off a set is always a good thing.
Leading things off is an Adrian Gonzalez 2001 Bowman RC. I tossed this card into my cart when the rumor mill had Gonzalez on his way to Boston. Jed Hoyer ended up getting cold feet and decided that he couldn’t trade his biggest star as his first major act as GM and the trade never happened. There’s a chance that Gonzalez might still be traded once the trade deadline comes around, but the Red Sox may just stick with what they’ve got and then take their chances with a much better free agent class next year.
While I admire the fact that Topps remained true to the original ‘48 Bowman set by including cards with diagrams of plays on them, it sucks having to track these things down to complete a set. The play cards are numbered to 1948, but I don’t even think that the fact there can only be 1948 possible complete sets of this will boost the value of the set. People aren’t really interested in complete sets anymore since rookies, relics and autos are all the rage. I couldn’t pass this up for a quarter and now I’m one card closer to the set.
It’s been a while since I’ve added any new Dee Brown cards to my collection. I wasn’t actively collecting towards the end of his career. This card is from 95-96 Upper Deck SP and it’s a great looking card. I always looked forward to SP sets when I was collecting in the 90s and have all of the SP sets from the first two years of release in Baseball, Basketball and Football. I ever tried putting together the hockey set that was a one-per-pack insert in that year’s Upper Deck Hockey. Some day I may finish the set, but it is tough to justify spending money on any hockey cards at the moment. Once I get everything out of storage, I’ve got to post all of my hockey stuff on here for trade.
It wouldn’t be a mail day post without some Big Baby cards. I’ve been picking up a lot of his cards because his rookie and autographs are still very affordable and became even more so while he was injured. I should pick them up now because once the New Big Three rides off into the sunset (and this might be the last season for both Ray Allen and Garnett), Davis looks to get a lot more playing time and if he can step up, his card prices could jump.
This 2007-08 Elevation RC is numbered 14/99. I couldn’t let this one get away with a one dollar price tag on it. I’m not huge on getting every single numbered parallel of a card, but when they’re affordable, I’ll pick them up.
Speaking of numbered parallels. Here’s a numbered parallel from a set that is itself a parallel. The Chrome cards inserted into regular Topps packs have a Bowman Chrome feel to it and have proven to be very popular. This is the refractor here and it is numbered 082/500. The picture of Davis leveling Brad Miller rules even more when it is presented in shiny chrome format.
This is a set that I’m putting together slowly but surely. The problem is that most times people are pricing these cards way too high. I love the whole “Cards That May Have Been” thing that Topps has done with various players. I was a huge fan of the Topps Basketball Archives set that was produced in the 90s and also have the Bill Russell cards that were inserted in 2007-08 Basketball.
I’m not sure what it says about me as a collector that cards such as this one appeal to me a heck of a lot more than boring jersey swatch after boring jersey swatch. That was such a cool idea when it started, but card companies have run it into the ground. It’s cool when you can pick them up cheaply for your collection, but for popular players it quickly starts looking like the same thing over and over again. I’ve stopped chasing most jersey cards for Piazza and Pierce because I have too many as it is. Why pay a couple of bucks for another version of the same thing when I can add something a little more original to the collection.
This was something else that Topps did in the 2006-07 Basketball set. They produced 33 different versions of card number 33, Larry Bird. I think that I’ve got about half of the set at this point. CheckOutMyCards has been great for putting this set together since you see an actual scan of the card that you’re getting. I could never put this set together though Sportlots and on eBay I’d either pay a ton for shipping on individual cards or would have to wait for the perfect lot to show up. Luckily, these don’t go for as much as the Griffeys from 2009 Upper Deck Baseball. I’ve got two of those sitting around and while I originally wanted to put that set together, there’s no way I can afford that so I have to figure out whether to hold on to those or toss them up on eBay.
Here’s some more retro basketball goodness. These 1958-59 variations were included in 2008-09 Topps Basketball packs. These were the four cards that I still needed after busting open a jumbo box last year. I’m not a huge fan of this set, but when you’re only 4 cards short and can finish the set for a dollar, you’ve got to do it. The set does have a nice mix of current players, legends and rookies, but I prefer the set from 2007-08 to this one.
Even though Upper Deck made the bad decision to cancel the Masterpieces brand before a basketball set was produced, they gave a little tease of what it may have looked like it 2009-10 Basketball. This is one set that I’m definitely chasing because of the beautiful cards and set content. I’ll have to pick up a few duplicates from this set since there are some great Celtics cards in here. Check out that sweet Larry Legend. I’ve also seen great cards of Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett from this set.
Speaking of 2009-10 Upper Deck Basketball, one of the other inserts sets were these Now Appearing cards. They look like movie posters and some of them feature great graphic design work. Garnett looks like he’s about to dunk on Neo and Pierce is set to star in a gritty film about the tough life of a basketball player (yeah right).
This card is yet another insert from 2009-10 Upper Deck Basketball. As a fan of Sportflics, these 3D Stars cards were right up my alley. This card switches from an image of Paul Pierce to one of Kevin Garnett.
One of my favorite things to do on CheckOutMyCards is to pick up the inserts from the sets that I like which I wasn’t lucky enough to pull from my box. The two Now Appearing cards and the 3D Stars card cost me less than a single pack even when you factor in shipping costs. I don’t need any more of the base cards so this is definitely the way to go. Between picking up the inserts on COMC and the base cards on Sportlots, it lets me cheaply add a ton of cards to my player collections.
I picked up this 2006-07 Upper Deck Ovation Leading Performers insert card after seeing one of the other cards from this set posted in a blog. You could always count on Upper Deck for designing some beautiful cards even if they always charged way too much for them. I got used to waiting for the boxes and singles to drop in price while I opened Topps products in the meantime. I’m not thrilled with anything that I’ve seen from Panini yet so I might take this time to fill in holes in my basketball collection. There are plenty of older basketball boxes out there just begging to be opened. It might be time to open some older Finest and stuff like that where the prices have plummeted due to the expired redemption cards. As long as it isn’t a product where the autographs were replaced with redemption cards.
Here’s something else that I don’t understand. Why didn’t Topps end up putting Turkey Red inserts into its basketball packs? Was the response to this product really that bad? I was able to pick up a white border (1:4 packs) and black border (1:24 packs) Paul Pierce for $1.50 total. These cards would probably sell a lot better if they were serial numbered, but this set came out a little before the serial numbering crazy really went overboard.
Here’s a 2009-10 Topps All-Star Relics Quad of Paul Pierce numbered 36/100. Some of you might remember me already posting this card on the blog, but that card was either sold to me on eBay damaged or got damaged in shipment. I didn’t pay enough to go through the hassle especially if the seller was going to require I ship the card back so I just went out and got another one. It’s nice to have the All-Star jersey relics show up in cards designed for that purpose. I’ve got Paul Pierce jersey cards with random blue swatches in them that make no mention of the All-Star Game.
Gene Conley is the perfect player to make the transition from basketball to baseball. I had no clue who Conley was until I met him at a baseball card show at my high school in the early 90s, but now I’m a big fan. Conley is the only player to win a championship in two of the four major sports doing so with the Boston Celtics and Milwaukee Braves. What made me become a fan was that he was incredibly nice to talk to that day and that he played for both the Celtics and Red Sox. Eat your heart out Bo Jackson.
Those of you who traded with me right before I moved may have gotten some of these cards in your package. I’m pretty sure that I opened two boxes of these Bookmarkers when they came out thinking they’d end up pretty popular with collectors. They were licensed so there wasn’t any need to airbrush what for the most part are beautiful pictures which pop off of these larger cards. If you collect someone who played in 1993 or want the players from your favorite team, drop me a line and we’ll work out a deal.
Having missed the opportunity to get a Junichi Tazawa autograph on a card, I figured that I may as well pick up a card and send it to Spring Training and see if it comes back signed. I’ve been trying to track down a card of Casey Kelly to do the same, but so far all that I’ve found online are autographed inserts.
One more positive thing about these Obak cards is that they’re perfect for getting autographed. I’ve never seen the need for super glossy minor league cards for that very reason. Now that Topps is involved MiLB Tribute can’t be very far off.
I don’t chase Kent Hrbek cards that often anymore. I end up spending money on more recent players before I search him out, but when I see a card from a parallel that once went for huge bucks then I’ve got to grab it. When these were new even the minor stars went for big bucks, but I was able to pick this up for a single buck. While not as flashy as Pinnacle’s Museum Collection, these were just as, if not more, popular.
It figures that when Hrbek is included in a current set that they decide to make him a short print. I still love the look of the Goodwin Champions set, but the price and how they packed it out still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Even now that the price has dropped, I’m still hesitant to pull the trigger on a box because I know that it’ll just tick me off. All of those 20th Anniversary cards and the packs with two minis just spoil the fun. With my luck I’d also beat the odds and pull one of those etymology redemption cards which will probably never see the light of day. Why am I picturing Upper Deck freaking out about a bunch of cards with nothing but bug fragments inside of them? I digress. This is a beautiful card and if it wasn’t short printed, I’d try to get the other versions of it.
The things that I miss out on the most when away from the hobby are things like this. I haven’t participated in any of the National Trading Card Day events. When it first started it was due to not collecting and now it is due to the fact that I don’t know of any participating card shops near me.
So, I had to buy a card that was given away for free, but that’s alright since it only cost a dime. The shipping cost more than that.
This is the type of thing that the hobby needs. Free Comic Book day seems to have become really successful, but that might be a side effect of all of the comic book movies that are coming out at the moment. The average person only thinks of “what is it worth” when it comes to trading cards.
This is the set that never ends, it just goes on and on my friend. Topps Tek has to be one of the crazier ideas to come from Topps, but there are a lot of people chasing the singles these days. Unopened boxes can be tough to find and aren’t cheap when you do.
I’ve been chasing these cards because they register high on my oddball radar. Some of the backgrounds on the cards are great while others are forgettable. This here is one of the ArchiTEKs insert cards. You’d get a few of these per box and these things are probably more common than each of the base cards.
Here’s another card that has been seen on this blog previously. This card was available cheaply so I decided to get one to put into my Piazza collection as well as having one in the set. That’s something that I’ve always struggled with. If you have a complete set of something that contains a card of a player that you collect, do you count that card in your collection? For example, I’ve got a 1992 Bowman Piazza in my set and another in my PC. It helps that I pulled one out of my box and picked up the other for $3 when the set was new, but I wanted one in each collection. How do those of you reading this feel? I usually end up getting the second card if it is affordable.
I felt that a post this long required an Epic ending and here it is. Oops, make that an EpiX ending. These cards were the best part of a fun 1998 Pinnacle Zenith box break and I had to grab what was available for Piazza. These cards look nice in the scan, but they’re spectacular in person. I have a new appreciation for cards that do something when you move them because my daughter loves them. She’s a big fan of lenticular and refractor cards.
The EpiX cards were kind of complicated. Play cards were the most common followed by Game, Season and Moment which were the toughest to pull. There were three color variations of each one with orange being the most common followed by purple and then emerald which was the toughest. Is a purple Play tougher to pull than an orange Moment? I’ve got no clue. Even though the Moment is listed with a higher book value, I actually paid more for the Play. Go figure.
That’s the end. Thanks to those of you who read through all of that. I think next time I’ll be better off breaking it up into pieces.