eBay for my bDay

As I've mentioned on both my blogs, I was feeling nostalgic as the calendar turned to August. Before I received any birthday money I began shopping for toys and sports cards I had (or wanted to have) as a kid. This led me to find all kinds of neat stuff, some of which I had completely forgotten about (remember Topps Double Headers?) 

In the end, I settled on seven things from Kruk Cards that brought back some childhood collecting memories - and I even found something for my current card project.

1992-93 Fleer Ultra was one of my all-time favorite designs; I remember carrying my Ken Griffey, Jr. and Frank Thomas cards wherever I went (in top loaders, of course) and trading basketball cards with my friends in the school cafeteria (back when Shaq rookies were gold.) It wasn't just the design that appealed to me, it was the feel and smell of those cards. But packs of this stuff were often $3 or more, which was outside my budget as a 12-year-old. They're much cheaper now...

1992 Fleer Ultra Football sealed box ($9.74)

1993 Fleer Ultra series 1 Baseball sealed box ($11.24)

I did add a box of 1992-93 Ultra basketball (series 2) to my watch list... but when I put all this stuff in my shopping cart I somehow forgot that one. D'oh!

Maybe that's because I was distracted by this shiny impulse buy:

1994 Flair series 2 Baseball sealed box ($26.24)

I'm almost finished with my 1993 Flair set build (just two cards to go) so I thought I'd get a jump on 1994, which IMO is an even sharper looking set. Plus, series two has the A-Rod rookie card...for what that's worth. (I mainly bought this box for the Hot Glove inserts)

Speaking of set building... Kruk Cards also had some 1956 Topps singles I needed:

#27 Nelson Burbrink PSA NM-MT 8 ($26.24)

#92 Red Wilson ungraded (listed as "NM-MT") ($5.99)

These will be the 99th and 100th additions to my '56 Topps set. (I just bought my 101st card on COMC.)

Back to my childhood for a lot of stickers...and a set of stickers:

1988 Panini Baseball stickers - lot of 293 ($5.40)

Panini sticker albums were a huge part of my childhood; I looked for unopened packs/boxes of these but they're surprisingly expensive. However, an unused sticker album would only set me back about as much as this lot did.

1986 Garbage Pail Kids Giant stickers - set of 15 ($6.60)

I keep telling my nephew that one day we'll crack open a box of original GPKs like we did back in the day..but Kruk Cards was asking about $80 for a sealed wax box of Series 4..so these will have to do. I'm going to break up the set and split them with my nephew but I'm keeping Foul Bill for sure.

Total for these seven items (plus shipping) was $109.40

The $17.95 shipping price was tough to swallow (especially for a 1 week turnaround time) and I probably could have spent my money a little more wisely. But I got a lot of random stuff in one place. And, thanks to my scratch-off lottery winners, I was able to squeeze this into the birthday budget:

1989 Starting Lineup Talking Baseball stadium ($37.86)

I couldn't find any SLU figures at the right price, but I was happy to grab this piece of my childhood for a best offer of $30. The seller claims the box was opened but everything inside is sealed. We shall see. 

Now... about those lottery scratch-offs. I mentioned that one of you guessed the exact amount of my winnings - and it just so happened to be the first comment I received:

MarcAugust 6, 2017 at 4:08 PM

Looks like you really made out for your birthday. Cash, scratch tickets and trading cards. What more could you ask for. Hopefully, you'll scratch a million dollar winner but, my guess is nowhere near that amount. Let's try $21.00 Best of luck to you.

ReplyDelete

Winner winner, chicken dinner! Congrats, Marc. Send me an e-mail (sutherlandct @ gmail .com) with a list of what you collect and I'll send you as much as I can fit in a mailer. 

Thanks to everyone who read and commented on my previous post. I'll bust open those old boxes and discuss them this weekend. 


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