Finale

I have sent out all of the PWEs and received all of my purchases from the sale of the Mike Trout Bowman Chrome RC. I've also taken down my blog tabs until those pages are up to date. After that I'm going to update my TCDB tradelist and get some more trades going over there. I'm also going to take a break from blogging and buying cards in order to catch up on other non-sports things around the house. 

After the $50 COMC spending spree I headed over to the Beckett Marketplace for their Independence Day sale. All orders from participating sellers were 20% off + free shipping with a minimum purchase. I balanced my purchases between three sellers, including Rich 'N Deals, where I found this Ichiro insert from 2017 Topps Heritage high numbers.

Also grabbed a few All-Time Teams players including the elusive Wilbur Cooper, who has just four cards produced in the past 90 years!

The rest of this order was mostly set fillers, including some 1996-97 Flair hockey for my wife's set build (should I tell her this is her anniversary gift? lol)

 

For some reason the last card she needs (Jaroslav Svejkovsky) was more than 50 cents so I passed on it. If I'd known it would have finished the set I might have just spent the extra pocket change. The other two cards are from sets I thought were complete, but when I hand-checked each set I couldn't find Jay Harrison or Shayne Corson anywhere. Also I once dated a girl from Brampton back in the day andso Battalion cards bring back memories.

I'm chipping away at the 1993-94 Fleer Ultra basketball set. The Topps white-bordered rookies were the last two I needed to complete that 14-card set. David Robinson completes my 1989-90 Hoops set (finally) though I'm still searching for the alternate Pistons championship card at the end of the set.

I don't know what to do about 2016 Donruss football. I'm almost done with the veterans main set (cards #1-300) but I need half of the 100 rookies in the set (cards #301-400) It's probably not worth completing or breaking up at this point.
 

Low-end set fillers. Each card was 50 cents (40 cents with the discount) so I stuck with stars. An updated wantlist is forthcoming, though I might place an order at Cardbarrel first.

I'd been planning to upgrade my Johnny Damon 1993 SP RC since it's all scratched up. Then I noticed that most of my foil RCs are looking like they've been in my collection since I was 13 years old (because they have), so I upgraded ten more. This also helped me reach the $40 minimum to qualify for the discount.

Here's another one of my all-time favorite sets, 2002 Topps Pristine. Armando Benitez will go in my All-Time Teams binder. This Joey Harrington RC intrigued me since it was way out of my price range at the time. I didn't need to spend 60 cents on it, but I didn't see a reason not to, so I eventually decided to take it home. No complaints about the Carlos Delgado (card #2 in the set) but I actually ordered Jason Kendall (card #4). 

Also, this 4 Sport card of Beast of New Haven alum Mike Fountain was supposed to be a Printer's Proof parallel. As you can see, it's a regular base card. Which means it's a dupe :/

I searched all three sellers for Panini Immaculate collection relics and autos. Rich N Deals had this Tommy Henrich for just over $2.50 so I added it to my order. The fact that I actually got it is noteworthy.

Columbia Sportscards had two of my favorite running backs in one of my favorite relic sets - 2015 Panini Immaculate Collection. These Acetate swatches are numbered to the player's jersey number. COMC has a Brett Favre #d to 4 for $120; eBay has a Barry Sanders #d to 20 listed at $60.

I placed an order for four cards - two Panini Prizm singles for my 2014-15 set build...

 

..and two Immaculate low-numbered relics: Adrian Peterson (#d/28) and LaDanian Tomlinson (#d/21):

Two days after receiving a tracking number I was issued a refund for the Tomlinson. They didn't have it. I was so annoyed because, of the three I ordered, LT was the one I really wanted. And why did the seller take two days to issue a refund? 

Well, when I got the cards in the mail there was a note written on the receipt - apparently an ex-employee had helped himself to some stock, and the shop owner looked for LaDanain all weekend. When his search came up empty, he sent me a pair of replacements:

These don't really fit my collection, but it was a nice gesture and unnecessary since he did issue a full refund. I'll probably add them to my TCDB tradelist. 

The third seller I bought from was Three Stars. The highlights here are the Johnny Damon upgrade and Wally Joyner 2012 Topps Archives SP:

Stadium Club set fillers:

Aw crap, I had Tomas Nido and Tyler Wade in my Rich 'N Deals order.

 

And I didn't need this O-Pee-Chee Camden Yards card, either :/ I'm now one Giancarlo Stanton card away from completing the 2018 Stadium Club set.

 

More basketball rookies.  I'm down to five needs for 2015-16 Donruss.

I tried upgrading the Dale Ellis sticker but this one is diamond cut, too. So is the Malone. And the Mullin. Btw, I found a copy of the Chris Mullin card in my crawl space - but the sticker had been peeled.

The coolest card in the Three Stars order is this Larry Walker uncirculated refractor:

Because I had ordered a Brian Urlacher Immaculate Acetate relic and apparently it was out of stock. I didn't get an apology or a replacement for that one. 

I was very disappointed because Immaculate Acetate relics were near the top of my shopping list for spending that Mike Trout money. Going 2 for 4 left a bitter taste in my mouth, but that's unfortunately par for the course with the Beckett Marketplace. The prices for commons are high, it takes forever to place an order, and you never know what you're going to get. At least I crossed off a lot of set needs.

With the discount and the refunds I only ended up spending $78, though the only significant card I received was the Peterson relic. I'd already spent $53 at COMC, on ten cards I won't see for another three months, minimum. This was not going according to plan. I was supposed to get a big piece. I headed to eBay and picked up this:

I've wanted a Bob Gibson on-card auto for a while, and the Heritage red ink variations were out of my price range. 2000 Fleer Greats is one of my all-time favorite autograph sets, and the price was right at $40. Plus, the seller offered free shipping if you buy 2 or more cards. All I had to do was pick any other card he had for sale and I'd save four bucks.

Problem was, his cheapest cards were three bucks. And I couldn't decide between this Blue refractor parallel of Red Sox prospect Jeter Downs:

Or this In The Game parallel (#d/100 on the back) depicting the Whalers' second-worst trade ever:

As you may have guessed, I bought 'em both. Another $51 spent, after tax. Over $180 of my Mike Trout money was gone - and I still didn't have my Big Piece. 

For two weeks I checked the sales of three cards in particular: 1956 Topps Willie Mays, 1956 Topps Hank Aaron, and 1975 Topps Robin Yount. My goal was to come out of this spending spree with any one of those cards. But the Younts were overpriced (one sold for $201 before I had money, and $280 after I sold my Trout) and the Aarons were either flawed or out of my price range. 

I almost pulled the trigger on a 1956 Topps Mays. That would have been a few dollars over budget, but well worth it. And then I found another card that was cheaper, and in better condition. 


Ladies and gentlemen, the pièce de résistance:

'68 Willie Mays and I go way back. When this set was just 21 years old my mom took me to the nearby card shop, a little shack of a place four blocks away. My first LCS had a '68 Mays stored in an acrylic holder with the price written across the plastic in black sharpie: $50.

Until cleaning out my crawl space I was unsure of the exact date that my mom purchased the '68 Mays. Now I know - August 12, 1989. My ninth birthday. It was my first vintage card, my first high-value card, and probably my first card of a player who was in the Hall of Fame. I treasured it for four years. And then I traded it to a local dealer I knew, along with a 1989 Score Barry Sanders RC, for a 1962 Topps Willie Mays.

I sold that Mays and some other stuff (can't remember what) to buy a 1955 Bowman Mays.

This Trout sale, my 40th birthday, and the quest for my 100,000th card didn't match up exactly - but it got me thinking about specific cards that mean something to me. A 1956 Topps Mays would be a great building block for my set, but a 1968 Mays would always bring back a great memory from my childhood. (Also, It was $80 less than the '56 - which was a PSA 6, btw.)

I'm still 650 cards away from 100k but few of them, if any, have as much personal meaning to me as this Mays. All of the cards you see in this post - plus the $50 I spent at COMC - represented roughly half of the proceeds from the sale of a card I pulled out of a blaster. If this is the last card I buy all year, I would be very happy with that. Or perhaps I should try to buy something special this August 12. ;)



Thanks for reading!




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