Ermagersh Ehprilh Fewlsh Yeww Gaissh

It's been a crappy winter, nothing has gone right for me, my vacation is over, and it's raining for the 73rd time this year. And yet I'm feeling less stressed and kind of hopeful today. Maybe the prospect of going to a fairly big card show is tricking me into optimism, or maybe it's because I'm finally getting some feedback on my short story (not good feedback, necessarily...but it's getting read at least.)

I definitely needed to vent about COMC, but I chose to hold it until 4/1 so I could reserve the right to say "April Fools! I'm never quitting cards, or sports, or blogging." But I've learned to never say never - at least on any day other than 4/1.

So here's an idea for a blog post: I'm going to use the exact same scans from the previous post (plus a couple more) but this time instead of sounding like a disgruntled customer I'll show some appreciation for the cards in question. Here we go...

I've got a couple extra 2-pocket pages so I shopped for some box toppers to complete a mini-binder of oversized cards. This Tim Wakefield (purchased after he died of cancer but before his wife did) cost $2.25, and it's one of the nicer images from the set. The Danny Tartabull, Rick Sutcliffe, and Joe Oliver master photos are neat non-star singles, but Wake stood out to me as a Sox fan. Selling cards of recently deceased players is kind of gross, but buying cards of them is a way of paying tribute. Weird, huh?

Colorful chromey cards, including a couple color matches. I don't think I've seen De'Aaron Fox play but I've scooped up a couple of his cards anyhow. I'm a sucker for those Kings throwbacks. The Kris Bryant Cosmic is a Blue Moon refractor (#d/99) that cost me twice as much as the purple refractor. And the Nikita Kucherov was the cheapest of the half-dozen, at just 36 cents (yay ePack!) Collectors must have caught on to his 125+ point season; the cheapest copies are nearly twice that now.

This Clyde Drexler Topps Stars reprint sat on my watch list for over 2 years. The price finally came down to a number I was comfortable with (under $3 after years of sitting above $5). I would have ripped so much 2023 Score if my local Target ever had any in stock, and my LCS didn't charge $40+ for a damn blaster. Maybe that's why Target didn't have any in stock? 1994 Leaf might be the last modern baseball set I build, and I want to rip boxes so I can pull those glorious Gold Stars. Longo isn't a PC per se, but I've picked up a small handful of his Rays issues in blue parallel form over the years.

Pristine (and a Prizm), starting with some set fillers. I just need Marc-Andre Fleury and Jordin Tooto to complete the uncommon ring of 2003-04 Topps Pristine hockey. It's getting tougher to find cheap refractors from 2002 Pristine. Jake Plummer was the most notable name under $2.50; most of the others are either already in my collection or rookies that didn't interest me. The base Kenny Lofton was on my want list for a while; I finally tracked it down for a tough-but-fair price of $1.44.
 

2018 Panini Classics is nearly complete (veteran portion only). The Josh Gordon is sitting in my Sportlots box waiting for me to request shipment. I lied about having three boxes in three months. Only had two :/

Game Dated moments for "all sports" would be a neat concept - if it weren't so watered down with Team Canada, spring football, and golf. Luckily Upper Deck did include a couple Mikaela cards. This is my 21st different Shiffy, and they'd better make more for me (and Matt over at Cards over Coffee)

I wasn't familiar with Josephine Skriver before. Apparently she is Dutch, and she's a 1993 baby. Real ones know the deal.

It is customary for me to pluck some puck from the shallow end of the COMC-ePack pool. Yegor Sharangovich has more goals for Calgary this year(29) than Jersey got out of Tyler Toffoli before turning around and shipping him off to Winterpeg. Brilliant trades all around. Charlie McAvoy and the Alex Ovechkin cards were the only ones over 28 cents in this group. While I dislike the distracting EVOLVE inserts I couldn't pass on Primeau for 26 cents. I'll always appreciate him for actually accepting the trade to Hartford - unlike those a-holes Brendan Shanahan and Paul Coffey.

The two biggest non-graded pickups in this order were the Blue Prizm Filip Forsberg RC and the Ralph Kiner auto. (I really should isolate them but I'm lazy) Kiner cost just $17.99, and fits right in with my other autos from 2000 Fleer Greats. I might give them their own post one day. Forsberg was exactly what I was looking for - a color matching Prizm RC of a significant active player. And, because he's a Swedish dude who plays pro hockey in Nashville, I was able to snag this superstar for $9.25. Try finding an equivalent Prism parallel of the 15th-best football or basketball player for that price.

Picked up a couple cheap autos to fill my autographed card box (including a 76 cent single of a CT guy!), another $3 Steven Stamkos relic, and a 1953-style Ernie Banks from a 5-card VIP giveaway set. Also the Khris Middleton was a nice PC pickup, especially since he was the cheapest of any single from that set on the site. I'd buy these for $1.75 all day, especially when sellers are asking $5+ for guys like Kyle Kuzma and Miles Bridges.

Picked up some nice Packers during this past football season, especially the Aaron Jones and AJ Dillon singles. This is how long my order was held up: when I bought the Jones Prizm rookie (for $2.25) he was injured and Green Bay looked lost without him. When I requested shipment he had just kept the Pack's playoff hopes alive with a 120-yard game against the Vikings. When I received it... he had already joined the Vikes 😢

There's very little room left in my Devils and Red Sox boxes but I managed to pick up some cheapies. Well, the Exquisite Brodeur wasn't cheap; that thick boi was $12.50. But it's numbered to 99 and I was at that game :)

Bonus content!

In my original post I mentioned a card with three creases and no condition note from COMC. Also Jon mentioned my 1956 Topps set build, so... here's a scan of the Frank Thomas card:

Now, here's the card in my hand:

How do you not notice that? WTF, COMC? 

This is why I buy graded cards. Perhaps I'll show off my slabbed pickups from this order (about 10 cards) in my next post. And perhaps I'll have a card show to blog about in the near future...



Thanks for reading!




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