Like a lot of collector's, I have quite a few saved searches on eBay, some going back over ten years, while others date back to just a couple of weeks ago. Many saved searches have been deleted over the years, either because I eventually got whatever it was, or I just lost interest in the item, and of course, new searches are always being added -- I think there's a limit to how many you can have, but I've yet to reach it (probably because of all the deleting).
And I don't know how it is for everyone else, but is seems like more often than not, that when I get the daily emails for items that match my searches... they rarely seem to match? Often times it's just stuff that shares a word or two with my search, and that's it! If this ever happens to you, than you know how frustrating it can be, especially if it's on a search that doesn't yield results very often (if ever), you get all excited, and are immediately let down once you crack open that email -- this too is something that happens to me on a fairly regular basis!
So imagine my surprise, when a couple of weeks ago I received a result amongst my daily emails for an item that hadn't popped up on the site in literally years, and wonder of all wonders, the emailed listing actually matched my search!?!?
You are looking at one of the most, possibly even THE most, hard to find autographs from the 2014 Golden Age set. This card was a short-printed redemption, which obviously is already going to be rare, but than when you take into account the fact that this set came out in July of 2014, and Mr. Banks passed away in January of 2015, well, that doesn't leave an awful lot of time for these cards to be signed. From what I've read - and I don't know how accurate the message board posts on the subject are - it sounds like they're might be less than 50 of these floating around, which would explain (if true) why this is the first one to come up in over two years.
I knew that if one ever did show up again, that it wouldn't be cheap, and I was right! It was listed for $89.99 (+ $3 for shipping), which is an awful lot for me right now, thankfully though, the seller was also open to best offers. Since I was seeing this listing just a couple of hours after it went live, I knew I'd have to act quick (I honestly don't know how it was even still there?), so I put in an offer, which was countered within mere minutes -- and even though it was a good counter, I still pressed my luck by submitting a counter to the counter, which was accepted after a very long two-hour wait.
Those couple of hours felt like an eternity, but it was worth it, because in the end I got my much desired card for $67 (plus that pesky $3 for shipping), which was still a lot, but it was a little more doable than $89.99.
Technically speaking, I didn't have, and wasn't going to have the money for this, but that's why god invented credit cards. I did have a plan though, which was to list a bunch of stuff for sale real quick, and hopefully have the money by the time the credit card bill was due. For the record, this is a terrible way to do things, so if any kids are reading this, don't do like me, go be financially successful so you'll have money on hand to pay for such things! That being said, the plan did work, as I did sell five things (including one that I didn't really want to) over the next two weeks, so when the bill comes, I will be good for it. I am glad though that I didn't have my heart set on going to a card show this month, because this purchase would've negated such a want.
As great as it was to have such a long standing search like this yield a positive result, I'd be completely okay if no more of my expensive much wanted items showed up on eBay for the next couple of months, that way I'd have a chance to build up a bit more of a reserve.
Another week, another ten randomly selected cards from last year's COMC hoard.
2013-14 Panini Prizm Green Prizms #186 (x3)
I mentioned a few posts back that I've been reorganizing, and have completely changed the way that I sort and store cards. While doing this I've come across a few surprises, one of which is finding out how many cards I have of certain player's, LaMarcus being one of those, granted my "collection" of his consists mostly of Prizm parallels, but still, I didn't realize that I had so many of them/him.
2013-14 Panini Prizm Prizms #251
I generally don't care too much for the Prizm Prizm's, or as they're referred to now, Silver Prizm's -- and sometimes just plain old, Silver's. Up until a few years ago, they were the most common parallel, and yet someone, somewhere, decided that these were going to be the most expensive, and desired, Prizm parallel?!?! I just don't get it, but of course I love colors though, so that might have a little something to do with it. All that being said, I love the look of the black and white photos that were used in the 2013-14 and 2014-15 sets. In my opinion they make for the best looking base cards, B&W on a grey background just pops, and they also look really good on the Silver's, plus if you turn them just right, you'll get a bit of rainbow, which is seen much better on the non-color photo cards.
2013-14 Panini Prizm Red Prizms #205
There's my dude! One of these days I'm gonna have to do a whole post on LJ, go back and talk about when and why my fandom began, you know, that sort of thing.
2014-15 Panini Prizm Yellow and Red Mosaic Prizms #168
One of my all-time favorite Blazers! As a kid, I was all about Uncle Cliffy and Crash Kersey, I met Jerome twice, but never got a chance to meet Cliff... maybe someday.
2014-15 Panini Prizm Yellow and Red Mosaic Prizms #153
It sounds silly given how talented he was, but Hakeem is one of those guys who I've come to appreciate a lot more in recent years than I ever I did while he was playing.
2013 Panini Father's Day #38
After completing my Chris Kreider Progressions rainbow, I decided to take it even further and get the base card, and the Cracked Ice card. I'm only an autograph card - which may or may not even exist - away from completing a true rainbow. I haven't really gone out of my way to try and do this by the way, it's just been a small side project that would be cool to complete, but I'd also be fine with it if I didn't ever get the auto, completing the Progressions was the only thing that really mattered to me.
1971-72 Topps #144 (blank back)
I bought this card during last year's Black Friday sale, then apparently forgot about it within minutes, which caused a bit of a confusion when the shipment arrived a few weeks later. While going through the box to see if everything was there, I spotted a very familiar looking card, and couldn't figure out why I had bought it. I mean I was about 99.9% sure that I already had this checklist, but just in case, I went and found the set binder, started flipping through the pages, couldn't find it, so I flipped it over to see the card number, and guess what? THERE WAS NO CARD NUMBER!!!!! I felt like such a f*cking idiot (even more so than usual)! I wasted like fifteen minutes trying to find the binder, which of course could've been avoided had I just flipped the card over to begin with. And for the record, I do have the regular checklist, and after seeing that this was a blank back, the memory of it's purchase did come back to me.
2013-14 Panini Prizm Red Prizms #230
Remember how I was just saying how much I like the Prizm B&W photos on the grey and silver backgrounds, yeah well, I really like 'em on red too. I also don't hate them...
2014-15 Panini Prizm Gold Prizms #205
... on gold either! And Bill is numbered to /10 by the way, so that's kind of cool.
1972 Topps #511
And finally, one for the "Telstar 4" collection.
With all of the Prizm parallels that were gotten last year (which is something that I didn't realize until I started scanning/photographing everything), I have been half-expecting the randomizer (shuffle button) to fill up one of these ten-card posts with nothing but Prizm. With seven of the ten spots being occupied by Prizm, it almost did so this week, probably much to the chagrin of everybody but me!
The miniscule amount of creativity that I possess seems to still be on vacation, so this is probably as good a time as any to dump another batch of scanned stuff from February's card show.
Everything this time will be of the basketball variety, which is basically just more cards that didn't fit into this post, or this post.
Being a card show post, there is of course going to be some shiny! Focus Pocus is one of those sets that I didn't ever see during my original card collecting run, but have grown quite fond of them since coming back.
What the Buck?
It's no secret that a lot of basketball inserts from the 90's have gone up in price over the last few years, however a few have also gone down, 1994-95's The Center Stage being one of them. It's a good thing that I don't care about such things though, I was still very much happy to find this new to me kissy faced Pippen.
Off the top of my head, I could probably only rattle off the names of around a dozen horizontal insert sets, two out of the three here would be amongst those listed. I know that there are a few more than that, but I just don't see them enough to remember them by name. I don't usually go for a lot of modern inserts, but I can make an exception for Dr. J, who had to of course go and scan poorly, so...
... here's a slightly better look at him.
A couple of base cards from sets that I don't come across very often.
I love getting inserts of guys like Robert Horry and Jim Jackson, I just wish they would've been included in more sets. And Jim is from one of those mythical Hot Packs, which were made up of an entire insert set. It would've been so cool to open one of those way back when, the only person that I know of who did hit one of those packs, on the baseball side, is Oscar.
Game Breakers ('96-97 or '97-98) are not something that I would expect to find for fifteen cents, although I don't know how much actual demand there is for this particular pairing, as it's not like there's a ton of Jerry Stackhouse and Clarence Weatherspoon collector's out there.
Hobby Masters was, and still is, one of my favorite sets of all-time, easily in the top three. I am still just as enamored with them as I was when they first came out, maybe even more so -- especially when they're found in a dime box, or in this case, a 6/$1 box.
In a (or my) perfect world all three of these guys would have played out their careers with their respective original teams.
Look Wahad my scanner did to Tariq's Zebut card!
Another trio that should've stayed where they started!
This photo was supposed to go in one of the previous posts, but I stuck it in the wrong folder, and forgot all about it. Oh, and here's a pro tip, if you ever come across a Frequent Flyer in a dime box, buy it! You'll thank me later :)
It's only taken four months, but I'm very happy to say that this was the last of the stuff from February's card show!!! This too could be the last card show post in general for a little while longer. I haven't felt like going to Nashville, and I really haven't felt like getting up at 3am on a Saturday, hence the no shows for four months and counting. Plus there's whole lack of money thing, that doesn't help either. I'm sort of thinking now that the next one that I go to will be September's super mega show, and then that might be it for the rest of the year... such a strange year!
Another week, another ten randomly selected cards from last year's COMC hoard!
1970 Topps #380 (Error)
No need to adjust your eyeballs, as this card is as off as it looks. When it comes to errors, I usually am only interested in blank backs, but I made an exception for this one. Tony showed up in a batch of Challenges that I was doing, and I immediately fell in like with him (do people still say that?). I added the card to my watch list, and then spent the next month checking in on it every single day, just impatiently waiting for it to be added to the site. Such efforts rarely pay off for me, but in this instance it did, as I logged in one morning to find that it had been added to the site during the previous night -- and not only had it not already been bought, but the price attached was considerably lower than I had expected it to be. When I saw that it was there, and that it was only $0.95, well, as you can probably imagine (especially after that build up), I could not hit that buy it now button fast enough!
2015 Topps High Tek Pattern 1 Grass/Waves Confetti Diffractor #18
I haven't been pursuing it as much as I was last year, but I have the want to fill up a page of these Tim Brown's. I'm no matholigist, but I believe that once the goal is completed I would then own roughly 10% of the to /99 print run. Without looking, I think I'm sitting at seven right now (4 from COMC, 2 from a card show, and 1 from eBay).
2014 Panini Prizm Red, White, & Blue Prizms #12
I got a mention from Trevor a few weeks ago in connection with this card, and now that's it come up in the Shuffle, the least I could do is reciprocate the shoutout :)
Also, I have no idea why that middle card scanned so poorly, but it don't look like that in person.
1952 Bowman #72
This was just one of those "it's too cheap not to get" kind of purchases. It doesn't really fit into any particular collection right now, but I'm hoping that inspiration will strike at some point, and I'll find a use for it.
2009-10 Upper Deck 3D Stars #3D-AR
I don't what the deal is with this set (and I don't really care), but some of the cards have just one player, while other's, like this LaMarcus Aldridge and Brandon Roy, have two. LaMarcus is who you see when the card is at rest, which I'm assuming is just because his last name comes first alphabetically, as Brandon was a much bigger name at the time.
1998-99 Topps Stadium Club Triumvirate - Luminous #T11c
One of my favorite players of all-time, on a card from one of my favorite insert sets of all-time... I believe that's called a "win-win"!
2012 Panini Golden Age Historic Signatures #JO
Fun fact: John went to the same high school (different years though) as Otis Redding and Little Richard. Fun fact #2: Otis Redding and Little Richard went to the same high school!?!?
1968 Topps Game #15 blank back
Here's a bit of a rarity. Not only is this the first blank backed Topps Game that I've ever seen, but it also appears to be the only one that COMC has ever had. For the longest time I was buying blank back lots of say, 1975 Topps baseball, with the goal of trying to get as many from specific sets as I could, but also still picking up the occasional outlier like this. Like everything else card related, my focus has shifted quite a bit, now when it comes to blank backs I'm primarily interested in trying to get just one example from as many sets as I can.
1954 Topps #23
I had never heard of Luke Easter until I read an article about him last year (which I of course can no longer find). He seemed like a really interesting person, and was probably one of the great "what could've been if it hadn't been for injuries" guys. Because of these things, I decided to try and get a few (or all) of his cards. I got this one during last year's Spring Sale, and haven't gotten any more since. I have found that other than his '54 Topps, COMC is not a good place to get his cards, and I just never think to look on eBay, hence the owning of only one card.
2014 Panini Prizm Orange Prizms #105
It looks like Dan wasn't too impressed with today's post. I guess I'll just have to try harder next week then!
My recent struggle's with trying to come up with a creative way to show off the contents from February's card show are still very much alive and well. So instead of wasting any more time on an effort that ultimately won't end up working out the way I want it to, I am just going to dump the remaining scans.
Today's dump will be made up of the remaining baseball and football, which is just a bunch of cards that didn't fit into this post, or this post. There's enough basketball left to warrant it's own post, so that'll be happening sometime in the very near future as well, but until then...
First up is a pair of shiny pitcher's who did in fact Own The Game!
I don't know how anyone else would feel about it, but I'd like to see Jeff Blake in a modern set.
The Big Hurt is trippin' balls, yo!
Jerry can't wait until he turn's 18... then he can finally get a real motorcycle!
I don't see Adrian Beltre cards here very much, so if I find one that's cheap and shiny, I tend to buy it!
Running backs just don't intimidate defenders by coming apart at the seams like they used to!
This is the first Panini made Pinnacle card that I've ever bought, and not to toot my own horn or anything, but I think it's a pretty good one. I believe that this card is part of some sort of tiered insert set, no ideas on the odds, but COMC only has "single's" and "double's" of Bo for sale, and I can't seem to find a Bo "Triple" for sale anywhere, so it must be a little bit on the rare side, which makes the fifteen cent price tag that much better!
Absolute is one of those brands that I never know what's a parallel and what isn't, so, when buying them at card shows I usually just look for interesting color combinations, and then try to figure out what's what once I get home. Turned out that Aaron here was just a base card, but's that's okay, I don't have very many cards (maybe two?) of his, and I really do like the colors on this one, which are much more yellowy in person.
More shiny! This Vlad must be a fairly common insert, because in the last year or so, I've found (and bought) four of them. Now if I find one more I'm gonna be awfully tempted to try and complete a page of them, okay that's a lie, because even with just four I'm already wanting to complete a page!
I love finding Tek football at shows! I didn't have any Roger Craig's yet, so this one was a neat get, although without looking it up I couldn't tell you which pattern this was... circuit board?
I'm sure that Omar Vizquel has more inserts than I know, but to me he's one of those guys that I don't think of as having very many, so I'm always bit surprised when I come across one. Also, even though I'm not trying to complete it and won't ever be making a list for it, I'm pretty sure that I've got at least half of this Hands of Gold set now. I think that it too is a fairly common insert set, so having more than half of it probably isn't a big deal, but it seemed like it was still worth mentioning.
Thrice the shine! Cards like these are no-brainer's when they're found in bargain boxes. The Natrone Pacific Prism is the prize amongst these three, and would probably make it on to the top five cards that I got from this show list, provided there was such a list of course. It's always nice to find a Rodney Hampton as well, I've got like 6 or 7 of his cards now, so old Matt better be careful, as I'm clearly getting closer to challenging his status as the #1 Rodney Hampton supercollector :)
One more post to go, and I AM DONE!!!! I tell you, if these struggle's are going to continue to be a thing, I might just have to go the "best of" route for a little while, as trying to show everything is starting to feel like way too much of a chore. That being said, there was some decent cards in here amongst the leavings... is it any wonder why I rarely look at anything other than the bargain boxes anymore?
The response that I've gotten from the last couple of early 90's packs has been far greater than I expected. I'd like to think that it's because of how well the posts are written (is there an eye rolling emoji that I could insert here?), but I'm pretty sure that it's just the nostalgia that most collector's have for this particular era that's driving the interest (how else can one explain a pack of Pro Set hockey generating 10+ comments?).
So with that in mind, I've got yet another twenty-five cent early 90's pack from ye olde "copy/print/cards-on-the-side" shop... and this time the cards are from a set that I don't remember buying a lot of way back when (happy day!)
I mean I know I bought some at the time, but I don't recall owning a ton of it like I do with the Hoops, Skybox, and Topps sets from that year. I guess there was only so much money to go around, and Fleer was the odd man out that year. It's kind of interesting too that this set was basically the last Fleer release to have minimal insert sets, because the following year would be the start of Fleer's famous insert blitzkrieg -- which, as a dedicated set collector, I didn't much care for at the time, now of course I adore the insane amount of inserts that were made during the 90's.
Before we get to the opening, I just wanted to note that this pack was an absolute pain in the butt to scan! The scanner kept chopping off the borders, and the crisp glossy finish was rendered considerably less glossy (and crisp), but I figure you people were worth the aggravation, so even though I thought about scrapping this pack, I powered through for all of you :)
I miss the days of league leader subsets. Cedric led the league in field goal percentage (57.6%) during the 1992-93 season.
I don't remember Randy White at all! Apparently he was taken by the Mavs with 8th overall pick in 1989 (ahead of guys like Nick Anderson, Tim Hardaway, Shawn Kemp, Vlade Divac, and Clifford Robinson), spent five fairly unproductive years in Dallas, and then left to play overseas.
This might be the scariest (best?) basketball card ever made!
Sweet dreams are not made of this.
I've talked about giving up on set collecting many times over the last year or so, and just recently I decided to give up on trying to finish any insert/parallel (90's stuff) sets as well. I'm still very much interested in such things, I just don't want to have to feel like I've got to complete anything anymore, especially since I already rarely pay attention to what I do and don't have when looking through boxes at shows, or even when I'm looking around on COMC -- I always just end up getting whatever appeals to me at that particular time, even if I already have multiple copies of whatever it is.
Because of this change in collecting, I've also started changing how I store and sort my 90's basketball inserts and parallels too. In an effort to make things easier to put away (and to look at), I have started sorting everything by player, and then bindering them. This will all be talked about more in a future post, but I brought up now for two reasons: A) I've been somewhat surprised by how many cards I have of certain player's, John Stockton being one of those. And 2) The image on this particular card seems to be a familiar theme on John's cards, in that there's often a defender (Greg Anthony in this case) trying to prevent him from doing what he did so well by keeping their body right up on him... hindsight tells us that this defensive strategy didn't work out so well.
There are a handful of guys who are often associated with "a dunk", John Starks is one of those guys:
If you're the sort to send out TTM requests, good luck if you ever try to send one to Chris Morris -- I've tried two different addresses, both were failure's. I wish I knew whether it was because he's hard to track down, or if it's just because he doesn't like signing autographs?
Fun fact: Reggie Williams, Muggsy Bogues, Reggie Lewis, and David Wingate all played together on the same high school basketball team (Paul Laurence Dunbar high school in Baltimore).
David Robinson is another guy that I apparently have more cards of than I had previously realized. This addition now makes for an even 100 cards of The Admiral, which doesn't seem to shabby, especially since only two of those are base cards.
Fleer backs were almost always good during those early years, they opted for less stats on the '93-94 set, but in my mind the back was still just as good as ever, if only because I really liked the secondary image over the player's last name.
Is that a young Anthony Bourdain in the background? eBay here I come! :)
People always give Shawn Bradley the business for getting dunked on (while trying to contest the shot) so much, well, Patrick Ewing got dunked on quite a bit too, and yet nobody ever tries to drag his name through the mud for doing so. Double standard?
Good player, but boy has he made some terrible decisions over the years, and in his case... age doesn't seem to be bringing wisdom.
Led the league in three-point percentage (.453) during the 1992-93 season.
Grant Long is one of those guys that seemed like he was around forever (15 seasons), and if you collected cards in the early 90's, you probably pulled your fair share of his cards (they were like water).
Spent the first eight years of his career with the Cavs and Clippers, scored a lot of points and suffered a lot of losses. Spent the last seven years of his career with the Bulls and Lakers, scored a lot less points and won five rings... funny how things work out!
It looks like Vlade's about to get got by Manute.
This is a set that I wouldn't mind opening up more of, maybe even a box (or two), but with it's glossy finish, I don't think that I'd chance buying a box, lest they all be stuck together -- $20 (that's with shipping) seems like a lot to pay for a potential brick. At least buying by the pack, you can tell when they are or aren't stuck together, this pack clearly wasn't, hence my purchasing it!
Normally this is where I would mention that if anyone's interested in anything, be sure to let me know, but there were an awful lot of keepers in this pack. There's only four that I'm not keeping: Randy White, Chris Morris, Reggie Williams, and Mark West -- so I guess if anyone's interested in those, you know what to do.
