2017 Black Friday Boxes #4: 2012 Panini Golden Age

Well, we've finally made it to the last box, which is nice because I'm getting a little bored with writing about the same topic over the last four posts. The last box was another of the 2012 variety, I have long since completed the set, and there aren't a lot of inserts to be had in the inaugural edition... but those possible case hit original Goudey's are just too much for me to resist, so that's why I ended up with the two boxes of 2012.

As usual too, the base cards and the minis are being excluded... well sort of. You'll see what I mean by that at the end.

My streak of only getting the yellow pennant toppers continued with this box, but at least I got a pretty good one this time. And even though I'm not actively seeking these out, but on the off chance that I ever do go after all of them, it was nice to get one that I didn't already have.

Amazingly, both the Batter-Up's were set needs.

The Truman Headlines was a duplicate.

This Jayne Mansfield Newark Evening World Supplement was needed as well. As a quick aside, my compliments to Panini for the photo selection on this one :)

Ugh, another Rusty Staub bat relic! I have nothing against Mr. Staub, but if you recall from the first post in this series, I pulled one from that box as well, which wasn't terribly exciting since I already had one. Being in possession of three now, I can't help but wonder how many more it would take to reconstruct the bat.

Even though Ron LeFlore isn't the most exciting autograph from the checklist to pull, I at least needed it, and that's the first time that I've been able to say that during these four posts.

The LeFlore auto came in the second to last pack, and it shouldn't be too much of a surprise to hear me say, that going into that final pack of the last box, I wasn't expecting anything to make up for what had been up 'til that point, a pretty disappointing quartet of boxes. It shouldn't be too surprising to hear as well, that as I was starting in on that last pack, I was doing so amidst the strongest feeling of buyer's remorse that I have ever known.

So anyway, as I'm opening the pack, I notice a white border amongst the normal French vanilla colored borders... which was mildly interesting, but not much, as I have pulled a white bordered parallel from the 2013 edition, and after looking for info on that one at the time, I found there wasn't much interest in them.

Here's who that white border belonged to. Again, while different, I was just thinking that it would be similar in value to the 2013's, aka nothing that would make up for these bad boxes.

Upon turning the card over, I found that not only was it a white bordered parallel, but a short print as well. Now that made it a little more interesting, but not much, as I also have a 2013 white bordered short print that as far as monetary value is concerned, has very little.

Here's the Bobby Jones parallel next to the regular base card, when their side-by-side you can really see the difference.

So out of curiosity, I started looking around online to try and find any info on the 2012 white border short prints. The only place I could find anything was on the Cardboard Connection site, which to my surprise, said that they have a print run of just /10. That's certainly rarer than the 2013's that I been comparing them to.

While it's kind of fun to have something that is apparently pretty rare, I'm not made of money, and these boxes weren't very good, so my thoughts very quickly turned to seeing if I could sell it and recoup some of the money that was spent on the boxes.

After more searching, I couldn't find any of these (there are ten different short prints, I believe) listed anywhere for sale, nor could I find any mention of one ever selling period, which made me even more hopeful about getting some of my money back.

Not knowing what kind of price to put on it, I decided to shoot for the moon and listed it with a $200 BIN or best offer, and to my surprise... I had an offer within two or three days! The initial offer was for $150, which wasn't bad at all, but I am human ( I think), so I of course tried to get a little more and countered with $175, which was excepted immediately by the buyer.

At one time, I thought I was going to try my hand at completing master sets for all three years worth of Golden Age, but after finding out about all the 1/1's (literally a couple hundred for each year), and of course, now knowing of the 2012 white border short prints and much they can sell for... that thought of master sets seems absolutely ludicrous.

The four boxes (with shipping) set me back $109.25. After eBay and PayPal fees, plus shipping costs, the card netted me roughly $145 (I also used that Groupon offer, where if your item sells in like two weeks or less, you get a $10 gift certificate... which I did). So when all was said and done, I ended up making around $45 in profit, plus I got one needed relic, one needed relic, a couple of needed inserts, and was able to get a couple more cards closer to completing two of the base sets. The idea of opening boxes, only to turn around and try and profit from the contents doesn't do a whole lot for me, but in this instance, it kind of felt like a necessity, so I'm glad it worked out alright.

Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, these most likely will have been my last boxes of Golden Age. From here on out, it just seems to make more (financial) sense to buy any of the cards I still need individually, as opposed to trying to play the lottery by buying more boxes


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