A first

COMC shipments have been a staple of this blog from the beginning, but today will be the very first time that I've been able to cover an entire shipment in one single post.

Normally my shipments are made up of hundreds of cards, which is a byproduct of often waiting a year or two to request shipping. However, today's shipment, built up for all of four months, is just 26 cards strong. 

I don't know how many people saw it, but back during the Black Friday sale, one of the perks for buyers was that people who requested shipments of 100 cards or more received a $4.99 shipping credit (basically free shipping when choosing the economy option) for that shipment, and would receive another one that was good until March 31st of this year. Having over two years worth of cards on the site as of the BF sale, it was not difficult for me to take advantage of this offer. I got my 200-ish cards shipped for free, and now had this other free shipping credit to play with.

I don't remember picking up 26 cards since the BF sale, but I guess it's easier to forget such things when your using earned credit, as opposed to cash, to pay for things. Had the shipping not been free, I would not have requested it, but it was, so I did. I waited until the 31st to request it, and was given a ship date of April 27th, which they met spot on.

I still have scan folders chock full of cards from the big two years worth of stuff shipment, but am bumping this one ahead, if only because it's the latest and greatest. I haven't gotten very many cards of late, so it was kind of fun fondle some cardboard again. Still wasn't fun to scan it though.

The post was led off by a really nifty Kellogg's Merlin Olsen. One of those scan folders that I mentioned has 4 or 5 more cards from this set in it, including a couple of HOF's for player collections; as was Merlin. There's a small part of me that would like to collect this set, but thankfully there's the much larger part of me that doesn't want to spend money on people that I don't care about. And it's a lot easier to listen to that larger part when money is tight, as it has been, and probably will continue to be for the foreseeable future.

Cards from this set are really only worth, at best, about a nickel apiece. I overpaid by 35¢ for each of these, but didn't have to go anywhere to get them, or pay for shipping, so it was worth it to me. Denver Pyle (on the left) was needed for the Perry Mason collection. I didn't want a card of him as Uncle Jesse, which doesn't leave a lot of options. Hal Smith is needed for two collections, Perry Mason, and a Brady Bunch guest stars themed page. I don't know which one I'll use this card for yet, but he has a few more cards in the set, so it'll be easy enough to get another one of him.

I haven't looked yet, but I think I now have all of the Carnage cards from this Golden Web insert set. 

With the ridiculous prices that people are putting on all things Marvel these days, I don't spend a great deal of time seeking them out anymore. These last three were all found just looking through people's sale listings, and were all below the current COMC/eBay going rate. Because of said high prices, most of my character collections have had to be put on hold. With that in mind, it was nice to be able to add a few cards to them with this shipment, especially the Sentinels gold chase card.

Hey, it's my first Kahn's! I decided a few months ago that I was gonna start chasing Griffey Sr.'s cards a little more actively. I don't think it would be too hard to put together an entire playing day run of Seniors, Junior not so much, that is unless you're fabulous wealthy. And even though it's a little outside my comfort zone, I've been thinking about doing a post comparing the careers of father and son, and arguing (if need be) that senior actually had the better career overall, which would apparently contradict just about everything else I've read online.

More player collection needs, although this is only my second card of Tom's, so I don't know if that can really be called a "collection" yet.

I think I mentioned it before, maybe not though, I don't know. Either way, while I'm still collecting J-Stew in general, he's got so many cards out there, that I decided a while back to just focus on his blue cards. They're a little less plentiful, and they got the pretty color matching action going on. So far, I've just been picking the low hanging fruit, like these two dirt cheap refractors, which were both less than fifty cents apiece.

I've been trying to replace some of my lesser conditioned Franz cards when I can. It's funny to see all the kooky online Franz prices, because when I was a kid, you couldn't give away Franz cards in Portland. Every single person pretty much had an entire run of them tucked away in a drawer somewhere, and most of those folks weren't even collectors in the traditional sense; that's just how plentiful the cards were at the time. Nowadays, there seems to be a slight bit more demand for them online, though Clyde is the only one that people are paying the higher prices for.

I already showed Paul here back in my post about starting to collect the Fran Tarkenton puzzle. Bruce has since joined the fun.

With the Steve Stonebreaker elbow piece (not shown here) that I already had, I've now completed Fran's right arm. And yeah, I know, it's terribly exciting.

How's this for a mix? Jackie Cooper goes into the Columbo collection (see the last post). I didn't want one of the many cards of Jackie as a child, but this one worked perfect. Richard Loo is another new entry for the Perry Mason collection. And I got the stupid idea last year to try and do a Sarah Connor Chronicles themed page, which is where Summer Glau destined. I say it was a stupid idea only because three of the people from the show that you would want to see on such a page (Richard T. Jones, Garret Dillahunt, and Dean Winters) don't appear anywhere in card form. Considering how long Dean Winters has now been doing those Progressive Allstate (thanks, Brett!) commercials, you'd think there'd at least be a promo of some kind out there, but no, there isn't. Oh, and how is that Shirley Manson only has one card in some Jack Daniels (or some other booze) playing card set? That doesn't even seem possible! First world problem, I know. At least Fuji will appreciate my struggle to make this page happen :)

I've been thinking about adding Stan Humphries to the list of player collections for a few years now, and had been setting aside his cards just in case I ever did start collecting him. The only thing that was keeping me from officially collecting him was that I already had so many other player collections going, and didn't really want to take on another. I solved my predicament a couple of months ago though when I dropped around a dozen basketball player collections (I'm about to drop a few more too). With those now out of the mix, I figured I could take on one more guy. And unless I find out something really interesting about somebody who's currently flying under my radar, this'll be the last new player collection that I start.

As for the card, I've had this one in my watchlist for almost two years, just waiting for it to drop to a more reasonable price, which it finally did after a succession of ever increasing sales. I think it was down to $1.49 when I got it. This is the first football PPI from this year that I've ever held, so I didn't realize that a lot of the bits were raised, sort of embossed like. Allegedly these are limited to /250 copies, which I have no way of confirming, but either way it's pretty neat card.

I grabbed these two from the same seller right before I had to put in the shipment request. Both were on sale, and I figured I might as well celebrate my newest collection with a couple of "good" cards. I know that everyone loves all things 90's now, but a Printers Proof parallel for a phone card was just silly, and I dare anyone to argue otherwise.

This was my first football Rave. Apparently they go for a lot less than their basketball counterparts. 

I'll probably shock a few people by saying that I've never been much of a fan of the Back to the Future franchise. I've seen the first one a couple of times, and each of the sequels once. I know that it's beloved franchise (or at least the first two films are), but they just don't do anything for me. I like time travel stuff, love the 80's, but just don't care for those pictures. As such, I've never spent any time looking through the card sets, so it was only by happenstance that I came across one of the cards from the first set that I thought would make a perfect center card for an 80's themed page. I still haven't gotten my center card, but have acquired a few others for the page, including this very spiffy Huey Lewis from that old AGI Rock Star Concert Cards set. Huey's got a few card in the set, but this is the one that I wanted for my 80's page. There has almost never been anything more 80's than this card, and I absolutely love it! I actually won this card from one of their auctions too. It's great going through your account to bid on things because you can add the card to your account after paying for it, and avoid those brutal eBay shipping charges. I think this was just over a buck, and was very much worth it.

Here's some more auction wins. These Monty Gum cards have been on quite the rollercoaster over the last few years. They went from worthless before the boom, to crazy prices went the boom first started, and now aside from a couple of the bigger names, have pretty much slipped completely back into worthless territory. I got the Sarge for a childhood themed binder that I've started (more on that some other time. I've got a page dedicated to OMG/Akeem, and Jesse will go into the Portland Wrestling collection.

Orson Welles doesn't have nearly as many cards out there as he should, and trying to find one that wasn't made by Panini has been quite the task. I guess all I had to do was wait a little bit, because this 1959 Maple Leaf playing card practically fell into my lap through yet another auction. This was $1.54 well spent, and would be my favorite card from this shipment if it weren't for this...

From what I've been able to gather, this 1962 Dutch Gum is Barbara Eden's first card, or as the profiteers would call it, her rookie card. To me it's just her first card, and now it's all mine! I love this card so damn much, and couldn't believe that was only priced somewhere around $3. In this condition, I would've easily paid upwards of ten for it. I like too that the Dutch Gum folks had to tell everyone that she was a fox, as if no one would've known otherwise. And yes, I'm joking, Fox is the studio that she was with at the time -- my scenario is better though.

I wish that this shipping credit would've been dated a little further out, as I did get three more cards during the recent spring sale, and would've loved to have been able to include them in with these. I'll probably get those at the end of the year, so it's not like I'll have to wait that long.

It felt kind of weird getting an entire shipment into one post. I think the last time I had such a small order shipped from them was back in 2010 or 2011 when I has just found the site; that feels like a lifetime ago.

On a completely different, and final, note, I sold a card on eBay last week to Mark Armour, you know the SABR guy/pretty well known writer (of actual books). I thought about sending him a message saying that he was the first celebrity that I've ever sold anything to, but figured that he probably gets that a lot, so I spared him the message. It was still kind of neat though.