How I spent my eBay bucks

I was the recipient of some very generous packages during December, most of which still haven't been shown here on the blog, before I start getting to those though, I thought it might be a good idea to catch up on something from October, namely how I spent my eBay bucks certificate.

I'm not one to keep track of how much eBay bucks that I've accrued over any particular period, so it's always a surprise to see how much, or how little, I've earned during one of the three-month stretches that you get to stockpile as much as you can. This past October I was very surprised to see how much I had earned, especially since it was by far the most I had ever earned.

I guess before I get too far along here, I should point that lest anyone think that I'm bragging here, I'm not, as this large sum of bucks wasn't earned from copious amounts of buying, no, they were gotten thanks to copious amounts of selling -- which is something that's been necessary for me to do since March in order to supplement my monthly hobby budget.

In the three months leading up to October, it seemed like eBay was offering up incentives to sell on an almost weekly basis, most of which were of the "Get 10% back in eBay bucks if your item sells in the next 10-14 days" variety. Because of their frequency, I didn't end up listing a single item during that three-month stretch that didn't qualify for one of those offers, including the most expensive card that I owned, so thanks this to strategy, I earned quite a few bucks.

As many of you know though, there is one downside to acquiring so much eBay bucks, and that is that you only have a month to use them. For me this has always been difficult, even when I only have like a $1 to spend, primarily because of everybody else spending their respective bucks like a drunken sailor. I know I should be treating it as found money, but I can't, I spend it just like I would if it was coming out of my pocket, so because of that mindset, I am unable to overpay for anything just so I can use it... which seems to be much against the norm.

I was able to use it at all, of course, about half of it ended up being spent on birthday/Christmas presents, but I did manage to find a few things for myself too:

Full disclosure -- and you might want to sit down for this -- I have never been a fan of Gilligan's Island! Shocking, I know, but the show just never appealed to me, and this even after me trying to get into it multiple times across multiple decades. Dawn Wells is of course best known for her portrayal as Mary Ann on the show, although personally, when ever I hear her name, I always think of The Town That Dreaded Sundown.

But no matter what you associate her name with, she is a name, a very recognizable name, therefor her autograph tends to sell for a bit. I have bid on, and made offers on, multiple copies of this card over the last couple of years, always coming up short... until now! I made somewhat of a low offer on this one, the seller countered, I countered back, and the seller accepted. After trying, and failing, so many times to get this card, I can't tell you how much of a relief it was to finally be able to cross it off the checklist.

I would like to think that I was fairly familiar with Mr. Barney's football career prior to getting this card, or at least as familiar as one can be with an athlete's career that ended before you were born, that being said, I was completely unaware of his second career in music -- which apparently has been successful enough, that among other things, he (and former teammate Mel Farr) provided the backup vocals for Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On".

No offense to Mr. Yeager, or to any of my readers who happen to be Dodgers fans, but for me this not one of the more exciting autographs from the Golden Age sets. He played during what is probably my least favorite era of baseball (not counting the current era) and I'm not a Dodgers fan (not a hater either), but I needed it for my set, and it was cheap, so...

I will say though that I do like the image that was used for this card, it really emphasizes the added pharaoh's beard, a safety feature that Mr. Yeager himself was responsible for.

Even though I've lost a lot of interest in set collecting over the last couple of months, I still wanted to try and complete the 1999-00 HoloGrFX AuSOME parallel set, and not just the base parallel set, but the insert version too. It has been one of my favorite parallel sets since it came out, but even with that being said, I've recently started to question whether or not I even want to bother to complete it. I guess even if I do give up on it, I'll still have a few really cool cards from the set, including this Tim Duncan parallel from the 24/7 insert set.

I haven't really ever discussed it here, but Shawn Kemp's 1990-91 Fleer rookie, has been my favorite card for just about as long as I can remember. If anyone's curious as to why it is, well, it's a very uninteresting story, so I'm not going to bore anyone with it (at least not today). For the longest time I was content to just own a couple of copies, now I want 'em all! Since deciding this, I've acquired two such lots, which has gotten me to nearly 100 copies owned, it sounds like an impressive amount, except when you take into account the fact that there were probably over a million copies, literally, of this card produced... if only I had started hoarding them back in the 90's.

As mentioned at the top of the post, I've got a bunch of a packages to catch up on, as well as a piece about some cards that I've been quietly collecting since last March. I also have a new COMC series that I'm hoping to get up and running in the next two weeks, and there's still all the stuff to get to that I got at the card show in November. I don't know if any of these upcoming things sound interesting or not, but I thought it would be good to let everyone know what to expect over the next month or two -- sounds like a lot of card stuff though, so I'll have find a way to work in some non-card items, otherwise I'm going to end up getting burned out awfully quick!

Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.