This one takes the cake

I have been using COMC since 2012, and in that time I feel like I've seen most of what the site has had to offer, the good, the bad, and the ugly, if you will.

Despite all of the ugly in the last year, I still use the site on a fairly regular basis. I currently have 185 cards sitting in my account, and have been adding to that number a couple of times a week for over a year now. I search the new listings for a few players on a daily basis, and do some more extensive general searches once or twice a week.

As I'm sure many have experienced, general searches often lead to rabbit holes, where one is likely to encounter items that he or she didn't initially set out to look for. Such was the case the other night, when a series of unplanned clicks led me to what may be one of the more "interesting" listings that I've encountered on the site in the last nine years:

Now I've seen some rough looking cards on the site over the years, most of which have been on the rarer side, this poor Hank Sauer though, well, I'm fairly certain that it now holds the honor of the being the most beat-up piece of cardboard that I've ever seen on COMC. And what's more, it's not rare! This is card #45 in the set, so it's not one of those mythical "high numbers", or an "SP" as the kids are so fond of saying. It's not Hank's rookie. It's not error of any kind. And yet there it is, sitting on the site with a $2.75 price tag. [Two to things to note: 1). Apparently I'm too old to figure out how to do a screenshot, and 2). The price will show higher if you're not signed in]

I find it interesting too that this card has probably been on the site for more than a few years now, because COMC hasn't accepted non-rare items in this kind of condition for at least the last 5-6 years. So not only did it's owner pay to ship it to them, but they paid for it to be processed, and because it's priced over the 75¢ threshold, have been paying a penny per month in storage fees for as long as it's been on the site. The storage fees for five years alone, would be over fifty cents, which is about fifty times more than the card is "worth".

I'm sure that some would disagree, but to me, what's left of this card is nothing but recycling. Again, it's not rare, more copies of it exist than there are interested parties in owning one, and that number will only continue to increase with time. I almost never care how people spend the money that they've earned though, so if someone wants to drop almost $3 on this, who am I to say whether it was right or wrong? I would hope that they've done a little research before clicking on that Buy Now button though, as much nicer copies can be had for less, even on the very site that's currently housing this curiosity(?).

COMC Sundays: Five from the 50's

For the one person out there who enjoys these Sunday posts, I apologize for skipping last weekend, being too tired is the only excuse I have for doing so. But I'm coming off of a whole seven hours of sleep, so today's edition should be a breeze.

When I finally got my COMC stash at the end of last year, I was a bit perplexed by the inclusion of the cards in today's post. I say perplexed... because I truly didn't remember buying them.

At first I thought that I had gotten someone else's cards, but after looking at the invoice, I found that I had indeed bought these, like in January and February of that year, which I guess made sense, but still... how was I supposed to remember items that had been sitting in my account for almost a year?

1956 Topps always gets a lot of love, but you don't see too many people waxing poetic over the '55 set. I'm probably in the minority when I say this, but taken as a whole, I think that the 1955 set is better -- although if you were judging strictly on individual cards, than I'd say that '56 gets the nod.

I recently mentioned that I had stopped collecting a number of vintage baseball sets, mostly stuff from the 60's, and after over a month now, that was a decision that's starting to look better and better.

I have known for awhile that I can enjoy getting cards from the 30's and 40's without feeling like I have to try and complete the sets, but only just recently have I realized that cards from the 50's apply to that same thought process. I can't explain it, but for whatever reason, I can't seem to just enjoy owning cards from 1960 and on for what they are, without feeling like I have to complete the sets. I know that this probably makes no sense to anyone reading this, but for the time being, that's just how things seem to be... hopefully at some point though I'll be able to enjoy cards from the 60's without feeling the need to complete their respective sets.

In the same post that I talked about ending my pursuit of 60's sets, I also mentioned wanting to possibly try and take all of my existing cards from those abandoned sets, and use them to start a PCL collection. I'm still on the fence with that idea, but if I do end up going forward with it, the cards in today's post would fit nicely into that collection as all five guys played in the PCL at some point in their careers -- Bobby Adams (Portland and Seattle), Murray Wall (Seattle), Joe Frazier (Vancouver and Spokane), Les Moss (San Diego), and Marv Grissom (Sacramento and Seattle).


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.