COMC Shuffle #28

Another week, another ten randomly selected cards from last year's COMC Hoard!

1997-98 Upper Deck Teammates #T59

I don't look for MJ inserts very often, and almost never on COMC, but at some point last year I happened upon this one from seller who was looking like they were trying to get out of the COMC game. For around $3, I figured why not? I used to see cards from this set in dime boxes on a fairly regular basis, nowadays I only ever come across Shaq's card (#T25), so I've got like 5 or 6 copies of that one, and maybe 5 or 6 individual cards from the set.

1999-00 Upper Deck HoloGrFX NBA 24/7 AuSOME #N14AU

Know matter how long I live, I will never be able to own enough of the AuSOME parallels, especially those of the 24/7 variety.

2013 Panini Black Friday Panini Collection #20

Panini seemed to have had a brief infatuation with DJ Kool a few years back, it didn't last very long though, I think Biz Markie unintentionally ended up stealing his thunder.

1968 Topps #327

One for the "Telstar four" collection. Also, did Tony Taylor ever age? Judging by his cards, I'd say no... must've stayed away from those cigars that his country his so famous for.

2014-15 Panini Prizm Yellow and Red Mosaic Prizms #28 (x2)

Twin towers?

1999-00 Skybox NBA Hoops Decade Draft Day Dominance #8 DD

Like MJ, I don't look for Kobe inserts very often, but I love me some Hoops Decade, and can't get enough of it's inserts (even the one's that scan poorly), so yeah, Kobe!


2013 Panini Cooperstown Collection Green Crystal Shard #96

The bad thing about deciding not to finish a set that you're pretty far along on, is that you end up having a lot of unwanted cards (like this one), and no idea what to do with them. I did pull out half a dozen or so, but still have a rather large pile to deal with.

2014-15 Panini Prizm Yellow and Red Mosaic Prizms #183

I didn't think it would ever happen, but I've actually to regret a few of my Prizm purchases. I'm just not feeling some of the color combinations anymore, Karl here is a perfect example of that, purple doesn't exactly mesh with red, white, and yellow so well. After going through my current COMC holdings, I found a few more that I'm no longer overly fond of as well, and those have been put back up for sale -- one of which, sold almost immediately right after I relisted it, even made a ten-cent profit on it!

1962 Topps Mars Attacks! #35

I absolutely love the original Mars Attacks! set, but that doesn't make me immune to the fact that most of it's story, and imagery, were pieced together from - or inspired by - other works. This card is really fantastic, but it was clearly inspired by Them!, which is okay, because Them! is awesome, but still... a little bit more originality would've been nice.

2013 Panini Father's Day Progressions - yellow #38

It fitting that the randomizer would choose this card to finish off today's post, as it just so happens to be the final piece of my Chris Kreider Progressions rainbow.

In case you hadn't noticed, today's post isn't so great writing wise, my apologies for that, but this Saturday is one of the bi-annual super mega card shows, and I've been busy trying to align the stars, so that I might be able to go -- which has really taken me out of blog mode, hence this hastily thrown together offering.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Backlogged baseball

I used to be so good about showing off my card show spoils in a timely manner. When I first started the blog a couple of years ago I would have everything photographed and/or scanned within a day or two, the recap post(s) would then be up within another day or two - fast forward a few years, and now I feel like I've accomplished something if I'm able to get all of that done within the following 30 days.

No sense of accomplishment this time though, as I'm just now getting around to the goodies that were gotten at the last show that I went to, which only took place at the end of this past November! Yep, only 2 1/2 months ago, that might be a new record for me?

I hadn't originally planned on going to this particular show, but I had plenty of Secret Santa shopping to do, and this was going to be my best opportunity to find some stuff for Billy and Mark, stuff that hopefully wouldn't suck.

Since it's been a couple of months now, some of the details are a little fuzzy, but I do remember that the weather was supposed to be nice that day, so I was trying to get there and back as quick as I could, I hate wasting nice days away from home. Because of this, I ended up getting there about half an hour earlier than normal. Usually things are jumping at that these shows around the crack of the dawn, not this time though, in fact, there was only about half a dozen dealers set up when I got there, but things did get going pretty quick.

Everybody's favorite seller, Jim, wasn't even there yet, so I had to bide my time by going to one of the few guys who was set up, a guy I've never seen before, who had pretty expansive spread. Much of his offerings were of the football variety, which worked for me, since that's what I've been most interested in lately, at least cardwise. After going through all of his football cards (those will be in a separate post), I noticed that he had two 3200 ct baseball dime boxes, so I went to work on those.

The first row I started in on had around 100 Griffey's grouped together, a lot of it was stuff that I already had at one time in my original Junior collection, stuff I don't really want again (early 90's base), but there were a few things of interest. The Gallery PPI up in the right hand corner is one of those auction points cards:

I remember these from the 1999-00 basketball set, but I never knew that they did them on the baseball side too. The basketball points were literally just points cards, these are actual baseball cards, which are apparently collected as such. I already showed this card to somebody via the interwebs, who didn't hesitate to make me an offer for it, supposedly a 100 points Junior is somewhat desirable, who knew? I think this is pretty nifty card, so I didn't take the offer, tempting as it was.

Of the dozen or so Griffey's that I got, this 1999 Tek is probably the coolest. Looks like these tend to sell for a bit on COMC, so that's always fun to find something like that for just a dime.

Found a run of Ichiro cards as well. I already had a copy of both the Lineage refractor, and the green Bowman, but they're both pretty, so I certainly didn't mind getting another of each. Even at a dime, the gold Bowman probably should've been left behind... it's not a very interesting card.

Here's just some random shiny.

And here we have some random... random? The Thome Clippings card is kind of neat, I don't recall ever having seen one of those before. I have quite a few Triumvirate's on the basketball side, but this was my first baseball one.

I have wanted one of Dan(ny) Ainge's baseball rookies for a long time, I say that, but I've never actually took the time to look for one, so I guess you can say that I wanted one in spirit. This one's got a punky corner, but it'll do until I can find a better one.

I had just finished getting through the first row of this dime box when Jim finally got there, so with the prospect of being able to get in on his stuff right away (that never happens for me), I quickly settled up with this guy - with every intention of coming back and seeing what else his boxes had to offer (spoiler: I didn't) - and made my way over to Jim... just as he was putting out mucho stacks of vintage!

I got there just in time to secure a spot before the feeding frenzy officially began, because of this, I was even able to go through three whole stacks before anybody else, plucking out four cards along the way. The first of said four cards was this really fantastic '62 Al Kaline, numbers two and three were...

... these guys! As far as vintage all-star subsets go, '68 is probably my least favorite, too much wasted space for my liking - that being said, it's not very often that I come across an affordable vintage Aaron or Clemente, in this kind of condition.

At $5 apiece, these last three cards were my "big ticket" items from the show, although the fourth card I had picked up, a creased '64 Mantle, would've been a little more, but Jim and I were a bit off with what we thought it was worth (I was most certainly being too cheap in my assessment of the card's value), so I didn't end up getting that one, which is fine, as there's plenty more of them out there.

While making my way through what was left of the "good" stacks (HOFer's, high numbers, etc.), I overheard someone asking about a couple of unpriced stacks, as it turns out, those were the 25 cent piles, which were made up of mostly "commons". There wasn't much left for me to look through by the time I got to them, but I did find one biggie...

... ANOTHER 1961 BILLY MUFFETT! This pretty much made up for not being able to get the Mantle (I'm only half being facetious btw).

Jim didn't have any dime boxes this time, but he did have some 6/$1 boxes, and those rarely disappoint, so after the vintage had been gone through, I hit the bargain boxes:

Jim had an awful lot of these 2018 sepia refractors, had I known that I would be owing a couple of people return packages, I would've bought more than just these three.

I've been buying any, and all, cheap copies of the 2011 legends variants (in parallel form) that I happen to come across, the Koufax Cognac for 15 cents might just be the best deal that I've found on one so far.

Tim must've just hit a homer, good for him! Normally I'm not a big rookie guy, but even so, I'm not gonna pass up a cheap Freddie Freeman. The McGwire is a sample, so that's something?

The last of my baseball purchases from Jim's bargain boxes is kind of interesting, and I have no clue as to what it is. The front is done up to look like a '58 Hires Root Beer (even though Mantle didn't have a card in that set), and the back...

... well, I don't what the back is supposed to look like, but it's certainly not a Hires back. I don't think it's a Broder, feels much different than those usually do, so I guess if anybody know what's going on here, please let me know.

By this time, it was getting kind of late, but since I hadn't found anything for one of the two people that I had to find Secret Santa gifts for, I decided to hit up one more table, and I'm glad I did, because not only did I find enough SS stuff, but I also found...

... a couple of much needed Golden Age inserts in a dime box! Unfortunately, that's all I found in these particular dime boxes, but just finding these four cards alone made the dig worth it.

I was now done for the day, there was still plenty of tables that I didn't even walk by, but I didn't care, it was time to go... so I went!

There was plenty of basketball and football cards gotten as well, especially football, so you can expect to see those coming soon to a computer (or phone) screen near you.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Old cards from an old card show

Now that I'm caught up with all of the packages that I've recently received from fellow bloggers [note: I started to write this before getting a PWE from Fuji the other day], I thought it might be a good idea to catch up on/recap the acquisitions from the card show that I attended at the end of July.

After the show at the end of June, I didn't think that I would be going to another one until the big one in September, so this was kind of an impromptu show attendance for me, as I had only decided the day before that I wanted to go. As a quick aside, to anybody who's within a couple of hours drive to Nashville -- who are wondering if the big 200 table show on September 29th is worth driving to? -- Let me just say, Yes! It'll be worth the trip. There will probably be sellers from at least a dozen states set up, and attendees from even more, by all accounts, it's the closest thing to going to The National... without actually having to go to The National.

So anyway, even though the trip was hastily planned, thanks to some eBay sales, I at least had some money to spend, and for once... I actually didn't spend it all!

It should be no surprise that this first post will be nothing but vintage, especially since I always start out the series of card show recaps with the oldies.

The 59's that you're going to see were actually my last purchase from the day, all coming from a guy named Tom, who has quickly become my second favorite seller at these shows. He had five stacks of 59's (probably around 300 cards in total), after over a month now I can't remember how they were priced, but it was basically a "the more you buy, the more you save" kind of deal.

I really like the 1959 Topps set, and might try to build it someday, but for now I just picked up cards that will be going into some recently started mini-collections -- except the Sauer, he was free since he had a hole in the middle of his card.

The Warren Giles isn't going to be part of any collection, I've just really wanted that card for a long time now.

Even if I never get around to (or get the money to) working on the set, I'd at least like to get all of the "rising sun" cards. It was nice to be able to add a few more to that collection, especially when a few of those featured the likes of Larry Doby, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Eddie Mathews, and Ted Williams.

I already had these two, but mine were of a much lower grade.

I'd also like to complete The Sporting News subset... I think it's safe to say that I made some pretty good progress on that front.

I'll have to get another Johnny Callison at some point, because this one (as well as the Tony Taylor in the first picture) went into my Telstar collection.

Like I said, I don't remember exactly how much all of the 59's were, but I think they ended up averaging out to around 60-65 cents a card, which seemed like a pretty solid deal to me.

Don't worry baseball fans, there's more for you at the end of the post, but for now...

... take a look...

... at all...

... of these...

... 1980-81 Topps!

There's so many here that I couldn't even...

... stretch that sentence to cover them all.

These were my second to last purchase of the day, and they were also my favorite purchase of the day.

They came from an older dealer who I've bought from many a times in the past. He's had some really good dime boxes in the past, but this particular show's boxes might have been the best so far... yeah, these all came from a dime box!

I couldn't believe that they were still sitting in this box over three hours after the show had started, sometimes I really don't understand other collector's. Internally, I did happy dance when I came across this stack, as I just don't see cards from this set very often, and when I do, there usually priced at a lot more than a dime apiece.

Initially I just checked one or two for condition, upon seeing how nice they were, I just grabbed the whole stack. I went through them after I got home, obviously I was hoping for one of Bird/Magic RC combinations to be in there -- not surprisingly there wasn't, but there was still some decent names in there, guys that should be more of a household name than they are.

I found quite a few other things in those dime boxes, some of which will be seen in upcoming posts. This '72 Sawx team card was the only other thing of a vintage that I came across in there though.

Another Sawx team card, this time from 1961. I can't remember which seller this came from, or how much it was, but it's still a neat card... which technically speaking, could be considered a Ted Williams card.

The last couple of cards in this post were the biggies (money wise), and all came from my, and everybody else's, favorite dealer, Jim.

Usually Jim is set up right when the show opens, so by the time I get there (about an hour after the doors open), his stuff has already been picked over, not that that has stopped me from getting plenty of great cards from him over the last couple of years.

This time was a little different though, as he had gotten hung up in traffic, and didn't get to the show until about twenty minutes after I did. Probably annoying for him, but good for me, because I was actually gonna get to see his wares as they were being put out -- the first, and last time, that this will probably happen.

It was really interesting to see him arrive, and then see the throng of collectors surround him as he walked to his tables, it was kind of like a card show version of The Beatles entering the room. Most of those guys were practically frothing at the mouth in anticipation for him to put out his high end autograph/relic boxes, which were worked for me, as I was just hoping that he would have a few of his legendary dime boxes, as well as some vintage to look through.

By the time I walked over, he was just starting put stacks of vintage out, and nobody else seemed to care... at least for a minute or two.

There is another dealer at the show who buys a lot of Jim's vintage stuff, takes it back to his tables, and marks it up to absurd (at least in my mind) prices. I'm not particularly fond of this guy (he tried to collection shame me at one of the first shows I attended after moving here), but I'm going to try and not say anything to negative about him. As expected, it didn't take him long to show up, but by then I already had a stack, as I had zoomed through 200-300 cards in about 2 1/2 minutes.

My initial stack was made up of the above '71 Ryan and '68 Maris, as well as a 1969 Reggie Jackson rookie, a '54 Topps Warren Spahn, a '72 Mazeroski, a 1955 Topps All-American (I can't remember who), and some other card that I can't remember. Now I didn't think that I was actually going to be able to afford all of these, but I figured that wouldn't hurt to see what the price would be.

As expected, the price was up there, mostly because of the Reggie, which was probably in gradable condition. So after hearing the price, I started whittling down the stack, asking how much the total would be after each card had been removed.

The stack got down to three cards, and I found out that I could either get the 1972 Mazeroski (high number), or for just $5 more, I could get the Nolan Ryan and Roger Maris... this ended up not being a very difficult decision. The Ryan a fairly iconic card, and I've wanted Roger's sunset card for quite a while now, Maz just couldn't compete.

Also, am I wrong, or is '68 Topps the first year that you started seeing guy's wearing a batting glove? Roger Maris, Jimmie Hall, and Johnny Callison are all shown sporting a glove. There might be more, but I can't think of any off the top of my head. And I don't remember seeing anybody wearing one in a set prior to 1968.

I was interested in this card as well, because I bought the other two cards, this one was tossed in for free. It's creased up a bit, but it's my first Uecker, and it was free, so it's kind of hard to complain about the condition too much.

This was two shows in a row that I've been able to find some really neat vintage cards, for some really neat prices, fingers crossed for the show at the end of this month. And for anyone interested, I have three more posts coming up that'll be covering all of the non-vintage baseball, basketball, and football cards that were gotten at this show.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

A reprieve

I'm taking a quick break between the Ollie's comic book posts today so that I can show off a recently received buyback from Chris, aka The Collector.

Chris really made me work for this one too, but this was one instance where I didn't mind putting forth a little extra effort to make sure it ended up being sent my way.

After their move to Oakland following the 1967 season, Topps got a little silly with their not wanting to show any Athletics players sporting their former KC logo in the 1968 set. And not only were Topps efforts silly, they were also terribly inconsistent throughout the set. Of the players shown wearing hats, Topps either airbrushed the logo out to create a solid green lid -- some of which still had a logo visible on the brim -- or in Dave's case (among others), they went the more aesthetically (sarcasm) pleasing route and blacked out the entire body of his hat.

Not knowing very much about Mr. Duncan, I was kind of surprised to see that he had such a long and successful career as a pitching coach. During his 32 years as a coach, he earned three World Series rings to go along with the one he won during his playing days, which came in 1972 as a member of the Oakland Athletics.

Chris, thank you very much for the card, it's always nice to be able to add a pre-'73 buyback to my frankenset. And if I am able to attend the card show next weekend I will be keeping an eye out for your Donruss basketball wants (among other things), and even if I don't go, I already have a couple of cards set aside for you... so either way, you'll be receiving some cards from me sometime in the next couple of weeks.

               

Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.