Old habits die hard

A lot of good things have been showing up on eBay lately (non-sport autographs and hard to find cards for my Portland Beavers collection) and I've been having some success with my bidding, which has been both good and bad. Good from a collecting standpoint, but very bad from a financial standpoint. I've mentioned it before, but with very little money to play with these days, usually if I win something on eBay of any real cost, it means that I need to sell something else to cover that won item. This may sound sucky to some, but I have a lot of unwanted things, so this cycle just acts as a motivator for me to get rid of said unwanted things.

This routine has also made me reevaluate a lot of my stuff, finding out that I no longer care about certain things that I had been fond of, and conversely, finding out that I still care about certain things that I previously hadn't. Such was the case when it came time to put up my various Post Cereal cards. I had already pulled out various cards for player collections, but was still left with a decent sized chunk of 61's and 62's, and a much smaller selection of 63's. There was a small amount of '63 Jell-O's that also needed to be dealt with.

I had decided a couple of years ago now that set collecting was no longer for me, and even though I still felt a little something for the Post (and Jell-O) cards, they were still added to one of my boxes of cards to sell. However, when it came time to list them, I found myself having trouble doing so, sort of.

Upon seeing again how many cards I had from '61 and '62, and still feeling some affinity for them, I decided that I just couldn't list them, and instead put them in a keepers box; thinking that maybe someday I'd give the sets another go. The same couldn't be said for my 63's (Post and Jello-O). Having only about 15 or so of each (after those that fit into player collections had been removed), I figured I was so far away on those that I might as well cut my losses and sell them. Which I did, and very quickly too. I want to say that that was back in February or March when I had been making a big push to list my abandoned set builds. 

Fast forwarding to last month, I started feeling like something was missing with my card collecting. Thankfully it didn't take long to realize what it was; I needed a set to build. This led me to getting out my stacks of '61 and '62 Posts, and deciding that someday was now, and that I was gonna start working on the sets again. 

The first step was to decide if I wanted to remove all the cards from player collections, and even though I didn't really want to, I did it anyway. The second step was to make checklists...

For 1961, I found that I had 57 of the 200 cards. Not bad, not bad at all. Above is what I figure are the best cards from those 57 (I haven't looked up short prints yet, so I may have one of those and not even know it). This set came in two different versions, the ones on boxes, and the ones you could get through the mail. Mine are all from boxes, and those will be the only kind that I'll be seeking out.

As far as the 1962 set goes, I've got 59 of the 200, and as you can see above, and below, I do have a few of the bigger names.

I can't remember if I ever mentioned it on here or not, but a few years ago (maybe five?), I accidently won an extra Clemente on a Sportlots auction. I wanna say it was around six or seven bucks, so it wasn't the end of the world, but was still something that I didn't really need. Since it is fairly nice, I took with me to a card show not long after getting it in hopes of either recouping my money, or at the very least, trading it. None of the dealers who regularly buy from people would even look it at the time. Later that day, since I was already there, I also took it to the card shop in Nashville, hoping that the owner would have some interest in it. He didn't. I was told, and I believed him, because he isn't the sort to mince words, that no one ever came in looking for Roberto Clemente or Post cards. Obviously the card world has changed a bit since then, and looking online now, it appears that there'd probably be more interest in it now than there was back when I got it. Ideally, I'd like to trade for another need, but given how poorly my attempts to pull off formal trades online have gone thus far, I'll probably just have to sell it, and then use that money for some set needs.

After bindering the the 62's, I found that the most cards I had for any one page was four. This by far was the better of the two. And what's more, I was able to add another card to it during the recent pre-Black Friday sale on COMC when I picked up Elston Howard (#8) for $1.48.

I realize too that I've stated many times here on the blog over the last couple of years that I was done with set collecting, forever, which now makes me look like a real hypocrite. Yep, I'm full of shit. But wait... it gets worse!

I've also decided to chase the 1962 Post Canadian set as well. And I'm doing so despite only having one card from it (I think that this is the third time that this Ernie has appeared on the blog). I really should think twice about this one, especially given what happened just a couple of weeks ago.

I found someone on the TCDB who had 19 of these up for trade, so I sent them a message to gauge their interest. It seemed high, so I went ahead and started trying to find things off of their wantlist. While doing so, I noticed that their profile said that they like doing bigger trades, so I decided to try and make it into a bigger trade. I spent a good three hours looking for things, and probably another hour just composing the trade, only for them to turn it down and say that they don't like to trade with my sort. Apparently, I didn't get the memo that asking about the condition of vintage cards that I can see is now a faux pas? I guess I'm that sort. It's ironic too because I was told by a fellow blogger some years ago, that I should try and avoid this person. Unfortunately, I saw that they've been trading with other bloggers recently, and that combined with their huge positive feedback rating made me ignore that old warning. Obviously I should've just listened to it and saved myself the four hours. Lesson learned though, don't ignore warnings from fellow bloggers; they usually know better -- especially when it comes to the TCDB. [I'd still try again if they ever changed their mind though]

And I may be the sort who asks questions about card conditions, but I'm not the sort who makes year-end lists for the blog. However, if I was, this would surely take the #1 spot for the biggest card related disappointment this year. It's been weeks, and I'm still pretty bummed out by it.

Oh, and about this whole deciding to 'start up some old sets again' thing, yeah, it gets even worse...

After bindering up the '61 and 62's, I got to thinking about 1963, you know, that I mentioned selling 15 or so cards from, yeah, that one. Digging through player collections yielded a couple of big names, although the Maris isn't ideal with that cut. Still an okay start though, I guess. None of the 15 cards that I sold would be overly difficult to get back, as I see a lot of them in almost every single lot currently on eBay. I guess I'm doing this one again, too. But wait, it gets worser (and yes, I know, that's not a word)...

I'm picking back up with the '63 Jell-O's too. This was what I still had left. The majority of the one's I sold were poorly cut, and were not SP's or HOFers, so with a little patience, those won't be too difficult reacquire.

A couple days after paging everything up, I remembered that I had overlooked at least one card, and after setting out to look for it, that one card ended up yielding four.

A couple more '63 Posts that I had held onto. Dick Groat came from my miniscule collection of his, and Maury came from a page of his stuff that I have. That page looks a lot less interesting now :(

To the '63 Jell-O's, I was able to add, Boog, who came from the Boog collection, and Curt, who came from a page of his stuff that I've got going.

And in case anyone is wondering, yes, I know, there are some expensive and hard to find cards in these sets; don't harsh my mellow. I'll deal with those later. I'm under no illusion that any of these sets will ever be completed, but since making this decision, that feeling of something missing that I mentioned earlier has dissipated, and I've really been enjoying the process so far; it feels like old times. Well, sort of, I don't feel like I absolutely have to complete the sets to enjoy them, like I used to.

The only real negative for me so far is that after looking at these sets online for the last couple of weeks, I've come to the conclusion that if I want to work on these, I'm gonna have to start going to shows again; because the online prices are just not very good anymore. That being said, I did get that Elston that I mentioned earlier, as well as a '61 Lee Walls (for 55¢) and a '61 Bobby Shantz ($1.34) during the COMC BF sale. Other than those though, the pickings were awfully slim on COMC, lots of beaters for way more than they should be. Sportlots and the Beckett Marketplace don't appear to be much of an option either. And eBay seems like it takes so much more effort these days, especially when trying to land set needs at reasonable prices. Having been away for so long now, I'm not sure if anyone who's setting up at the twice-a-month Nashville shows would be bringing any Post, so I think I'll just wait until the next big show in March. 

There used to be this couple that only set up at the big shows who only did vintage, and I remember them having many binders full of Post cards. And I guess even if they aren't going there anymore, with probably close to 800 tables, one would have to think that somebody would have some Post for sale, right?

COMC Shuffle #16

Another week, another ten randomly selected cards from last year's COMC hoard.

1951 Bowman #173

Hank played five seasons in the bigs, all with the Browns. Making his debut in 1948, Hank started off like a house afire, belting a triple and a home run in his debut against the Yankees. He had an average of .400 through his first 19 games, but it was pretty much all downhill after that, by 1952, his last season, he only managed to hit an anemic .143, playing 15 games before his contract was sold to the minors. The minor league team that he was sold to? None other than the Portland Beavers, which is why I was interested in this card. Hank spent his last three seasons of professional baseball in Portland, where over the course of 349 games he would bat .259, racking up 288 hits, 138 RBIs, and 29 HRs.

2014 Panini Prizm Orange Prizms #12 (x2) 

These would've looked a lot better if Panini had made a yellow Prizm parallel, but the orange is still pretty sharp, sharp enough in fact that I wouldn't mind getting a page's worth of these at some point.

1968 Topps #415

One for the "Telstar 4" collection. This might be my favorite card from that collection so far, if only because of that batting glove! Those old school trucker gloves make it look like you're ready for a fight, meanwhile todays gloves look like you're just checking to see how thorough the maid was with her dusting.

1997-98 Topps Rock Stars #RS4

One of the top five basketball insert sets from the 90's? Definitely!

1970 Topps #375

Apparently the randomizer was really feeling the Johnny Callison this week! It's funny, before I started reading the blogs, I never paid any attention to hatless cards, they just weren't a thing for me. Now five years later, I , thanks to the blogs, don't really care too much for the hatless pics. They're just too generic, I mean if you take this card for example, I could be looking at anybody, from any walk of life, is this a card of a soccer player? An actor? Who knows?

1963 Topps #144

I don't remember when it was exactly, but sometime in the not too distant past, my dude, Oscar, showed this card in one of his card show recap videos, which made me realize that I didn't have one, and that I wanted one... so I bought one! I seem to have a bit of a Roger Maris collection going, I didn't even know that I did until just recently when I started going through, and pulling keepers, from all of my abandoned vintage set builds.

2014-15 Panini Prizm Red, White, and Blue Pulsar Prizms #205

There are few things more American than a seven-foot tall hippie!

2014-15 Panini Prizm Green Prizms #206

One of my favorite player/color combinations from the 2014 set. If someone at Panini ever sees this post, do everyone (i.e. me) a favor, and add Paul Silas to more of your products, thank you!

1966 Topps #110

Last years Spring sale started five days before one of the twice a year Nashville mega card shows, as such, I found myself up at o-dark-hundred on the morning of the show with a few extra minutes to spare, so why not go peruse COMC for the thousandth time that week? Most of the stuff was of course at the same prices that it had been all week, but while doing a random search for Ernie Banks, I found this card, and it was from a seller that had just upped their percentage off sometime within the previous couple of hours. Most of this sellers offerings were of the vintage variety, and I think I bought a few other things, but Mr. Cub is the only one that I can remember at the moment. The corners aren't mint, but I still thought that the price tag of just little over $3 was a good one. This card will also probably always hold a personal record for the earliest (around 4am) in the day that I've ever gotten a card.

2013 Panini Father's Day Progressions - Black #17

This is the Lillard that I mentioned in my Progressions post awhile back. For those that didn't see it, or don't want to go back and reread it, the short version is that I got the magenta at a show last year for a quarter, and then later that night bought this black on COMC for $0.99. So I completed half the rainbow in one day, and after a year and some change, I still only have half of the rainbow. There's a yellow on COMC right now, but it's priced higher than I want to pay, and the seller apparently doesn't realize that I'm seemingly the only person who collects these!

Last week's mix wasn't much of a mix what with all of the Prizm parallels, but the shuffler seems to have done a little better this week, more variety that hopefully will have appealed to a wider audience.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Golden Cub

Like a lot of collector's, I have quite a few saved searches on eBay, some going back over ten years, while others date back to just a couple of weeks ago. Many saved searches have been deleted over the years, either because I eventually got whatever it was, or I just lost interest in the item, and of course, new searches are always being added -- I think there's a limit to how many you can have, but I've yet to reach it (probably because of all the deleting).

And I don't know how it is for everyone else, but is seems like more often than not, that when I get the daily emails for items that match my searches... they rarely seem to match? Often times it's just stuff that shares a word or two with my search, and that's it! If this ever happens to you, than you know how frustrating it can be, especially if it's on a search that doesn't yield results very often (if ever), you get all excited, and are immediately let down once you crack open that email -- this too is something that happens to me on a fairly regular basis!

So imagine my surprise, when a couple of weeks ago I received a result amongst my daily emails for an item that hadn't popped up on the site in literally years, and wonder of all wonders, the emailed listing actually matched my search!?!?

You are looking at one of the most, possibly even THE most, hard to find autographs from the 2014 Golden Age set. This card was a short-printed redemption, which obviously is already going to be rare, but than when you take into account the fact that this set came out in July of 2014, and Mr. Banks passed away in January of 2015, well, that doesn't leave an awful lot of time for these cards to be signed. From what I've read - and I don't know how accurate the message board posts on the subject are - it sounds like they're might be less than 50 of these floating around, which would explain (if true) why this is the first one to come up in over two years.

I knew that if one ever did show up again, that it wouldn't be cheap, and I was right! It was listed for $89.99 (+ $3 for shipping), which is an awful lot for me right now, thankfully though, the seller was also open to best offers. Since I was seeing this listing just a couple of hours after it went live, I knew I'd have to act quick (I honestly don't know how it was even still there?), so I put in an offer, which was countered within mere minutes -- and even though it was a good counter, I still pressed my luck by submitting a counter to the counter, which was accepted after a very long two-hour wait.

Those couple of hours felt like an eternity, but it was worth it, because in the end I got my much desired card for $67 (plus that pesky $3 for shipping), which was still a lot, but it was a little more doable than $89.99.

Technically speaking, I didn't have, and wasn't going to have the money for this, but that's why god invented credit cards. I did have a plan though, which was to list a bunch of stuff for sale real quick, and hopefully have the money by the time the credit card bill was due. For the record, this is a terrible way to do things, so if any kids are reading this, don't do like me, go be financially successful so you'll have money on hand to pay for such things! That being said, the plan did work, as I did sell five things (including one that I didn't really want to) over the next two weeks, so when the bill comes, I will be good for it. I am glad though that I didn't have my heart set on going to a card show this month, because this purchase would've negated such a want.

As great as it was to have such a long standing search like this yield a positive result, I'd be completely okay if no more of my expensive much wanted items showed up on eBay for the next couple of months, that way I'd have a chance to build up a bit more of a reserve.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Cubs, trains, and other assorted vintage goodies

Two Saturday's ago was a card show day, and not to brag or anything, but I think I did pretty well.

Having not been to a show since March, I was really looking forward to this one. However, I wasn't looking forward to going and having considerably less money to spend than usual, thankfully though, I ended up selling a fairly rare record for a decent chunk of change about a week before the show... so I had plenty of paper folding money to play with. The only downside was that I probably should have been trying to save some of it for potential future wants, but no matter how old I get, I'm still like a small child when it comes to money, in that, if I have it, I spend it!

As per usual, I'll be spreading out the purchases across four or five posts, starting first with the vintage portion, as that always seems to be the most popular with readers.

My favorite seller (he's a lot of other people's favorite seller as well), Jim, was there with his usual array of insanely low priced items. This time though, he had a large selection of vintage cards, which isn't the norm for him, not surprisingly, going through those vintage cards was my first priority upon seeing them (I always go to his tables first).

Have you noticed how many people seem to be in a collecting funk as of late? I guess this is a good time to mention that you can add my name to that list as well. It sounds like a lot of folks are becoming disenfranchised over the ever increasing amount of new products flooding the market, and even though that's not what's causing my malaise, I can certainly understand why it would be having such a negative impact on so many people.

This post is already fixin' to be excruciatingly long (hopefully in a good way though), so I don't want to get too deep into this right now, but the short of it is, that I realized a couple of months ago that I just wasn't having very much fun collecting cards (or anything else for that matter) anymore.

Set collecting, vintage baseball set collecting, to be more specific, has been causing me a great deal of stress as of late, and collecting should never be stressful. I'll go into more detail in a future post, but for the moment, I can tell you that I have stopped working on a number of vintage sets (they've been removed from my want lists too).

For some time now, I've been thinking about starting a side collection of guys who played in the PCL, so now with a bunch cards from broken up sets sitting around doing nothing, I thought that this might be a good time to start putting together such a collection... apparently I was wrong! It only took a couple of days of trying to figure out who played where for me to get overwhelmed, so for the moment that idea is going to be shelved, and will likely revisited at the end of summer.

Some of you might be wondering why I even bothered going to the show then? And that would be an easy question to answer, I went because there's a number of sets that I still do enjoy collecting. There's also a number of sets that I have no illusions about ever being able to finish, but still enjoy getting cards from, case in point, the '49, '51, and '52 Bowman's that you've already seen.

I've been on a bit of a Bowman kick ever since I found that cheap '52 Bowman Casey Stengel back in March. And like I said, I know I'll never be able to finish these, but that's okay, I'm just having fun picking up cheap semi-decent condition examples when I can. I have a few currently sitting in my COMC account too, all though, with these old Bowman's, I've noticed that for me, it's much more fun to buy them at shows, than to buy them online. I don't know if that makes any sense or not, but hopefully somebody what I'm talking about.

This is only my third '55. I'd love to know the story behind Gene Baker's giant Band-Aid.

I have mixed feelings about this set, mainly because of the action shots. I mean, some are so cool, like with this Hank Sauer, while others are of guy's just standing there doing nothing, which is kind of the opposite of "action". Either way though, I had to have this one.

Hey, this guy was pretty good, wasn't he? I didn't realize how many vintage Ernie Banks' that I had until I started going through all of my recently stopped sets. Even though I've shown most of them on the blog at one time or another, I'm thinking that I might try to get all of 'em into one post coming up in the near future.

One thing that I'm definitely not giving up on, is the Post sets. Unbeknownst to me, and I'm pretty sure Jim too, the Frank Thomas is a short print, and one of the harder to find one's to boot. There seems to be no rhyme or reason with the Post short prints, at least in my mind, so I was kind of surprised to find this out after I got home that day.

Another thing that I've been thinking about doing is to start a few mini-collections, which is something that a lot of you do, but I've always been a set collector, so this is kind of new territory for me. Recently I was reading a book that had a chapter about the first live transatlantic television broadcast on July 23rd, 1962. As part of that broadcast, a 90 second clip of a Cubs-Phillies game was shown, so I thought it might be kind of fun to start a collection of the four player's who were featured in that clip -- George Altman, Calvin Koonce, Johnny Callison, and Tony Taylor.

This guy was pretty good too. My first vintage Lou Brock. It's off center, has some scratches in the middle, and a crease at the bottom... but I don't care, it's still a cool card!

As I mentioned, Jim doesn't usually have a lot of vintage, so I was pleasantly surprised to see all of it when I got there. When he does have it, they're usually just stacked up in top loaders in the middle of the table, between his dime boxes, 5/$1 boxes, etc.

None of them are priced, and if it was anybody but him, I wouldn't even bother -- but after buying stuff from him for over three years now, I know that once you ask him how much? He's not going to reach for a Beckett, or check anything on his phone -- he'll just look at everything, and give you a price, a price that is usually negotiable too. So what was the price that I was quoted for all of the above? $42... sold! Even though his prices are always low, I still expected the quote to be higher.

If anybody thinks that that price seems like a lot, well, you remember that Frank Thomas short print? It looks like that when it does come up on eBay, $40 or more, is not an uncommon selling price. I'm sort of feeling a bit guilty about that one, I might have to let him know about it the next time I see him, and give him a few extra bucks too. If it was someone else, I might not feel the same way about it, but it's Jim!

 

Behind his sports GU/auto's box, Jim usually has some non-sport relics/autos stacked up, this time being no exception, but he had also had a small stack of what were clearly tobacco cards back there as well. I might have missed them, had another dealer not come over and inquire about them. I guess that guy didn't think that he could flip them (even though I didn't hear a price being quoted), because he walked away, and then I pounced.

Jim knew that they were German tobacco cards, and that was about it, which was fine, because that's all I knew about 'em too.

Initially I was only interested in three of them, but when I asked for a price, Jim said "just the three?", to which I replied, "yeah, well... unless there's a discount for taking all of them". So he looked through the stack one more time, and said "how about four bucks?", which sounded like a really great deal for all sixteen of them, so I of course accepted.

I still haven't gotten around to trying to research this Schienen-Wunder set yet, but I will one of these days.

Jim had so much vintage this time, that some of it even made it's way into his dime boxes, namely a bunch of mid 70's basketball. Most of it was 1974-75 Topps, a set that I'm almost done with. Even though I figured that I wasn't going to need any of it, I still grabbed all of the nicer one's just in case any of them were in better shape than my copies.

On the following day when I was going through them, I was stunned to find that I actually needed two of them. With those removed from the checklist, I'm down to needing only seven.

I also found this 1972-73 Topps in his dime boxes as well. It's got a little bit of staining, but since I never come across vintage hockey cards, I thought it was still pretty cool. I thought it was kind of funny too, to see that COMC has this listed as the Stanley Cup's rookie card.

Moving on to a different seller, a guy named Tom, who was the only other person that I bought from that day. I've seen Tom set-up there a couple of times before (he's not a regular), but other than the exchanging of pleasantries, I had never really talked to him before. We ended up talking for about 20 minutes, which was kind of nice because my social anxiety usually prevents me from having such lengthy interactions. Although I think that my brain was too occupied with the ever increasing temperature inside the gym to notice that I was actually talking to someone. By 10am, the real feel outside was over 100 degrees, and I swear that it must have been like 90 inside, because I was getting a tad bit uncomfortable (understatement).

I don't know if the AC was having a problem or what, but it just kept getting hotter and hotter in there, and after having been there for three hours, I was now thinking that it might be a good time to leave. I probably didn't look through Tom's stuff as much as I should have, because he had a lot of good stuff, and a much larger spread than I've seen him have in the past. That being said, I still picked up quite a few neat things (more of which will be in subsequent posts).

Oh, and that '69 Lou Michaels up above, that was in a dime box, I was hoping that I would find more from that set, but the rest of that box was just mid 70's, aka stuff that I'm not collecting. I didn't look at my checklists at all, so I did end up with a few duplicates, Lou being one of them, so he's available if anyone's interested.

And one other thing to note, I ran out of usable sunlight on the day that I was doing these pictures, so the rest of the cards in this post were scanned. I only mention it because the scans look terrible to me.

The Hank Bauer was a buck, which didn't seem too bad considering that he's a high number. The Cepeda and Morgan were $2 each. All three of these are likely going to be part of some new mini-collections (I'm going all in on this approach to collecting).

All former PCL guys, and all were 20 cents each.

The condition of most of Tom's vintage cards was pretty amazing. These kind of got mixed up, so I can't remember which cards came from what box, but some were from the 5/$2 box, and then a couple were from the 5/$1 box -- not that it makes too much of a difference though, as they were really well priced either way.

The two 72's were in the 5/$1 box, I think I might already have both of them, but I still haven't double checked yet. Red was only a dime!

And finally, some more 72's from the 5/$1 box. Boog's a duplicate, so if anyone needs him, don't be shy about saying so.

Originally I had planned on doing three card show posts this week, but I've just been too tired to work on them, but I'll have one more on Saturday. And if I can be a little less rambly, maybe I can crank out the rest for next week, as I don't want to drag these out for too long.


Thanks for taking a moment (or two) to look at my page.

Sparkle, Sparkle!

As I mentioned in the beginning of the previous post, this past Saturday was a card show day, and not just any old card show day, no, this was one of the twice a year card show on steroids days... featuring 180 tables of pure cardboard nirvana. Oh, and the Beckett grading people were there, as well as the JSA folks, and for the third time in the last year and a half, Denny McClain was there to sign stuff.

Having not been to a show since the last big one in September, I had been looking forward to this day for quite a while now, and thankfully the show didn't disappoint (not that I thought it would).

As far as getting there goes, it was pretty uneventful, got up at 3am so that I could hit the road by 5am in order to get there at/or before 7am. Although I did see two bunnies and a deer practically right after I got out of the driveway, so that was nice, and it must've been a good omen as the rest of the drive there ended up being quite pleasant.

I was surprised to see how many people were already there when I arrived shortly before seven, as the main crowds don't usually arrive until an hour or two later. It seemed to be rather crowded the entire time I was there, thankfully though, I left a little earlier than normal (ran out of money) so my anxiety didn't get as bad as it usually does by the time I leave. And as always, I enjoyed seeing where everyone was coming from via the license plates in the parking lot. I lost count, but I think this show beat the old record of 12 different states being represented, including an Arizona and a New York (he was a dealer, his accent gave him away) this time. Maybe it's just because I hate long drives, but I couldn't imagine driving to Nashville all the way from Arizona... that's just crazy!

As I mentioned in the last post too, since everything I bought pretty much fits into six different categories, I'm going to make these recaps a little easier by separating them into six different posts. Since the vintage stuff seems to always be the most popular, I had fully intended to start with that, but apparently the lighting wasn't good enough when I did pictures, so all the whites look yellowish... and just won't do, so instead I'll be starting with all of the glittery/sparkly stuff, aka the polar opposite of vintage.

I hit a bit of 2011 Topps Platinum Diamond Anniversary mother lode while going through my favorite seller's (Jim) quarter boxes, and I guess before I get too far along, I should probably mention that everything in this post came from two different sellers, and nothing was more than 25 cents.

If anyone's interested, the J.J. Hardy and Joel Pineiro were duplicates.

In terms of star power, the MadBum was by far the best of these Platinum Diamond's. 26 of these cards were new to me, and they almost doubled the amount of cards that I now have from this set.

Also from the 2011 Topps set, I found a couple of the Cognac's. The Banks and Sandberg are variations, of the legends variety, so it was pretty cool to find those for a quarter as they usually go for a couple of bucks apiece. The Ernie Banks is also my favorite card in this post.

Even though the scans don't show it, these cards (in my opinion) are more sparkly than shiny, which I feel need to mention because the next post is reserved for shiny cards, and I spent a couple of minutes trying to figure which cards should go in which posts.

Ooh, more Platinum Diamond's, this time from the 2011 Topps Lineage.

I love this set so much, but like everything else, I didn't know of it until a couple of years after it came out.

Of all the Topps parallels, I think the 2012 Golden Moments is the set that I have the most of. I really like the active AL batting average leaders, the base card's cool too, but it's just so much better in glimmering gold. This is another set that, in person, seems more sparkly than shiny.

I bought this Piazza mainly because of it's sparkly nature, and also because I couldn't recall ever seeing a card from this set before. I have since found out that it's a Nth Degree parallel from the 1995 Score Summit set. I don't know if I'll end up keeping it or not, but for the moment I sure do enjoy looking at it.

And finally, another card from a set that I don't recall ever having seen before. From checking COMC, I have been able to ascertain that the 1993 Collector's Edge had a five-card John Elway insert set, which came in three different versions. This one that I found is of Taraus Technologies Prisms variety, and under the right conditions, could seriously mess up your eyes. I was torn on which post this one should go in, I guess if anybody reading this has one, you can tell me which category you would've put it in. This is also another one that I don't if I'll be keeping or not, but either way, it sure is cool looking.

If you still haven't gotten your fill of gaudy cards, you'll want to come back for the next post, as it too will be full of brightly coated pieces of cardboard.

Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.