Grabbed a few to move the twins closer together

Been a few days since I posted, but I did receive a nice package at the beginning of the week that was designed to move the '59 Topps want list and the 71-72 OPC want list a little closer together.  

Quite a few of the 71-72 OPC cards have some awful head shots; meaning in the case of Larry Hillman, the head of Larry was placed on a goalie's body.  Had to look twice to reinforce to myself that Larry was a defenseman.   It also looks like the neck is being strangled by the jersey.  

I was very happy that the 8 cards cost about $24, considering that there a few cards with some good names such as Giacomin and Berenson, and a couple of rookie cards as well.  

I haven't quite caught up with the 1959 Topps want list, which is at just 43 cards with one on the way.  But it sounds a lot better that 1971-72 OPC is down to just 50 remaining.  I think I may be able to get one more purchase similar to this one to knock down a few more cards at once to twin the two sets.   Then more of the big names will start. 

Ugh!

Robert

Damn disappointing, well maybe 2/3 wasn't so bad

So I hit ebay last Friday, had an idea to start knocking down a pair of want lists at the same time.  The idea worked, but then when the third card arrived I was a bit disappointed.  It was my own fault though, as you'll read soon enough.

My goal is to start grabbing some cards off of a pair of long time builds.  '59 Topps was one of them.  I keyed on this card during my search and found a copy for less than $20, which for me was very exciting as any time you find a card from a vintage set featuring Willie Mays on the front for less than $20, you have to do the happy dance.   My balance hasn't been good lately, so I stuck to a large grin when it arrived.

43 cards to finish this set.  I'm hoping I can get it done before too long.

Now, the disappointing part.

My thought is to "twin" these sets in pursuit of finishing them both.  With the '59 Topps now at 43 cards, the 71-72 OPC hockey set seemed like a good idea to twin them and work on completing them both at the same time.  Sounds like a good idea right?

Knock off a couple of cards for the 71-72 set as it was at 59 cards left on the want list, so grabbing these two for a little over $10 total was a no-brainer,  right?

Partly the seller's fault on this mistake, but mostly I'm crediting myself with the error.  As you can plainly see, the Goring is the OPC version.  Beauty!

The Gilbert is the 71-72 TOPPS version.  I looked again, the auction plainly said 71-72 OPC Rod Gilbert.  I was so happy to grab the card at just under $5 that I didn't look at BOTH pictures on the listing.   The front, no problem.  The 2nd picture has the back of the card.  If I had looked at it, I wouldn't have bought it.  

Not going to complain to the seller, had I looked closer....

I'm now down to 58 cards.  There's a bunch on the way.  The want lists for these 2 sets will be a little closer before too long.  Then we hit the big boys at the end.  Wonder what order I'll choose to chase the big names.

Robert

Trades 607 & 608: Colorado from Canada, and my first trade to SD

I spent my morning off today working on the mess of cards that I had acquired over the past couple of months.  I'd been procrastinating putting them away to their rightful places, and this morning was spent taking care of that.

Now, I have a pair of trades that I've removed from the acquired pile, scanned them both, and now I've started building up a new pile of cards to put away.  Nothing serious mind you, but it's a start.

Curtis from up in Canada came through with several cards I needed for A&G sets, especially hitting the oldest two, 2006 & 2007.  Curtis is a Rockies collector and I hope he only dipped into some duplicates here to help me on my set building pursuits.   Thank you Curtis, especially for your patience with me on this deal!

1984 Topps football is only a recent addition to my football set pursuits.  I looked at my TCDB page to see how many I have in hand so far, the total was better than I thought.  92 cards out of the 528 in hand.  

Nabbing these three was via a trade with Carl in South Dakota, my first foray into that state.  One day I'll have to check and see just how many States I can cross of the list for having traded with.  

The trades are coming along really nice, I have 4 more in the hopper, one of them heading to Sweden (first trade there as well).  

I've hit double digits for posts in a month for the first time in 2 years.  Trying to keep it going!!

Robert

3 > 5

Hit up eBay a couple of weeks ago, looking to stay within the $30 a week budget with a few vintage purchases.  I wound up finding 5 cards from one seller, and 3 from another.  

1968 Topps football.  All of them less than $1.39 apiece.  The Andre White is a bit off center but overall I spent just under $8 to get these home.  My favorite part of the cards is the old time logos in the upper right corner on the front.  Reminds me of vintage all day.

Another thing that I like about chasing this set is the size.  219 cards total is a very achievable size for me to collect and 29 cards in I still think that I can build this reasonably quickly (less than a few years).

I put these 3 cards in my watch list, and the next day I had discounts offered on all 3!!  The Bosch and Allen cards are high numbers from the '68 set and they are in really nice shape.  $3.50 apiece was a good deal that came my way.  The Bill Skowron '59 Topps card was my original focus when I started surfing for cards.  It wound up being just $5.50, and it knocks down the want list for this set to 44 cards.  

For these purchases, the 3 is definitely greater than the 5.  Both in price and in sets that are being actively chased.  

I have another card for the '59 Topps set that I picked up for a nice price recently, that one will be part of a post when I receive another purchase in the mail.

Robert

TCDB Trade 606: Are you ready for some football?

Received a trade offer from Chris after the Leafs won the first round to celebrate the long overdue series win.  Less than two weeks later, I have the cards which I'll show off here, but the Leafs are done and we're waiting for football training camps to start up in a couple of months.

The trade was more hockey centric rather than the football, but I received a nice share of both sports to trim down some want lists.

A couple of different seasons of O-Pee-Chee starts us off.  Funny how things change; Nick Cousins was a Philadelphia Flyer a few seasons ago, and he scores the Game 5 winner to send the Leafs packing.  His teammate, Carter Verhaeghe, was a Leaf for a short time several years ago before they let him move on, and now he's on to the semifinals which will probably start sometime mid-week.

I don't recall ever seeing the Generations card from Fleer Ultra, both I love that they honored the talent from Sweden that has been a part of the Maple Leafs from the 70's until today.  I was very sad to see Borje Salming pass away a few months back; I remember him from my early days of being a Leaf fan anchoring the defense, and being a warrior against a tough Flyers team during their pair of Cup winning seasons in the mid 70's.

I'm slowly managing to piece together the run of Topps football sets from the late 60's to the mid 80's.  For the longest time I wasn't really interested in building these sets, but now over the course of the past few months I have had some fun starting to put them together, and reminiscing about the players from the 70's and 80's that brought a lot of memories back.  I've only recently started the 1980 Topps set which are seen here with the Cliff Branch/Mark Cotney cards.  10% done on this one, a long way to go but no hurry because of all the other sets I'm trying to put together.  

Thank you for the trade Chris, it is appreciated!

Robert