Sunday, August 5, 2018

25% of a set for $10

Before I started writing this post, I decided to take a quick look at the latest Beckett baseball magazine that I purchased (July/18) and see how much the 1985 Topps set is priced.

Was I surprised to see that the complete hand collated set is listed for $50.  Geez, a set with Clemens, Puckett and McGwire RC's is only $50?  Those 3 rookie cards that I just listed combined go for $47.

What I read is that the remainder of the set goes for $3.  789 cards for the price of a gallon of gas.  Just can't see it.

Well, in my quest to get the 80's portion of the 1968-86 Topps run completed, I stumbled into an ebay auction for singles, 3 cents apiece.  Can't say that I've ever seen that price anywhere, online or at a show.  You know I had to test it out.

So, I sent in an order for 195 cards.   The auction said $3.75 shipping for any amount of cards, so you know the seller is losing $$ on an order this size. 

The offer came back for $9.93.   With no delay, I hit accept and PayPal was sent. 



You just never know with a seller that you've not dealt with before how things are going to turn out.  Will the cards be in reasonably good shape?



Will the cards be packaged well.  Will everything that you asked for in the order arrive?



I did quite all right here.  The package didn't come postage due.  As you can see from the scans of the first 54 cards that they are all in good shape, and the time it took for them to arrive from NJ wasn't too bad (one day later than the anticipated arrival date).

I could have gone on with scanning all the cards, but if you really need to see them all, there's a blog that can quell that thirst here.

So pulling in the 195 cards in this package has my want list down to a very manageable 63 cards.  There are 6 listed RC's left on my list, Clemens, McGwire, Saberhagen, Davis, Hershiser and Gooden.  While writing this post I hit COMC and picked up the Saberhagen RC for 61 cents, so I feel pretty good about getting the rest for cheap as well.

To be honest, I still can't get over picking up a quarter of this set for just under $10. 

Thanks for reading, Robert


1 comment:

  1. I think it's insane that 1981 to 1985 complete sets are so affordable. I guess it's a good thing for collectors like myself who don't care too much about value. It's just so shocking since I remember sets like this 1985 Topps sell for well over $100. Two or three months ago, I found a guy at the flea market with a 1985 Topps set in a binder for $25. The guy obviously swapped out nice copies of the Puckett, Clemens, and McGwire... but the rest of the set was really clean. If I didn't already own this set, I would have grabbed it.

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