One at a time, slowly but surely, the '59 Topps want list is dropping

This seems to be the M.O. lately, pick up a card for more than a quarter, it gets its own post.  Jerry Rice was yesterday, today this post is about Richie Ashburn, card #300 from the '59 Topps set.

I picked this up for $7 on eBay this past week and it arrived yesterday.  I didn't know much at all about Richie and kind of wondered why his cards were in the 7-15 dollar range on the site.   So I turned over the card and looked at the back...

That man, right there, is a hitter.  Love the cartoon up top saluting his 4 four hit games in '58.  Seeing this card back made me go to the baseball reference website to get a look at his career numbers.

Right off the bat, Hall of Fame.  Didn't know that.  

5 times he had 90 or more walks, led the NL 4 times.   Impressive

Twice led the NL in triples, 3 times in double digits in that stat.   Speed to burn, which makes sense since he played centerfield for his entire career.  

His biggest home run output?  7, in his final season that he played with the NY Mets in 1962.   Short fences?

Only struck out 50 times in a season once.   That's it.  He walked a little over 2 times for every strikeout during his entire career.  You will not see that from today's players.  

I love learning about players like this, great bat, not much power, get on base a lot (.396 career OBP).  

Just 62 cards to go to finish the set.  I'm going to be optimistic and say I'll have this one done sometime in 2022.

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

Patience pays off

I've been digging away at a lot of different want lists lately.  '59 Topps, the run of Allen & Ginter sets and so on.  I have even made a nice start on the '79 and '81 Topps football sets, knocking out almost 25% of each in the past few months.

But '86 Topps football has largely gone to the wayside, largely because the set is almost done.  Some of the cards are in COMC purgatory, which is fine as it appears that the site is making strides in getting caught up with shipments.

The big piece that I've been looking to purchase as cheaply as possible is the Jerry Rice rookie card.  I kind of relegated myself to paying at least $75 or more as that's all I've seen on eBay for the past few months.   Then this copy showed up:

You can see instantly in the corners that a lot of the green has "disappeared" for the lack of a better word.   But I took a long look at the card, decided that this set was being collected because I loved the look of it and not for the investment and pulled the trigger on the purchase.

The big reason why?   It was only $25.

I'd been looking somewhat actively for the past 2+ months for this card.   Then this one drops in my lap.  Credit to the seller for being what I say is spot on with the price considering the condition.  

Patience has paid off for me many times.  I'm hoping that it continues as I work towards finishing some other sets.

Enjoy the hobby!!

Robert

One for the Mantle

The '59 Topps run of purchases I've made lately is still coming in.  Don Larsen came in on Thursday (showed him off on twitter) and yesterday came a card that may be a bit flawed, but I'm still happy to have paid as little as I paid for it.

A bit of ink at the top and the corners are soft, but for just under $40 I have the Mickey Mantle baseball thrills card from the '59 set in hand.  Never would have believed that I could find this card for less than $50, let alone below $40.  But when I saw it I knew that I'd probably never see anything like this again at this price.

The set now has 64 cards to go with a lot of them being more affordable than the card above.  It's just a matter of finding cards that I enjoy at a price I enjoy paying!

For anyone who has looked at my want lists lately on the blog, you may have noticed that they look slightly different in spots.  I was able to find a feature on the TCDB website in which you could copy and paste your want list from their site to the blog by number, such as the '59 Topps want list I've pasted below.  

This is a handy feature for me as I'll have to do less bookkeeping now when updating my want lists on the blog.   Copy and paste is much easier than hunting for card numbers on both lists.

Enjoy the hobby!!

Robert

1959 Topps want list (64 cards)

1, 10, 20, 40, 50, 76, 90, 149, 150, 163, 180, 202, 212, 222, 240, 248, 251, 268, 270, 300, 317, 338, 355, 360, 380, 387, 390, 420, 430, 439, 463, 467, 478, 509, 510, 514, 515, 518, 519, 524, 526, 528, 533, 536, 537, 538, 542, 543, 545, 548, 550, 552, 553, 555, 557, 558, 559, 561, 562, 564, 567, 570, 571, 572