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

Trade 605: Spoiled with this one

A nice bit of trades have happened lately on the TCDB website for me.  I have a pair that I'm going over in the next 2 posts, which includes this evening's courtesy of Bill, a long time trade partner.

Bill hit a few of my want lists.  Set wants and player wants.  Simple.  Great stuff.  Needed.

2013 & 2014 A&G.  If it isn't short printed in this scan, it's a star card.  NICE!  The 2013 set is right at 80%, well within range of being completed sometime soon.  2014?  Well that one isn't so close; I just hit the 200-card mark with this lot so there is a ways to go.  I've been trying to get some cards from these 2 sets, along with the 06 & 07 original Allen & Ginter sets in trades on the site.  

Lots of blue and white in this scan.  Sundin and Potvin collections, 3 more each.  The Marner's will go into the Leafs collection.  Even though they are down 3-0 against the Panthers, I'll always cheer on the team.  I hope that they at least get one win from this series tonight; a 4-game sweep after the 19-year drought was broken will probably tarnish the accomplishment.  

Thank you for the trade Bill, it is appreciated!

Next trade post, it won't be pedestrian.

Robert

The 5 and dime

I got lucky figuring out a title for this post.  I was going to try and think of something to reflect the year that these cards all have in their names.  1972. But the number of cards just worked out great and here we go with another post.

1971-72 O-Pee-Chee, 5 cards in total.  59 cards remaining to finish the set, almost parallel with the 45 cards that I need to finish my 1959 Topps baseball set.  I've begun to start pecking away at the '59 set here and there (Bill Skowron is on the way from an eBay purchase), and I probably will start to do the same thing with this set.  Each set has a trio of cards that I can think of off the top of my head that will cost $100+ each, so those will probably be the last to come off the books.

The NL pitching leaders card I thought was a steal at $1.34.  Most of the other cards in these 2 1972 Topps scans were at or below that price, including one high number card....

I hunted quite a bit during the last purchase on COMC for cards as cheap as I could get, and the Cesar Gutierrez is one of the few 700 or higher numbered cards I have, and it was just over $3.  I know that over time I'll be spending that kind of money to get of the higher numbers in hand. 

250 cards to go for the '72 set.  Which is just under a third.  Lots of stars to acquire.  Not a lot of money to spend.  Fingers crossed I can get them for cheap.

I wish there was a 5 and dime store I could buy them from.

Robert

52% of your daily fiber

A while back I received a Plain White Envelope in the mail, another of the many trades that I've received from fellow TCDB site members.  I had written down the title for this post on an index card, but I wish that I had saved the cardboard cutout that was used as a stiffener so I could show it off.

After a little bit of searching, I found the image on Google:

With a little bit of thought, I put the fiber in the cereal together with the cardboard I received and came up with the idea.  Now I doubt that the number of cards I'm going to show this evening will amount to 52% of the total that you're going to see today on all the blogs, but here's hoping!!

First up, the scans are a little better.  2nd, 16 cards off of the want list of the '70 Topps set that I've largely ignored for a couple years.  A few names you may recognize such as Jim Spencer, Mike Lum, Zoilo Versalles (who doesn't look very happy with his photo being taken) and Mike Torrez.

I'm also beginning to appreciate the cards such as the AL Playoff in the top center of the first scan.  Over the years they tend to focus on the stars, and naturally the teams that were successful in the playoffs.  

I'm further along than I thought for the 1970 Topps set, just over 60% complete.  It's another set that I started picking up here and there when I lived in PA a few years ago, and still hit it from time to time.

A couple of checklists, the AL RBI leaders' card, and a few names such as Mota, Gaston that you may recognize.  Also, the Dave Concepcion rookie that I got for under $3 and Catfish Hunter that I believe was around $2 were also some nice pickups from the 12 cards of the '71 set.  

The '71 set is more of an off again, still off again set that I've bought cards from over time; just over 300 cards in and I still can't seriously call this a set build.  If I ever get a couple of other sets done (68,69,72, etc.) maybe I'll get more serious about chasing it.  

Maybe 28 cards won't get you 52% of your daily recommended cardboard; I'd settle for even just 1%.  If that's the case, then you've had a good card day.

Robert

6 - 4 - 3 Double play

For me, this is post 2,131.  If it were consecutive games, it would break Lou Gehrig's record.  Is this the Cal Ripken of posts?  Hardly.  But it's another one in the bank.

I didn't hit as much on the '69 Topps want list as I did on the '68s, just 13 cards off.  But still it made a dent.

6 pack:  not bad condition on these cards.  Nothing expensive at all in this group, the Mike Paul high number card was just $1.24.  The Pirates rookie stars card was just half that.  

4 square:  Long time manager Dick Williams in this group managed just over 3000 games in his career, I was too young to remember him as the Red Sox, Angels or A's manager.  But I do remember his time in Montreal, especially losing the 81 LCS to the Dodgers.  Still remember the Rick Monday homer in Game 5 off of Steve Rogers in the 9th inning.

3 in a row:  Love the newspaper style front on the Lou Brock card.  The 10-1 win was a "romp" in the headline but graduated to a massacre in the text below.  Dramatic

I've always liked the '69 All Stars cards as well.  American League in red, National in Green/Blue (hard to tell).  still have to get quite a few more of the bigger name AS cards; that will come in time.

This block of 13 got me over the 75% completion plateau.  155 to go including the Reggie Jackson rookie and last year Mickey Mantle card.  Another set that may take a long time to complete, but still having fun putting it together after over a decade since I started building it.

Robert

The almost 3 %

I know I unloaded a bit on the blog a few days ago, mostly about my job and the worries I've had about potentially losing.  For any of you who paid attention, I am still employed (thankfully) and quite relieved.  

Believe it or not, I do have a bit of an itch to get writing again; yes, I know I've said this many times on the blog in the past.  Now it's time to put up or shut up.

Going to start a little run of posts about the recent COMC order that I received back in April.  Today is the 68's, 16 cards altogether.

Still not the greatest of scans as I still need to figure out how to not cut off tops and bottoms of cards.  Phil Niekro was probably the biggest spend of this lot at just under $3.  I remember watching Mark Belanger at short for the Orioles in the 70's as my baseball fandom was just beginning to bloom.  1968 was Mark's first full season with O's and he was as light hitting in his early days as he was later on, hitting just .208 

I remember Doug Rader from the Blue Jays first season back in 1977 (funny how it seems I remember that team better than more recent squads).  He wasn't part of the expansion draft; he was purchased from the Padres before the 1977 season and found enough ABs to hit 13HR and have a .240 average.  1977 was his last season in the majors as the Jays released him in March of '78 and his career in the majors ended.

Love the name Bobby Wine.  Nothing more on these 4 cards other than we need more alcohol based player names.   Jimmy Bourbon.  Walt Whiskey.  You know, things that are interesting.

The 16 cards that I received knocked almost 3 % off of the want list.  Not bad, still a lot cards to go, many of which will be out of reach for a long time on this budget based collectors dreams.  But I'll keep on trying to put the set together, and who knows?  Maybe one day I'll get lucky and have a Nolan Ryan Rookie Card gifted to me.

Right.

Robert

Just added one

All over the place.  I'm still all over the place when it comes to my collection.  But as my last post mentioned, I've finished one set and am close to another.

What does that leave me, about several dozen sets left to go?  That's OK though, I'm sticking with my preferred method of operation.  Slow (putting them together) and low (prices, that is the only way).  With the long-time process of the '59 Topps set being put together still ongoing, I added one, just one, to the binder this week.

$4.  Rocco Colavito.  Not a beautiful card, but not bad.

I certainly will not get the last 45 cards I need for the set at prices of $4 (most of them will have a zero, or two, at the end) but when I saw this on eBay I couldn't pass up the opportunity.  

I'm likely going to stick with the one at a time process now to whittle down the want list for '59 Topps.  I've been building the set for so long now that prices have gone way beyond my budget.  Guess I'm going to have to find a side gig to get it done.

Robert

Another A&G set complete

It took a couple of separate transactions to obtain the final 3 cards to finish the 2009 Allen & Ginter set recently.

  

This pair of cards came from my recent purchase from COMC which consisted of a few SPs from the 2013 and 2014 A&G sets, along with a boatload of singles from vintage sets from 1968-1972.  I ordered shipping from the site on April 1st, and they quoted me a date of April 24th for shipping.  COMC hit that date right on the nose, and 3 days later I had my cards in hand.  Not too shabby!!  Combined the pair of cards cost me about $4.50.

The Michael Phelps card came from an eBay purchase a couple months ago, not quite as cheap as the other pair above, but at $6 +PWE shipping I was able to consider the card worth it and it arrived before the others.  

This marks the 9th complete A&G set in my collection.  2020 A&G has one card to get (Tatis) for #10.

I haven't started 2022 A&G set, I may just do that set purely by trades.  Still thinking on that.  But for now, all is good!

Robert