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

5 out of 10, the Wizard is in

My COMC order finally arrived on Saturday, and the first card I'll show from the latest order finishes off my 1979 Topps set.

It isn't the greatest looking Ozzie Smith RC you'll see out there, it's a bit off center, the edges are a little rough and the top right corner isn't the greatest, but for just under $11 it does the trick for me.

Best of all, I'm halfway to finishing my 2020 goal of completing 10 sets.

Halfway doesn't last for very long, as I'll show off the last 2 cards for the 6th set tomorrow, and I'm just 3 cards shy of finishing 1976 Topps as well.

I'm already formulating plans for the next 10 sets I want to finish up, so hopefully before the summer ends I'll have that plan in place as well.

Enjoy the hobby and stay safe!!

Robert

3 down, 7 to go

Part of the COMC order that I've talked about for a couple of days was the final 14 cards from the 1983 Topps baseball set.  This falls inline with my first of the year post which defined the order of my set completions for 2020.

I started putting the cards away before realizing that I needed to write this post, so I took a half dozen of the cards that were still out and gave them a quick scan...

Not too bad a group of 6 cards, wouldn't you say?   As with most of the sets that I have that are close to the finish, most of the remaining cards are of the star variety.  All Stars in 3 cases here.

Now that '83 is complete, the next two sets in order are also very close to completion.   Both of them were also part of this COMC order.

More stars as part of the '79 final countdown, as I bought a dozen of these.  I'm finally down to just one card to finish up this set, and that's the Ozzie Smith RC.  By the time this posts, I may have already bought it, depending on whether I can find one online for a good price.  I don't want to have to wait until the monthly card show in 2 weeks to finish this off.

Once I get Ozzie bought, I'll go after the final two cards of....

2012-13 O-Pee-Chee hockey.  I've been trying to knock down the want lists of the remaining sets in the list of 10 while finishing the sets at the top.  These 4 SPs leave me with just 2 to go, both of them fairly inexpensive so once I complete the next order on COMC, I'll have 5 out of the 10 completed.

Two months into 2020, I'm very happy with how I've progressed so far.  Staying on course has always been difficult for me, as I just end up finding so many distractions.

We'll see what happens when it's '73 Topps' turn to be finished...

Enjoy the hobby!!

Robert

Just two

A big run of trades came in this past week.  7 envelopes in total, which is probably the best run I've had in the 14 months that I've been trading seriously on the TCDB website.  3 of the envelopes were light, containing just two cards each.  All of them were quite good though.

First up was a 2 for 1 deal with repeat trade partner Colin (TCDB ID: nwcardsupplies).  I sent off a Didi Gregorius card and got a couple of base cards for a couple of player collections.

I've had a pretty good run over the past 2-3 months since I've put my Jim Thome collection/want list on the site, adding a great deal of base cards in trades so far.  The Andrew McCutchen collection is still gaining ground, as that's well over the 200 card mark now.   Both of these collections still have a lot of base and minor inserts/parallels needed so those numbers should climb as the summer goes along.

I made a 4 for 2 trade with new trade partner Shane (TCDB ID: obxyankeefan), knocking a couple of star cards off of the '79 and '76 Topps want lists.  Shane was a great communicator, asking me to wait a few days until he pulled the Johnny Bench card and was able to give me an idea of the condition.  Honest all the way, and the cards arrived promptly as well.

With a few purchases on COMC, and the Bench card you see above, my '76 want list now stands at 13 cards.  The '79 set is only missing the Ozzie Smith RC, so once I find a nice copy at a decent price, that set will be complete.

This trade was the most surprising as I was only expecting the Willie Stargell card on the left from Andy (TCDB ID: BrewerAndy).  I was kind of absentmindedly taking the Stargell card out of the Card Saver inside the envelope, when I realized that the Dave Parker card was also inside.  Needless to say, that was a wow moment!

The '74 want list still is in the 80+ range, but finishing this one is a few sets away.  It's nice now though that I have both the Parker RC in hand, and the Winfield RC on its way via COMC.

Thank you to all 3 traders, great stuff filled my mailbox this week!!

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

What a difference a couple of years makes

Have 8 cards to show off for tonight's post from a regular trade partner Craig (TCDB ID: DukeyDevil).  It always has been easy to swap cards with Craig, and this time was no different.  But, when I started to scan the cards this evening to try and come up with something to write, I struggled for a few minutes.

Then it hit me.  These cards represent two portions of my card collecting life.

The first part is 3 cards from the '79 Topps BB set.

This is one of the last sets, baseball anyhow, that I remember collecting as a young lad.  Seeing these cards again reminds me of walking to the corner store and buying packs for a quarter (or something like that).  Where the cards that I had went from when I was a kid, only my mother knows.  I was 11 years old going on 12 when these cards were first released.  Still young.

Fast forward 3 years to 1982.  1982-83 to be exact.  I was 15 at the time, and have not one memory of these cards or buying any packs of them.

For a period of almost a decade, most of the 80's is a non card blur in my life.  I didn't start picking up cards again until 1990 when Upper Deck released it's first hockey set.  Seeing cards like the 5 above make me realize what I missed for those 9 years.

A lot of great sets.  I'm still working on a lot of the hockey sets from that decade.  The baseball sets, at least the ones I wanted to build, are complete.  I did a lot of things with my life in the 80's and sadly cards weren't a part of them.

I'm slowly getting that part back.  Sorry about the nostalgia, but sometimes inspiration hits in the weirdest of places.

Thank you for the cards Craig, they are always appreciated.

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

Some goodies from the monthly card show

Spent $50 at the monthly card show this past weekend, the most I've spent in quite some time.  I got some goodies for myself, and a few cards for my buddy Chris to help with his '83 Topps FB set build.  Some of the cards that I found this weekend were quite surprising to find down here in S. Florida, especially the hockey.

This wasn't in line with anything that I was working on, or hoping to find this weekend, but when I saw this in a dollar box, numbered 2 out of 10 from the '02 Chicago National, well there was no way that this Mask card of Ed Belfour wasn't finding it's way into my pile.  Love it!!

I could probably count on one hand the number of Keith Tkachuk cards I've found at the show over the past couple of years, and still have fingers left over.  This Pacific Paramount Special Delivery die cut insert is something I'd never seen before so I was more than happy to add it to the pile, along with this next card...

97-98 Donruss Preferred gold!  Another card never before seen by these eyes, so this was also a great find.  I was quite happy with these and a few others I found in the dollar boxes, such as these two Patrik Laine cards,

Rookie card and the retro variation for a dollar apiece is a bargain I couldn't leave at the show.

This turned out to be another Ichiro show; I grabbed a dozen more Ichiro's out of the dollar box, including these two serial #'d cards.  As you can see, I'm still working out the kinks of scanning with the new software.

I even grabbed a couple of serial #'d cards for some trade bait...

I've managed to pick up more Clayton Kershaw cards on the cheap at this card show than any of my own PC's.  Love how the Prizm scanned!

But the big two pickups for me were not in the dollar boxes.

For $5, I found this Larry Fitzgerald card #'d to 25

Believe it or not, that's the orange parallel.  Scans more red though, don't you think?  No matter the scan result, $5 was a good price from where I stood for a card #'d 3/25.

Last up, one of the few remaining cards for the '79 Topps set.  

Nolan cost me $8, not too bad.  The back is a bit off center, but for less than a sawbuck, I was happy to have this card finally in hand.  Down to just 3 cards needed to finish this one off.  Ozzie Smith, Pete Rose and Lou Brock are all I need to pick up.  Once that's done, we're on to 2012-13 OPC in keeping in line with the set completion order that I laid out for myself at the beginning of 2020.  

I wasn't too sure originally about finishing the 10 sets, but the way things have progress over the first 5 weeks of this year, I'm a lot more positive about finishing them all.

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

2020 is upon us. Time to finish some sets.

Happy New Year to everyone!  I do hope that you had an enjoyable evening celebrating the ringing in of a new decade.

For me, collecting in 2019 was quite enjoyable, and successful.   I completed a few sets, and I also wound up with 154 transactions on the TCDB website (which becomes www.tcdb.com as of today so update your bookmarks), far better than I ever expected to accomplish this past year.

What I want to do this year is pretty simple.   Complete 10 sets.  Easy right?  All 10 sets that I'm going to discuss have want lists of 100 cards or less, 8 of which are under 30.  How I'm going to do it will be a little bit of a challenge, because why would I make it easy on myself?

OK, so here goes.  Here are the 10 sets that I will finish this year, in order of completion. 

1981 Topps

Robin Yount is my first scan of the 20's, and finishing this set is fait accompli.  I mentioned recently that I only needed Mark Wagner to finish this set, and I received a message shortly there after from Bruno in the Great White North (thank you Bruno!) that he was willing to send me the card in a trade, so this is done.  

1982 Topps

As part of that same trade, Bruno is sending me 5 of the remaining 15 cards that I need to finish the '82 Topps set.  That left me with 10, so I hopped on COMC and picked those up.  So, this set is done and is either in transit, or will be in transit in a couple of days.  Which brings us to...

1983 Topps

This was one of 4 cards from the '83 Topps set that I received in a recent trade package (thank you Jason!) that took 3 weeks to travel from Wisconsin to Florida via the USPS.  Dog sled, no doubt.  My '83 build is down to 26 cards, with 2 of them being the Gwynn and Sandberg RCs.  I bought the  Steve Carlton base card on COMC yesterday, so this set is currently in progress.  Once this is complete, next up is..

1979 Topps

Evidence as to why Mario had trouble hitting over 200.  Donuts on the bat make it tougher to hit the ball

This is where a bit of the fun begins.  I have 24 cards left to go to finish this set.  The Ozzie Smith RC will be the one that costs the most, but there's also Nolan Ryan and a host of other star cards to pick up, so I'll be hunting to try and find them as cheap as possible, like usual.  A bit of a hurdle, so after this is done I'll drop down a bit and make things easier for myself again with...

2012-13 O-Pee-Chee

This set will be one that I'll be glad to have out of the way.   I've stalled on it for way too long, and with only 6 SPs left to go, getting this completed will bring a bit of a sigh of relief.   Brandon Manning and his $5 SP (why???) be damned, I'll finish this one in the first half of 2020 finally.  Then I'll move on to...

1976 Topps

This set completion may not be as daunting as I thought.  20 cards remaining including a George Brett 2nd year card, Ellis Valentine and Ron Guidry RCs along with 4 All Star cards and a few other big names will make it a challenge on the wallet, but it's what I signed up for with this set so I'm looking forward to working on this roughly around the start of baseball season in late March.  After this is done, I'll finally finish...

1973 Topps

Yes, I've been down to 2 cards left to go for about 2 years now.  Mike Schmidt RC and the high number series checklist.  The stalling will end this year.   I promise.  Once this is done, we'll move back to hockey and finish...

2013-14 O-Pee-Chee

27 cards left to finish this up, 2 from the base set (Andrei Sekera and Taylor Hall) and 25 SPs.  This situation actually improved while writing this post, as I had the Vladimir Tarasenko RC on my want list, which I was pretty sure I had.  Checked the box and sure enough, there it is, so that dropped the want list by one.  When this is done, I've got two want lists that are a bit bigger, so we'll start with the more recent...

1978 Topps

Still a bit of work to do on this one, with 79 cards to go.  The Molitor/Trammell RC and the Dale Murphy RC are the two big starters on finishing this one, but there's quite a few commons that should help to knock the list down to a more manageable number quickly.  Once those are in hand, several big names such as Rose and Ryan will cost a few bucks.  I also need 11 team checklist and 2 manager cards, which I thought was interesting (Night Owl, do you have a Tommy Lasorda dupe from this set?).  Once this is done, the 10th and final set from this list is...

1974 Topps

92 cards remaining to finish this set.  Let's start with Dave Parker and Dave Winfield RCs.  4 Hank Aaron Special cards at the beginning of the set.  A Ryan/Seaver combo card.  Ryan, Bench, Stargell and Rose cards.  This will take a bit of time to finish up.  But I believe with the other 9 sets above completed and distractions to a minimum (hopefully), I can knock this out in a reasonable amount of time.  

There you have it.  10 sets that I'm going to finish in 2020.  The only other thing that I can promise is that will not rip any 1/1 cards in half.  

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

Bits and pieces in chronological order

This latest COMC order showed me that I've got a lot of sets that I'm working on.  Maybe too many.  I think once I start seeing a little more clearly in 20/20 that I'll concentrate on one at a time and get them finished and off the books. 

Here's anywhere from 1 to 16 cards from eight different sets for your viewing pleasure.  Nothing amazing, just numbers off a want list....

Joe Jay brings the '59 Topps want list down to 96 cards.  I have vowed that every COMC purchase going forward will contain at least one card from this set.

1968 Topps is slowly approaching the 50 % mark.  It is already bindered, which at this point is probably the earliest into any set build that I've decided to put cards into a binder.  I usually wait until I'm well over 50%.

I always say to myself "I love '69 Topps, it's time to get serious about putting it together", and then it lags behind every other set I've got working.  Even '71 and '72 have blown past this set in terms of how many cards I have.  This will probably end up being the last set I put together from the '68 to '86 run.

A RC, a rookie cup, and the World Champions card #1.  A good trio.

I must have found this cheap, because that would explain why I only grabbed this sole '74 Topps card.

Yes, I started getting serious about finishing the '76 Topps set on this order.  16 cards down, just 20 to go.  I think this is going to be next.  Anyone got a spare Nolan Ryan from this set?

Down to 24 left for the '79 set.  This will be done very soon as well.  Lefty is a common card I've needed/bought recently as I'm whittling away at a lot of sets.

Looking for #358, Mark Wagner to finish up 1981 Topps.  That's it...

Looking forward to the new year as I really start to knock out a lot of sets.  Being focused will be a theme in 20/20.

For as long as I'm able to stick with it.

Thanks for reading!

Robert

In the nineties

This has been one helluva year for me trade wise.   I received a couple of envelopes in the mail this week, bringing my trade count for 2019 to 92. 

I honestly thought that 100 trades would be a fight right to the bitter end of the calendar year for me, but with 8 currently on the go (and 1 on "lost" status), by the first week of October I'll have hit my goal.  

Incredible...

The first envelope was another USPS surprise, making it from Washington State to Florida in 2 days.  Jim (TCDB User ID:  jmkidd) snapped up a few Seattle Seahawks cards from me, and in return I got a bit of set help and a bit of help with 3 of my player collections.

First up, the set help.  Fred Lynn's card from the '81 Topps set was a nice one to grab, along with the Saves leaders card from '78 featuring Rollie Fingers and Bill Campbell.   Would love to see the term firemen come back to the game..

The '69 Topps Darrell Brandon reminds me that the '69 set is becoming similar to my 85-86 OPC hockey build.  1 card comes in at a time, slowly nibbling away at the set.  Only problem is, I still need about 460 cards to finish the set, and that's a lot of trades at 1 card at a time!

A pair of cards each for Olerud and Fitzgerald were nice additions.   I'm actually doing quite well adding Olerud cards featuring him in uniforms of the Mets and Mariners.  T. Y. Hilton's card brings him to a paltry 19 cards, but there's a ton of base cards on my want list on the TCDB site, so I'm sure eventually that number will start climbing.

Next up is a nice lot of cards from Edward (TCDB ID: kaline6), which hit want lists for a couple of sets I expect to finish by the end of the year, along with a few other goodies.

Both the '81 and '82 sets are winding their way to completion, I believe combined they are around 100 cards from being finished.  Still some star cards to pick up here and there, but it shouldn't be a major dent to my wallet to get these done.

Four more cards off of the '79 want list takes that set below 80 cards needed to complete.  Need both the Ozzie Smith RC and the Nolan Ryan cards on that group, so that's a big maybe to see this complete by the end of the year.  And yes, the George Foster card is quite a bit off center,  you're not seeing things.

The lone wolf from the '69 set, Joe Sparma of the Tigers.  Just 10 more cards to reach the 200 mark.   Not a big priority at the moment however.

Four more cards for the Olerud collection.  Every time I write one of these posts, and see all the Blue Jays cards that I've added to the sets and player collections, I often wonder if I should just have poached my Jays collection to reduce these lists.  I'm glad that I didn't...

Thank you to both Jim and Edward for the trades, the cards are really appreciated!!

Thanks for reading!

Robert

Patience, pt. 1

We've returned unscathed from our trip up and down I-77, and I'm back to semi regular posting.  Part of the trip was stopping the mail for 2 weeks.  While we were gone a couple of trades came inbound, including one from a fellow trader also named Robert (TCDB ID: bkim).  Robert became quite concerned when the USPS website showed his package delivered, but I hadn't updated the website to show the trade as completed.

Thankfully, he was good with my explanation that the package had arrived after we had left for vacation...

This was a solid trade package, as it hit a trio of sets.  Two Padres, including Gene Richards who isn't just choking up on his bat, he's strangling it.  The Tim McCarver card is also awesome, showing off the big wad of chaw in his left cheek.  You won't see that on today's pics...

19 cards are off of the '83 Topps want list, and they're all names that I can distinctly remember playing/watching on TV as a teenager. 

Finally, 3 horizontal cards to show off, including an addition to the John Olerud collection.  I had a bit of a tough time remembering Olerud in a Yankees uniform, and then I looked up his stats and I know why.  He played just 2 months in the Bronx during the '04 season, signing with them just one week after being released by the Mariners.  2004 was also the 1st time since '91 that Olerud didn't walk more than he struck out in a season (61 walks and 61 K's that year). 

Thanks for the trade Robert!  The cards are really appreciated!

Thanks for reading!

Robert