These 5 sets aren't next

It's nice that I made some progress on the sets that I'm going to show, but it's also a bit sad to know that I have a ton of sets that I'd like to finish.  The sets below range in completion from around 35% to in the 60's, but they're not on the set completion radar yet.

My introduction to the modern OPC sets was the 2007-08 OPC set that I found fat packs of in a Wal Mart one day.  I've now the mindset that OPC sets from the past that I'm going to finish are going to be started SPs first, thus making the pain of the final few cards hopefully a lot lighter.  These 9 cards ranged in the 30 to 50 cent range, just perfect for me and I'm sure that sellers priced them that way in order to move them from their inventory.  That and outside of PA Parenteau in the top center, there aren't any players that had a decent career in the NHL on this page.

I have another envelope coming from Sportlots as they notified me the day after they sent my box that they forgot one envelope of 20 cards.  These two sets will be a good chunk of those cards, as I found a seller that's selling commons at anywhere from 18-25 cents, which works for me.   I was a bit off on my opening paragraph, the 85-86 OPC set is nowhere near 1/3 complete, it's actually 1/6 done so there's a long way to go. 

One of my favorite sets of the 80's and one that I'll be glad to have completed again, the 84-85 set took a nice jump with these 13 cards.  As I'm going through my next 10 sets, I'll probably end up continuing to pick off commons as cheaply as I can, avoiding finding the Steve Yzerman RC for as long as possible.   Took a quick look on eBay for the Yzerman RC while writing this, and the cheapest copy is just over $40, and you can clearly see a corner that is nowhere near sharp.

Moving on from mid 80's OPC we come to more modern shiny cards with the 2013-14 Prizm set.  I remember seeing these in Wal Mart a few years ago and loving the look of them.  Had I known then what I know now, I wouldn't have kept on buying them as the last 100 cards of the set are all rookies, and there were some good names among the final 3rd of the set so it'll likely be a while before I start chasing this one more vigorously. 

Going through the Sportlots box has been a blast because I knocked about 200 cards off of my massive want lists, but seeing just how much I still want makes me think sometimes if I've taken on way too much and get myself overwhelmed.

Enjoy the hobby!!

Robert

Out of one, many

Many will know the common Latin phrase used on American currency e pluribus unum, translated means out of many, one.

Well, I received a trade in the past week that had me thinking just the opposite.  For one Wayne Gretzky card, I received many cards in return from new trade partner Charles (TCDB ID: CharlesD).  Charles helped me with a trio of hockey sets, and a card for a couple of player collections.

Likely to be one of the next 10 sets up for completion is the 18-19 OPC set, which after a strong couple of trade months is down to 70 cards, 20 base and 50 SPs.  16 of the 50 are the team checklists, so I'm hoping to get them for a reasonable price, along with a good chunk of the rookies that I have left, many of which haven't established themselves in the NHL yet.

Still moving along very slowly is the 85-86 build, with only 38 cards in hand.  Nice to get a trio of star cards out of this trade.  Still a long way to go and a lot of big names to acquire, but this is one set that I'm looking forward to the fun of the chase.

Not far behind my love for 85-86 is the 86-87 OPC set, a little further along with 72 cards in hand, or just over a quarter of the set.  Again, nothing but stars in this group which is always good.  Some guy by the name of Patrick Roy and his rookie card are what's going to slow this build down at the end.   Again, the fun of the chase, right?

More additions to to a pair of my hockey player collections; especially nice is the Mats Sundin jersey card from the 07/08 Black Diamond set, #'d out of 100!   It's kind of funny that I appreciate trades for hockey cards more in the summer time than I do in the winter.   Wonder why that is....

Thank you for the trade Charles, the cards are really appreciated.

Enjoy the hobby!!

Robert

Remembering the good old days like it was 6 years ago

I like to poke fun at myself, and the less extensive blogging numbers I've posted over the past few years.  A fair bit has gone on in my life, I've moved twice (once long distance) and kind of settled into semi-retirement life in a warmer climate.  I call it semi-retirement despite the fact that I'm still working full time, my vacations are more stay at home now, as I'm located somewhere that makes me feel like I'm on a vacation all the time.

Back to blogging, the reason I bring it up today is tonight's post is the 20th this month, and it's the first time I've hit 20 posts for 2 months consecutive since 2014.  I guess you could say I'm truly enjoying collecting, and writing about it again.  I believe that the main reason is my shift from chasing packs, which I was still doing a couple of months ago, to focusing on finishing sets and trading.  Spending $20 on ebay instead of packs is more enjoyable now, since I'm getting cards that truly fit into what I'm trying to accomplish with my collection.

I bought just 5 cards for $19 from my usual ebay haunt, The Battersbox, and I'm starting off with another number off of the 1959 Topps want list.  Seeing this card proves to me that Tony Kubek never really aged; I watched him for many years do the color commentating on Blue Jays telecasts in Canada, and he looked the same in the 80's as he did on this photo in '59.

Now, just have to find Thurman Munson and the '76 set is complete.  Tom Terrific was $2.75.

I have had very good luck finding decent copies of star player cards at reasonable prices lately.  Killebrew's '72 Topps card cost me just $3.25 and I'm quite happy with it.

For less than $3, I got this 73-74 OPC Alex Delvecchio card.   I was even more thrilled when I had it in hand, because the condition is super!!  It's even more so important on this card because it's #1 in the set, and especially 70's hockey I find it's tough to find really nice condition on the first and last cards of the set.

By the way, Delvecchio played the previous season with the Wings as a 41/42 year old, and still managed almost a point a game (71 pts in 77 games).

Sometimes cards just find you.  I was looking for one more hockey card to add to the order, and happened upon this 85-86 Gretzky league leader card.  $3.25 for a LL card for the Great One is really cheap, so there was no hesitation adding this to the cart.  $19 for the 5 cards, and free shipping and I have my "blaster" in hand.

__________________________________________________________________________

Post #1960 features Ray Boone's card from the '60 Topps set.  I always thought that Ray was a catcher, obviously confusing him with his son Bob whom I grew up watching in the 70's and 80's.  1960 was Ray's final year in MLB, splitting his time with the Braves and the Red Sox.

Not a bad card, a bit lopped off the bottom left corner, but no doubt I bought it for cheap a few years ago.  It'll do if I ever decide to chase the '60T set...

Enjoy the hobby!!

Robert

dAndy

Sometimes the end result of waiting for a long time for a trade to come in is well worth the wait.  Case in point with this trade from multiple time trade partner Andy (TCDB ID: andyroy) who sent me a big helping of cards to make a few want lists shrink quite nicely.

I still remember sitting at a kitchen table with a buddy of mine 30 years ago, ripping open a box of these cards.  We split the proceeds in half, and they promptly went in one of my many monster boxes and sat for over 2 decades.  I finally decided to get a want list going about 18 months ago, and piece by piece this want list has shrank.

I just looked at the want list, and it's down to just 29 cards, much less than I thought.  This set is definitely on the radar now for completion as the task is a lot less daunting than I imagined.  I'll get that done sometime in 2020.....for sure??

The 85-86 OPC set build is the exact opposite of its counterpart above, as it only has 34 cards in hand as of now.  I'm finally starting to get some in here and there via trading, but it's been a very slow process for this set, which is probably my favorite from the 80's.

The only portion of the trade that saw any baseball come my way was these three cards for the Thome and Olerud collections.  The Olerud collection is starting to pick up a little since I expanded the want list, and it's just a handful of cards shy of the 200 mark.   Thome's collection, which I've been working on for much longer, is now 20 cards from hitting 600, and I had to add a 2nd binder as the first one was just too overloaded and a bit tough to manage each time I opened it.

The last scan is nearly a full page of needs for my various hockey collections, including a much appreciated Mitch Marner card from the 2017-18 Tim Horton's set.

This envelope actually arrived via the Pony Express, as it was mailed in April and didn't arrive until Friday of last week, about 5 weeks enroute.  In the end, it was worth the wait.

Thank you for the trade Andy, it is appreciated!  Looking forward to the next one.

Enjoy the hobby and stay safe!

Robert

A few sets that aren't anywhere near complete

Early 80's hockey is easily one of my favorite eras, and I'll be glad for the day when I can say that I own all the OPC sets from 80-81 through 85-86.  My latest TCDB trade netted me some more cards from that era, courtesy of a repeat trader.

I believe that this is the 3rd trade I've completed with Kevin (TCDB ID: kdinthejaw), and I was fortunate enough to knock off a dozen cards from various want lists.

I don't know what it is about the 85-86 OPC set, but it is probably my favorite design, both front and back, of the front half of the 80's OPC releases.  Unlike yesterday's 4 card post, these 4 players played a lot of games in the NHL, with Sylvain Turgeon having the lowest number of games at 669.  These 4 cards finally put me over the 10% mark with 27 cards in hand out of the 264 card set.

Fortunate enough to get a lot of star power in this trade, as the 82-83 portion features Mark Messier and Paul Coffey, and Middleton gets a 2nd appearance here in the 84-85 set.

What's great for me having Canadian trade partners is they have cards that I'd never see down here in the deep south, such as the Felix Potvin 17-18 Upper Deck Canadian Tire release in the upper left corner of this last scan.

The 93-94 Ultra Mats Sundin is probably one of the final releases that featured him in a Nordiques jersey before he was traded to Toronto.  Kevin even snuck in a Mark Ingram card that I needed from '18 Prestige football as an added bonus.

Sadly, none of the three 80's hockey sets featured here are anywhere near complete; 2 of them are barely off the ground (82-83 and 85-86) while the 84-85 set is a little over half done.  There's probably a couple dozen sets ahead of them in line for completion before these will be tackled.

Thank you for the trade Kevin, the cards are really appreciated!!

Enjoy the hobby and stay safe!

Robert

Yea, none of these will be complete set #5

Well, I finished off a trade with fellow blogger Curtis which saw me send a mixed bag of hockey, football and baseball his way, and in return my package that arrived today (after just over 2 weeks travelling via dog sled from the Canadian plains) saw me knock out a bunch of Bruins from a couple of OPC sets

That might be close to the entire Bruins team set from the 09-10 OPC set, which is coming along quite nicely I must say.  I'm about a third of the way through the base 600 card set (I won't be chasing the high number update set) which is a lot farther along than I thought I would be for just seriously starting to pursue this set a couple of months ago.  The Torey Krug in the lower right hand corner is the first card for the 14-15 OPC set that I've picked up in a while.  That set is just over 1/2 complete.

Barry Beck is just the 17th card I own for the 1985-86 OPC set.  This set will probably take me quite a long time to finish, as I seem to only be able to pick up one card at a time.  I now have just 17 of the 264 card set in hand which isn't a major concern as I know it will be well into the 2020's before I finish the set because I'm so cheap and there's that Mario Lemieux RC that I'll need to find for less than a monthly car payment.

This also marks my 60th trade completed on the TCDB website so far in 2019, well ahead of the pace for 100 trades by the end of the calendar year.

Great stuff to add to the collection, thank you Curtis, the cards are really appreciated!!

Thanks for reading.

Robert

Deep Pockets

Received a couple more trades in this week, including one today from new trade partner Greg (TCDB ID:  Thick McRunfast) who also writes the blog Nine Pockets .  Greg is a relatively new blogger with just 10 posts so far, but is much like me in that he will write about hockey and baseball cards. 

This was kind of a lopsided trade in terms of numbers, as I sent Greg just a trio of cards while receiving quite the bounty of hockey cards in return.

I recently added a couple of early 90's OPC sets to my TCDB want list.  Both of them have been on the shelf for a very long time but recently during the ongoing process of adding cards to the site and trying to clean up everything in general.  91-92 OPC Premier is 7 cards closer to completion, along with a couple more Keith Tkachuk cards to add to his PC (which is growing nicely).

Another want list that was added was the 90-91 OPC set, which is now 7 cards lighter.  I had this on the blog want list up until about a year ago and removed it as it really wasn't moving anywhere.  Along with those 7 is a pair of 86-87 OPC cards, including a 2nd year Kevin Dineen and current Sabres coach Phil Housley.  86-87 OPC is almost 1/4 complete now.

I've mentioned the 84-85 OPC set on the blog quite a bit lately, maybe to the point that guys are sending me cards to help me right the wrong I committed by selling my completed set many years ago.   9 more cards off the want list have me approaching 150 of the 396 card set in hand. 

I've seen a couple of Steve Yzerman RC's at about 50% of the normal book price on ebay lately and it makes me wonder if I pick one of those up for cheap that this set might have a chance to be completed this year.   We shall see...

I seem to be getting one card from the 85-86 OPC set in the house every month.  I have 12 now that Mike Ramsey is in hand.  I figure with 252 cards to go, one card a month will have the set complete by the time I turn 72 years of age.  Hopefully I'll still be able to see and also be sane enough to enjoy it by then....

As a bonus card, Greg threw in this Netminders insert from the 93-94 Fleer Powerplay set.   I may have one or 2 of the Powerplay cards around the house somewhere, but for the most part have shied away from it due to its size.  No matter, I love the addition to the Felix Potvin PC, which is lower down the totem pole, but new cards are always welcome.

Thank you for the cards Greg, they are appreciated.  Look forward to more trades!!

Thanks for reading!

Robert

1 if by air, 2 if by dogsled

OK, let's have a bit of fun with the post office shall we?

In my post from the 23rd, I showed off a few cards that came from Dave up in Nova Scotia, Canada.  The same day that Dave shipped his, a gentleman by the name of Hugo in Gaspe, QC (TCDB User ID: Pennytendencies), sent me his portion of our TCDB trade, which included 36 cards from the 2009-10 OPC hockey set, which I'm too lazy to scan right now, and these 3 beauties...

The Serge Savard card on the left is from the 75-76 OPC set, which breaks the ice for me.  Only 395 of those 2 go!  The other 2 are from the 85-86 OPC set, which I now have 10 cards from.  Randy Moller in case you were wondering is now the man between the benches on Florida Panthers telecasts where he does a really good job, and is also famous down here for his goal calls on the radio when he was the play by play man for the club.   Take a listen, there are some funny ones there.

The same day, I received my end of another trade from frequent trade partner Mike (User ID: 49ants) which bumped my John Olerud collection up 5 cards.

OK, now all 3 envelopes (these 2 and Dave's from the other day's post) arrived on the same day.

Dave and Hugo's packages were shipped December 28th.   They arrived January 21st.
Mike's envelope arrived the same day, and was delivered to my neighbors house.  Thankfully my neighbor is a gentleman and walked it over that evening for me.

So, here it is.  2 envelopes from Canada took 24 days to arrive , yes that's 3 and a half weeks.   Sorry, but I could have walked there in that time and picked up the packages.

My other envelope was delivered in 3 days, but to the wrong address.  What the f#$%

Come on USPS, you've done better than this in the past.  Also, the prices are brutal to ship to Canada.

I mailed a 9 card package and it cost me $10!!!  No more packages to Canada I'm afraid.  PWE's only going forward to Canada.

Come on USPS, you can do better....

Thanks for reading!!

Robert

Some 70's and 80's hockey if you like

Most of these sets I'm about to show have a long way to go until they're complete, but the fun I'm going to have in chasing them all down is going to be endless.

I showed the 14 baseball cards from my recent COMC order yesterday, and that total is small in comparison to the 25 vintage cards from the 71-72 through 86-87 OPC sets that are pictured below.

All but one of the scans have 3 cards pictured.   It just worked out that way after going thru the pile.  The Jacques Lemaire card has a couple of creases which you can see if you look close (1 just above his head to the left, the other by his left glove), but for me they don't ruin the aesthetic of the card.  The Tony McKegney card was cheap and I wanted to get the 80-81 set going, and the Flames team card drops the want list for 76-77 OPC down to 12.  Bobby Orr and Ken Dryden are the two big "obstacles" left before that set is done.

The different colored borders that the 73-74 OPC set contains has me intrigued.  It'll be a while before I start seriously working on this set, but these trio of cards were a good start for me.  The Larry Robinson and Billy Smith RC's are pricey, and there are several other cards that go for $20 or more in really good condition, so this is another set that while not big, will take some time as I'll be picky in what I pick up for the set.

These three 83-84 OPC cards bring that want list even further down, as I now only need 11 to complete the set.  This will be done before too long (hopefully) even though I still need the Scott Stevens RC and the base card of Wayne Gretzky.

Biggest scan of the post, as these 6 84-85 OPC's were a nice cost-effective purchase.  I mailed an envelope to Norway on Saturday as part of a trade that will net me 22 of these.  When they come in, I'll be over 100 cards towards the set.

Both the 85-86 and 86-87 OPC sets are among my favorites, and I look forward to putting them together.   Mario Lemieux and Patrick Roy RCs will be the major hurdles in finishing both of these, as they are tough to find for less than $150 in decent condition.

Love the airbrush on the Gamble, totally wiped out the Maple Leaf

The 71-72 OPC set I've been picking at for over a year now and I'm almost a quarter of the way through (just 2 more to get me there).   This is the one set that I've seen more cards than any other with paper loss on the back.  I'm sure many of these cards back in the day were taped into binders or onto some kind of paper, and when pulled off the backs were torn up.   It's a shame because this might be one of the best sets ever, and finding cards without that paper loss is essential for me.
I've pretty much given up finding any commons less than $1, but that's OK because I'm really only buying 2 or 3 at a time, thus not spending a whole lot of $$.

This isn't even the whole of the hockey portion, tomorrow I'll post the more modern cards.

Thanks for reading!

Robert

1904

I had a pretty good time at the monthly card show this past weekend.   I spent a total of $80, 20 of which was on the Brett Hull RC I showed yesterday (which my be counterfeit now, I'll have to do some research and follow up with that--thanks to Coast to Posts for the info).

The other 60 was spent on a lot of other goodies, which I'm going to cram about 90% of them into this post.

A few more Leafs for the collection, including a couple of my favorites past and present, Darryl Sittler and Morgan Rielly.  I'm hoping that Rielly's injury that he suffered tonight isn't serious and he'll be able to come back soon.

I grabbed a couple of star cards from a pair of mid 80's OPC sets on the cheap.  I still have a very long way to go for both of these sets, maybe later this year I'll hunt for some cheap lots on eBay to try and knock the want lists down for both the 84-85 (Francis) and 85-86 (Coffey) sets.

I found a trio of star cards for the 1990 Leaf set that I'm trying to put together.  It seems that the last couple of shows I've attended I managed to snag a Nolan Ryan card or two each time. 

For $4 I was able to snag a '71-72 OPC John Bucyk all star card for that set.  Each of the past couple of shows I've also found a card from this set.  The border is definitely off center, but it's still a nice card with no other flaws, so I just had to pick it up

This was a very happy accident.   I was down to just 3 cards to finish the '73 set, and really didn't go to the show looking for any of them.  While sorting through a box of star cards from the early to mid 70's, I came across this card, and had to stop and look at my phone to see if this was something I needed.  Sure enough, it was, and I now need only 2 cards to finish the '73 set. 

I was able to grab these 6 cards for the '59 set I'm working on, the highlight being the Enos Slaughter card on the lower right which cost me $9. 

Finally, at a table that had a dollar box, I grabbed 11 serial #'d cards for the SNIH set.  If you bought 15 cards out of the box, he charged only $10, so I got these for 66 cents apiece, right around what I normally like to pay for serial #'d cards.  I was excited to get another Tony Esposito card for the set, the classic Butch Goring helmet that he wore for his entire career was also another cool pickup for me.

Let's do the math.  $1984- $80 spent at the show leaves the budget for 2017 down to $1904.  If I did an average spent per day so far, the $2K right now would last me until the 354th day of the year, December 20th.

Let's see how that plays out...

Thanks for reading, Robert