Now that it's finally here...

It appears that I wasn't alone in waiting (im)patiently for a COMC order to arrive.  After 5 days in purgatory, my order popped up at my post office today, and wound up in my mailbox late this afternoon. 

This was my biggest COMC order to date, 125 cards in total.  I'll show off just 9 of them today, for a good reason.  These 9 finished off two sets.

1976-77 O-Pee-Chee hockey is now complete with these 4 cards in hand.  I knew that the checklist card in the upper right hand corner had some centering issues, but it almost looks like it missed the cutter altogether.  The back is centered about the same.  No matter, it's unmarked, and it's in hand.

1989 Upper Deck is also done now that these 4 are in hand.  Vizquel RC, Ryan throwing the football, Finley RC, and the correct version of the Gallego card were 4 of the 5 that I needed, with the 5th being...

Number one.  Never had I owned this card until now.  It's not perfect, there's a minor ding on one of the corners on the back, but if memory serves me I only paid $15 for this, so I'm a happy camper and can cross another set off of the multitude that I have in progress. 

Still quite a few cards to go through in this monster package including Prizms, vintage baseball, 1 card for last year's Prestige football set, all kinds of cheap OPC hockey SPs, and some player collection adds.

I'll try and figure it out and get some posts done.

One teaser, the 125 COMC card box wasn't the largest package I received this week.  More on that in a few days as well.

Thanks for reading!

Robert

When last we met...

It's been a while, almost two months since I've posted anything on the blog.   Haven't had the urge to write to be honest.  Extra time to sit down and come up with something has also been at a premium.

But since it's thanksgiving morning (Happy Thanksgiving to all in the US!) and I've nothing to do until football starts in about 4 hours, I figured I'd sit down and update a post from the beginning of July.

I'd posted 8 sets on the blog that I thought I had a chance of finishing (at various levels of confidence).  Here's how I'm doing in that regard...

1.  95-96 Collector's Choice Players Club hockey.  This was finished about 2 weeks after the original post.   The final cards can be seen in this post.

2.  1976-77 OPC hockey.  Original post stated I had 9 cards remaining.

I found the Bobby Orr you see above for cheap, and a few weeks later I snagged the Ken Dryden on ebay during a 10% ebay bucks promotion.  The final 4 cards, including the Tiger Williams RC, are in my COMC cart, so this one is done.

3.  1989 Upper Deck baseball.  Original post stated I had 25 cards left to obtain.

I traded for this Randy Johnson RC recently on the TCDB website, and that left me with just 2 cards on the want list.   Ken Griffey Jr. and Omar Vizquel.  I'll see if I can find something cheap this weekend and put this one to bed as well.



4.  2012-13 OPC hockey.  Original post stated I had 18 cards left to go.

This Pelle Lindbergh SP was part of a recent Sportlots order that brought my want list down to 8, with 2 of those in my current COMC cart.   Black Friday weekend is here, hopefully I can get the last 6 bought and have this one done also.

5. 1976 Topps Baseball.  Original post boasted a want list of 47 cards.

Found this Willie Randolph RC in a box of cards I was about to add onto the TCDB trade list, and I've been whittling away at this want list here and there on COMC.

The want list is down to 21 cards, but with Hank Aaron and Nolan Ryan on the list, I don't think this will get done in 2019.  2020 for sure...

6.  2013-14 OPC hockey.   The original post had this at 36 cards left...

This Calvin Pickard RC was one of 2 cards I bought on the same Sportlots order as the Pelle Lindbergh above.  My absolute stubbornness (read cheapness) sees the ridiculous prices on some of the SPs, and the want list is still at 28 cards to go.   This isn't happening in 2019 unless a minor miracle happens.

7.  1981 Topps baseball.   185 cards left on this want list back in July

I'm as happy as Hector Cruz to say that the 185 card want list has all but vanished.   2 of the 3 cards I need are in my COMC cart, the only one on the want list left is #358 Mark Wagner.  

Done.

8.  1973 Topps baseball.   2 cards on the want list back in July.   Mike Schmidt RC and the high series checklist.

Status quo.


With those out of the way, I've made some strides on some other sets over the past few months, such as '79 Topps  (29 left to go and 3 in the COMC cart);

1983 Topps has just 93 cards to go (I believe the list was over 300 to go in July)

And I've added another want list page for a couple of parallel sets I've been chipping away at, one of them being 2008 Upper Deck X die cut

And the 2019 Gypsy Queen green parallel set is also there; I've passed the 50% mark on that quest.

So, even though I haven't been writing, there's still lots going on with my collection. 

If you're on TCDB, my trade list and want list are under my ID rmitchell6700.  I hit the 140 trade mark for 2019 this week, got a shot at 150 by year's end...

Thanks for reading!

Robert

The push to complete sets is now on

We're already halfway through 2019, and I've had a pretty good year trade wise.  I'm over 70 completed trades so far, so the goal of 100 trades by the end of the year should not be a problem.

My goal of 5 complete sets will easily be knocked out as well, as I'm very close on a few of them.  But I decided to write a countdown post largely for my own benefit (I know that there are many out there who don't care for these types of posts).  I'm hoping that putting something in print will help me get my thoughts together on how to progress for the remainder of the year on my set building journey.

Here goes:

1.  1995-96 Collectors Choice Players Club Hockey

Cards remaining:  3
Confidence level:  Very high

Comments:   It's been a quarter of a century, time to put this to bed.  If I don't finish this by the end of the year, it's time to turn in my collecting badge and move on to basket weaving.

2.  1976-77 OPC hockey

Cards remaining:  9
Confidence level:  Medium High

Comments:  A common theme through out this post will be my cheapness.  I gave up hunting a few months ago for cheap copies of Ken Dryden, Bobby Orr and Tiger Williams, so sometime in the near future I'm going to have to bite the bullet and get this beauty of a set completed.

3.  1989 Upper Deck baseball

Cards remaining:  18
Confidence level:  Medium High

Comments:   A recent trade on the TCDB put a major dent in this set, dropping my want list from just over 100 cards to 18.  Mostly the big name RCs are left; Griffey Jr., Smoltz, Biggio and Johnson.  Again, just have to dig in and start adding them.

4.  2012-13 OPC hockey

Cards remaining: 18
Confidence level:  High

Comments:  There is nothing overly expensive preventing me from completing this set.  Some of the cards on sites like COMC are just ridiculously priced, so I might turn to trading for them to get this done.

5.  1976 Topps baseball

Cards remaining:  47
Confidence level:  Medium

Comments:  You know, if I didn't have the 4 sets above that I wanted to finish, I'd probably be quite confident that I could get this done by the end of 2019.   Even with the fact that 90% of the cards remaining for this set are stars.

6.  2013-14 OPC hockey

Cards remaining:  36
Confidence level:  medium

Comments:  Another set that has just some ridiculous prices on fringe rookies, mostly for the simple fact that they are SPs.  My refusal to pay such stupid prices is the reason that this is below '76 Topps BB.   Stubborn, yes I know I am, but sometimes you have to draw the line.

7.  1981 Topps baseball

Cards remaining:  185
Confidence level:  medium

Comments:  This set right now has the exact same number of cards left as the next set on the list (79T), but I rank this higher because I see so much more of this on trade lists than I do '79s.  By the way, someone on twitter had a question recently asking about underrated players from the 1980s, my answer would be Carney Lansford.

8.  1979 Topps

Cards remaining:  185
Confidence level:  Just below medium

Comments:  I just don't see a whole lot of these up for trade, and buying lots of them on ebay aren't very feasible (too many doubles), so I'll be patient and see if I get lucky and find someone willing to part with a bunch of them on the cheap.

9.  1973 Topps

Cards remaining:  2
Confidence level:  Lower than I can limbo

Comments:  Approaching 2 years now at 2 cards to go.  Mike Schmidt RC.  High number checklist.  Do I expect to find these 2 cards at a price I want to pay by years end?   Hell no.  Maybe it's time I just ignored everything else and went after this.   My frugality will likely prevail and this will end up on 2020's list of sets to finish.

I had a lot of fun writing this post.  I got a lot of my thoughts on these sets and current pricing out there for everyone to see.   I'm not ashamed to admit I'm cheap, but as you can see from what I've written above, maybe it's time to just move forward and concentrate on finishing these sets.

We'll see what happens and revisit this post at the end of the year.....

Thanks for reading!

Robert

I'm going to party like it's 1989

First off, just want to send a Happy Canada Day greeting to all that are reading this north of the border today.  Hope everyone up there is enjoying their 3 day weekend!!

Not a huge post today, but a few trades recently helped me knock out a bunch of cards from my 1989 Upper Deck want list.  No major RCs here, I still need the Griffey, Randy Johnson and Smoltz rookies, but it's nice to have this set within striking distance of being completed this year.

I believe that Chris Sabo's card is the only RC out of these 26, but at least there's a bit of star power in the group with Greenwell and Ripken Jr. cards making their way to South Florida.

One of the aspects from the late 80's and early 90's UD set releases that I enjoyed was the art on the team checklist cards.  Both baseball and hockey had some great players represented on them.

A good portion of what I need out of the 103 cards left on this want list is the high number cards.  Roughly 60% of the list is cards numbered over 700.  Thankfully, I have a trade on the way here from the great state of Hawaii (thank you Al!!) that is going to knock off a big portion of this want list. 

Thanks for reading!

Robert

Trade, trade, and trade again

With the new card purchases at a premium, trading has become a big part of the card way of life here. 

I thought that the 100 trade goal on TCDB for 2019 might have been a bit lofty, but it turns out that I could finish it by Thanksgiving! I recently pulled in a few trades of varying sizes, so I figured we'll get a post out of the cards that came in.

A small 3 for 3 trade starts the post off, as Billy (TCDB ID: billwill305) and I made a quick trade of some recent inserts/parallels.   3 more cards off of the Green GQ list...

I am going to enjoy putting this set together.  Hopefully it won't take me 25 years like the Players Club set that I showed off the other day has.

Next us is a trade with Nick (TCDB ID: hittinaway), that was a home run for me.   Not only did I get the 4 cards that were offered...

Parallels all over the place here

But Nick was extremely generous and added a few extras to put a smile on my face:

A single John Olerud card never hurts the cause, as that collection closes in on the 100 card mark.

The 5 '89 UD cards were great to see as well, as that is another set that I'm looking to finish this year.  A large part of what I still need from that set are the high numbers, accounting for about 1/2 of the 135 cards still needed to finish it up.

A nice little stack of '82 Topps rounds out the generosity portion of this envelope.  This is another set that is on the radar for completion this year, with just over 200 cards to go. 

Maybe the 5 completed sets goal was a bit light...let's shoot for 10!

Last but not least is 3 time trade partner Tom (TCDB ID: BigOinPA), who helps me get my hockey fix.   I traded off a bunch of Flyers inserts and parallels, along with some Pirates base cards and nabbed a few Felix Potvin cards for that collection:

Easily my favorite of these is the 94-95 Ultra on the bottom that gives a nice close up shot of the cat mask that I've loved for a long time.  To go along with the Potvin's, I received 40 cards from another set that I've added a fair number of cards to this year, 2009-10 OPC

While the 40 cards puts a nice dent into the set, I'm only at just over 200 of the 600 cards needed.  I don't expect to have this one finished this year.   I did get lucky at last weekend's card show however and was able to snag 40 of the SPs at just a dime apiece, which was a great feeling. 

These 3 trades put the 2019 count up to 59, putting me on pace to finish the year at about 120 which is more than I would have dreamed of.   TCDB has definitely changed my outlook on collecting, as I've been able to get a lot of cards that I wasn't going to enjoy into hands of collectors who will.  In return, I've knocked off quite a few wants, and started putting want lists together for sets that a few years ago I never would have dreamed of even completing. 

The extra time spent doing this has been well worth it....

Thanks for reading!

Robert

Yea, I remember the Astrodome

Well, maybe two weeks ago I had started seeing Marc from Remember the Astrodome fame's name all about the blogs, and on TCDB as well.  So I decided to do a search to see if he needing anything of mine that I had up for trade.

That initial offer of about 11-12 cards each way turned into a bigger swap as Marc hunted down more that he needed, and with my gigantic want lists it wasn't hard to turn this trade into a big enough one that made it worth the price of a bubble mailer.

I was quite worried that I wouldn't be able to trade for the Shohei Ohtani RC from the A&G set, but thankfully that has been put to rest as it was part of 8 cards that Marc sent my way.  This set should be done before too long, as the want list is down to just 20, including 7 SPs.   Most of those SPs I've looked up on COMC and are selling in the 50-$1 range, very reasonable indeed.  A&G will likely be the first or 2nd set I put to bed this year.

Newer cards weren't all the rage in this trade, as Marc had plenty of older stuff to send my way as well.  The '72 set is being nickel and dimed right now, as these 6 cards bring me closer to 20% complete.   A long way to go, and a boat load of high numbers are still to be found.   Marc also included a couple of '82s, and a page worth of '79s as you'll see below...

'79 Topps is another set that has been coming along nicely, as I'm closing in on the 60% complete mark.  Still so many commons to pick up that I haven't even bothered looking at which RC's need to be found, that will probably come later in the year.

Marc added in a "bonus bag" of cards, which included the 17 1989 Upper Deck cards shown above.  The '89 UD set has been pretty much forgotten for quite a while, as it's been stalled at just over 600 cards acquired.  Still quite a few big names to buy for this set, including the Ken Griffey Jr. rookie.   Maybe this year I'll work on finishing this one off as well.   It could end up being one of the 5 sets that I end up completing this year.   That's the goal anyhow.

Last up is a few cards for a couple of player collections.  A bit of laziness on my part made the '15 Archives John Olerud card in the middle row look like it was cut off, but rest assured Marc sent me a nice copy in perfect condition.  The McCutchen first career home run card is the gold parallel, which is also a nice add.  I'm always looking to add common base cards of both of these players to my collection, as I don't own a great deal of either player so far.

Marc, thanks for the trade, I'm looking forward to many more with you on the TCDB website!!

Thanks for reading!

Robert

Some card show goodies

I don't normally start off a post with a scan, but I figured now that I have my new scanner in hand, I'd put the first scan I created right off the top to see what it looks like.

Not bad.

My friends were in town last weekend and asked me if I have a plan in place when I go to the show.  I told them that I used to do that, but usually wound up disappointed.  What I do now is I go and hit a table, hunker down there and see what I can find.

This time around, I found a table that had several boxes labelled "Vintage 4/$1".   Sounded good to me, until about 15 minutes into my dig the dealer came up to the group of us digging in the boxes and changed it to "5/$1".

Well OK THEN!!

So as you can see from the scans, I came home with a little bit of everything.  $17 spent and each card hit one of my want lists.  68, 69, 70 Topps.  89 Upper Deck.  1976 Topps hit big, 1977 Topps also had 13 cards come off the want list ( I put them away before scanning them though). 

I even found some clean check lists for 20 cents apiece. 

A good days work, even without a plan.

Thanks for reading, Robert

Stacks

I responded to a post a few weeks ago on the APRSmith's Sportscard Obsession blog about Adam wanting to move some cards.

I raised my hand and asked for some 82, 83 and 84 Topps starter lots if they were available.

Adam went to town.  Then some.  The stack of Blue Jays on the left wasn't even close to being the biggest pile of cards as you can plainly see.

I put about 100 of the '89 Upper Deck cards away (the clean white pile) before taking this picture.

You can see where my keyboard is on the right, it's actually been tough typing this post while not disturbing the stacks on my left.

The stack that I'm most excited about is the '70 Topps (2nd from the right).  That's 61 cards that I wasn't expecting which put a nice dent into that vintage set.  I actually toyed with the idea of abandoning the '70T build a few months back, but for some reason I persevered and now I'm over a third complete thanks to this lot.

The '84 Topps set is going from 18 cards in hand to about 18 cards left on the list (I don't know that yet, I'm just exaggerating to make a point) thanks to the giant stack 4th from the right.  '85 Topps also takes a big hit with the pile to the left of the '84.  There's also nice stacks of '79, '80 and '83 Topps as well.  I put all those want lists on the blog in the past couple of months thinking it might be a couple of years before I finish the run of Topps sets between 1978 and 1985.  Now I'm thinking it might happen by the end of the 2018 baseball season.

My guess?  My want lists just took about a 1500 card hit from this mailer that Adam sent.

Adam, there is no way I can thank you enough for the time and effort you put in to combing my want lists, it is truly appreciated!! (believe me, Adam had to have done a ton of work on this)

Time to hit Amazon to order some binders...

thanks for reading, Robert

Inbound and Down #27: Remember the Astrodome

Sometimes you go quite a while on the blogosphere without communicating with some of your fellow bloggers.  It's just a fact of life, as there's so many card bloggers out there you can't keep up with everyone.  I recently received an email from Marc at the Remember the Astrodome blog saying that he had a few Series 2 cards from '17 Topps to send my way.

It had been quite a while since Marc and I communicated last, since the address he had on file for me was my PA address!  So I sent him the new address and I received a nice windfall in the mail yesterday...

6 more off the list, need just over 100 now.   Hoping that today's card show can knock that list down some more.

A trio of Blue Jays, a welcome addition in any envelope!!  I especially liked the Fond Farewells card of Omar Vizquel which I don't remember seeing in the past.

Marc also chipped away at a couple of other want lists, as he knocked off 4 '89 Upper Deck cards, as well as a 1990 Leaf (not scanned).  Still a long way to go for both of these sets, but every little bit helps, right?

The topping on this envelope, which was totally unexpected, was the '74 Topps cards that Marc included.

Love the horizontal cards, especially the shot of Gary Matthews sliding into 3rd.  Looked at the '73 Giants roster, and that team had a very young and talented OF group, with Matthews (22), Garry Maddox (23) and Bobby Bonds (27) .  The team as a whole was young, with only one regular fielder over 30 (McCovey) and one starting pitcher (Marichal); neither of those two would be on the club the next season.

Another 9 more towards the set, including Barry's dad and Bob Forsch's brother Ken.  These 13 cards put me at just 2 cards shy of having 2/3 of the set in hand.   Maybe I'll be lucky and find a few today to bring home from the show.

Thank you for the cards Marc, they are appreciated!!  I have sent you a friend request on the TCDB (rmitchell6700 is my user ID there).  

Thanks for reading, Robert