Check out some cards: Finally

The order wasn't big, just 55 cards (4 of which have been shown in a previous post), but waiting over 3 months to get them was a bit tortuous.  But finally receiving them has shown me one thing that I've known for a while but is more evident now...

I've got way too much going on.   Nobody's fault but my own.  

Let's see what we have now in the house...

 

All 20 cards here from the 2012 and 2019 Allen & Ginter sets are short prints.  Both sets are nearing completion; 2019 needs just 5 more SPs, and 2012 has a list of 46 with a dozen SPs.  More sets that are nearing completion to come here in this post.

Nice cheap pickup on the Saquon Barkley RC here, just $2.50.  The Prestige set is down to 12 cards, and I'm hoping to get that done soon.   The '86 Topps set has come together quite nicely and quickly, with the set only needing 3 cards to complete.   Two of them are RCs featuring great players Steve Young and Reggie White.  

The hockey contingent above are all sets on The next 10 list.  Top scan is the 02-03 Vintage Set which has nothing but SP stars and checklists left to go.  22 cards might cost me a bit.  

2018-19 OPC is next.  14 to go.  Short printed rookie cards (9), 4 season highlight cards and the Pittsburgh Penguin team checklist is all that's left.  A few of the RC's are overpriced.  Might have to bite the bullet and get it done.

2013-14 Panini Prizm has 27 to go.   A few bigger name RC's are on the list, finishing this set will be a bit pricey but it is doable.  It's time to focus on these 3 in the coming weeks and get them out of the way.

Poor Dave Balon.  Might that be the ugliest card ever, photoshop wise?  74 cards left in this set, it's been fun picking up reasonably priced commons/semistars recently, but it's time to put this aside and focus on a lot of other sets that are closer to completion finished.

I keep saying that, but it's too tempting to keep grabbing cards from other pursuits.  

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

On the 405

I've watched enough TV during my lifetime to have heard a few times about the 405 highway in California.  Doing a quick Google search found me an old article from a few years back showing that the 405 was the busiest Interstate in any US City.  If you click on the link you'll see photo evidence of why that's the case.

Lately I've been quite busy on the TCDB website and passed the 400 transaction milestone; with a couple trades that I received this weekend I'm now sitting at 405.  

Both of these were on the small side, I traded away a few early 80's baseball cards to get 2 cards closer to each of the 86 and 79 Topps football sets.  

The '86 set has moved along really quickly as I'm down to just 31 cards (10 RCs including Rice and Young) to finish the set.  Had no idea when I started the set in 2020 that I'd breeze through the set as quickly as I have.  

The '79 Topps FB set is already taking shape as I'm just a card shy of 100.  This set is much bigger than the '86, 528 cards compared to 396.  It's already fun seeing a lot of the older players such as Gene Upshaw though.  

The card that stands out for me on this 2nd trade scan is the Larry Fitzgerald.  It is the base card from the 2009 Topps set.  I know that the baseball design is not similar, but I think this design could be a good one for Topps to use/reuse in a future baseball set.

Slowly but surely the Prizm hockey set, one of my Next 10, is being whittled away.  I have a few of them in my current Sportlots box and the want list is down into the 30's.  

The John Olerud PC has grown quite a bit during my lack of posting so far in 2021.  This Leaf card from the '97 set brings the total to 262.  The Olerud collection is climbing up my list of PC's with help a lot of my recent trades, including one where I received 15 Olerud cards!

I Still have the goal of hitting 500 TCDB trades by the end of 2021; if I have more months like April (16 so far), I could make it there....

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

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