Desk cleaning continued--Jumbo Pickles

The tiniest of piles meant digging out the 100-count plastic card holder that I have in plastic tub that is full of cards on the closet floor.  That 100-count holder contains 70 cards from a set that for over 4 years I have desired to put together yet have been very slow to do so.

I acquired this pair in a trade a few weeks ago, cards 69 and 70 towards the 600-card retro parallel set.  Both players were a pivotal part of the Stanley Cup Final run that the Sharks had a few years ago, and I decided to use their nicknames as part of the title.  "Jumbo" Joe Thornton (a really big man) and Marc-Edouard Vlasic, nicknamed pickles because of his last name were two cards that I felt like showing off from the cardboard jungle that is slowly evaporating from my desk.

Don't read a lot into 2 posts in 2 days, I have a bit of time on my hands for a few days.  

Robert

500 is in the rearview mirror

Have had a good run of trades so far this month on TCDB, so much so that the 500-transaction mark that I passed on the third is already up to 507, with 8 trades in some form of progress.

I received a small one today, just 5 cards, but they hit 4 different want lists which I thought was great.  I had to send a few Flyers cards to Paul (TCDB ID: flyers4life) but the cards I got in return filled some pretty good holes...

Starting off with a couple of current Maple Leafs to help add to the Leaf collection, which I decided to move to one of those solid plastic 4 row boxes that BCW is now selling (Amazon link here ).  I really do like the product, it's very sturdy but not super heavy (yet, I still don't have it full).  I got it for Christmas which was great because the price point had the box on my "do I want it that bad" list.  

Slowly creeping its way towards completion, 1981 Topps has been a relatively fun build so far and hopefully as it gets closer to being done I can find a Joe Montana RC for a nice price.   

Wish me luck

Another set that came as part of the trade is the 86-87 OPC set, with Steve Yzerman being a nice card to add to the set build.  I started knocking down a bunch of commons on Sportlots a while back, and I have a few more in my current Sportlots box.   The set is small, just 264 cards and I'm now about 2/3 of the way through.  A lot of big names still to go, including RCs of several great players with the most expensive being Patrick Roy.

One day, I truly believe I will hit a vein of these cards somewhere on the cheap and put a good dent into this want list.  The 2018-19 OPC Retro parallel is a beast at 600 cards, and I've not even hit the 50-card mark yet.  My eyes did light up a bit when I saw this as part of the trade package, which some might think a little crazy considering the rest of the trade you've already seen above, but hey this guy thinks a bit different than most!!

Thanks for the trade Paul, it is appreciated.   Hopefully more trades are in our future.

Still having fun here!

Robert

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

2 for 5 is a good day for a hitter--for a card company...well

OK, this purchase result I felt was so funny that I had to share it with everyone this morning instead of waiting till later on today or the weekend.

First off, I'm going to say that the shipping time on this 5 card order was phenomenal.  Ordered from CA on Friday the 19th, arrived at my house in Florida yesterday.   Have to give props when it's due.

Now the cards.   This was a 5 card eBay order from one of the larger card sellers on the site.   I'm not going to mention the name, but it's on the west coast as I've already said.

2 for 5 is how they did.  Apparently the order filler on Friday has an issue with parallels.

First off, the positives

This was going to be a "Sunday 15" post that featured these 2 cards, but like I said, I couldn't wait to post this.

The Yastrzemski '72 Topps and the Esiason RC from '86 Topps were right on the money.  Both cards in really nice shape and they cost me $4.50 apiece.  This part was well done.

Now, this is where the games begin.   Let's start with a couple of cards from 18-19 OPC hockey.

I've mentioned quite a few times about the Next 10 set project.  18-19 OPC is one of the sets and I decided to start knocking off some of the cards.  Card 555 is Hellebuyck on the right and #557 is the Sedin twins on the left.  Both needed for my BASE set.

For those who don't know, these are the retro parallels.  Not even close to what the base cards look like.

What's even better?  I finally put up the retro set on the TCDB website as a want last week.  Luckily for the seller, this ends up as just a minor fail, as I'll just end up using these to fill my retro set, which hopefully will be completed by 2030.

Now, for the true fail....

The primary reason I started this order was to finish off my 2019 Gypsy Queen Green set.  Ken Giles of the Blue Jays, card #281, is the final card I need to complete the set.  Notice I said need and not needed.

Forget the Topps logo, where in the world do you see any GREEN on this card?  

I even checked the packing slip that they sent in the envelope.  It even says 2019 Topps Gypsy Queen Green #281 Ken Giles.

How is this not a total fail?  One, I only spent 99 cents on the card, so I'll just hunt around for it on Sportlots to finish the set.

Feedback wise, I'd love to hear how you'd do it in the comments, but I'm going to give:

• 2 positives for the Yaz and Esiason cards
• 2 neutrals for the Retro Parallels
• A negative for the Giles card

I don't give negatives very much, but to mess this order up like this, I feel its warranted.

A little bit of a delay in showing off the GQ set will happen because of this, but it's coming...

Enjoy the hobby!!

Robert

One Piece at a Time

Another musical inspired post, this time featuring a song that my dad would play constantly when I was in my early teens.  

One Piece At A Time is a song by the great Johnny Cash which tells the story of a young assembly line worker at a GM plant who proceeds to build a car by taking parts out of the factory, as you might have guessed, one piece at a time.  

I've never been a fan of country music, but there's something about this song that makes me sing along with it each time I hear it, whether on my phone while I'm walking or on my iTunes when I'm writing posts.

I'm trying to assimilate the song to my quest to finish off the 2018-19 OPC hockey set.  A recently completed trade with Sean (TCDB ID: Broadway) netted me 8 cards for the build, including the final 4 non-SP cards.  

I don't know why it seems this way, but putting this set together seems to be taking a long time.  It's only been a couple years since the set came out and I'm down to 40 cards on the want list.  I've also knocked off big chunks of the set a couple of times in trades, but for some reason it seems like I'm building the set one piece at a time.

Everything left on the want list now are all short prints, so the hunt is on for the cheapest copies I can find.  

Just like every other modern OPC set that I'm putting together.  Here's the song for your listening pleasure.

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

How retro

The big Sportlots box order came in today (at least 16 out of 17 of the orders did), and of course I had a lot of fun going through the decent sized box of envelopes and digging through buried treasure.

Once I got the roughly 180 cards organized and removed them from 14 different want lists on the TCDB (more on that in another upcoming post), I figured I should at least start writing a bit about the haul.

One of the sets that I pulled a few cards from is the 18-19 OPC retro parallel set.  Well off the beaten path of sets that I'm trying to complete, this build is only in its infancy at 38 cards out of the 600. 

For some reason during all my ordering decided to grab a total of 8 cards of varying star quality.  Nobody in particular was in mind when I started grabbing these, I'm sure it was just a matter of picking up some more cards from sellers that I already had in the cart.

When looking at the cards, I noticed the background color patterns.  The 4 in the first scan with the blue background/green name bars.  The 2nd scan featuring green background with orange name bar and the orange background with a purple name bar.  I tried to decipher if there was any rhyme or reason to the color scheme, maybe they were separated by division?  that was quickly shot down as hockey fans will know that the Rangers and the Kings/Coyotes aren't in the same conference, let alone division.  Some more thought will have to be done on this.

This set is probably going to take years to build, and I can see my future with this set clearly now.  I'll be wandering around the International Center in Toronto at the Hockey Expo in 2030 and seeing a dealer with a box full of these trying to get rid of them for cheap. 

That's the norm for me....

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

A couple of trades show a preview of "the Next 10"

I'm a set collecting guy.  That's what I do, it's what I like.  I think a lot of the reason I've posted a lot more in 2020 is I've finally found my collecting groove.  Building sets has been the predominant theme since January 1st, and now that I'm closing in on finishing the 10 sets I mentioned then, I'm ready to take a crack at finishing another 10.

Round numbers are so much easier.

My trading has slowed down a bit on the TCDB, nothing major to be worried about as I believe it's a by-product of me finishing some 70's and 80's baseball sets.  I'm still trying to find a Thurman Munson to finish my '76 Topps set, as the trade I was working on didn't pan out (it happens).  I did get in a couple of trades so far this week, and all but one of the cards you'll see will be part of "the Next 10" sets that I'm going to focus on once I finish the originals.

I received these cards yesterday from Sean (TCDB IB: cardsinthebasement...love that ID!), and these 3 beauties did two things for me.

John Olerud's '97 Pacific Crown Collection card leaves me just 2 shy of the 200 card plateau, a healthy portion of those coming as part of trades over the past several months.

The 2 GQ green parallels get that set to the 80% complete mark, which I still can't believe I've hit so quickly.  60 cards remaining for this set that I love ensures that '19 GQG (Gypsy Queen Green) will be part of the Next 10

Another set that's come a long way due to trading is the 2018-19 O-pee-Chee hockey set, and these 18 cards are courtesy of multiple time trade partner Justin (TCDB ID: Lightningfan7609).  Of course, a bunch of Lightning cards went his way in return for knocking my want list for this set down to 73 cards.  Fifty-two of those are the dreaded SPs, so it'll be interesting for me to see where I put this on the list.

I'm planning on doing the same process with the Next 10 sets, putting them in a specific order and doing my best to finish them in that order.  It didn't quite work out that way the first time, but hey, getting them done is the goal, correct?

Enjoy the hobby!!

Robert

Out of the blue--north of the border

On the same day that I received cards from the Night Owl, I also received a pair of PWE's from fellow blogger and TCDB user Joseph.   "Crazie Joe" runs the Crazie Joe's Card Corner blog, and does a good job of posting every day, even after 4 + years on the blogging roll call.  Joe's envelopes hit my hockey wants perfectly, as they always do.

First up is the outliers.  4 cards that didn't match the other 19.  The Joe Sakic card is from 2002-03 UD Vintage, and as I always do, I check the set want list to see if it was needed there.  Nope.  In the Sakic PC it goes.  

Claude Giroux is a SP from the 18-19 set, which is doing quite well as I only need 93 cards to finish.  58 of them are SPs, so it will be a bit of a chore, but it'll get done eventually.

Finally, I was very surprised to see a couple of 81-82 OPC's come out of one of the envelopes.  Love the photo on the Bobby Clarke card, a little nick above the right eye shows the warrior that he was during his career.  One day I'll start to work seriously on this set; I currently just have 11 cards from this release.

The remainder of the cards were from the 07-08 OPC set, something that I've had on the go since it was released 13 years ago.   Still need a lot of cards to finish this set, over 200 to give you an idea of how I've procrastinated in putting this together.  I have a weak spot for the modern OPC sets, even though they do the same thing as Topps Heritage and release the last 100 cards in the set as SPs.

These cards were most welcome, and a total surprise for sure.  Thank you very much Joseph, they are much appreciated!!

Enjoy the hobby and stay safe!

Robert

One of the best in the west

Growing up, one of my favorite towns to hear about in the news or weather reports was Moose Jaw, SK.  Just saying "Moose Jaw" was always entertaining for me, and just imagining what it would be like to live there in the middle of the Canadian prairies always fascinated me.  Now, I'm able to get a few cards from there.

I've just completed my 2nd trade with a great trade partner, Kevin (TCDB ID: kdinthejaw), who is great at hitting multiple and varied want lists for me.

Let's start with some set help.  2018-19 OPC has 5 cards removed from the list, including the Maple Leafs rock steady Freddie Andersen.  That set is doing quite well now as it's over 500 out of the 600 cards needed.

Bill Guerin on the lower right of the scan is from the 2007-08 OPC set, which I'm miles away from finishing (I've just over half of the set in hand), and this may be only the 2nd or 3rd card I've received in trades.

Half a dozen cards from another slow set build, 2018 Playoff Prestige.  Still need another 86 cards to finish this set, including a bunch of short printed rookies.  Once I did some digging and found out that the Prestige set is released pretty much with the same amount of cards (300) and Short Printed rookies (100) you can better believe that I stayed away from it in 2019.  It still surprises me that I don't have a lot of trades for football on TCDB, even with a decent want list for my player collections on the site.

Leave it to my Canadian hockey brethren to help me out with some player collections, including a 04-05 Pacific Sakic, leaving me just 11 cards short of the 800 mark for the Sakic PC.  As a contrast, the Mitch Marner collection doesn't even take up 2 pages yet.  He's still quite young, and expensive, so there's a lot of time for him yet...

Pat Flatley RC!  84-85 OPC is still a set that I regret letting get away, and so it will be very sweet when I have this completed.  This card took me over the 50% mark by one, and the next card I receive will be the 200th for the set.  Still need a couple of the big RC's, including Steve Yzerman, so it'll be a while before this is done.

Thank you for the trade Kevin, the cards are appreciated.   Look forward to the next trade with you!!

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

OPC all over the place

This evening I'll be watching what arguably could be the biggest game of the regular season so far for the Maple Leafs, as they'll be right down the road from my house here in Sunrise.  The defense corps just lost its 3rd person, as Jake Muzzin is down for a month with a broken hand.  the current defense is nearly the same as the one that won the Calder Cup (AHL championship) two years ago.  Yikes!

So while I'm doing that, this post will automatically appear on the blogger site, featuring a group of OPC cards that came from Canada via new trade partner JF (TCDB ID: althib).

These are the bits and pieces of the trade, 4 cards from 3 different sets over the past 5 years.  No big names out of these 4, but they do remove 4 numbers off of 3 want lists.  Maybe this weekend I will get around to adding these want lists to the blog.

Since I really started focusing on trading on the TCDB at the beginning of 2019, the 1990-91 OPC set is one that I'm surprised that I haven't been able to complete yet.  I was sure that I'd get a lot of requests for trades, especially from north of the border.  Alas, that hasn't been the case, but the set is getting closer to being completed as I'm down to just 44 cards to go.  Been a long time coming...

JF pretty much cleaned me out of my 83 and 85 Topps baseball traders, which is cool as I'm glad that they found a good home.  Thank you for the trade JF, the cards are really appreciated!

Enjoy the hobby!   Go Leafs Go!

Robert

Number 11?

I've talked pretty regularly on the blog so far this year about the 10 sets I'm going to finish off first in 2020.  Pretty much a way to keep myself motivated and not try to get too distracted.  But, with this recent trade that I received from 2nd time trade partner Aaron (TCDB ID: suedehead) I may now have the 11th set that I could finish this year.

This was actually a very big hockey trade, the biggest trade I've done in a while.  I wound up knocking off 84 cards off of 2 want lists, both of them being recent OPC sets.

First up is 9 of the 11 SPs that were part of 27 cards from the 2015-16 OPC set, which I had mentioned recently was just starting to get off the ground.  This set doesn't really have any big name RC's (the most notable I found was Sam Bennett), and the other half of the SPs are the Legends, which usually add a bit more to the cost.  I only have 81 cards out of the 600 for the set, so it's nowhere near worrying about yet.

Still need to figure out how to scan 

The 2018-19 OPC set was really bolstered with 40 cards from the base set, 18 of which are shown above, in whole or in part.

And 17 of the SPs, including 7 of the team cards, an idea which I've said that I love in the past.  I've also mentioned this before, but I like what Upper Deck did and instead of pushing the same old Legends cards on us year after year, they added the League Leaders cards at the end (See Ovi and Freddie Andersen above), and the Season Highlight cards #'d 551-560.  It was very nice to see a change, and I hope that they keep this trend going.

This 57 card lot that came in brought the set total to 501 out of 600 cards; there's been quite a jump towards completing this set with the past two trades.  With less than 100 cards to go now, this might be the next set up once the first 10 sets are done this year.  There's other sets that are close to being complete as well, but this is now in the mix.

Thank you for the trade Aaron, the cards are appreciated!!

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

Well, if you insist

In the mail today I probably received the biggest package of cards from a TCDB trade yet, and I've received quite a few decent sized ones for sure.

So, I received an offer at the end of November from repeat Canadian trade partner Hugo (TCDB ID:pennytendencies) which took me a little while to get through.  Let me explain.

Hugo asked me for 15 Montreal Canadiens cards of varying types, such as serial #'s, silver signatures, inserts, you get it...

On my side, there were 13 cards that either fit my player collections

and 3 that helped a couple of early 2000's Topps Heritage hockey sets...

I LOVE these two sets, and can't wait to finish them.   Someday

But apparently that wasn't enough, because I guess Hugo had a few extra 2018-19 OPC hockey doubles lying around.

Good ol' Henrik Lundqvist was one of two hundred and six cards that I was able to mark off of my 2018-19 OPC want list.  In one shot, I gain almost 35% of the set. 

If you're familiar with trading on TCDB, you know that 222 cards will take quite a while to scroll down on the screen, and I'm sure it took Hugo quite a while just to click and enter them on the trade proposal.  Above and beyond for sure.

Down to 157 cards for the 18-19 OPC set, 1/2 of which are SPs.  Doable.  But after I finish about 10 other sets that I'm close to finishing.    Priorities you know.

Thank you for reading, and thank you for the trade Hugo, it is very much appreciated!!

Robert

The crazy things I'm still chasing

I took this want list off of the blog a long time ago, but that didn't mean I still wasn't chasing these:

I recently picked this up for $1.25 off of COMC, and it becomes the 25th card in the set that I own.  There's still 65 more to go, and while this isn't any kind of priority right now, I did put up a want list on the TCDB on the off chance that someone might have one or two that they're looking to move.

Here's another card that I picked up in a trade recently, it adds to another long lost set that I started putting together many years ago:

I love the look of the 2000-01 Topps Heritage hockey set, and I look forward to someday having the complete set as part of my collection.  A big thanks to Edward (TCDB ID:  Detfan6897) for the set help , and the player collection help as well as he hit several of my player wants.

As far as the next set goes, I wouldn't classify it as "still chasing", more likely the words "getting off to a good start" applies:

Mr. Mike Minor that you see here is already card #79 out of the 300 card set that I own.  I've had quite a bit of good luck with trading for these already, and while I know that the set isn't going to be finished quickly, I'm still looking forward to having this in hand when it's completed. 

Another parallel set that I've added another card to recently is the 2008 Upper Deck X die cut set:

Roy Oswalt is the halfway point for the set, as I now have 50 of the 100 cards.  No rush here as well, but I do have the want list up on the TCDB as well.  

I don't expect to finish this set off anytime soon as well, but the 2018-19 OPC retro parallel set is another one that I'd love to finish someday.  With just 26 out of 600 cards in hand, don't expect to see any cheering on here that the set is complete any time soon. 

Notice that only one of the 5 sets I have listed in this post is a base set.  Everything else is a parallel.

It's a sickness I say....

Thanks for reading.

Robert