249 left, and none left

July has been brutal, and that's saying something for south Florida.  I spent the first week of the month in South Carolina at my sister in law's, but couldn't escape the heat.  Several days I left work at 3:45 in the afternoon only to be greeted to 100 degree heat when I opened my car door.

I do know that there are many of you that are suffering worse heat than I am, and I certainly pity you.  But when I can say that I've been spoiled by the summer's I've had here in Florida for the 8 years I've been here, 2023 has been brutal so far in comparison.

I don't think August will be much better, but at least today I've got the gumption (yes I used that word) to sit down and write a post.

In July I've completed 8 trades, not bad considering how hot it is and I'm sure a lot of collectors would rather be doing other things beside roasting at their computers.  One trade I finished recently was a 2 for 1 deal.  One of the 2 cards actually helped me finish a set!

I've had the Fernando Tatis Jr. card as the only one on my want list for the 2020 A&G set for a while now.  I thought that eventually this would be part of a purchase somewhere down the road.  Luckily I received it in as part of an offer, and I quickly made the trade to finish off the 10th A&G set in my collection.  I have 3 or 4 Allen and Ginter sets that are reasonably close to being finished, and I'm hoping to knock those want lists down with a couple more trades in August.

The Thurman Munson 1972 Topps In action card was part of a purchase.  This one seller on ebay had a deal where if you buy $50 worth of cards, you got a 20% discount.  Can't complain about that!  With the discount, this turned out to be free (at least in my eyes) so this is a nice add to the '72 set.  

Just 249 more cards to go for this set!!  I have another set that's 4 cards closer.  Tomorrow's post will show those off.

Robert

Another A&G set complete

It took a couple of separate transactions to obtain the final 3 cards to finish the 2009 Allen & Ginter set recently.

  

This pair of cards came from my recent purchase from COMC which consisted of a few SPs from the 2013 and 2014 A&G sets, along with a boatload of singles from vintage sets from 1968-1972.  I ordered shipping from the site on April 1st, and they quoted me a date of April 24th for shipping.  COMC hit that date right on the nose, and 3 days later I had my cards in hand.  Not too shabby!!  Combined the pair of cards cost me about $4.50.

The Michael Phelps card came from an eBay purchase a couple months ago, not quite as cheap as the other pair above, but at $6 +PWE shipping I was able to consider the card worth it and it arrived before the others.  

This marks the 9th complete A&G set in my collection.  2020 A&G has one card to get (Tatis) for #10.

I haven't started 2022 A&G set, I may just do that set purely by trades.  Still thinking on that.  But for now, all is good!

Robert

Clean up your mess and you can go fishing

On the weekend I had some time on my hands.  I decided to do something I haven't done in several months, update the want lists on the blog.  They certainly needed the work.  One of the pages that I noticed needing the most work was the Allen & Ginter page.

I'd pulled in a lot of cards from trades over the past few months, and I noticed that there was a couple of sets that were getting pretty low.  One in particular was the 2012 set, which I realized had only one card on it.  For a long time, I was being cheap about spending the money for it, and I decided it was time to go fishing for some Trout.

I thought $14 was a reasonable price for Mike Trout's first A&G card, so I grabbed it.  I immediately updated the want list to show that it was done, even though the card wasn't in hand.  It showed up today and I'm very happy to take another box off the bookshelf and add it to the stack of other completed sets on the A&G run.

I searched the same seller to see if he had any other cards worth purchasing and I only found 1.

Already had the matching base card for '21 Heritage, so the In Action card becomes the 29th VGJ card in the mini collection.  Not bad for just over a buck.  If you have any base cards of his that you're looking to trade, let me know.  I'm sure that I need a little over 9,000 of them.

Robert

The Minister of Defense

Short and sweet post.  1986 Topps football is done, thanks to Reggie White card #275.  

Working on many other sets.   Will post when I can.  As you saw because of work the last 2 months was non-existent as far as posting.  No promises made as to when the next ones may come.  

Robert

6 out of the Next 10: 2019 Donruss

It has been quite a while since I've been able to write a completed set post, several months is probably how long.  

I don't know if I can call it a problem, or just my frugality/cheapness, but the 4 remaining sets that I have on the Next 10 left are giving me issues.

2018 Panini Prestige, I'm running into issues finding some of the cards anywhere.

2002-03 Upper Deck Vintage hockey, same issue as Prestige

2018-19 OPC hockey, cards are still overpriced for the rookies I still need.  Trying hard not to bite the bullet.

2013-14 Panini Prizm hockey might be the only set of the 4 that I can complete in the near future without gasping every time I put a card into an online cart.

These 4 cards were part of my long awaited COMC order, which took 3 months and 10 days to arrive.  It's a good thing my 55 card order didn't bog down the system...

The Drew Lock RC was the most expensive at $2.25, Bosa was just under $2 and the other 2 were under $1, all 4 prices I could easily justify paying.  

I have a lot of incoming cards that I want to get on the blog, so this 10 day run of posts that I'm on will probably continue for a little longer.

Not sure if that's a good or a bad thing....

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

1,234,761

I've really taken a step back from posting the past 3 months because the desire to write has really dropped off, along with a lot of household issues that have distracted me and taken a lot of my time away from the keyboard.

I think this is the first time that I've written 2 posts in the same week since March, which is OK.   My interest in cards hasn't waned in the mean time as I'm still working on my favorite passion in collecting which is knocking down want lists.

The one set that I have finished in the past 3 months is the 2008 Allen & Ginter set, the 6th of the A&G run that I've completed.  Trades and small purchases off of Sportlots really knocked this set down quick to the point where I needed just 2 cards.

Glavine and Pierzynski were both quite cheap for SP cards, which is something that I've found a lot more in the past several months, cheap short prints from all along the A&G run.  I'm closing in on a couple other A&G sets and still really just getting going on years such as '06, '07, '13 and '14.  

You might be wondering what the title # of this post is all about.  It's a little humor (OK, very little) on my part to have some fun with the amount of cards that is ahead of my order on COMC.  This # is up to date as of 6:45 this evening, or just before writing this post.

Now the # of "items ahead of my order" is kind of a new thing on the site. I'm sure that some collectors will find the number depressing, intimidating or just plain crazy.  But for me, I'm going to have fun with it.  Numbers have always been my thing and now I have some easy title fodder for the blog, when I do decide to write posts.  

Let's see if the estimated ship/pick date of October 25th comes true.  That date is 2 days before my birthday, but I'm not holding my breath just yet.

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert 

As promised

I finally took advantage of a day off of work and got around to scanning the 2019 Gypsy Queen Green parallel set that I finished off a few weeks ago.  

Took about an hour, but for me it was well worth it.

Heavy on the scans coming up, so it may take a little bit to load all 34 of them...

My favorite card in the set is in the very last scan, it was the first one that I pulled when I bought a couple of packs a couple years ago.  The Odubel Herrera card really got me excited about this set and each green parallel card that came in only enhanced my love for it.

300 cards later, it is done.  And now it's on the blog.

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

5 out of the Next 10: Green is clean

After grousing, complaining, chasing, trading and trying to do everything right, the 5th set out of the Next 10 group of sets I'm working on is finally complete.

I finally have the final card for the 2019 Gypsy Queen Green parallel set, Manny Margot, in hand with a very big thank you to Gavin at the Baseball Card Breakdown blog for the assist. 

I haven't taken the time yet to scan the entire 300 card set as promised, hopefully one day this week that will be accomplished, but I can tell you that I love the look of it in the binder.  

5 sets remaining on the list, everything modern (post-2000).  A pair of football sets and a trio of hockey sets are my upcoming chases, combined the total amount of cards I need to finish them off is 169.  

RC's mostly in football, a lot of SP's in hockey.  These next 5 sets aren't going to be as easy as it looks.  But it will be very sweet when they are all done.

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

4 out of the Next 10

I would have written this one as the 3rd set completed earlier had my record keeping been accurate.  I'd been in single digits to complete the 2017 Allen & Ginter set for a while, having been on 6 to go since November.

With the Sportlots order came these 2 cards...

The Aaron Judge RC alone costing me $6, which I wound up considering reasonable considering the madness that is going on in the card world currently.  

I had 4 other cards on my TCDB "in transit" list, which I wondered whether I'd received them already but had neglected to remove them.   A quick check of the 2017 box for this set revealed that I had them, so the '17 set becomes the 5th Allen & Ginter set I've completed to go along with 2011, 2015, 2016 and 2018.

I've now finished the first 4 sets I had listed in the Next 10 post a few months ago; the remaining 6 sets are down to a combined 191 cards left on the want lists.  A lot less daunting task than I had previously imagined.

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

3 out of the Next 10

So after a bit of a weather delay, I received my Sportlots box yesterday.   Lots of fun inside including cards from at least 15 different sets, which is something I probably should slim down a bit for my next order.

A good thing though, is that quite a few of those cards went towards the Next 10 sets that I'm working on and 3 of them in particular finished off a set that's been in progress for quite a long time.

Say goodbye to the want list for the 2008 Upper Deck X Diecut set!

I am glad to have this one off the list since the want list for it since I wrote the Next 10 post back in September has been fewer than 10 cards.  

The recent Sportlots order has also knocked off cards from several of the Next 10 want lists.  The Gypsy Queen green set is nearing the finish line, as is the 2017 Allen & Ginter set.  I managed to knock off cards off of all the remaining Next 10 want lists, which is a good thing. 

I'm also coming within sight of finishing sets like 2019 A&G, 1984-85 OPC hockey and 1986 Topps football.  Each of these 3 sets are now less than 100 cards from completion, with the latter two sets likely being a bit slower to complete as they have big name rookie cards that I'll have to hunt down.

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

2 out of the next 10

This time of year just wipes me out as I get older.   The pressure at work increases each year and the time I have for my beloved hobby (and blog) just seems to decrease.

For example, today was the only day off I had this past week and I decided to spend a good chunk of the morning putting a couple of vintage sets in binders ('69 T baseball and 84-85 OPC), then get a couple of my nearly completed Allen & Ginter sets into boxes that actually fit the set properly (500 count BCW boxes if you're wondering).

While putting a bunch of cards that have been on my desk away, I realized that I had completed 2 sets from my recent Sportlots order and hadn't written a post about the 2nd one.  

The 2012-13 In The Game Between the Pipes set is one that I bought a box of way back many years ago at the Hockey Expo just outside of Toronto, then promptly let it sit in box of cards for years.  With the new found desire to finish sets, this one wound up in the crosshairs and the final 31 were part of the Sportlots order.  

Nothing but goalies in this set.   Love it.   You get some pre rookie cards such as Garrett Sparks, Zach Fucale, Laurent Brossoit and Tristian Jarry .  Then you hit subsets like Stars of the Game, the Decades subset which I really like, Record Breakers and then International Stars.  ITG didn't have a NHL logo license so choosing photos such as Michel Dion and Corey Crawford had to be tough to change what was on the mask, even slightly to avoid infringing on trademarks.

Good to get this one out of the way quickly.  I have 2 other sets that are less than 10 cards from completion now, so hopefully if I get some time next weekend I can get those finished and move forward.

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert