A few more PieCes and some 59s

This order from COMC was very small, just 35 cards in total.  Because I'm a bit short on funds at the moment, my plan is to hit ebay or Sportlots with some orders while I'm on vacation to avoid putting big chunks of money into the COMC account.

So what I did with this last order is all but clean out the account, just to get some more cards in the house.

Last night you saw some of the deals I found, and I have some more to show...

I've mentioned that I'm getting to the point in the 1959 Topps set build that the cards I'm buying are more than a buck apiece.   These 4 are no exception.

The black background cards in this set will always be my favorites.  I don't know what it is, especially when the cards are in nice shape, the black really stands out in my opinion.  These 4 leave me with 105 to go.  With so many big name, high dollar cards to acquire, I doubt that this set will be a "focus" set.   I'll continue to chip away, and hopefully by the end of 2019 I'll be reasonably close to finished. 

I kind of picked away at some of my PCs as well with this order.  I have a bunch of Fitzgerald cards that I'm going to show tomorrow, but there's a few others today worth looking at.

Sixty nine cent Gold Medallion of Ichiro.  Wonder if the price point had any factor in picking this up.

Keith Tkachuk will never be a huge PC for me, as these three bring me to 79 cards.  The Green StarQuest card fills in the attainable rainbow (Blue, Green & Red) from that year.   I haven't seen the gold parallel yet (it's #'d out of 100).  The Emerald Ice was something I was surprised I didn't have already in my collection as I had dozens of the EI parallels back when they first came out.  The Crown Royale 2000 card?  The American flag in the background made it an easy choice to add to the cart.  The 3 cards cost me less than $2.

Contrary to Tkachuk, the Sakic PC will continue to grow whenever I get the chance.  I had never heard of the Saturday Knights card before, so grabbing it was a must.  The Saturday night reference for anyone that grew up in Canada I'm sure was quickly understood.

Now the next card I'd looked for for quite a while.   It had always been priced around $10 and I just wasn't wanting to pull the trigger on it for that price.

2011-12 Certified Mirror Blue Joe Sakic.  #'d 75/99.

$2.39

MINE!!

I love this card, and my cheapness/patience finally pays off. 

There are other mirror cards in the set; black, red, gold, emerald.  The red is serial #'d to 199 and will be within reach, but the other 3 are numbered to 25 or less so will likely not hit my hands anytime soon (if at all).

Now it's time to see if those 4 '59 cards completed any pages.

Thanks for reading, Robert

The focus has helped....somewhat

I declared a while ago that I was going to try and focus on finishing one set at a time to try and not feel so overwhelmed by all the sets that I wanted to complete.

That worked for a short time, as I knocked a good chunk off of the 76-77 OPC hockey want list right away.

Then the cheap ass in me took over.  That's usually my standard M.O.  Buy up as many cards as I can to get close to finishing the set, then wait and wait for the best deal possible to finish up the set with the high end cards.

My latest COMC order came with just 2 cards for the various hockey sets that I'm building.  This 76-77 OPC team leaders card I picked up for just over $2, and it reminded me of the talent that the Sabres had in the mid 70's.  You don't even see Rene Robert, Jim Schoenfeld, Craig Ramsay or the other solid players that this team had.  It's kind of surprising that they didn't get to the Cup final more than once.

This card brings me down to 14 for the set, and I still have some big names like Orr, Dryden, and the Tiger Williams rookie still to pick up.  Bargain hunting it is...

Speaking of looking for cheap cards, for me this next card was the steal of the order.

One of the best U.S. born players of his era (if not the best), the Pat LaFontaine RC is criminally low priced at $15.   I somehow managed to snag this copy off of COMC for under $4 (!) which should never happen.  Aside from being slightly off center, the card is in fantastic shape, and is a fabulous addition to my 84-85 OPC set build.  I'm just a couple of cards away from being 1/6th of the way through the set, and I'm always hunting for a nice lot of cards to give me a push towards completing the set.

I will say this about my focus, it may have strayed away from finishing off the 76-77 OPC set somewhat, but my resolve for purchasing only cards towards my set projects has grown.   Outside of the hockey re-pack I bought myself to celebrate the 7th anniversary of the blog, nothing new is coming into the house. 

The fact that I've held out this long from buying packs is a miracle itself.  We'll see how long it lasts.

thanks for reading, Robert

Inbound and Down #45: Too Many Verlanders

Dennis over the years has been very good to me.  In the comments of my post from the other day, he congratulated me on 7 years and called me "SNI guy".  I guess that's an appropriate moniker considering my love for serial #'d cards over the years.

Dennis has also been very keen on keeping that moniker intact for me, as he has contributed to the SNI baseball and hockey sets on a regular basis.   Out of the blue last week he sent me another envelope, 20 cards in total to put another small dent in the set.

The last couple of envelopes that Dennis has sent have had quite a few Pacific cards from the early 2000's inside, and this one was no different.  There are 20 cards above, all from the 2002-03 Pacific Heads Up set. 

You have to look closely, but you can see a stripe across just more than half of them, which indicates that they are "Hobby Ltd" parallels, numbered to 299.  The rookies on the bottom are numbered to 899.  As with most sets, most of the rookies didn't pan out.  The notable exceptions are Joni Pitkanen who played over 500 games in the NHL, and Antoine Vermette who played in his 1000th career game in the NHL last season as a member of the Anaheim Ducks.  At age 35 he may find it tough to get another contract in the NHL, although his faceoff skill and durability may help him find a PTO with someone.

Dennis, thank you very much for the envelope, it really is appreciated!!

Thanks for reading, Robert

Seven---Try A Repack video post

Had a little fun with a hockey repack in this video.   Today is the 7th anniversary of the first post on this blog.

For those of you who don't wish to watch the video, thank you for the support/trades/dialogue over the first 7 years, and I'm looking forward to many many more.

Thanks for viewing/reading, Robert

Nines

Got my package of winnings from Daniel at the It's like having my own card shop blog yesterday.  A fine envelope of goodies indeed.  The scan above features all kinds of colors, and one card that if you asked if it had any color you'd say negative.

All the 2010 Opening Day blue parallels are numbered, very nice.  For me, if the negative parallels were numbered there might be more excitement around them.   It's definitely a different idea for sure, but for me it's nothing to get excited about.

Daniel even sent me my own Paul Goldschmidt starter pack of nine cards.  OK, if you're looking closely it's 8 plus a double, but it's a nice thought so we're not going to split hairs here.   Love the Topps Finest card at the bottom center BTW.

Daniel spotted on one of my posts recently that I had started a John Olerud collection but I really didn't have anything aside from the Blue Jays cards I pulled out of my collection.  So 11 cards featuring John as a Mariner are now mine.   Diamond Kings cards are always great so I immediately gravitated to that card in the bottom center.

You may have noticed the improvement in quality of my scans today.  I've figured out the software for my new scanner, and the scans are turning out great.  3 sets of nine card scans have made me quite happy.

Sometimes though, just scanning one card is enough.  Love being able to add another hit to the Jays hits page.  I don't recall seeing any Home Run Derby jersey cards before, so this is a nice add as well.

Daniel, thank you for the package, it really is appreciated!!

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