Week in review: trades aplenty and some minor pack purchases

During my travels this week, I bought cards at Target a couple of times.  At the Target near my house, I bought one of those Fairfield repacks for $11.99 which contained 10 packs of hockey cards.  Nothing major in the 2 MVP 5 card packs, the 90-91 Pro Set series 2 pack was also fine, but I did pull a Martin Brodeur RC out of the 90-91 Score American pack that was inside...

Can Enterprise pick you up?

The remaining packs in the Fairfield were Upper Deck packs from 2016-17 to current, a nice deal, including a jumbo pack!  Those went into my hurricane stash of packs that I have accumulating at the bottom of my bookshelf. 

I had to hit Target one day at work to pick up some supplies for the office, and no visit is without a pack purchase.  Didn't see any hockey there, so I picked up a couple of packs of Panini Rookies & Stars football, and the first parallel I hit wasn't too shabby.

The Green didn't come out very well in the scan, needless to say it will be added to my trade bait on the TCDB website.  Speaking of TCDB, I mailed out 4 trade envelopes this week, at a cost of just under $6.  Incoming was a different story, as I received two packages from Canada, along with 3 others from the US.

One of the trades came from Washington state, and inside was 11 GQ Green parallels including these two key players, Trout and Judge.  I was worried that I might have to buy them as this set came to a close, but now I don't have that problem. 

The same trade netted me a nice add to the T.Y. Hilton collection, which is starting to grow nicely.

I see all types of collections out there, does anyone collect cards that feature the elements on them, such as the two cards in the middle row that have T.Y. running in the snow.   If you do, point me to some posts/scans so I can check them out.

Finally, one of the trades from Canada added a few older cards to my Joe Sakic collection, which is slowly inching it's way to the 800 card mark.

The Score card in the middle row?  That's a Kellogg's card from 91-92, a great food issue that I thought I might never see.  The 90-91 UD next to it is the French version, of which I have none.  Even with all the cards I have from the 90's of Joe, I'm still adding more with these 5.  Great stuff.

So, total spent this week was $26, knocked off wants from the Sakic, Potvin, Sundin and Olerud player collections, several set builds also had some cards added, and a bit of trade bait crossed my desk.

Card show tomorrow.  Hopefully find some cards to finish off the '83 Topps set, maybe some '79s as well.

Enjoy the hobby!!

Robert

One down, 9 to go.

I decided at the beginning of 2020 to finish 10 sets, in order.  First on the list was 1981 Topps, and I mentioned a couple of weeks back that the set was down to just one card, #358 Mark Wagner.

Why he wound up being last, I'll never know.  Well, thanks to the post I made, and fellow collector Bruno from the TCDB site (ID: sandyrusty), I have 9 sets left to finish.

Bruno also sent 5 singles from the '82 set, which brings me to 10 on the want list, which I'm waiting patiently for COMC to send me.  By the way COMC, 8 days to pack up 23 cards?   That's assuming you're going to ship today.   I know you have a vast inventory at your warehouse, but in my opinion, that's just a bit slow.

9 more sets to go, and 2 of them are really close.  Once '82 and '83 Topps are done, that's where the fun begins.

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

One in a million

I'm sure that many of you are familiar with Beau on twitter (@onemillioncubs is his handle) and his 1,000,000 Cubs cards project.  Honestly, that is more than I could ever think of handling in my house, and I'm sure that my wife would give me a look if I ever suggested doing something like that.

Beau had mentioned on twitter on Friday about some eBay auctions that he was running, and asked people to go check them out.  I've traded with him in the past, and the experience was very good, so I gave it a shot.

I click on Beau's ID, and I swear to you, this is the first card that was on his list for me to look at...

Yes, big brother is definitely watching.

So for $7.50 shipped, the other half of the dynamic duo (Sandberg was last night's post) arrived today and has dropped the '83 Topps want list down to 24 cards, 9 of which are on their way from COMC.  I'm hoping I can find some or all of the last 15 at the monthly card show this weekend, and if so that will make 3 sets complete when my shipment from Washington state arrives. 

I will say, 2020 is off to a great start for me.

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

Giving credit where credit is due

Not a long wordy post, but had to give a quick shout out to an eBay seller that impressed me today.

I bought this Ryne Sandberg RC on Friday the 3rd.

Paid $6 + $3.25 shipping.  Pretty good price for the card, but as you've seen and heard all over the place, you just don't know what you're going to get for shipping from someone you've never brought from in the past.

This was in my opinion, perfect.  Shipped in a bubble mailer.  Sleeve, top loader and team bag!!

There was even a note thanking me for the purchase.  I loved everything about this pickup.   Thank you to Mark (eBay ID: dduman5) for a great experience that was well worth writing about, even if it was only 130 words worth.

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

Week in review: Progress made on a couple of fronts

I've wanted for quite a while to start up the weekly review posts that I used to write on Friday's a long time ago.  Seeing as I'm dedicating to doing things this year such as finishing off 10 sets, I'm going to try and dedicate some of my energy to these Friday posts.

So, let's begin.

I went a few bucks over the mythical $30 spending limit, but unlike in the past where I spent it willy-nilly on crazy stuff, I'm working towards finishing a few sets.

$20 deposited in the COMC account helped me finish up the '82 Topps set, grab a few cards for the '83 Topps set, and have them shipped my way with just under $5 left in the account.

A couple more exhibits from a recent TCDB trade

Oh, and by the way, COMC raised their shipping rate for the economy shipping level to $4.99 at the beginning of the year.  Adjust accordingly...

Woke up this morning and turned on twitter, and lo and behold Beau (@onemillioncubs on twitter) had a link to his eBay auctions.  I've enjoyed reading his exploits as he heads towards his 1M card goal, so I clicked on the link.  To my surprise, the first card on his auction list was the Tony Gwynn '83 Topps RC.   Big Brother is definitely watching.

So along with a cheap Ryne Sandberg RC I had in my cart, and using the $4.25 eBay bucks I had accumulated, the 2 key pieces I had remaining for the '83 set are on their way for just over $12. 

Finally, off to the post office I went this morning to send off one trade envelope for $4, which will net me a couple of key cards in the '19 GQ Green parallel set that I needed, along with a nice boost to my T.Y. Hilton collection.  Hopefully I'll be able to show them off sometime toward the end of next week.

So, spent just over $36 this week, not too bad considering I have a nice bunch of cards headed my way. 

Fingers crossed that I can keep up these Friday posts...

Enjoy the hobby!!

Robert

2020 is upon us. Time to finish some sets.

Happy New Year to everyone!  I do hope that you had an enjoyable evening celebrating the ringing in of a new decade.

For me, collecting in 2019 was quite enjoyable, and successful.   I completed a few sets, and I also wound up with 154 transactions on the TCDB website (which becomes www.tcdb.com as of today so update your bookmarks), far better than I ever expected to accomplish this past year.

What I want to do this year is pretty simple.   Complete 10 sets.  Easy right?  All 10 sets that I'm going to discuss have want lists of 100 cards or less, 8 of which are under 30.  How I'm going to do it will be a little bit of a challenge, because why would I make it easy on myself?

OK, so here goes.  Here are the 10 sets that I will finish this year, in order of completion. 

1981 Topps

Robin Yount is my first scan of the 20's, and finishing this set is fait accompli.  I mentioned recently that I only needed Mark Wagner to finish this set, and I received a message shortly there after from Bruno in the Great White North (thank you Bruno!) that he was willing to send me the card in a trade, so this is done.  

1982 Topps

As part of that same trade, Bruno is sending me 5 of the remaining 15 cards that I need to finish the '82 Topps set.  That left me with 10, so I hopped on COMC and picked those up.  So, this set is done and is either in transit, or will be in transit in a couple of days.  Which brings us to...

1983 Topps

This was one of 4 cards from the '83 Topps set that I received in a recent trade package (thank you Jason!) that took 3 weeks to travel from Wisconsin to Florida via the USPS.  Dog sled, no doubt.  My '83 build is down to 26 cards, with 2 of them being the Gwynn and Sandberg RCs.  I bought the  Steve Carlton base card on COMC yesterday, so this set is currently in progress.  Once this is complete, next up is..

1979 Topps

Evidence as to why Mario had trouble hitting over 200.  Donuts on the bat make it tougher to hit the ball

This is where a bit of the fun begins.  I have 24 cards left to go to finish this set.  The Ozzie Smith RC will be the one that costs the most, but there's also Nolan Ryan and a host of other star cards to pick up, so I'll be hunting to try and find them as cheap as possible, like usual.  A bit of a hurdle, so after this is done I'll drop down a bit and make things easier for myself again with...

2012-13 O-Pee-Chee

This set will be one that I'll be glad to have out of the way.   I've stalled on it for way too long, and with only 6 SPs left to go, getting this completed will bring a bit of a sigh of relief.   Brandon Manning and his $5 SP (why???) be damned, I'll finish this one in the first half of 2020 finally.  Then I'll move on to...

1976 Topps

This set completion may not be as daunting as I thought.  20 cards remaining including a George Brett 2nd year card, Ellis Valentine and Ron Guidry RCs along with 4 All Star cards and a few other big names will make it a challenge on the wallet, but it's what I signed up for with this set so I'm looking forward to working on this roughly around the start of baseball season in late March.  After this is done, I'll finally finish...

1973 Topps

Yes, I've been down to 2 cards left to go for about 2 years now.  Mike Schmidt RC and the high number series checklist.  The stalling will end this year.   I promise.  Once this is done, we'll move back to hockey and finish...

2013-14 O-Pee-Chee

27 cards left to finish this up, 2 from the base set (Andrei Sekera and Taylor Hall) and 25 SPs.  This situation actually improved while writing this post, as I had the Vladimir Tarasenko RC on my want list, which I was pretty sure I had.  Checked the box and sure enough, there it is, so that dropped the want list by one.  When this is done, I've got two want lists that are a bit bigger, so we'll start with the more recent...

1978 Topps

Still a bit of work to do on this one, with 79 cards to go.  The Molitor/Trammell RC and the Dale Murphy RC are the two big starters on finishing this one, but there's quite a few commons that should help to knock the list down to a more manageable number quickly.  Once those are in hand, several big names such as Rose and Ryan will cost a few bucks.  I also need 11 team checklist and 2 manager cards, which I thought was interesting (Night Owl, do you have a Tommy Lasorda dupe from this set?).  Once this is done, the 10th and final set from this list is...

1974 Topps

92 cards remaining to finish this set.  Let's start with Dave Parker and Dave Winfield RCs.  4 Hank Aaron Special cards at the beginning of the set.  A Ryan/Seaver combo card.  Ryan, Bench, Stargell and Rose cards.  This will take a bit of time to finish up.  But I believe with the other 9 sets above completed and distractions to a minimum (hopefully), I can knock this out in a reasonable amount of time.  

There you have it.  10 sets that I'm going to finish in 2020.  The only other thing that I can promise is that will not rip any 1/1 cards in half.  

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert