Before I start to show off my purchases, I want to state something for the record. While I technically spent over $400 on sports cards this month, a great deal of that cash came from the sale of other sports cards - so I only spent about $80 out of pocket.
A couple weeks ago I listed some high-end sets for sale on eBay in an effort to fill the PayPal 'pot'. Only one item sold: my 3-set lot of 2000 Topps Chrome Traded sets.
I broke the "buy low, sell high" rule with these, but still managed to rake in about $200 (after fees and shipping). My plan was to divide that into two roughly equal 'halves' - one for COMC, and one for a "big piece" towards my 1956 Topps set build.
$100 wasn't going to get me a graded Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, or Roberto Clemente (the top three stars missing from my set.) Perhaps the whole $200 would, but I wanted to spread the pool around and have a little more fun. Black Friday is my Christmas, after all.
Focusing on mid-tier HOFers for my '56 set is actually kind of difficult. Harmon Killebrew is often out of the $100 range (it's his 2nd year card), and I bought the Ernie Banks last time I tried this. Roy Campanella was a possibility, but I didn't like the examples I was seeing.
Soon I found a high-grade copy of an early-career card of a mid-tier HOFer. The seller was asking $125 OBO and I made an offer of $95, with the assumption that we'd meet in the middle. Which is exactly what happened:
This Al Kaline was exactly the kind of card I wanted: a high-end set filler that only took up roughly half of my spending money. I had my eye on another Kaline item, and threw a quick BIN auction up to offset the cost (I call this an eBay "trade".)
I offered up this Jacob deGrom Orange parallel on TCDB for $25. No one bit, so I sold it on eBay. That would have given me enough cash to cover the Kaline item I wanted...but then I got distracted.
It started when I was window shopping at Blowout Cards, kicking the tires on their Black Friday sales. Their hobby box prices for flagship and Big League were unbeatable - barely more than a blaster. I filled my cart with about $80 worth of goodies, then cleared it. Why place an online order for the only cards I have easy access to (at Target)? That led to an eBay search... which led me to Kruk Cards.
In the summer of '17 I was feeling nostalgic, and Kruk Cards had a whole bunch of items that brought back childhood collecting memories for me - specifically a starter lot of 1988 Panini stickers. I wrote a Buying Back My Childhood post about it at the time.
Cut to this week, when I spied a sealed box of '88 Panini stickers for less than the cost of two blasters. Obviously I don't need 100 packs of these, but since single stickers are at least 50 cents apiece on COMC I thought it was the most cost-effective way to complete the set (at which point I would stop opening the packs and list the remaining ones on eBay.)
Last summer I spent $109.40 at Kruk Cards; this order was almost exactly the same price - $107.17. A big chunk of that was the cost of shipping; the items were on sale so I couldn't "commit to buy" without paying for them and eBay had a 15% off coupon that expired Wednesday night - after Kruk was closed. A woman in their customer service department assured me they would reimburse me for any overcharge, but the items were shipped yesterday so that seems unlikely.
If Kruk Cards does issue me a partial refund it will cover the cost of another '56 Topps set filler. When I started adding cards to my COMC wantlist I found that one of the few graded singles I needed (that wasn't overpriced by Deans Cards) was a Lew Burdette.
The PSA 7 example on COMC didn't drop down into my price range, so I picked up this 6 instead. At $9.50+ shipping it was a full $50 less than the PSA 7's sale price.
So, here are the details of my eBay "trade":
Sold three sets of 2000 Topps Chrome Traded for $215
Sold a Jacob deGrom 2014 Bowman Prospects parallel for $25
total (before eBay/Paypal fees) $240
Bought a 1956 Topps Al Kaline for $110
Bought a 1956 Topps Lew Burdette for $13.50
Bought a bunch of old stuff from Kruk Cards for $107.17
total $230.67
Considering the fees and cost of shipping the items I sold, this was basically a wash. In the next few posts you'll see what "old stuff" I bought from Kruk, and the first of my multiple orders from COMC - which should arrive Monday. This order contains a Secret Santa gift, and I wasn't about to make my recipient wait until Dec. 17 or later, so I paid $4 a week before the free shipping promotion began.
How did you spend your time/money on Black Friday? Did you do all of your shopping online, or did you also shop in stores? Did you buy gifts for yourself, others, or both?
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