The first $50

I'm ten days out from my 15th anniversary with the Mrs. and nearly all of the "play money" I set aside from the sale of my Mike Trout RC has been emptied out of my PayPal account. It did not go the way I expected at all. Shoebox Shane advised me to focus on one or two high-value cards and I really did try...but I ended up with a lot more than two cards.

Most of my purchases will arrive at the end of this week, and I'll likely recap them all sometime around the 17th. However I decided to spend $50 (plus tax) at COMC, knocking a few cards off of my watch list. I don't plan to request shipping until I've got 200 cards in my inventory (I'm at about 150 now) and I don't want to wait that long to discuss these cards. 

Initially I'd planned to pick up an Immaculate on-card auto of a Hall of Famer for $24.99. One of the 49 copies sold on eBay for over $32 and I was afraid that the COMC copy would have sold out as a result. It hasn't, but I got my Panini Immaculate Collection fix in other places (or tried to, anyway - that's a story for another post.)

Instead I spent my COMC cash on PC and set needs. A quick search for graded 1960s cards turned up this Al Simmons for my mid-grade 1961 Golden Press set build:

$8 down, $42 to go. Once this is in hand I'll have 12 of the 33 cards in the set. I'm still missing all of the big names (Cobb, DiMaggio, Gehrig) and there's a slight chance I'll add a couple more high-grade HOFers to my collection by the end of the week.

I've had my eye on these Conlon Collection color masters for quite a while. One COMC seller has a bunch and I finally made an offer on Frank "Home Run" Baker here. I added it to my inventory for $8.20, about 10% off the asking price of $9.

This Dustin Pedroia manupatch wasn't on my watch list for 100 years but it sure felt that way at times. I've kept an eye on it since 2018 and it just wouldn't budge below $5 - until last week when I snagged it for $4.65.

Thanks to CrazieJoe (and an assist from baseballcardstore.ca) I finished the 2003-04 Topps Pristine base set. I'm not bold enough to tackle the serial-numbered rookie portion, but I didn't hesitate to add a Devil #d/699 to my collection for $1.11. 

My Brett Favre box is running out of room and I planned to prioritize other player collections - until I came across this 2002 Topps Pristine refractor #d/349. The seller was asking $9.99 and I might have picked it up at that price. When it went on sale for $6.10 I threw it in my cart faster than one of Brett's bullet passes to Antonio Freeman. 

This Tremont Waters Panini Prizm green parallel was a bit of an impulse buy at $1.19. The G-League Rookie of the Year went to high school in my home town and, tragically, his father was found dead in a hotel that's about 20 feet from my mom's house (we used to play Wiffle Ball in this parking lot.) I was actually browsing Tacko Fall cards when I saw this color-matching gem pop up. If both Fall and Waters make the Celtics rotation I might have to switch allegiances from the Bucks, lol.

Here's a pair of on-card autos from 2018-19 Upper Deck Chronology. I've glanced at the $5 and under offerings from this set and Brian Bellows was one of the biggest stars (no pun intended) available. The green North Stars jersey featuring the 1991 Stanley Cup final patch caught my eye and led me to spend $3.80 in credit. I nearly got both Bellows and Nelson Emerson for $5 total; Emerson's messy signature set me back just $1.31. 

More Whalers here with a Ray Ferraro Canvas insert. I have no idea when Upper Deck started sneaking retired players into what I thought was a parallel set, or why they picked "Chicken Parm". Regardless, as soon as I saw it I added it to my watch list.. and then someone bought it an instant later. So I quickly snatched up the next-cheapest copy for $2.80.

Ferraro was the Whalers' #2 center for many years, behind this Hall of Famer:

Until now I did not have a rookie card of "Ronnie Franchise" and one of my goals with this windfall was to fill that hole in my collection. I had always hoped to pick up a graded copy but I just couldn't justify spending triple-digits on a slabbed single. And so I examined my options on COMC, picked out the best-looking copy in my price range and made an offer. It's a bit of a gamble at $12.75, and I won't know if it paid off for a few months, but at least I can cross this off my shopping list.

If my math is correct that's a total of $49.91. Can't exactly call this a COMC Blaster.. a COMC Megabox maybe?  

This is the last time I'll be spending money at COMC until at least Black Friday, and I'll be happy to bring home some longtime residents of my watch list.. eventually.


Are you still shopping on COMC? Has your opinion of the site changed due to their indefinite shipping delays?



Thanks for reading!



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