Summer of Slabs 02 - Adventures with Alex

Yesterday I shipped my consignment order to 4 Sharp Corners. I sent two separate packages - 14 cards to be listed immediately, and three high-value cards for their August Showcase:

Huh huh.. ass  ... huh huh huh 

 

I mentioned the Mickey Mantle before. It's my hope that the 14 other slabs will sell for enough cash to upgrade this to a 5.5 or maybe 6 if I'm real lucky (when am I ever lucky though?)

At one point I had a small stack of SP Authentic Future Watch autos. The true RCs really exploded in value during the Covid lockdown/hobby frenzy, and I decided to sell off my Henrik Lundqvist RC but not mt Steven Stamkos RC. I always liked Tampa, and Stammer. His autograph was so sharp. 

But he'll be 36 this season. 2024-25 was his first year in Nashville, and his worst full season since his rookie year. I probably should have sold it three years ago, after Tampa's three-year run as Stanley Cup finalists and his first/only 100-point season. But I really liked this card. I still do, just not as much. 

If there was no urgent family health crisis in my life to navigate around, I might have waited until the 2025-26 NHL season was in full swing to sell hockey cards. Stamkos is 18 goals away from his 600th career and he's never failed to pot at least 23 in a full season, so 700 is a possibility before he hangs 'em up.

800 career goals is out of reach. 

900 career goals is impossible for anyone -- except this guy:

Here it is. The Golden Ticket. The most valuable card in my collection... or at least it was until yesterday. I'm honestly a little sad to see it go. But what a journey it has been. 

I bought this card in 2014, after his fifth 50-goal season:

The seller had listed a Buy It Now of $450 but I made a best offer and he accepted. When I received the card I knew immediately why he didn't haggle:

There was gunk all over the case. I couldn't wipe it off, it was embedded in the slab. I knew BGS had a reholder option, and they have a booth at the East Coast National show in White Plains, NY. Eventually I would get back to that show, bring the Ovi, and get a fresh holder. 

That never happened. My wife and I were too busy with our infant daughters to go to a major card show. I worked when she didn't; she worked when I didn't. The time and money just wasn't there.

Meanwhile, Alex Ovechkin kept scoring goals. And this card kept rising in value. I absolutely did not want to send it to Beckett in the mail, risking loss or damage for what would become the crown jewel of my hockey card collection. 

The Capitals finally won a Stanley Cup. Ovi kept scoring goals. Covid, the stimulus, the hobby spike, etc. etc... before I knew it this card was worth 15x what I'd paid for it. This wasn't just my most valuable hockey card -- it was my most valuable possession. I'd have to sell it someday, to put my kids through college (or pay for medical bills) .. and with Ovechkin in hot pursuit of Wayne Gretzky's goals record...

I knew the time to sell was approaching just as quickly. But if I was going to send this card through the mail, I wanted to minimize the risk of postal damage. 

COMC had an option to submit cards to PSA for grading, so I submitted the Ovechkin as a crossover - thinking that those three 10s would equal a PSA 10 (plus a clean case) This was a huge mistake. 

After paying a substantial grading fee to PSA for crossing over a $5,000 card in a hurry (because I wanted COMC to list it for sale right before he broke Gretzky's goals record) I received this... 

PSA didn't grade the card. And, as an added bonus, they pocketed the grading fee. 

I was livid. I ripped into the COMC customer service rep, who reported that PSA considered this 'below standard' or some garbage. Obviously no one at PSA even bothered to hold this in their hand because it's clear that the damage is on the case, not the card. I made this point to COMC customer service while also accusing PSA of stealing my money.

The COMC rep got me a refund, so at least I has some store credit to play with. That was my last order on the site. Ever. 

I also have zero plans to submit anything to PSA ever again, which is unfortunate for my 1956 Topps set build, but that's a story for another day.

While I was insisting on a refund for the grading fees and attempting to sell the card as-is, do you know Ovechkin was doing? Scoring goals at a higher rate than ever before. Russian Machine Never Breaks* 

*my enjoyment of Alex Ovechkin the hockey player is not an endorsement of Russia or the Putin regime

COMC listed my scuffed-up slab at a 20% markup (two things to scare off bidders) while other sellers with an SPA 9.5 were selling theirs for five digits. Right before Ovechkin broke the record, one copy sold for $11,000+ 

Do you know what I could have bought with that kind of coin? I do:

I whipped this up based on COMC ask prices at the time. That would have been an unreal trade. Alas.

Obviously it was a very tight window to max out the sale price, and it's long passed. But $5-6k is still a lot of money. It's enough to buy some timeless vintage cards, a few set fillers and/or upgrades, and have enough left for a minor home renovation project. 

But... the gunk. I had to get rid of the gunk. 

And so, I bit down and shipped it off to BGS, along with the Chapman and Parker and Nash and McDavid and Connor and Forsberg. And it came back, nice and clean and nearly pristine. 

And then I put in the mail again, this time to 4 Sharp Corners consignment. It should reach their headquarters Tuesday, but it won't be up for sale until late August. That's fine, I'll be too busy with the Mrs. to spend the money anyhow.

Sending this Ovechkin out for consignment is the end of an era for my hockey card collection. Through the years I've sold Upper Deck Young Guns cards of Ovi, Sidney Crosby, Leon Draisiatl, Nikita Kucherov, Nathan MacKinnon, and many more. I've sold SPA Future Watch autos of Henrik Lundqvist, Drew Doughty, Logan Couture, and now Ovi (and Stamkos). I once had six Ovechkin rookie cards. 

I've only got two left - a Black Diamond BGS 9.5, and an ungraded Victory RC that was inserted into Upper Deck packs so it probably shouldn't even count as a true RC.

This Ovechkin RC accompanied the SPA and friends to 4 Sharp Corners. It was part of a Pack Wars prize from my LCS, with a few other ungraded Power Play RCs (Corey Perry was among them). I sent it to BGS way back in 2008 - along with a pack-pulled prospect auto of the top slugging prospect in MLB at the time:

Remember Matt LaPorta? He was supposed to be the prize of the CC Sabathia trade, not Michael Brantley. I was so excited when I pulled that card, too. It's fun to look back on my BGS submissions and remind myself of what cards I had and sold long, long ago. The Ovechkin RCs were never meant to be flipped, but I held them in my PC for over a decade. It's time to cash out. 

Thanks for reading!




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Summer of Slabs 01 - Color matching

Welp, now that everyone has noticed I've returned to blogging... I will have to go on another hiatus. 

Two weeks from today Mrs. Collector will go under the knife for a 6-hour procedure involving three different surgeons to (hopefully) remove her liver and colon tumors. If all goes well, her recovery will take about a month. But that's strict rest; she will still have to take it easy for a few months after that. 

So.. no East Coast National, no birthday visit to Connecticut, and no card show at the mall the following weekend. I'm still consigning cards with 4 Sharp Corners(might need the money more than I care to imagine), and I'm going ahead with my planned series of Summer of Slabs posts. Some of these might have to be scheduled, but we're not there yet. 

In this series I'll scan up a couple of BGS or PSA-graded cards in my collection. Some of these just arrived from Beckett, some are on their way to 4SC, and some have permanent residence in my hallowed Graded Card Chest -- which the Mrs bought me at least 15 years ago. 

The manufacturer went out of business a decade ago

There's room for 144 PSA-graded cards in this bad boy, and my initial purpose for these posts (before the surgery was moved up a month) was to determine which cards to keep, which to sell, and which cards to acquire. 

We'll get back to this soon enough. Today I want to kick off this series by showing off some color matching parallels fresh from BGS:

This Matt Chapman green refractor is numbered to 75. Someone on eBay offered me $20 for it after he'd just been traded to the Giants. I decided to hold on to it for a while, but decided to submit it for grading while he's still a top-tier third baseman. It's going in the shipment to 4 Sharp Corners. 

I picked up this Tony Parker Bowman '48 tribute for $5.25 on COMC way back in 2015(have I really been back into basketball card collecting that long?!?) The black parallels are numbered to 48 and I wanted to grade it specifically so 4SC would consign it. There is a white corner (back bottom left) that I was aware of before submitting it to BGS, but I took the gamble anyway. No idea what to expect for this one; Carmelo Anthony and Vince Carter cards sold for about $20 raw, while a PSA-authenticated (not graded) Kobe Bryant sold for $330. 

I love this Steve Nash orange refractor. The only reason I considered selling it was because these sell for a lot more than I realized; a PSA 9 Nash just sold for about $130. The centering was an obvious issue on my copy, but BGS saw more of an issue with the edges. Either way, a Mint 9 was best-case scenario for this card. A sale price ceiling of over $100 is tempting, but I'm gonna hold on to this for another year or so.

Sorry about the iffy pictures, btw. My scanner won't work with thick BGS holders so I had to use my phone. 

Finally tonight, here's the one card that I knew I wanted to get a Gem Mint grade on, the one that would look the coolest in my color match collection, even if it's not as valuable as the others... 

Wooo this is the best grade yet! Filip Forsberg isn't Connor McDavid or anything, but he's one of the top rookies in the 2013-14 Panini Prizm set. This was the only stand alone Panini Prizm puck product and since a Red Sasha Barkov is out of my budget, this was the best color match I could acquire. There's one on eBay (with a better pic) listed at $129. I don't think it would sell for half that in auction. 

This weekend I'll discuss some more from the 'consign' pile, and maybe another keeper or two.

Thanks for reading!



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Summer of Slabs preview... maybe...

On May 1st, I sent an 8-card submission to Beckett Grading. The plan was to get these cards back in mid- July, keep a couple, and send the rest (along with 10-15 cards I already have) to 4 Sharp Corners for consignment. Those cards would be listed on eBay in late July, and I'd receive my payout sometime around the second week of August. This would align perfectly with my birthday and the East Coast National in White Plains, NY. 

I received two emails on Friday, one from Lucky's Promotions listing the autograph guests for the show, including Julius Erving, Frank Thomas, Sammy Sosa, Allen Iverson, and Barry Sanders. Of particular interest to me: Packers legend and Pro Football Hall of Famer LeRoy Bulter, and Basketball Hall of Famer Alex English. 

I've never had an opportunity to meet any of the Packers stars I cheered for as a kid/young adult, and I only have autographs of two: Brett Favre and Dorsey Levens. Butler was the anchor of Green Bay's secondary for the entire 1990s. He invented the Lambeau Leap! 

Alex English was a guy I never even saw on TV, an out-of-market star that I learned about through trading cards and became a fan simply because his stats popped off the page. $39 bucks to meet him and get his autograph - on an 8x10 or a basketball?!?!? That's a steal!! 

The other email I received was from Beckett, informing me that my order would be delivered to me via FedEx on Monday(today). Cool, I'll just tell my wife and she can sign for it, and...

.....nope, she has a chemo appointment. Up until the end of May, she had two appointments every two weeks. But the surgeon took her off chemo so she can get her strength up for the major surgery she needs to have somewhere around the end of August/early September. She shouldn't have any chemo at all. But she's still taking pills and going in for hydration and checkups and whatever. So she would not be home from about 10 am-12:30pm or so. No problem, I can come home for lunch at Noon, and my office is right down the street, so there will only be a two hour-window when no one will be home. 

Yeeahh, no one was home. Of course they attempted delivery at 11:15 a.m. What are the odds? 

Glad you asked. July has 31 days, and every day has 24 hours, and Mrs. Collector has exactly two two-hour chemo appointments per month, and does not leave the house on a weekday for any other reason. So the odds of the FedEx delivery truck arriving at a time when neither one of us would be home to sign for a package that contains $5,000+ worth of trading cards is:

100%, exactly. 

Well, that sucks, but they'll re-attempt delivery tomorrow when the Mrs. will be here. No problem. 

They'd better, because she already has to go upstate on Wednesday for an exam and meeting with some more doctors. That will take her out of the house all day. And, the surgeon called her today to discuss her condition. Apparently her tumor is growing a bit larger no shit sherlock, you took her off the good chemo so he wants to schedule her for some tests on Thursday. He's already starting to waver on his initial steadfast diagnosis that he can remove all of the tumors in one single six-hour surgery. 

What was I talking about? 

Oh yeah. Cards. So, I'm still going to send a consignment order to 4 Sharp Corners and (assuming there are no unforeseen issues with my cards) I'll have some money to spend in August. But I can't drag my wife around a big convention center for 4+ hours while I browse through dime boxes and stand in line for autographs. Instead, I'm going to visit my mother that day. My wife can handle a 2+ hour drive, but standing and walking for more than a minute is an issue. The surgeon told her to exercise but she didn't listen. I kept trying to get her to take walks but she's been too tired or busy. 

I'm torn about what to sell though. If I send everything I initially wanted to consign, that will include hockey cards which are out of season and would likely sell for more during fall/winter. But I don't know what I'll be able to do by then; when I sent my BGS order on 5/1, none of this surgery shit was on our radar. Will things be better, or worse, in November? And it is worth waiting just for the potential to make a couple hundred dollars more?

But if I don't send the hockey cards I have a lot less to work with. My goal was to upgrade these three:

...plus pick up a Nikola Jokic RC, a Joe Montana RC, and some of the remaining 1956 Topps cards on my need list (Willie Mays in particular) If I don't include the high-end hockey cards in my consignment, I'll basically have enough to upgrade the Mantle. 

Not that any of this is important under the circumstances. It's just that the window for enjoying my collection is closing fast.

I won't be able to squeeze in another card show, but maybe I can make the best of it somehow. If the BGS order arrives as expected I'll show those off before I ship them out to 4 Sharp Corners.

Thanks for reading!



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The rarest RC of 1991-1992?

Here's a short price list of early 1990s rookie cards:

$0.77 on SportLots

"Super Premium" rookie card of a Hall of Famer. This is the nicest of Jeff Bagwell's four main set(not update/traded) RCs. There's a million of these circulating. 

$1.50 on SportLots

Upper Deck managed to sneak in a "Final Edition" in 1991, and had the foresight to add this future legend. It's the only MLB card depicting Pedro Martinez in his pre-rookie season. There aren't as many of these Final Edition singles as the main set, but they're not hard to find. 

$0.20 on SportLots

Here's the only RC of a Hall of Famer in Upper Deck's inaugural basketball issue, and it's available for the price of a common. 

$2.42 on SportLots

12 year-old me would be crushed to learn that this Shaq rookie card can be acquired so easily. My friends and I ripped open as many $3+ packs as we could get our hands on to try and pull one of these. 

$2.02 - $2.52 (SportLots or COMC)

                                                                               

Score was the only company to include Martin Brodeur in their 1990-91 sets. His two RCs (English and French) are slightly more expensive than Dominik Hasek's RCs but waaaaaayyyyyyy cheaper than Patrick Roy's 1986-87 Topps card. That's because there are millions of 1990-91 Score singles floating around. My mother in law has at least a dozen Brodeur RCs. She could buy a dozen more and still spend less than the cost of a Roy RC.  

$2.73 on COMC

One more Hall of Famer here. Paul Kariya's first appearance in a mainstream set is this basic-looking 1991-92 Upper Deck single. However, this was not a basic card or set. This was a World Junior-only issue released in Czech. And it's still cheaper and more abundant than the inspiration for this post...

I'm pert'near finished with the first ten years of New Jersey Devils cards. There's only a dozen or so singles from 1982-83 to 1991-92 that I don't have, and this Bill Guerin XRC is unfortunately one of them. It's Guerin's only RC, and he did accumulate over 400 NHL goals over a stellar 18 year-career. But he's not a Hall of Famer, and he was never considered a superstar. 

I really didn't like him much during his playing days. He bounced around a lot and often complained about his contract, which is ironic because he's now the General Manager of the Minnesota Wild. He also assembled the US roster that lost to Canada in February's Four Nations tournament. I liked him even less after his pathetic display of groveling to Dear Leader, but I digress. 

Personal opinions aside, this is a Devils card and therefore should be in my collection. It is not, and here's why.

Parkhurst were reeeealll sneaky bastards, even more so than Upper Deck. This 25-card extension was available as a mail-in purchase on series II packs. Per TCDB, it is estimated that less than 15,000 of these sets exist.

Luckily, Guerin is the only Devil among them. 

This is what you can get for about $40+ shipping. Some extra Roy, Ray Bourque, Mario Lemieux, and Brett Hull cards, a playoff recap of the 1991-92 season -- indicating this should count as a 1992-93 release -- and three rookie cards. 

Trent Klatt's card would cost 10 cents in any other format. This one is $2.02 on Sportlots. 

Ray Whitney's RC is an interesting one. The highly underrated forward played parts of 22 seasons in the NHL, accumulating 1,085 career points (more than Guerin) and 385 career goals(more than Eric Lindros). His card should be ten times more than Klatt's but due to the scarcity of the set, they're equal. One - and only one - SL seller has both cards available for two dollars and two pennies apiece. 

He does not have the Bill Guerin. Beckett Marketplace does not have the Bill Guerin. No eBay seller is currently selling an ungraded Guerin (and I'd slide it into a 9-pocket page, so slabbed singles need not apply.)

The only place I could find that has a copy of this card in its intended free-range form... is COMC:

For that price you could buy the Bagwell, Pedro, Mutombo, Shaq, both Brodeurs, and the Czech Kariya. It appears that the Bill Guerin Parkhurst XRC is the scarcest rookie card in any set produced in 1991 or 1992. 

Topps added a High Series to their 1992 flagship and Stadium Club football card sets. Among the half-decent to very good players with RCs in this extension are Cowboys DB Darren Woodson and Packers WR Robert Brooks. 

The Brett Favre single in this set is more expensive than his 1991 Stadium Club RC - both of which would cost more than Bill Guerin's Parkhurst card. But they're not rare. I have both of them, as well as the Brooks RC.

Back on the baseball side, 1992 Fleer Update was a fairly limited release. Mike Piazza's RC is included. Jeff Kent and Tim Wakefield, too:

There's a John Valentin RC in this set that I don't have in my Red Sox collection. It's not available on SportLots or COMC. Could it be as scarce as that Bill Guerin card?  Nope!

Every team collector knows it's practically impossible to track down every single. And now I know that it can be an arduous task trying to track down a basic rookie card of a not-great player from the peak of the overproduction era.

Thanks for reading!  

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eBay adventures

Bought a complete base set of 2024-25 Upper Deck hockey from an eBay seller in Quebec. The cards arrived today, and ... it's not complete. There were five duplicate cards, and two missing cards: 

Filip Forsberg and Jonathan Quick aren't superstars, nor are they French-Canadian (Forsberg is Swedish; Quick's hometown is right next to mine). Probably just an oversight. But that means I have to go back to Sportlots one more time to actually complete this set. Guess I'll pick up some Whalers and Devils while I'm there... 

One of the cards I submitted to BGS for grading is a Filip Forsberg Panini Prizm rookie card. I picked up the Blue Pulseczar Prizm on COMC a couple years ago and if the grade is high enough, it's going to look awesome in a slab. Here's a J.T. Miller Blue Pulsar for context: 

That order should return to me by the end of July. There's a couple other hockey RCs in there, along with a Jackson Chourio Mojo Refractor and a couple low-numbered basketball inserts. 

eBay really is a necessary evil for collectors. I wish I didn't have to buy or sell on that godforsaken site, but it's the easiest way to offload unwanted cards and collectibles. A few weeks ago I listed a medium flat rate box of about 2,500 football cards in an auction. Here's the key pic, and the description:

This medium flat rate box is FILLED with over 2,500 football cards from Panini Prizm, Donruss, Donruss Optic, Topps, Upper Deck, and more. 90% of these cards are modern football from 2000-2024 and more than half are from 2020-2024. Lots of stars and parallels in this box plus a few inserts and rookies of players such as Josh Allen, Jalen Hurts, Caleb Williams, Tony Gonzalez, Barry Sanders, Derrick Henry, Justin Jefferson, Rome Odunze, Marvin Harrison Jr., J.J. McCarthy, Christian McCaffrey, and many more!!

The buyer was "extremely disappointed" because there were only a few rookies and the rest was "junk". I told her (based on the name I assumed it was a female bidder) that the cards pictured and described were all shipped. 

It was pretty obvious that she (or he) was trying to flip this lot and make a couple hundred dollars. Why else would they be disappointed with hundreds of recent base cards from Panini Prizm and Donruss, which included hundreds of semistars and stars. 

So, because they bid over $70 for this huge box of cards, which included a Caleb Williams Prizm parallel RC and got exactly what was shown here... I got neutral feedback "unsatisfactory" 

I petitioned eBay to remove it because there was no reason for this comment but they're very pro-bidder.
 

On a lighter note, Fuji asked about the mystery batting champion whose mother bought his card from my friend. And since no one else is reading this, I don't mind sharing ;)

My guy Baseball Brittie does much more volume than me, and seems to have much better luck with customers (not just DJ's mom) I don't think I've ever plugged his store, so if you absolutely must shop on eBay and you see something you like, tell him Chris The Collector sent you. He'll hook you up!

In more personal news, my wife is doing much better. We visited my family and best friend in CT for the first time since February (when she couldn't eat and had to go the hospital for a week) Everyone commented on how much healthier she looks. She's been eating solid food again, and has much more energy than she did even a month ago. 

And we breathed a huge sigh of relief this week. My insurance company was in negotiation with the cancer center that Mrs Collector has been visiting and there was a last-minute agreement to continue coverage. If they didn't agree to terms and our hospital was no longer in-network, our only options would have been to rush the surgery to squeeze it in before Continuity of Care would have ended August 31st, or pay tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket. Yeah. No.

Luckily, all is well and we don't have to rush. But her improvement has me hopeful that we could schedule her for the end of August anyway.

I've got a significant anniversary coming up, which is somewhat tied to an NHL anniversary as well..

Thanks for reading!



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p.s. even though the UD hockey cards I bought were advertised as a complete set and I did not receive a complete set.. I left positive feedback and didn't bother the seller about the two missing cards. I'm not petty.