Saturday Show and Tell

Before the second half of NBA Week begins I thought I'd squeeze in a recap of all the cards that have arrived at Collector HQ this week. We'll start with the first pair of PWEs for the Swap Meet:

The mysterious Elliptical Man who never provides a last name sent 15 singles, including loads of legends:

I knew Moses Malone was great - but I didn't realize just how dominant he was until researching my 1982-83 "Topps" Basketball set. Tim Hardaway will be a Hall of Famer eventually.. right?

Very nice mix of cards here. Thank you Brendan!

Jeff, author of the blog Wax Pack Wonders, contributed 14 cards:

1980's Fleer! I'm now back up to 32% of thie 1988-89 set, after purging some PSA singles.

These six Reggie Miller cards bump Karl Malone off the top spot in my collection; I have 54 Mailmen and I now have 56 Millers - not including his cameo in the Hardaway card.

Six Hakeem Olajowon cards round out the PWE.Thank you Jeff!

I bought a pair of hockey cards from Harris Sports Cards on eBay:

Tyler Seguin is the 27th card I've added to my 2015-16 Exquisite set build. There are 30 cards in this subset/base set, but try telling that to TCDB. I was excited to add the Whalers logo sticker to my order for $1. Couldn't find it at any of the online retailers I frequent, and no one had it for trade on TCDB.

I tried filling sets through Sportlots. Bandit24 offers free shipping if you order more than 80 cards from him.

I ordered 109.

My 1986 Topps Football set is complete; these are all upgrades. Pat McInally invented Starting Lineup figures.

My wife had about 80 of the 180 cards in the 1994-95 Upper Deck SP insert set and I've nearly completed it for her. I'm down to just 8 needs, with one card on the way from Baseballcardstore.ca.

2013 Topps is almost complete. I just need three Mike Trout cards, the Manny Machado rookie, and nine other randos. 2013 Topps Update is less complete. I'm at about 85% of the 330-card set.

Another very ambitious set build I'll probably never finish - 2018 Topps Chrome. The good news is I've got 61% of the set. The bad news is I still need the Ronald Acuna RC, the Rafael Devers RC, and the Shohei Ohtani RC. Yikes.  The Ron Artest Hoops Decade RC has a roller mark on it. I'll probably have to upgrade.

1995-96 Playoff One on One is another one of wifey's starter sets I'm trying to finish. I've added about 40% of the 2019 Score football set over the past couple of months - and at far less than the cost of a blaster.

I picked out a couple of cards for my team PCs, including a Xander Bogaerts insert and an Aaron Rodgers base card. By the way, every single card in my order was 18 cents.

Except for this Wayne Gretzky sticker from 1985-86 Topps. This was kind of an impulse buy at $3.95.

I made some room in my Hartford Whalers binder (by taking out New Haven cards) so I started filling in those empty slots. Also picked up a couple of Colorado Rockies cards. I might add the Rockies and Scouts to my list of team collections, since they are part of the Devils' lineage.

Made some progress on my 1988-89 Topps set build - but not quite as much as I intended.

How did I manage to order two Rick Vaive cards? I could have filled in another need. Oh well :/

These are all in nice shape, but the Hrudey is way off center on the back. I might have to upgrade that one.

Finally, the main focus of this order was finishing off my 1992-93 Topps Archives basketball set. I needed 15 cards and Bandit24 had them all. They were the first cards I placed in my cart. Everything else was secondary.

Feckin' hell. Gold parallels.

All of them were gold parallels. It's a nice bonus, I guess. But now I have to go get those 15 base cards.

I've already spent the $1.98 in loot (and a $0.36 refund) on more cards from Bandit - but I didn't bother trying to order these again. 

Have you ever received parallel cards when ordering base set fillers? Did you notify the seller?

Thanks for reading!




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Almost There

As I mentioned in my previous posts I've been working on set builds and deciding which ones to complete. This will be a three-sport post thanks to an above average mailday but I'm going to focus mainly on my four basketball sets: 

I threw in the towel on my 1988-89 Fleer set build because I didn't want to spend $150+ on the Michael Jordan base card (and he's got an All-Star card at the end of the set.) If I wanted to, I could sell some of my high-grade Hall of Famers and buy a "raw" set, but that's a decision for another day.

Since the '88-89 set was too expensive to compile I thought I'd try the next best thing: 1989-90 Fleer. As of last week I (technically) needed just six cards: John Williams, Mike Woodson, Gerald Wilkins... and Larry, Magic, and MJ. Once I got within ten cards of completion I splurged $32.95 (plus tax) on the Jordan card:

If I were submitting this to PSA I'd be bothered by the yellow bubble on the right side border. But I'm not. 

With the "goat" in hand I'm absolutely going to finish this set. Heck, I'll even go for the master set since it only requires two additional cards. I have an incoming trade for three cards, which (if all goes well) will leave me with just Magic Johnson, both John Williamses, a checklist upgrade, and a Gerald Wilkins variation left to acquire.

The next basketball set build is an even smaller one: 1992-93 Topps Archives. As mentioned on my 1993 Blog I'd been trading for singles from this set just for the heck of it, and ended up with more than half the set. When I compared prices of the 1989-90 Fleer Jordan I noticed the price of his "First Topps Card" from Archives was as high - or even higher - than the Fleer issue. Since most of my Archives singles are in less than mint condition and I've got 46% of the set to go, I made the decision to abandon this set build. 

But then.. while I was at work today, I received a trade offer that saved this set from the scrap heap. A Canadian trader asked for three 1979-80 OPC hockey singles I'd just added to my tradelist last night. 

In return he's sending me seven Archives singles - all Hall of Famers (except Shawn Kemp.) One of them is the Michael Jordan card. The set build is still on!

Ah, but now it gets really difficult. Jon Pennysleeves (tm Julie) sent me a starter set of 2014-15 Panini Prizm a few years ago. I'd been plugging away at it here and there, until I got within six cards of completing the 300-card set. At one point the Giannis ("second year Prizm") was selling for $150. I held onto it because I was determined to complete this bad boy. At that time Joel Embiid's RC could be had for about $60. I kicked the tires but ultimately passed. 

Aaand it's more than double that now. Also, Zach LaVine sells for about $50. Andrew Wiggins was over $20 not that long ago but it's much cheaper today. I can't catch a break because Jordan Clarkson sells for a Jackson now. Jordan Clarkson. I nearly bought the Marcus Smart RC a couple times but passed. Oh, and I still need the Kevin Durant base card.

Sigh... this set is going to cost me a minimum of $200 to complete. But I really don't want to break it up. 

While I ponder that one a little more I decided to work on my 2015-16 Donruss near-set. This build began with two retail boxes purchased from Dave & Adams for a total of... $39.98 (plus tax/shipping)

I really wish I had a Crystal ball and stashed those two retail boxes because now D & A are asking slightly more for them. Wow.
 

Alas, I opened the boxes and began the set build. I only got one of the top three rookies (Karl-Anthony Towns) so I needed to track down Nikola Jokic and Kristaps Porzingis. Luckily I bought the "Joker" before the pandemic (for $3.05!!) and four of the five remaining rookies are no big deal. I found a TCDB user in Australia who was willing to trade me a Terry Rozier RC, so that knocks it down to four. 

The Unicorn was the big obstacle, so I searched eBay for his rookie and... snagged a copy for $5.05 after tax and shipping. Assuming those transactions go smoothly I'll have three more to go: Kelly Oubre (I pulled his autograph out of one box but not his RC), Jarrell Martin, and some guy named Christian Wood. Never heard of him. Is he good?

What. The. Fork?

Okay, yes, Wood has become a breakout star for the Houston Rockets. But this is a hundred dollar card, which I can only attribute to two factors:

• Donruss was the only brand that made a Christian Wood rookie card (Porzingis has about a hundred more RCs to choose from.)
  
  
• The hobby has gone absolutely insane
  

I might have to wait until this Rocket comes back down to Earth before continuing this set build.

Moving on to other sports.. I received three PWEs in today's mail - including two from fellow bloggers.

Here's the PWE from TCDB user jmkidd. I sent seven Seattle singles his way for these set fillers.

Robert is working on the 1986 Topps football set and I had a couple extras he needed, including a slightly creased Bruce Smith RC I'd just received as a freebie in a TCDB trade. Four of the cards I asked for are set fillers: the Upper Deck SP inserts and the 1988-89 Topps singles.

Last but not least we have a PWE from the aforementioned Jon, who contacted me about a Haywood Jeffires Sports Illustrated single after reading my post about the 1993 Houston Oilers. 

He also offered up some cards of UConn alum Richard Hamilton. No set fillers here, but all six cards were new to my collection. Jon, thanks for the nice Rip(s)!

It's high time I sent out some freebies to my loyal reader friends but instead I have an idea for a sort-of contest that combines Easter with my upcoming 500th post. Who's up for a blog "Easter Egg" hunt?

Thanks for reading!



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