Summer of Slabs 06 - Sets, etc.

The "final boss" of my card collecting career is the 1956 Topps set. My original plan was to get every single card in PSA 5 grade or better. Here's the latest acquisition, a Rip Repulski 6: 

Down to 48 cards, which means most of what remains is either a hall of Famer (Mays, Reese, Doby, etc.) or a tough common that rarely appears in mid-grade. A fully slabbed set probably wasn't feasible before 2020, and it makes even less sense now. I've filled in some spots with ungraded cards whenever I can find an affordable option. In some cases, the ungraded copies are even pricier than slabbed singles.

Here's a Walter Alston I'm watching. The Dodger tax is real with this one. 

When this ends, it will likely be over $75 total. For those who think graded cards are a waste of money, here's a copy of the Alston card that would have fit my needs:

That's about as much as I would want to pay for a Manager card, even if it is a "RC" of a Hall of a Famer. 

I'm hoping to pick up at least a few '56s from Greg Morris this weekend, but the bidding is always competitive. That's why I prefer to use Buy It Now.

Picked up this Joker RC for under $200. It's a lot for a Donruss card, but I got one really cheap on COMC a few years ago and flipped it for a nice profit. I'm building a bit of of a current/recent greats RC collection, and usually buy Chrome or Prizm because anything higher is out of my budget. However I went with the Donruss RC for Nikola Jokic because I preferred the price and the action shot over his posed Prizm photo. 

Also because I have the complete 2015-16 Donruss basketball set. 

I love graded cards. and I love building sets. A lot of collectors avoid slabbed singles because they're old school set builders and want to have every card in its pack pulled, natural state. I totally get that.

A lot of people buy graded singles as an investment. The authentication gives the owner some peace of mind. They're easier to resell if you suddenly have financial issues because of a natural disaster, or family illness, or because you have two kids who are approaching college age and you're no longer a two-income household. I totally get that, too.

My slabs and my sets are mostly separate. Except when they're not.

Here are three (more) graded singles in my collection that I can't sell because they are part of a complete set:

2018 was the last year I collected more than one baseball set, and it's a good thing I did. I have complete sets of Topps, Topps Opening Day, Big League, and Stadium Club along with Topps Chrome. Much of the appeal of those sets is tied to the Shohei Ohtani RC, and it's unlikely that someone looking for this Chrome RC would be interested in the whole set when they can just buy this one card.

This Michael Jordan All-Star card is one of a handful of slabbed 1988-89 Fleer singles in my collection. I do not currently have the complete set of this; I sold my base MJ (PSA 7) to raise funds for an upgrade. One of the other cards in that consignment was a Dominique Wilkins PSA 9, which I didn't really need in PSA grade. I'll pick up a 'raw' copy for a couple bucks, eventually.

The 1988-89 Fleer set looks a bit off in my basketball binder, because I've got empty pockets for those half-dozen singles in the PSA box. My 2000 Finest baseball set has a space for the Johan Santana RC, and I've considered selling the BGS copy to pick up an ungraded card for the binder. Maybe one day.

Which leads me to 1993 SP, one of my all time favorite sets. I've got the baseball and football sets completed in one binder. Except for the Derek Jeter RC, which was also sold with the intent to upgrade.

I can't possibly afford a PSA 9 copy of this iconic card, and I'll probably pay more than I want to for an 8. But there's another card I'm tempted to upgrade. Not nearly as iconic, but a staple of my teen years - and in my opinion, a nicer looking foil SP RC:

I grew up in New England during the Drew Bledsoe era. I remember when Bill Parcells joined the Patriots, when Robert Kraft bought the team, when they updated their uniforms, and when they drafted Drew. The franchise was a laughingstock through the late '80s and early '90s, and there was a ton of excitement over the new-look Patriots. 

A couple years later, when Bledsoe started resembling Dan Marino, this card blew up. I had a dealer come to my house and personally deliver a copy to my door. I think I paid $65, a "friend" price (they were selling for $75!)

It's tempting to pick up a PSA 9 copy for this card for my PC. The foil edges are just as condition sensitive as they are on the Jeter - and it's a fraction of the price!

Can't justify it though. I already have this card. And I need to set aside cash for the Walter Alston :/

Thanks for reading!




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12 Days of Christmas Day 6 - Christmas cards

My wife just finished assembling and mailing our Christmas cards, and it got me thinking about all of the cards I've received for Christmas over the years.

In my second-ever post on this blog I mentioned two cards that my mom picked out for me at the old LCS - both from the 1956 Topps set:

They were not graded at the time (I don't think PSA existed when she bought these.)

Mom had a good relationship with the owner of the shop. Both of them knew what I collected and while his prices weren't the best, he was always fair and honest with her. 

Whenever I saw a single card that I really wanted, I would add it to my Christmas list and write "Harvey has it." Sometimes it would end up under my tree, in a super thick screw-down holder. Sometimes I'd find it in my stocking at 3 a.m., mixed in with a plastic candy cane full of M & M's, a chocolate orange, and a few packs of new cards. 

One such card was a Karl Malone Fleer RC:

I'm mad at myself for not holding on to this one, not just because I'm back into collecting basketball cards but because it was a gift from Mom. 

As I've gotten older and my time with her runs low, I've learned to appreciate all that she's done for me. It must have been difficult being a single mom with little income raising a sports-obsessed boy with an endless wantlist. Writing these posts reminds me of all the big and little purchases she made over the years, from factory sets...

...to hobby boxes:

Of course I opened all of the boxes and sets immediately. Most of them were retained or replaced, with one exception being the 1990-91 Topps hockey set. I might not have all of the cards but I have great memories of opening and sorting them on the living room coffee table.

One gift from Mom that I don't regret selling came from one of the last stocking stuffers I got before moving to New Jersey, a box of 2003 Finest Football:

I pulled the Carson Palmer RC and listed it on eBay a short time later. I think it sold for $125-150. 

I've received so many sports card gifts from Mom that I can't possibly remember them all. But she wasn't the only one who bought packs or boxes for me...

 
Sometime around 1997 or 1998 my brother and his family gave me a long box that looked like it could be clothes.. but it was an assortment of packs from all sports plus a handful of 9-pocket pages. I had so much fun ripping open all the packs and storing them in the pages as randomly as possible. It was such a fascinating mix of 1990 Topps and 1995 Fleer baseball, Stadium Club and Skybox basketball, Topps and Upper Deck football. There were some shiny inserts with funky '90s designs and bland base cards, and for that day I went against all my organizational instincts and embraced the chaos. 

not the same assortment, but as close as I could find

Two years ago my daughter managed to find a repack of Mets cards at her school's holiday shop. I wrote a post about it at the time (apparently I've used this title already) and it made me so proud and happy that she would think to buy me sports cards. I was reminded of those cards twice recently - once when pulling the J.J. Putz to send Dennis as part of a Christmas gift, and again when Nick mentioned the Wrigley Field backdrop on a Donruss Team Heroes card.

It was tough to part with the Putz, but I've got eleven other cards from that blister pack to treasure - along with a Teuvo Teravainen Fleer Ultra RC pulled from a pack my daughter selected for me at Target two years earlier.

I'll have at least one more post in this 12DOC series covering new cards I've acquired this holiday season. 


What's your most memorable sports card Christmas gift? 



Thanks for reading!
 



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The most SPectacular SPorts card sets of 1993

I'm thrilled that my Favorite Things post has turned into a nice little Blog Bat Around, and as promised I'm going to expand on one of my choices here...


1993 was a golden year for baseball cards. It was the peak of the hobby, in my humble opinion. There was market competition but not over-saturation. The cards were getting shinier, smoother, sleeker.. but for the most part they were still affordable. It was also the last year before the baseball strike.

I bought hundreds, perhaps thousands, of cards in 1993. Donruss was an okay set. I enjoyed pulling Diamond Kings inserts almost as much as I enjoyed pulling Franchise inserts out of Score packs. I had a tough time finding (and affording) Bowman but even as a 12-13 year-old I appreciated their emphasis on prospects and recent draftees. Upper Deck's flagship brand was their best effort to date. The 1993 Leaf set remains popular to this day; I wrote about that one in December.

I also mentioned the first Flair set in one of my first posts. It was one of two boxes of higher-end baseball cards my mom bought me for Christmas that year. The other was 1993 SP. 

Upper Deck called this "The finest trading card ever produced." (A swipe at Topps, perhaps?) Even if the Finest brand had the same price point, I'd still choose SP. The vibrant colors and photography were a natural progression from brands I'd already loved - such as Leaf, Fleer Ultra, and flagship UD. Finest looked like an alien spacecraft. 

Looking at this Bret Saberhagen now it kind of feels like an homage to 1959 Topps. But the background isn't real and he's completely outside of it. I guess it creates a decent 3-D effect but I didn't like it at first (the next three Finest sets won me over - especially 1996.)

Now this is a baseball card. Ozzie is perfectly cropped within the border. That string emerging from the logo might be a little odd but it frames the card nicely without being obtrusive. The blocks at the top left add just enough color; the cards might have looked plain without these.

Here's another perfectly cropped photo. I love how Upper Deck used team colors for each card. It's a nice touch and something I've appreciated since Pro Set color-matched in 1990.

A lot of the photos Upper Deck chose were taken during spring training, though I remember being astounded that Gary Sheffield was already pictured as a Florida Marlin (he was traded June 24, 1993) I don't remember SP being a late-season release, and I couldn't find the official release date anywhere. It must have been early September because the first 18 cards were the 1993 All-Star starters.

The set composition is perfect for 9-pocket pages. There are nine cards per team, and the checklist is alphabetical by team and player. That means the Yankees are last! (we can dream, eh?)

The Brian McRae above is just one example of the fantastic on-field action found in SP. Here are some more plays at the plate:

Infield action:

Outfield action, including a triple-exposure Kirby Puckett:

Lots of missed signals in Spring Training. I hope these guys straightened it out once the season started.

Nearly all the cards have a second photo on the back, though a small handful repeat the front photo. Here are some of the more unique card backs:

The Luis Polonia sunset card (not to be confused with a sunset card) stood out to me. The only other sunset/night card I found was Gene Harris:

This set was loaded with interesting singles, including Jose Canseco pitching:

Bip on a boat?

Brian Harper on a brick:

And I haven't even mentioned the foils yet!

As you can see, some of these are scratched and chipped. This was the first time I was aware of a modern set that was "condition sensitive". A lot of my base card corners are starting to wear out as well. I probably shouldn't handle them anymore because finding pack-fresh replacements is next to impossible at these prices...thanks to this guy:

A mini-rant about sealed box prices: why would I pay over $2000 for the chance to pull a card I can buy individually for $500? I wish I could make a deal with the dealer: "I'll give you $100 for the box, and if I pull the Jeter it's yours". That's how much I love this set.

Here are my five favorite singles from 1993 SP, starting with #5:

 

When this card was released I was amazed that Jim Abbott could swing a bat. I hope I also recognized the rarity (at the time) that an American League pitcher would have to bat.

#4 might be a familiar one to all the Oakland Athletics fans out there:

Rickey stole a lot of bases. Rickey stole so many bases that Rickey got to rip 'em right out of the dirt. 

My #3 favorite is a majestic looking Hawk:

This is a perfect posed photo. Blue sky, Green Monster, and a Hall of Famer. Again, the cropping is on point here.

My top two favorites are also Hall of Famers. I selected these because they're action shots of baseball legends, and they're colorful:

Cal Ripken Jr. comes in at #2. And at #1 we have another Junior:

Okay, so this Ken Griffey card could have been cropped a bit better. I don't care. It's awesome. There was no more exciting card to pull for a 12-13 year old kid. Nobody knew who Derek Jeter was. If you had this card - or any similar Griffey issue at the time - you had struck gold. I wonder if that wasn't the last time kids could feel that way about pulling a base card.

I'm considering a similar post about 1993 SP Football and/or 1993-94 SP Hockey so if you enjoyed this post and you want to read more about my favorite set design, please let me know.

Thanks for reading. Have a great weekend!


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