Mergers & Acquisitions

I've fallen into a bit of a blog block lately - haven't felt like writing much even though I've had a couple trade packages and a major eBay "trade" to report. I've had some ideas about the future of my blog(s) and I'll share those at the end of this post. For now, here are the latest additions to some of my set building projects.

Earlier this Autumn I sold my collection of Bowman baseball prospects - mostly to consolidate my collection, but also to take advantage of the Aaron Judge craze. Here are some of the cards I sold in the Bowman box:

 

The bid price (with shipping) ended up being the exact same amount as the best offer price (with free shipping) that I made to acquire this:

I don't like to do these very often, because I know that selling large lots on eBay isn't nearly as profitable as selling each card elsewhere would be. But I'm happy to add another HOFer to my 1956 Topps set build.

I also purchased these two on eBay, around the same time I bought the Banks. Schoendienst was virtually free, I used accumulated eBay bucks to cover all but the shipping. Kell was acquired with a best offer of $25 (plus $3 for shipping) so my total for the pair was about $30.

Now for a pair of actual trades...two months ago Dan Rauer of the blog The Other World
read my post about Panini baseball stickers and offered to help fill some holes in my wantlist. I sent him a stack of Phillies cards (which I hope he got - haven't heard back from him) and he sent about 30 stickers my way, including these:

I still need about 75 stickers from the set, but this was a huge help. Thanks for the trade Dan!

I also completed a trade with the legendary Matt of Bob Walk The Plank fame. I sent him some Pirates a while back and he returned fire with these:

The Clemens relic is #d to 50. Very cool. Nice on-card auto of Steven Wright there, and three SP's for my never-ending Heritage set build. Thanks to this trade I've now got 81 of the 100 short prints.. in the main set. Now I need 15 of the 25 shorties in the High Number set. What have I gotten myself into?

This was a nice little trade package but Matt said he has "more to come." If that is the case, I'll be ready to fire another round ;-)


As for the blog news... I've been thinking about merging my two blogs into one, which would likely be this one. I have a concept that would work better here, and I'm assuming that my sports card readers are more open to reading about non-sports topics once in a while than the other way around. Still brainstorming about it, but if I do plan to follow through with it I'll let you know. It wont be until after Christmas, because I've got a whole lot of Black Friday posts planned once my COMC cards are shipped to me.

Speaking of COMC...have any of you hit the Autumn specials yet? I've got a few cards targeted but haven't pulled the trigger on anything over $1. I'd pimp my port here but I'm still waiting for COMC to complete my submission. Hope you all find some great deals!


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Season Ending Retail Break - 2017 Topps Heritage High Numbers (and some hockey)

Y'all remember my five-box break of 2017 Topps Heritage? I spent about $300 on those five boxes but considering what I pulled (and how much fun I had) I'd say it was worth it. I still haven't finished the entire set - I need 25 of the 100 SP's - but I knew I'd have to set some money aside for High Numbers.

However, when I searched pre-sale prices at my favorite online retailers I found that many of them didn't have any in stock, and those that did were charging $90 for a single hobby box. I wasn't willing to pay more than the $65 that a "low number" box cost, so I had to go the retail route. 

As soon as I got word through the blogosphere that High Numbers hit stores, I made a trip to my LCS (Target) and grabbed a little bit of everything:

I also bought a fat pack of 2017-18 O-Pee-Chee hockey because I like to sample the season's first issues, and I usually prefer it to MVP.

But this year... blecch! I liked last year’s design a lot better. When I opened the pack I saw a shiny sticking out...

...figures it was a checklist. At least I got one Devil. Domi is a guy I kind of collect, and Mitch Marner is better than I thought (I guess he was overshadowed by Auston Matthews.)

My favorite card in the pack is definitely the Jagr playing card insert. As Shoebox Shane said, someone sign him! The fact that the scoring-starved Devils signed Drew Stafford (21 points last season) instead of Jagr (46 points) boggles my mind. Even if he can only manage half that total, the experience he'd bring would be invaluable for Jersey's young forwards like Pavel Zacha and Nico Hischier.

I was hoping to pull a RC of Charlie McAvoy – who I will be collecting because McAvoy is my wife’s maiden name – but instead I got White and Keller. Can't complain with those two.

Now back to baseball, and the Heritage High numbers. My first thought when opening these is that the black wrappers are much cooler than the yellow packs from the main series:

The second thing I noticed is that there were no "Rediscover Topps" buybacks included. Bummer.

I have to admit I didn't study the checklist before opening the packs, and so I assumed there were only 25 SPs in the high numbered portion of the set, numbered 726-750. I was half-right. There are 25 SP's, but the set "only" goes up to 725. I pulled four: 712, 715, 722, and 723. 

Here are the inserts, including the Target exclusive Topps Game rookies:

I got the "wrong" Dodger. Oh well, at least I pulled a Kris Bryant. The Thames and Schwarber cards are cool, too.

As for the base cards, I’m disappointed my guy Trevor Williams isn’t in this set. (Maybe 2018?) But I'm even more disappointed in the repeat packs I picked.

Of the 114 base cards in these packs, 42 of them were duplicates:

 And some were triplicates (is that even a word?)

Aanyone waant to taake these extraa A's off my haands?

Even though I'm planning to build a second (base only) set - as I did with the low numbers - I still have plenty of trade bait because... 

I bought the whole High Number base set from Just Commons. It cost me $25 and arrived the day after my retail break, but I still think it was money well spent, for one reason:

A couple hours after this set arrived I watched Bellinger tie an NL rookie record with his 38th home run. It's a good bet that he'll break that record and end the season with at least 40 bombs. It's an absolute lock that he'll win NL Rookie of the Year.

         And we all know who the AL's ROY will be.


This concludes my card buying for the 2017 baseball card season. I spent over $400 on Topps Heritage products, including the boxes/packs, base set, and SPs I purchased on COMC. It was a lot of money but it was also a lot of fun. I haven't bought this many cards in a single season since before my daughters were born. 

But now I've got to gear up for Black Friday. It's only two months away!


How much have you spent on baseball boxes/packs this season?


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Heritage Break Part III: All the inserts and a 19/68 Hit

This is the third (and probably final) post of cards from my 2017 Topps Heritage 5-box break. I might discuss the base set in a future post, but I want to get to some trade goodies I received over the past week (and my incoming COMC order) so I'll end Heritage Week with the inserts and relics.

I was sort of amazed that I didn't pull any duplicate inserts over the 120 packs. That said, I didn't complete any inserts sets, either. For my 2007 Topps Heritage set I completed the full set (including SP's) plus all variations, and I thought I had completed the basic insert sets - but if I did, I no longer have them. Not sure what I'll do with this year's Heritage inserts, but here they are:

Topps Game inserts (11 out of 30)

Baseball Flashbacks (6 out of 15)

News Flashbacks (7 out of 15)

Some of these cards (and others that I didn't pull) are sad reminders of what a depressing year 1968 was in America.

New Age Performers (10 out of 25)

Then and Now (6 out of 15)

Notice that Topps is re-using the same photos for the insert cards. Lazy.


Now for the hits...each box promises an autograph or relic, and after opening the first two boxes I was worried that the Real One autographs were one per case.

Since I bought less than half a case I was afraid the odds were against me, and I'd get stuck with five fairly pedestrian relics.

I got four relics...

Near the bottom of the third box I pulled this beauty, a red ink Real One auto of Astros superstar Carlos Correa:

Apparently these red ink autos are parallels of the regular autographs... and numbered to 68 in recognition of the 1968 set. What's even more awesome is that this particular card is numbered 19/68:

I assure you those are creases in Correa's jersey, not the card.

I bought these boxes purely for the enjoyment of the base set, not to pull a big hit. That said, if I hadn't pulled even a standard auto I would have been disappointed. This Correa card was the cherry on top of a '68 sundae. 

Hope you all enjoyed reading about this Heritage break. I'll be sending some base and buyback packages in the mail soon.  

Enjoy your weekend!

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Is This Anything? (2017 Topps Heritage SP's & Variations)

I'm still in the process of sorting through the mountain of 2017 Topps Heritage base cards on my table.. out of five boxes I managed to get at least one copy of every card from 1-200, and no more than three copies of any one card. I should have plenty of dupes to send out as part of my giveaway. (Reminder: if I don't have your address, e-mail it to me by Saturday morning and I'll ship your cards this weekend)

As for the short prints, I ended up with 43* out of 100. Not great, but not too bad. Some of my favorites:

This is just the right amount of hatless players.

Altuve is 5' 6" and the bat looks like a twig in this picture.

Too many Red Sox SP's - and I didn't even get Ortiz or Pedroia

Who said Topps only SP's star players on marquee teams?

*Three of my SP's are action image variations:

 I don't know if I'll count these as part of the set or hunt down the 'regular' SP versions.


There were eight parallels in the haul -- five chrome cards #d to 999, two chrome refractors #d to 568, and a mini King Felix numbered to 100:

Now for the variations. I got two that I'm certain of, including a Rookie Image Variation of Aaron Judge:

regular

sans Austin

Judge is a big dude - I don't think he should have to share a card with anybody. (I was hoping for a Benintendi or Moncada, but I'll take it.)

I also pulled a Clayton Kershaw action image variation:

This is the only one that's not an SP

Now here's where I need your eagle-eyed help - I also pulled three powder blue looking things:

These aren't listed as variations on Cardboard Connection, and the code at the bottom is the same as a regular base card (my contacts might be in the wrong eyes, but I think the code ends in -1867.)

I'm less certain of these next two, which look ordinary on the front:

...but are clearly different on the back:

The one on the right is darker than any card I pulled. Every other card in the box has that mustard yellow back that hurt my eyes after about two hours of sorting.

well... every other card except one:

These Sandy Leon have a different shade of yellow on the back:

 Mustard yellow, meet lemon yellow. Both of these have the same codes as well. 


What do you guys think... are these cards unannounced parallels, or regular base cards with irregular (but not special) colored backs/fronts? I'm going to treat them like variations, but I honestly don't know if I have anything here. 

My next post will definitely be something...


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Rediscover This!

Okay, so I'm finished busting open over 100 packs of Topps Heritage. What a fun break! The cards are everything I hoped they would be, in terms of replicating the 1968 set. I haven't collected a Heritage set since they recreated the 1958 set, which was ... ten years ago. (Duh.)

As I opened the packs I separated the inserts/variations/SP's from the giant pile of base cards so that I can scan and sleeve the special cards first.


Before I dig through all the base cards and see if I have a complete set and/or any variations I may have missed, I thought I'd scan up some of the inserts... starting with the "Rediscover Topps" Buybacks.

I have to say, these are kind of lame - not the buybacks necessarily, but the plain all-caps type along the side, and the various colors of each. The set selection is a disappointment as well. Like the cards you've seen fall out of 2017 flagship, it's a lot of overproduced junk wax-era stuff:

And a couple of recent issues. The Seaver is the only one I'm really fond of; it's a Red Sox and a HOFer.. plus I've never seen a buyback of a Topps Traded card, so that's cool, too. I guess I'll keep the Plesac and maybe the Hechavarria... but everything else is up for grabs. Jon and Shane (Shoebox Legends) both collect buybacks, and both have sent me some great cards this week - so you guys get dibs on these.

FYI, here are the card numbers:

85 Lefferts #608
85 Kennedy #635
86 Lee #23        
86 Bannister #784
86T Seaver #101T
87 Willard #137
87 Von Ohlen #287
87 Felske #443
87 Palmeiro #634
87 McGregor #708
88 Brock #212
88 Magrane #380
89 Williams #411
89 Steinbach #725
90 Hrbek #125
90 Plesac #490
90 Crews #551
93 Pugh #702
12 Casilla #389
15 Hechevarria #656

Tomorrow I'll scan up some of the other "hits".. either the variations or the regular inserts. Maybe the relics, I'm not sure. I'm going to get a lot of blog mileage out of these 2017 Topps Heritage cards.


Oh wait, I almost forgot...

Two more buybacks. These one-card packs are very tricky to open, as there's nothing between your thumbs and the fragile fifty-year old piece of cardboard. If you get one of these, definitely open them carefully and slowly (or just cut the top with scissors, and extract them through the slit - maybe that would have worked better?)

Anyway, here are the final two buybacks:

#108 Don Pavletich and #197 Larry Brown. Not junk wax, but not in great condition, either. Both are available for trade.


Have you bought (or plan to buy) any 2017 Topps Heritage? Do you collect buybacks?
Jon/Shane, which card(s) should I set aside for you?



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