Sunday Night Scan Dump

I've emptied the creativity tank with my Young Guns series and my novel/memoir (which I was proofreading until 4 a.m.) so here's a bunch of scans from my recent COMC order.

 

Picked up this '57 Frank Lary for $1.24. It pairs nicely with my other '57 Tigers card, Charley Maxwell. 

Let's go back a year:

For those of you who think graded cards are a scam/waste of money, here's some more evidence to support your case. This Luis Arroyo cost $3.25, which the Hobie Landrith set me back $1.24.

Meanwhile, this Pedro Ramos EX 5 cost $14.50 - ten bucks more than the first two cards combined. I'm two cards away from crossing the next milestone in this set build, 60% completion. Can I get there by the end of 2022? Perhaps if I get a decent Christmas bonus.

Some random-ish baseball cards I scooped up. Perhaps when I hit 60% completion I'll discuss some '56 Topps knock-offs such as the Piersall and Robinson, and compare them to the real thing.

Piersall and Duke Snider cost 37 cents each. The Nelson Cruz emerald parallel (#d/259) cost 62 cents. Hooray for thick, high-end cheapies. It always makes me shake my head when I have to pay more for a thick top loader for these cards than the singles themselves.

Some upgrades to the All-Time Teams project on the top row. I've got about 7 or 8 more upgrades to chase down, two customs to be commissioned from Gregory at Nine Pockets... and then it's complete.

Pedroia was also part of the 37 cents group. I'm thrilled that Topps brought back Pristine, but I couldn't afford a pack even if my LCS had them (and I'm not sure if they do.) The Topps Tribute Xander cost just 49 cents. I've got one more card of the newest Padre on the way, but that will probably be the last.

The last two needs for my 2018 Topps Chrome set. I hadn't planned on completing this when I bought a megabox at Wal-Mart four years ago, but it's done. Future Dodger Rafael Devers cost $5.35. My budget for Acuna was $20, and I got one for $17.50 after my offer was accepted.

Football pickups. I really wish I could grab some more fat packs of 2015 Panini Prizm from Blowout Cards (lower your price, you cowards!) It's the last football set I'm trying to complete and I still need about 25% of the set. Know what I didn't need? The Lavonte David red parallel. Guess I picked one up in a prior COMC order, so this one is available for trade. LT and Benkert were also 37 cents each.

Color-matching Chiefs and Dolphins here. Nothing over 60 cents.
 

We'll end this post with some basketball cards.

I was certain that I had close to 50 Damian Lillard cards. That was way off. I'm at 27 different Dames now, which is the most of any active NBA player in my collection.

What can I say? I'm much more focused on the basketball stars of my childhood. These two Dominique Wilkins cards (plus the Photogenic single I showed off earlier) bring my total to 31 uNique singles.

1987-88 Fleer singles are the oldest basketball cards I search. There are plenty of HOFers from this set that I'd like to add to my collection (Olajuwon in particular) but I'll never attempt the set. The Miller is a 10th anniversary tribute to that set. At $3.75 it slots in between Wilkins ($4.50) and Mullin ($2.75). There's one other interesting card in that insert set - Kevin Johnson in Cleveland - but it's priced too high.

 
When Bill Russell passed away this summer, I realized that I didn't have nearly enough cards of the GOAT. $2.49 for this Innovators insert brought my total to four. Ray Allen was the other Panini Photogenic single I picked up. Perhaps I should look for packs of this set at my LCS. 

As I mentioned, current stars are severely lacking in my NBA box. This Certified Joel Embiid single is just my forth different card of the 76ers center. Wish I could hit a card show with an NBA-heavy dime/quarter box. Maybe next year.

Thanks for reading!



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Set Building Progress Report - Baseball

The 2022 baseball season is about to begin! Why not celebrate the occasion with an update on my baseball set builds? 

I'm not attempting a 2022 Topps set build, but I've picked up some singles in TCDB trades. I had to bite the bullet and buy a small binder at Staples for Red Sox overflow; Dime Box Nick filled up the last of my five full-sized Boston binders!

Some more flagship singles I recently acquired. Three of these four aces have World Series rings; the other has pitched for the Astros and Yankees 😜

I'm still chipping away at inserts from two sets nearly a quarter-century apart: 1993 Fleer Ultra and 2017 Topps Heritage. And I need Nolan Ryan in each of them!

His Strike Out Kings card would complete that six-card set. I also need two Home Run Kings inserts - Joe Carter and Barry Bonds. (No plans to finish other '93 Ultra insert sets at the moment.)  This Flashback insert of a young Ryan is the only 2017 Topps Heritage insert I need that isn't a Topps Game card. Just yesterday I picked up a Jake Arrieta single from the 'main' Topps Game insert set on COMC. That means Anthony Rizzo is the only other card I need - unless I decide to pursue the tough Rookie 'Game' insert sets.


2013 Topps Update is nearly complete, thanks to these recent acquisitions from COMC:

Puig my friend. The rest of these guys... not so much. Although I've got nothing against Gattis or Didi. I was lucky to snag the Cole RC (the one on the left) for $4.25; they're usually at least $6 on the site. However I passed on a chance to procure the Mike Trout All-Star card (#300) for $3.00 and now the cheapest copy is over $5. You win some, you lose some.

Aside from that Trout I only need the Nolan Arenado RC.. and maybe a Grant Green upgrade.

It's a similar story for my 2014 Topps set build: I need a Mike Trout, a star third baseman's rookie card, and an upgrade of a common card. Four more cards - including a Trout checklist and Marcus Semien's RC - are waiting in my COMC inventory, leaving me with the 'base' Trout (#1), a Logan Morrison upgrade, and a rookie card of recently-extended Guardians slugger Jose Ramirez to finish off '14 Flagship.


And then there's 2018 Topps Chrome. I've been chipping away at this one as much as I can, through trades:

I traded a PWE full of 2014 Topps blue parallels for these

COMC purchases:

And Sportlots. I found a seller who had three rookies I need and charged just 95 cents shipping for up to four cards. Once those arrive - and the four COMC is holding for me now - I'll have just six cards left to acquire:

• #12 Tyler Mahle RC
• #25 Rafael Devers RC
• #66 Max Fried RC
• #72 Ozzie Albies RC
• #150 Shohei Ohtani RC
• #193 Ronald Acuna Jr. RC

Eeek! I can see myself giving up on this set build six cards away from completion, like I did with the 2014-15 Panini Prizm basketball set. Not to get too off-topic but I needed the Joel Embiid and, rather than pay $150+ for that card during the pandemic, I broke up the set and earned about $150 for the lots I sold. Embiid is having an MVP-caliber season and that Prizm RC has actually gone... down. Huh?!?

Not ready to throw in the towel on the 2018 Chrome set yet.

Future Projects

Aside from a few 1993 inserts (Score Franchise, Donruss Diamond Kings) the only other baseball sets I'd consider building are 2010 Topps and 2012 Topps. That would give me a complete ten-year run of flagship - which is certainly tempting. I already have the 2012 Topps Trout, so that will save me $10-20.

However I'm nowhere close to completing either issue. I've actually got a higher percentage of 2010 Topps Chrome(20.9%) and Update(17.9%) than the main set (15.6%). I'm barely at 10% of the error-filled 2012 "surfboard" set, and I'd need the Bryce Harper RC to complete that one.


How many Topps flagship sets have you completed by hand? Do you own any Topps factory sets? Have you spent $25 (or more) on a single card to complete a recent set?

 

Thanks for reading!



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A Barrel of Fun

What an absolutely exhausting week. I had two job interviews that went well. One of them told me to call and let them know when I can start. However I held out for the second job (much closer, better pay/benefits) and after that interview I was told I was "at the top of the list." Unfortunately they had two more days of interviews and I didn't get the job (yet?) If you chase two rabbits, you will lose them both.

Meanwhile my current place of employment has become a shitshow. We were operating as part of a franchise until January 1. Our owners decided to sever ties with the franchise and change the name of the company, which makes it really difficult to follow up on jobs that started before the name change. Also it's tough to keep track of which customers know us by which name, and some customers have to be asked to re-sign documents because the original copy had our company's old name on it. Fun times.

Anyway... here are some cards I bought at CardBarrel. I got a big order from BaseballCardStore too, but that deserves its own series of posts. I don't have the energy for that yet.

These Conlon Collection cards were a mixed bag. I already had the Rice. Cuyler has a small crease across the front. Wood is fine though. This is my first non-Red Sox card of Smoky Joe, who passed away in my hometown when I was four.

A pair of newer Brewer cards. I now have 117 different Robin Yount cards but not his 1975 Topps RC. I do have a Yelich RC incoming, as soon as Nick stops giving away cards :D

The rest of my Cardbarrel order featured set fillers, including two from 2013 Topps Update. I need just 16 cards to complete the 330-card set, and all but two or three of them are big names. The 2018 Chromes you see here leave me just 29 cards shy of a complete set, 25 of which are rookie cards.

2019 Topps Update got a big boost as well. Does anyone know why Mike Trout is wearing #45 here?

Every other card I ordered was a 2014 Topps common. I forgot to scan any of those before putting them away, so here's a Domonic Brown from my duplicate pile. Sorry folks, it's been quite a week.

I was hoping to visit my mother today, whom I haven't seen since before Thanksgiving. After I got Covid, my girls got Covid, and my mom got Covid I thought that there was no one left to get Covid and delay our visit. LOL. Her heart doctor got Covid, so she had to put off having a test done until... today. 😡

Perhaps I'll see her next weekend. This weekend I plan to put away the rest of my new card purchases (and Christmas gifts), update my wantlists, update my tradelists on TCDB, and visit your blogs while watching playoff football. Since my Packers have a bye I'm hoping for the Bengals to win and the Buccaneers to lose. I'd add Dallas to the 'lose' list but I've got no love for the Niners, either.


Enjoy the games, and have a great weekend!


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Christmas In July

Cleveland sports teams have been on my mind a bit lately. First there was the three-part documentary about the Cavaliers from Secret Base. Then the Cleveland Indians changed a few letters in their name.

In between, this card arrived in my mailbox. It's my first legit Cleveland Barons card; there are five in the 2004-05 In The Game franchises set. The only other vintage Barons card in my collection appears to be airbrushed. In fact there are very few cards from the Barons' two seasons of existence that actually show the team logo. 

I had requested this Gilles Meloche card - along with 14 set fillers from 2018 Topps Chrome - in a TCDB trade offer made on June 11th. It took me nearly six weeks to complete this deal, but I had to be patient. Nine cards - including a Seth Jones Black Diamond RC and some 2014 Topps baseball inserts - were sent to RustyK99 in exchange for:

Two Cardinals, two Astros, two Twins, and the Indians' only decent hitter - plus a guy who just got cut by the Tigers. My 2018 Topps Chrome set build is now 68% complete. I still need far too many rookies, but every little bit helps.

For a while I had turned off trading as I planned to finish my PWE Swap and then rebuild the tradelist from scratch. However I saw some Texas trader anxious to get rid of his football and basketball cards for some reason  and he clearly stated that he would trade 10 cards to 1 in our favor.

I happened to have two cards he needed, and so I scoured his tradelist for some NFL/NBA goodies. Of the ten cards I'd requested two were taken - a Larry Bird Hall of Fame insert and a Bobby Portis Mosaic green parallel. My substitutions were even better: I found a Brett Favre insert on second glance and got a nice Red Prizm parallel of a guy I semi-collected a couple years ago.

My first 1986-87 Fleer single and my first Domantas Sabonis card. He was probably the best NBA veteran not represented in my collection - until now. The Kevin Huerter Hoops Premium will fit right in with the fat pack I got as a free gift for spending way too much money at Dave and Adam's.

Broadcasting legend Mike Wallace is the only set filler needed from this trade. The Taylor RC might be the sleeper of the deal; he was the NFL's third-leading rusher in 2020 as a rookie. A pair of Packers would have been a fair trade on their own; this is my second Za'Darius Smith card and my 844th Favre single.

I got all ten of these for a Houston Astros Panini logo sticker (and I threw in a Warren Moon checklist card.)


As for that Hoops Premium stock pack, it was fairly pedestrian:

I'm not a fan of the Ball family, and I would have preferred the other Blazers star.

First year player cards. Cam Reddish played well once he got a chance in the East final. Cavaliers point guard Darius Garland might be the best of the three rookies.

The hits. Wendell Carter Jr. is back, in Green prizm form. The Lazer Prizm pack yielded Cleveland's best player and two Jazz superstars.

More NBA content (what is this, Secret Base?) The PWE Swap Meet is nearing the big finish. Two more envelopes arrived this weekend, one from Jafronius:

...and one from The Diamond King, who asked that I do not send a return. (Are you sure, DK?)

The black Bird is SN'd to 99

Thank you Jerold and Kevin! I've shipped out all of the "Rack Pack" PWEs and sent a small box to Bo in exchange for the grand finale of NBA Week. (Fuji, there's still time to jump in if you're interested.)

When I mailed out the PWEs - and Bo's box - something at the counter caught my eye:

It was too late to send these to one of our resident Yankees fans but I'll save them for the next mailer to Bo, AJ, or anyone else who might want one. And I'll be sure that they're in the envelope, not on it ;-)

One final card to discuss. Stephen of the Baseball Card Store reached out about some 1994-95 SP hockey singles he was offering. I'd included a bunch in my last order and he wanted to give me first crack at his new stock. The only one I needed was Joe Sakic, and I told him that if it's still there when I order again, I'll take it. But I didn't expect him to hold it for me.

He sent it to me as a gift. A... Christmas gift?

Merci, Stephane! And Merry Christmas everyone ;P


Thanks for reading!




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Prizmachrome

Panini Prizm singles are one of my go-to searches on BaseballCardStore. I used to hoard as many as I could find in card show dime boxes but the last time I attended the Milford show they had been mostly picked clean. The online dime box still has plenty of Prizm, though the big names get scooped up fast. 

 

This Devan Dubnyk from 2013-14 is one of about a dozen Prizm cards I picked up in my latest order. 

I actually had a dream the other night that Dubnyk was drafted by the Seattle Kraken. Well, I have to assume it was Seattle - there were no logos or anything. It was just a tall man in a suit jacket and tan pants (he looked too young to be Ron Francis) standing behind a card table in a banquet room. There was a large notebook on the table, about the size of a guestbook. The nameless GM paced a bit behind the table saying "Now all we need is a goalie." (*btw, expansion teams always pick goalies first - not last.) 

He scribbled in the book as he said "Dubnyk" and I groaned from the other side of the table "Oh, come on!" like I was upset we 'lost' Devan - though I can't be sure if I was a fellow GM or a fan. 

As Shoebox Shane mentioned on his blog, this was the only proper Prizm set issued for the NHL. O-Pee-Chee Platinum has filled the void, and I pick up singles of those whenever I can, too: 

The Baseball Card Store is based in Canada - and flippers often lay off of hockey cards - so their inventory is especially abundant. I only picked up a half-dozen this time because I've bought so many hockey singles in the past that my boxes are overflowing. No parallels here, though I can get those on COMC fairly cheaply - if I ever order from them again. 

I'm currently working on two Prizm set builds - 2014-15 basketball and 2015 football. I'm six cards away from finishing the NBA set - but three of those are high-end RCs including Joel Embiid. Not sure if I should keep trying to finish that set, the Embiid might out of my budget. 

The 2015 Prizm football set doesn't have any high-end RCs to worry about, but I've got less than a third of the set and BBCS doesn't have any (more) singles I need. That didn't stop me from picking up some Prizm football: 

No big names but some above-average players - and a Packer is always a nice find. Delanie Walker shares my birthday.
 

If you can't see the names they are: Jameis Winston, Gerald McCoy, Duke Johnson, Andy Dalton, Danny Woodhead, and Martellus Bennett.
 

I'll pick up Donruss Optic cards for a dime, too. (The last two 2017 Prizms are Jadeveon Clowney and Tom Savage.) Sometimes I'll pick up Optic baseball even though they're unlicensed but I don't usually seek out any Prizm baseball singles. 

That said, I have been hoarding 2018 Topps Chrome cards ever since I bought a megabox at Wal-Mart.

These seven singles bring my total to 65 out of the 200-card set. No big names here either but rookies are always good; they're tougher to trade for. I filled out this scan with a Kevin Russo X-fractor from one of the mystery repacks I purchased from BaseballCardStore. 

 

Are you working on any Chrome or Prizm set builds?

Thanks for reading!




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2018 Topps Chrome "Monster" Blaster Box Break

Before I get to my box break I want to thank all of you for the belated birthday wishes, and I hope you enjoy your prizes. Reading your reactions to each gift will be more exciting than cracking open a dozen packs of cards. 'Tis better to give than receive, after all.

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I was in Connecticut this past weekend, visiting my family for what amounted to a second birthday. On Sunday - after having lunch with my mom - I popped into Wal-Mart to check their card aisle, since I don't have a Wal-Mart near me here in Jersey. I've read that some bloggers have had better luck there anyhow. 

The sports card selection at the West Haven Wal-Mart wasn't great, but they did have fat packs of 2018 Topps series 2. I bought one of those, and with my last $40 I grabbed this:

This "monster" box of 2018 Topps Chrome was dented (hence the lousy scan) and it was the last one on the shelf. But that's one more than my Target has had, so I gave it a shot. 

I assume that these are called "monster" boxes because they are the physical size of two standard blasters. But the contents aren't that different: 10 packs plus two X-Fractor packs. The four-card packs allow me to scan the complete contents of each pack two at a time. 

Packs 1 and 2:

A pair of Dodgers, a pair of Phillies, and a pair of star third basemen. Are the purple refractors a Wal-Mart exclusive? 


Packs 3 and 4:

Gleyber Torres RC! I'm obviously not a Yankees fan, and Miguel Andujar has sort of stolen the hype from him, but I'm not complaining about this pull. Chris Taylor starts a trend of pulling the same card in base and refractor form. 


Packs 5 and 6:

A little bit of everything here - the first insert of the box, a Conforto prism refractor (I think?) and a Victor Robles RC. Also another Rendon, and another Yankee. 


Packs 7 and 8:

Manny Machado in back-to-back packs. I really like the '83 insert in Chrome refractor form. This Rafael Devers Freshman Flash insert is the only Red Sox card in the box. 


Packs 9 and 10:

Not a great finish here, the Buehler RC is nice and the Eugenio Suarez completes the base + refractor trend, joining Taylor and Rendon. Good thing I've got the X-Fractor packs to fall back on...

There are five cards per pack here. I've scanned them all together:

Wait...that's only nine cards. Where's the tenth card?

There's your 2018 American League Rookie of the Year right there. It seems like he's had a clutch home run in just about every Yankee win this month. I'll probably hold onto this until the season ends but it will eventually end up in the hands of a Yankees fan. Most of the other cards in this post are available for trades (except the Devers of course). If you're interested in anything, let me know.


Thanks for reading!


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