It's the most wonderful time of the year...

I've been sick all week, stayed home alone for Thanksgiving, I can't go to the mall or have a Christmas-scented candle in my home, but I've still got some holiday cheer because ... the gift box is here.

Here's a sneak peek at what's inside:

 

 

You'll see more from this year's Black Friday haul in the next couple weeks. Some of you might even see a card or two in your mailbox 😉

 

 

Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!

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Pack Ripping Is In My D&A

The holidays are always difficult for me. I'm away from my family. Work is much more stressful. Free time is scarce. From Halloween to New Years' there are seven events that take up my weekends, and they are all at the in-laws. Most of them can't stop talking about politics, and I'm so done with all of it. I need a break. 

 
I need some time to rest, relax, watch a movie, watch some football, write a story (or a blog post), crack open some cards. Retail therapy in the year of the 'rona is so much more difficult. I tried going to Target this past weekend. The sports card aisle has been my LCS for the past 5-7 years. It's always there for me.

It's gone.

Oh, the card aisle was fully stocked with cards. Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon and MTG and other non-sports things. Not a single trading card depicting a human, much less a pro athlete. The last time I bought cards at Target was when 2019 Topps Update was released. They were on an end cap where the action figures were found. So I checked the toy aisle and... nothing. My LCS is gone. 

You all know about the problems at COMC. Black Friday on that site was my Christmas. I got excited about it every year. I made a shopping list, woke up early, and jumped to my computer to see what was waiting for me. Checking the list to see what sales 'popped' was like unwrapping presents. Pure joy.

That's gone, too. Oh, COMC is still going ahead with their sales this weekend. But I'm not participating. Well, I shouldn't say definitely not. There is one card on my watch list that I might be tempted to buy if the price drops. 

So what if it does though? Let's say I add $20 to the site and buy the card. I'll then have one card in my COMC inventory with no intention of buying more. I'd have to spend $5 to have it shipped to me, and lord only knows when it would arrive. I'd be better off buying it on eBay for full price. At least then I'd get the card in my hand sometime this decade.

I really thought that COMC would get me through the holidays this year. The timing of my order seemed to work out perfectly. I requested shipment on July 26. My estimated ship date was October 26. Obviously that was too optimistic. But! Even if they were one month behind and my cards shipped today there's a good chance I'd still get them this weekend. 

Nope. My cards still have not shipped. And you want me to spend more money at your site? 

I've been ordering singles and set fillers all year so it's not like I've been unable to acquire any cards. But it's Christmastime. I needed something to open. 

And so I checked the "big three" online retailers to see their Black Friday deals, knowing all too well that the price of everything has tripled. Another great gift in this godawful year. Those blasters you can't find at Target or Wal-Mart anymore? Blowout has 'em. For $50. 

Want to take a shot at some Panini Prizm? Hundred bucks. A pack. Ugh, this is gonna be tough.

Lucky for me I'm a hockey card collector, and no one on this side of the border is hoarding Upper Deck products and reselling at 3-4x the sticker price on the off chance that they might pull a hot rookie. Dave and Adam's had some decent deals so I filled my cart with two hobby boxes - which I'll open this weekend - and the cheapest football packs I could find. 

I was able to choose "random football pack" as my free gift. And here it is:

Not too bad. I can work with this. Let's see what's inside:

Jeremy Hill hot pack. No Packers but I did get a Beast Mode base card, a couple nice inserts, and a Scorecard parallel (not numbered) of Danny Amendola. Apparently Danny Shelton's nickname is "Feast Mode"

Now for the Score pack I paid for:

I like the 2019 Score design more than most years, and $15 wasn't a huge markup from the pre-Covid price. (I think they were $10 at Target last year?) Let's see if there are any purple parallel Packers - an admittedly odd combination but I'd still like to see it :)

Eight of the 23 base cards in the box. That's right - there are 37 rookies, inserts, and parallels.

Here are the purple parallels, along with some Signal-Callers that look a little purple but aren't.

A double dose of DeAndre Hopkins, along with two cards each of current and former Patriots QBs. Lots of trade bait, including the Nick Bosa which I already had and traded to someone on TCDB earlier this year.

I got one Packers card in the box, and it was a dupe. But that wasn't the only card of a Wisconsin team:

I wasn't expecting a relic, so that's cool. There are no odds posted on the box, and I didn't look before opening anyhow.

Part of the reason why I've been so reluctant to order packs and boxes this year is that the price per card works out to $1-2 or more. Doesn't seem like a worthwhile gamble when we can trade for half the cards or buy them for a dime each at the Baseball Card Store. And yet I had to roll the dice on something new:

This pretty pink pack cost $30, or $2 per card. Let's see if there are any keepers in here. 

Here's the first pack:

Three legends including a cool insert and a rookie card of a guy who just caught the Covid.

Pack #2. Any Packers in here?

Nope, but the Watt family is well represented. The Parker parallel is awesome. No rookies though.

 

Finally, here's the bonus pack of pink parallels:

Boom! That's what I'm talking about. A new Brett Favre for my thousand-card quest (I'll have some thoughts on him next week) and a RC parallel of Football Team stud Chase Young. Not bad at all.

I'll crack open the hockey boxes this weekend. Perhaps I'll scan up both boxes but I'm leaning towards leaving out 2018-19 Upper Deck MVP unless I pull something really special (a stamped buyback perhaps?)

Thanks for reading, and have a Happy Thanksgiving!


 

 

 ~

COMC Black Friday weekend in review

Did you do any Black Friday shopping on COMC this past weekend? This is likely the first time I did not have anything shipped to me during their annual sale. Their "specials" continue to be less and less special every year, and setting a minimum purchase of $99 just to earn free shipping (by Dec.23?!?) was such an insult that I refused to qualify (but I nearly did anyhow...) 

Since the cards I purchased won't be in-hand for quite a while I might as well share my thoughts on them now.

I had $17 in challenge credit before the sale, and I will give credit to the COMC gatekeepers for keeping those challenges open the whole week leading up to the sale. There were four cards I immediately wanted to jump on, but only two of them were discounted - both by the same seller:

This Orlando Cepeda second-year card was $8 before the sale. I grabbed it for $5.29 on sale, which allowed me to add this to my cart:

Solly Hemus sounded only vaguely familiar to me but it's a 1952 Bowman rookie card in good shape (I hope), and it was only $2.69. That's good enough for me. 


I had $65 remaining from eBay sales and put $60 in my COMC account. It was all I'd planned to spend during the weekend. With my total up to $69, I made an offer on another vintage card and it was accepted:

Really thought I had a 1956 Topps Richie Ashburn already, but I guess I added it to my eBay watch list and never picked it up. This was an auto-accept at $36.20; the seller had another '56 HOFer I needed, but I could only afford one and chose the cheaper card so that I could pick up some Packers.

The backs of these Flashback Fabrics cards are weak (like most non-base cards these days) but it's an actual game used swatch, and..

It's numbered 4 of 399! This would be my first Favre card numbered #4/xx, so I gladly paid the sale price of $11.73.

Then we have this Jordy Nelson Immaculate Numbers relic. I absolutely overpaid for this. 

When I came across this last year it was priced at $20.25 ($16.25 on sale). That was too much for me, so I left it on my watch list all year. This Black Friday weekend, Nelson was on sale for.. $16.25. I got tired of waiting so I grabbed it. What could I have bought instead?

This Calvin Johnson relic is available for under $16 right now. On sale it was less than half that. Sigh.. the price of being a Packers fan..

To be honest I could have purchased both cards. I had enough room in the budget for Megatron, but instead I spent my remaining cash on a couple of Boston boys.

I added this Zdeno Chara to my Exquisite set build for just $3.75. That left me with $4.40. There was a Sterling Sharpe relic that I really wanted priced at $5.24 ($4.50 on sale.) I made an offer of $3.75, and the seller countered with the sale price of $4.50. I didn't have $4.50, I had $4.40. So I offered him that, and he declined.

Then I tried the same offer with a card priced at $5.25 (not on sale). This seller accepted:

That was it. My Black Friday shopping was complete, and I had... six cards?!? A new personal low by far. 

Then Cyber Monday came along and some of the cards on my watch list were discounted even further. I decided to clear them out, and added another $10 to my COMC account. With $2 more in challenge credit earned late Monday night I had $12 to spend... but what to spend it on?

The Calvin Johnson relic was now $6.25 and I agonized over it. I really wanted to grab a Taylor Hall auto even though I know he's not long for New Jersey and will probably be traded by the end of February. But $7 for an on-swatch auto was too good to pass up:

That left me with $5 - not enough for Calvin, but enough to add another Exquisite single:

Nathan MacKinnon cost just $2.49. I'm now down to five needs in the 30-card base set.


With my remaining $2.51 I added two more Brett Favre cards:

 

There were three copies of this Pinnacle Inscriptions Favre - one unpeeled for $2.75, one peeled (and scratched) for about $0.65, and this peeled and (hopefully) unscratched copy, which cost me $1.20. 

This Panini Illusions Favre sold at $0.75 then resurfaced for $0.68. I double-checked my TCDB have list, confirmed I don't have it, and added it to my cart.

That left me with $0.63, just enough for this odd-looking Dave Andreychuk milestones card which, if turned on its side, notes his 500th goal.

That's... better?

How did you spend your Black Friday weekend? Did you get any great deals on cards, gifts, or anything else?


~

Connecticut Cards From COMC

I've got something special planned for my next post, which will be the 200th* on this blog. 

*This does not count posts I deleted during severe bouts of depression. I really should stop doing that. I'd probably have passed 220 posts by now.

Hopefully I'll be able to hit the Milford card show when I'm visiting my family in Connecticut next weekend, though I won't be able to recap it (if it happens) until after Christmas. One of the posts I deleted was a recap of the show I attended in March. I had a good reason for deleting that one though - it was getting spammed like crazy.

In the meantime I've got 32 new cards to discuss, courtesy of my second COMC Black Friday order. Let's start with the five newest additions to my Connecticut Collection:

This Hartford Whalers team schedule thing is strange and fascinating. It's not a foldable paper schedule like we're used to seeing and, as such, it makes no mention of who the Whale were playing on any given night. It's really more of a calendar than a schedule. But it's got Ron Francis on the front, it's in near-perfect condition, and it's not something I'll find anywhere else.

 

Here's another Whalers non-card item I couldn't pass up. This Civic Center sticker from 1989-90 Panini was one of the first things I purchased on Black Friday. I was happy to send 98 cents worth of COMC credit to Dollar Store Doug - the first time I've (knowingly) bought from a blogger.

The rest of these items were under a buck apiece.

I was expecting this Jeff Bagwell Best card to have a dinged corner. I was not expecting it to be glossy. This one had the most eye appeal of his New Britain issues, which are otherwise fairly bland.

Before making his big league debut with the Giants in 2009, Madison Bumgarner posted a 9-1 record in 19 starts for the AA Connecticut Defenders. The Giants moved their AA affiliate to Richmond, VA after the '09 season. This (and the mini-version) is the only MadBum Conn-card available on COMC.

Here's a bonus card that did not come from Redmond, WA but Burbank, CA:

I bought this Art Ceccarelli Orioles card from Burbank Sportscards (along with some set fillers and Supergirl cards) but COMC gets an assist on it. I was working on Challenges when the back of one of his cards caught my eye:

I had no idea there was a major league baseball player from my hometown!

"Chic" didn't have much success with the Athletics, Orioles, or Cubs (his career WAR over five seasons was a -3.2) and his Topps cards are equally forgettable. In fact, according to TCDB he's only got thirteen cards*. Let's take a look at them:

This Rodeo Meats card from 1955 is such a tough oddball issue I immediately dropped any notion of completing a Ceccarelli PC. Here's an eBay auction for a PSA-graded copy. Yikes!

The card on the left is also a Rodeo issue. The card on the right is apparently a 1976 reprint of the Rodeo card - though there are some notable differences.

Here are all three of Art's Topps cards, from 1958-60:

 Looks like the same photo, with a 'C' airbrushed onto his cap for '59.

  
These appear to be actual Cubs photos. Not sure why Topps didn't center the close-up.

All of Art's other cards are variations of these: buybacks of his 1959* and 1960 Topps cards, autographed versions of the 1960 card, and a Venezuelan edition. That's it. 

*TCDB has his '59 buyback listed twice. I'm not sure these are two separate cards.


If anyone happens to come across one of Art's Topps issues please keep me in mind for a trade. I'll be adding him to a list of Connecticut connections I plan to PC in the new year.


Hope to see you back here on Sunday for my 200th post celebration! Until then, have a great weekend! 


~