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 **If you have sent me an NBA PWE please go to The 1993 blog and claim your return PWE. Thanks!**

The NBA Finals could end tonight (now that I've typed that, they probably won't) and the NHL Expansion Draft is tomorrow. I'm very excited about the Seattle Kraken. I've already ordered a hat and I'm going to wear it at work. Not that anyone will know what it is.

I'm not ready to get back into baseball. I'm not sure if I'll ever be a fan of the game the way I was in the before time. I see a lot of comments on blogs and message boards from folks who have stopped following the NFL or NBA (or NHL) because the sport doesn't resemble the one they grew up with. My father in law used to say the same thing about Nascar. It's not the same. Too many rule changes. 

That's how I feel about baseball. It's really hard for me to care about the sport when every other day seems to bring some bad news. Meanwhile, exciting things are happening in hoops and hockey - and football is just around the corner.

Even though I've become disenchanted with the product on the field I'm still collecting baseball cards. I kinda have to if I want anyone to read this blog lol. I've requested a blaster of 2021 Stadium Club for my birthday and I've got a small stack incoming from a Nachos Grande box break. 2022 Topps looks interesting. I may have to consider ending my self-imposed set building freeze once that his shelves. 

Until then, here are some newly-acquired cards of some of the greatest players in baseball history. I bought two of them for pocket change. The other two cost me nearly four figures.

 I had a small amount of eBay bucks to spend and picked up a long-lost single from my childhood:

This 1984 Donruss Nolan Ryan was one of my most cherished and valuable singles as a kid. I'd kept it in a Card Saver holder, stored it... somewhere.. and then lost it more than 30 years ago. I'm not a Nolan Ryan collector at all but this is one I've been meaning to pick up ever since then, and it only cost $1.76.

The seller only charged $0.99 shipping and adding an extra card was free, so I checked their other auctions. Didn't see anything I had to have but decided to put a low bid on a 1980 Topps Mike Schmidt. I once had a PSA Mint 9 copy of this card when I was collecting World Series champions. 

And now this card has returned to my collection, for just one dollar. After the eBay Bucks I spent $1.25 total.


The '80 Schmidt and '84 Ryan were two of the most recent cards on a vintage wantlist I'd created. In the spring I sold over $5,000 worth of items on eBay. I banked over $3,000 for home improvements, set aside $1,000 on a new couch for our living room, and I allowed myself to spend the rest on one high-value vintage card.

After another fruitless search for a high-grade Robin Yount rookie card I narrowed my focus to two cards: a 1960 Topps Mickey Mantle and a 1971 Topps Roberto Clemente. This was a tough decision.

I'm not a fan of the 1960 Topps set at all. One of the first price guides I ever owned wrote a feature story calling it "major league ugly" - and I agreed. However one of the few singles I like in the set is of course the Mantle, which is also one of the best looking vintage issues of "The Mick" in my opinion.

On the other hand, the 1971 Topps set is more attractive - if a bit dull. Clemente led the Pirates to a World Series victory in both '60 and '71, and I'd much rather have his '71 single. The black borders pair nicely with the Pirates uniform - and he's properly identified as Roberto rather than "Bob" on the newer card.

These particular copies had their pros and cons as well. The Mantle was a BVG 6. I have never bought a Beckett-graded vintage single; I've always been loyal to PSA for older cards. However I've been very annoyed with them lately. If this were slabbed by PSA - in a 5 or a 6 - it would sell for a lot more.

Dave and Adam's had the Mantle - along with a 1972 Topps Hank Aaron I'd had my eye on. If I bought from D & A I wouldn't have to pay tax, and I'd probably get the cards faster. But it would cost more.

Clemente was listed by a prominent eBay seller (not Probstein or PWCC or any of those jokers.) This card was sharp. It was also $100 cheaper than the Mantle - but once tax was attached the savings would be negligible. This particular copy was the nicest '7' I'd ever seen - the centering was a bit off but more than acceptable for my money. I'd asked my wife for her opinion and she agreed the Clemente was much nicer than the Mantle.


All things being equal, I'd choose Roberto. But how do I pass up a vintage mid-grade Mickey? I deliberated all night, and planned to decide before going to bed.

The decision was made for me.

Someone bought the Roberto Clemente card. I quickly headed to D & A to snatch the Mantle - and the Aaron.

Because I bought it :P

I know I'll never see another '71 Clemente in my price range that looks as clean as that one did. The borders on that card were immaculate. But I'm thrilled to add another Mantle - and another Aaron - to my collection.

Thanks for reading!



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The Allure of Black Friday sales

Have you done any Black Friday shopping? I purchased and received my order from Dave and Adam's in a total of four days (take that, COMC!) The football packs were fun, but the main attraction was the box of 2019-20 Upper Deck Allure hockey:

This is a set I've had my eye on since Brian offered up some singles for Free Stuff Friday way back in April. Only 48 cards in this box, which works out to about $1.50 per card. Let's see that shiny!

Pack #1:

A pair of Devils is a nice start, though most collectors would prefer the pair of Penguins. Max Domi is a white rainbow die-cut.

Pack #2:

Hell yeah! The lowest-numbered insert in this box happens to be a Green Quartz parallel of Devils star Nico Hischier. I've had some great luck with PC players so far in this order.

Pack #3:

A "Johnny Hockey" insert and a Connor Hellebuyck white rainbow die-cut. There appears to be one parallel and one insert in every pack. Let's see if that holds throughout the box.

 

Pack #4:

Indeed it does, and both are Red Wings. I really like the color-matching Filip Zadina rookie parallel. Hellebuyck is back, in base form. I came up with a little jeering toward him which would work a lot better if he hadn't just won the Vezina: "Hellebuyck, you hella-suck!"
 

 

Pack #5:

Another Devils parallel, though Nathan Bastian is kind of a fringe prospect at this point. Dobson and Vrana are already starting to curl so I had to order some emergency top loaders lol.

Pack #6:

Two more Red Wing hits including a Ryan Kuffner auto. I have no idea who Ryan Kuffner is. Notice the Zadina is slightly different from the others? That's a short-printed RC. No idea why Upper Deck gave the same players a base RC and a short-printed RC but it's not a large set so I don't mind.
 

Pack #7:

Only five cards in this pack due to the thickness of the Max Jones relic. Nice orange swatch for the Orange County team.

Pack #8:

And we close out the box with some future Hall of Famers, another short-printed RC, and an Orange Slice parallel of Connecticut Cam. This beauty is serial numbered to 199. Nice!

I also picked up a cheap box of 2018-19 Upper Deck MVP, for three reasons.

At $25 a box this works out to $1.05 per pack. It's increasingly rare to find decent cards at that price.

MVP is pretty basic stuff, the design doesn't change much and the top rookies are only attainable via redemption. But I really don't have too much hockey card tradebait so this will give me a little boost for TCDB. [I ended up posting about half of the cards FT.]

Also, the big draw is the 20th Anniversary stamped buybacks. I haven't even seen the Peter Worrell card anywhere so this purchase was like buying a lottery ticket for a huge PC need.

I won't scan every pack, but here's a look at the base card design:

Some short-term stops, my first cards of Kerfoot and Brown, and Joe Thornton's beard. I really hope he wins a Stanley Cup so he can finally remove that monster from his face. He signed with the Leafs though, so it doesn't look like that's happening :/

There are 50 short prints in the MVP set, and this box contained six veterans and six RCs. Notice the Connor McDavid SP has the same photo as the checklist (which is not an SP.) The Player Credentials cards are a neat concept, but I feel like they could be a little more realistic - and colorful.

 

Three types of Tyler Johnson - including the base, puzzle back, and silver script parallels. Mittelstadt is the only rookie SP in my keeper pile.

 

The rest of my rookies, including a Ryan Donato Credentials insert. I think the vertical orientation works better for these.

These 20th Anniversary silver script parallels inserts are really sharp. My wife and I both collected 1998-99 MVP and I have fond memories of hoarding packs at the Newbury Comics near Cape Cod. It's neat to see newer teams like the Golden Knights on this design. I'd love to add more of these to my collection.

Nikita Kucherov was the best of the four players I pulled. The Oliver Ekman-Larsson next to it is a Colors and Contours insert numbered to 198. I do not like the look of these, or the snipped-off edges.

I was not expecting to pull a 20th Anniversary buyback since there are only 20 copies of 220 cards. That means only 4,400 of these exist in total. The odds that I'd pull a Peter Worrell were very, very slim.

And yet...

I did pull a buyback!

Not the one I wanted, but that's okay. Andrei Zyuzin played for six different NHL teams including the Devils over his ten-year career. New Jersey has seen so many players with Z-names come through the Garden State, including Zach Parise, Danius Zubrus, Valeri Zelepukin, Peter Zezel, and current Devils Travis Zajac and Pavel Zacha.

I'm surprised that the lowest-numbered parallel came from the lowest-priced set (not counting that free 2015 Score football pack.) While I didn't pull any "sick hitz" from this D&A order it was a lot of fun to open packs again, something that I haven't done nearly enough this year.

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!


 

 

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2015-16 Donruss Basketball

FYI: if you didn't see my last post, I posted some 'hits' I have for trade. If you're interested in anything, hit me up. I'll be heading to the post office in the next day or two.

Just before Christmas I received a big box of basketball cards from Billy (Cardboard History) which was loaded with 2015-16 Donruss cards. I had previously received a handful from Jon (A Penny Sleeve For Your Thoughts) and when I added them to the cards Billy sent I was at about 35% completion of the 200-card base set. Since I hadn't completed a basketball card set in at least 20 years and this was a colorful, affordable set I decided to go for it.

I had made a resolution not to spend any money on cards in 2018 (which I've already broken, btw) and so I ordered a bunch of card supplies and retail wax (including the Hunger Games boxes I discussed here) from Dave & Adam's late in 2017. Originally I had only planned to buy one box of Donruss basketball, but at $19.95 each I couldn't resist adding a second box to the cart.

In the first pack of the first box I pulled this Marc Gasol holo parallel:

These are very cool cards, but unfortunately they're only one per box (I got Markieff Morris in box #2)

Because every Donruss set must include a nod to their baseball beginnings, there are Rated Rookies short-prints and The Rookies inserts.

I don't mind pulling two The Rookies dupes; they're not part of the set. Getting two dupes of Rated Rookies is a problem since there are 50 in the set and only 6 per box. Fortunately Jon sent me a couple so I do have 12.  

Passing/Rebounding/Scoring Kings are a slightly less obvious nod to the traditional Donruss 'Diamond Kings' (I'm assuming the reason Panini didn't use the catch-all term "Court Kings" has something to do with Star) I think these are three per box, but I got a low-numbered gold parallel in each box as well. The serial numbering corresponds to the player's career average. 

The other inserts are kinda bland. Elite/Extra/Futures all look similar so I wont bother scanning them all. And why do the Futures cards have the RC logo? They’re inserts, aren’t they? I'm fine with the RC designation when it's on a base card - but not on an insert, and not on an Update card if they already had a RC in the main set Topps.

Also, I pulled an autograph in the second box - which is included on my 'trading post' post.


As for the base set, I knew I'd get a fair amount of dupes between the two boxes and the cards I received previously. With that said, the collation was...interesting. Nearly all the dupes in the first box were the lower numbers, which meant that the cards I needed were almost all from the first half.
 
After the first box I needed cards #6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 27, 28, 33, 34, 35, 40, 41, 46, 50, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 63, 64, 65, 67, 68, 69, 70, 74, 75, 76, 80, 81, 82, 83, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 119, 156, and 161.

The second box helped a lot, but it wasn't enough to complete the base set. I still need #28, 35, 41, 46, 50, 65, 70, 76, 83, 91, and 100..in addition to 38 short prints. The complete list has been added to my updated Wantlist tab.


If anyone is interested in base or insert cards from this set let me know. I have plenty to trade, including dupes of nearly every card from 101-200. 

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