This Is Why

Big mailday today. Six packages arrived in the mail - three from Sportlots, two from TCDB, and one from eBay. 35 cards total. Varying degrees of satisfaction.

Christmas Evening, as in eight days ago, I spent a small fraction of the cash I'd received as gifts and hit up Sportlots for some set fillers. Had to purchase from four different sellers due to postage and inventory. If you're one of those weirdos who collects baseball and hockey cards (there are dozens of us!) you've probably noticed that sellers who have hoards of hockey cards rarely have the baseball/football cards you're looking for, and vice versa. 

And so I placed my order on the 25th, expecting that maybe one or two would ship from Canada, one or two would ship on the 27th or 28th, and at least one seller would be on vacation and wouldn't ship until today.

I got all four orders already. Here they are:

This order was based around two cards that had been oddly difficult to track down. Finally I'd found someone selling this 1993 Donruss Eric Karros Diamond King insert for under three dollars. Tocchet is the last "common" I need for the 1988-89 Topps set - though it cost me 52 cents (the highest of these four cards) and the bottom has both a dirt spot and a rough corner. Karros cost just 37 cents - but it's a little off-center and has a wonky corner. Still, the foursome was just over three dollars shipped.

I needed just two cards (excluding the super rare gold SPs) to complete my (wife's) 1995-96 Playoff One On One hockey set. Sabres32 happened to have them both, but not much else I needed. Perreault was sort of a throw in; 1983-84 O-Pee-Chee is a set I might consider building someday.

Trombley was initially in a bigger order but since I couldn't find a fourth card from Sabres32 I bought it from him/her instead. You know the rule.

Here's a few representatives from that bigger order, a 32-card mailer that nearly completed two sets:

I decided to complete the 20-card Pro Pointers insert set to fill out the extra pockets in my 1995-96 Donruss hockey binder. Irbe was one of the seven base cards in this order from the actual set and completes the run of 1990s Donruss flagship puck. 1994 Ultra is nearly there - I've got less than ten cards to go. Two of the cards have some bricking damage as you can see; the seller did reimburse me for these.

This PWE actually arrived before New Year's. A four-day turnaround beats nearly every TCDB trade. I sought out the Hakeem Topps card because I didn't want to spend 90 cents for it on COMC. However I did end up spending that 90 cents on the last Pro Pointers card I needed after Lindros and Kariya arrived. The Mario Lemieux is en route from COMC (along with 75 other cards) but it will take a lot longer than four days to arrive.


Speaking of slow wait times... I really, really tried to wrap up my TCDB trading in 2023. I even offered an inducement. But, despite pestering the last two traders as if I was at the office, these swaps took > 2 weeks to complete.



I will give saavik a pass on the turnaround time. She's a student, and her profile page indicates shipping will be a little slow. But I removed something from a different offer when she specifically asked for this one and only card. I sent her the Don Larsen insert she requested on the 16th. She sent me this Clayton Kershaw on the 26th:

Scotch-tape and a penny sleeve. It's amazing this card survived without a scratch.

The last trade took nearly four weeks to complete. And it is my last TCDB trade for a reason. I made an offer to Dtd500 on December 8. He countered on the 11th by removing the Olajuwon Topps card you saw above, and substituted it with another PC player. I accepted, and shipped on the 12th. 


Hoping to receive my six-card PWE by Christmas I messaged him on the 18th "Have you shipped my end yet" He said he was busy with the holidays and would ship the next day, on the 19th. 

Sigh... Christmas mail, am I right? So...let's see what we got.

Yes, Blue Prizms are worth the wait. Unfortunately these two were not eligible for my contest. Mihome316 won, btw.


This is why I'm happy to be done dealing on TCDB. People have busy lives and stuff happens. But when you buy something, those mail delays somehow cease. A purchase made a week ago(or less) can arrive at the same time as a trade shipped out three weeks ago.


(It also helps that the holidays are over.)



Thanks for reading!




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Smarch Swaps

One good thing about being home every day is that I don't have to wait until the evening to open my mail. Three PWE trades and a box from COMC arrived at Collector HQ last week.

The first trade in was from TCDB user gatorsportscardart:

I sent 18 basketball dupes (17 from 1990-91 SkyBox) out to Gator and got 12 cards in return, including two Lance Parrish issues and Mark Belanger's sunset card. I knew he was a very light-hitting shortstop but I had no idea his all-time great fielding was enough for him to stick around into the '80s.

The Francona card was not in the initial trade; I'd asked for a 1982 Topps Al Oliver but Gator couldn't find it so I asked for Tito instead. No, I'm not building the 1983 Topps set. Even after this trade I've only got 29 of the 792 cards.

Got a couple basketball cards in return for the 18 basketball cards. Also an off-center Jim Zorn and a couple newer cards in Porzingis and Kershaw - which is from the National League All-Star team set, though it looks exactly like the base card. Whatever.. different card number, different card I guess.

Here's a minor trade I made with JDStinz, sort of a 'bottom-pair defenseman for future 4th rounder' deal:

I sent three Stranger Things base cards and two 2015-16 Donruss basketball dupes to JD for these four. Classic Images is not one of my favorite sets at all, but I can't pass up a Brodeur, a Pronger(listed as a Whalers card on TCDB) and an Arnott. Wasn't easy finding an active user who needed my Stranger Things dupes, so I took what I could get. Lucas definitely jumped to the forefront in the most recent ST season. I really enjoyed his character arc and relationship with Max.

Do any of you watch Quantum Leap? Did you watch the original? My wife and I have been watching the reboot, which is funny to me since she had Quantum Leap nights at her college dorm back in the day.
 

I mention this show because the spoils of my most recent Time Travel Trade arrived last Thursday. It had been a while since I swapped cards with Matt, and I'm already preparing for the next one.

Royals and Red Sox here. Tazawa and Hanrahan are extras for my Red Sox binder.

You probably can't read the names on most of these (except for Hubie Brooks) so I'll list them for you: Jim Abbott, Roberto Alomar, and Gary Sheffield are pretty recognizable by photo. Then we have Brooks, Will Clark(also a familiar face), and Marcell Ozuna. Then at the bottom we have Charles Johnson and Josh Bell.

Clark reminds me that there was a Quantum Leap episode where Ben leaps back to the Bay Area right before the 1989 Earthquake.

 

 

And we'll finish with some football Hall of Famers. I was a little too slow on claiming a Scott Rolen card, so I added Moon as a substitute. He's joined by a 2019 Donruss Dan Marino I had to grab quickly because anyone could have offered anything 2018 or older. Michael Strahan rounds out the swap. I'm sure Matt will cover what he received in a future post at Diamond Jesters.

On the same day these arrived, I received my latest COMC order. Here's a preview:

 

I'll show off the rest of my order after the 100 Greatest Non-Hall of Famers Countdown concludes later this week.



Thanks for reading!



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Flipping Repack Pulls

My latest COMC order is scheduled to arrive next week, so I should probably recap some recent TCDB trades and clear out the "to be posted" folder while I wait. 

This 1980 Topps Calton Fisk was one of 14 cards I received in a trade with supergajit. This is the fifth time I've swapped cards with Summer, which makes her the 11th member of my own personal "five timers club". I sent her a handful of Red Sox dupes, along with five cards from my recent baseball repack and four cards from the 2022 Sage pack that was included in a football repack I purchased earlier this year.

Here are the equivalent singles I picked out for my repack pulls. I never seem to get any Packers cards in my football repacks, so it was nice to fill some gaps in my collection.

Got some 2022-23 hockey singles in exchange for the Sage stuff. I'm working on a blog post about one of these teams, which will be published in early March. [hint: it's not the Devils]

Not every card I traded was pulled from a repack box, but they gave me enough to build the foundation for a worthwhile trade. Here are two such swaps, including my first one with nannema:

I shipped out three surplus Topps singles along with six basketball cards that didn't come from repacks in exchange for these three. It wasn't quite a 3-for-1 swap; another Hall of Famer was included but I'm holding that one for a fellow blogger 😉

Another stack of Sage singles plus some 2020 Leaf Draft from an older football repack, were sent to Clyntngrffn in a 2 for 1 deal. Here's what I received:

The Browns lineman is newest Hall of Famer Joe Thomas. McCaffrey was the big prize for me; I'm iffy on continuing my CMC PC now that he's a 49er but I couldn't pass up a Prizm parallel in a trade that offloaded lots of unwanted draft pick stuff. There was one more card involved in the trade:

I was happy with this trade and left positive feedback for Clytn.. but when I scanned Peterson for this post I noticed something:

Frickin' thing's creased. Grrr. Which one of you collects damaged cards? Do you want this one?

These next two deals were much better. My fourth trade with dheim1220 involved a couple cards from the baseball repack, plus six dupes from 2022 Topps, and two more basketball dupes. I received these:

If I'm going to build a set of 1994 Leaf I might have to give up on the idea of buying boxes of each series. Lofton is actually an upgrade from the single I pulled 28+ years ago.

The Panini Pedroia/Doerr was one I'd had on my want list for a while. The DK checklist is from 1992. I'm nearly finished with the '93 Diamond Kings insert set so I decided to try and finish its predecessor.

Perkins is an upgrade as well; a lot of my Fleer singles are off-center. The last two are Connecticut cards.


If you're new to TCDB and you have a lot of overproduction-era singles to unload (or you just bought a repack) you can definitely get some great stuff in exchange. In most cases, users prefer to trade similar era/type, so don't expect to get Panini Prizm or Topps Chrome for your '88 Donruss doubles.

If you're willing to receive "junk wax" you might be able to get extra cards for your newer singles. Here's a swap I recently completed with RDGKDHNC. I sent him five cards from the 2022-23 Upper Deck hockey packs I purchased at my LCS, plus three 2020-21 Upper Deck MVP singles.

Instead of an 8 for 8 trade I received 9 cards:

The last two are from 1991-92, which equated to one newer single. Not a hard and fast rule, but it usually works for me. (I was shocked my wife didn't have that Trevor Linden card already.) You'll probably see one of these cards again when I publish that NHL post.

I also shipped out some repack pulls to Matt for his Time Travel Trading.  That's one of three incoming deals I'll include in my next trade recap.


Thanks for reading!




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Wave 2.2 - Winter Sports

The Third Wave arrived today - my first order from Baseball Card Store in Canada. I'd been hoping for a CardBarrel type website that sells cards for all sports - and this could be it. 

But before I dive into that shipment there's plenty left from the Second Wave - my 400+ card trade with TCDB user Randylaw. This post will focus on winter sports because it frickin' snowed last weekend. (It's 83F in Jersey today.)

Ladies first:

I've really been slacking on adding to my Women on Cards binder. This is my first Lindsey Vonn card.

Erin Hamlin was selected as the flag bearer for the U.S. delegation at the 2018 Winter games - which prompted speed skater Shani Davis to have a Twitter temper tantrum. 

A pair of fantastic figure skaters. Gracie Gold has struggled with an eating disorder in recent years but she's making a comeback and doing well on and off the ice.

As for that other ice sport..

It's getting tough to find Devils cards I don't have from 1990 to about 2008. I actually had the Sean Burke already. Oh well.

I have no plans to build the 1989-90 O-Pee-Chee (or Topps) set but I don't mind picking up HOFers like Yzerman and near-HOFers like Nicholls and Barrasso. The airbrushed Randy Cunneyworth is pretty weak though. 

Oh Ca-na-da! Darin Madeley counts as a New Haven Senator. Guy Carbonneau is a Hall of Famer; Theo Fleury is not. (It pays to be Montreal's captain.)

More from the junk wax era - though Bowman doesn't count as "junk". My LCS overpriced these singles back in the day so I had very few at the time. Nothing but HOFers and borderline HOFers here. On that note:

SPx and SPa including a pair of P.K. I'm not much of a Jonathan Quick fan but he is a CT guy, born and raised in Milford (the town next to mine and home to the card shows I attend when I visit my mom.) Is Marc-Andre Fleury a Hall of Famer? I kind of think he is, but goalies are tough to judge. Curtis Joseph and Tom Barrasso are still waiting for the call..

..and so is Mike Richter, though his career was cut short by injury. I really miss Topps hockey cards; it's a little surprising to me that I didn't collect more Heritage hockey.

This trade reminded me of just how great those sets were. (I also miss the Thrashers.)

Basketball isn't considered a winter sport - but the NBA season is played in winter so I'll count it for this post.

I still have dozens of duplicates from my 1992-93 Fleer Ultra box, and I was able to swap a bunch of them to Randy for some 1993-94 needs. This stack of 40 singles brings my set build to about 85% completion. 

1991-92 Skybox was one of my favorites as a kid. The vibrant colors were a huge improvement over the initial Skybox set. I have no plans to build the set but it's easy to add these singles to any trade.

Some popular '90s Nets.. and Tate George, the first UConn star of the Jim Calhoun era. Aguirre and Potapenko were substitutes for the 16 cards Randy didn't have. 

Chrome cards are another thing I look for in dime boxes and trades. 

Season Ticket stars. I always overcompensate when I'm short on a star player such as Nikola Jokic. I'll have to re-calibrate and see what other stars I'm missing. (As soon as I'm done with scanning the new cards coming in I'll explore this further.)


I'm not sure how I'll scan and discuss the rest of the cards I received in this trade with Randylaw. Perhaps I'll complete the trilogy with a baseball and football post, or perhaps I'll mix them in with cards from the Third Wave. Either way, I'm getting closer to my goal of 100,000.


Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!



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100 Trades!

As I mentioned in the TCDB forums (I posted something on a message board? what?) I completed my 100th transaction on the site. In exchange for 31 duplicates (mostly hockey) from the 1990s I received 31 cards from DukeyDevil. They arrived in a folded-up 9-pocket page:

The most interesting item was this 1980-81 Topps Whalers team poster insert. 1979-80 was the Whalers' first year in the NHL (Gordie Howe is in the front row.) I was expecting this to have more wear and tear but it looks great!

Three more 1980s Whalers I needed. 

A nine-pocket page worth of set fillers from 1993-94 Fleer Ultra basketball. I've completed the 1992-93 Ultra set, and now I'm at 69.3% completion of this one.

Some more set fillers here. I finally finished 2019 Topps baseball, though I could use a couple upgrades. The Singletary is a huge upgrade to my 1986 Topps football set, my previous copy was creased. I've had a hard time finding a well-centered Al Toon RC. This one isn't 50/50 but it's good enough.

Some team favorites here, including a Ted Williams insert from 1992 Upper Deck. The John Garret isn't a team PC card, and it isn't part of a set build... yet.

I was thrilled that these Hall of Fame Habs were in fantastic shape. I've had so many bad experiences trading for vintage-ish OPC hockey cards that I almost quit TCDB trading. In fact the 1982-83 OPC Shutt is an upgrade over a creased copy I got in an earlier trade.

There were two reasons I kept at it - to finish my 2019 Topps baseball set, and to complete 100 transactions. I couldn't be happier that this deal accomplished both those things and more. Transactions #101 and #102 (which will be trade #100) are already in progress.


Btw, this brings my current card count up to 98,002! However that number will go down as I have a stack of cards ready to ship out to a blogger tomorrow.


Thanks for reading!



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Sox and set singles

I haven't felt like saying much lately. The news has been depressing and exhausting. I'm hardly even aware of the Super Bowl - though I'm sure I will hate-watch it, and I'm sure the 49ers will win because I absolutely don't want them to. 

There are plenty of posts percolating in my mind. I'm hoping to publish a couple of them before rebooting the All-Time Teams series. All of this will require energy and enthusiasm, which I am very low on at the moment.

I'm nearly finished cataloging my card collection. I had hoped to be done by the end of January, but I didn't quite make it. I thought that when every card was hand-checked (again) the final count would eclipse 98,000. It looks like I'll fall just short.

A couple trades came in this week, along with an unofficial trade. Julie of A Cracked Bat is back, and she offered up some fresh new cards for pocket pickin'. 

I asked for five singles. She sent nine, generous soul that she is:

This was a pleasant surprise! I'm impressed that Julie was able to ship a relic in a PWE without incident. I tried that once and it did not go well.

The rest of the PWE. Snider, Seager, Scherzer, Varitek and Lowell were my picks. Julie threw in the Devers and Pedro cards. Thanks again Julie! 

I'm not one to simply take cards without giving something in return, and I was able to scrape together a return PWE. However I feel terrible because my Tigers traders were depleted on a "gift" that was not even acknowledged. From now on, if I get any decent Tigers cards they're going to Julie or Dennis. Period, full stop.


Anyway... I added some more Red Sox to my collection this week, thanks to a pair of TCDB trades. The first is a PWE trade with CardsInTheBasement:

Six Sox from 2019 Topps Heritage, including some highlights from their 2018 title. Ah, the good old days. Honestly, none of these players evoke good feelings right now - except maybe JBJ. I love Mookie and all, but there's no point in blowing up the payroll and paying penalties just to hand him $400 million. Is he worth it? Compared to Mike Trout's contract, sure. But how many World Series has Trout won? Or Bryce Harper? Or Giancarlo Stanton?

Here are some more cards you're probably sick of seeing. 2020 Topps Series 1 is about to hit shelves and I haven't finished the 2019 set yet. I'm surprised at myself for even wanting to collect this set give how much I disliked it initially. I would say that the new flagship issue doesn't interest me - which it doesn't (it looks too much like a Bowman design) but I'll probably give in eventually.

My 95th completed trade on TCDB was with jmsisco. This was a bigger swap - I unloaded 74 flagship dupes in exchange for 51 cards I needed. Why did I offer to take 23 fewer cards?

So that I could snag the Eloy Jimenez RC! I'm now just a handful of singles away from completing the 2019 Topps set. I had hoped to complete it by the end of January, but I didn't quite make it.

 

Similar to the previous trade, this one also included a handful of Sox singles from 2019 sets.

My main goal was to send surplus Topps singles to someone who needed them. I wasn't too picky about what I could get in return, whether it's Bowman Platinum singles of guys I collect...

..or an assortment of singles from Update. I now have about 1/3 of this set, but I'm not sure I'll attempt to complete it. Side note: the Festa card was of particular interest to me since that was also the last name of my 8th grade crush.

 
I'll be in Connecticut visiting family this weekend. No card show this time; those are at the end of each month and I probably wouldn't go even if it were this weekend. The dime boxes were kind of picked clean last time I was there. Besides, as I'm re-cataloging my collection I've found that I have very little room for any new cards - except football.

 Go Chefs!!


Thanks for reading, and enjoy the SuperbOwl!


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