Birthday Cards (and a contest!)

My birthday isn't until next weekend, but my (wife's) niece is about to turn 22 and so the in-laws use the occasion of her birthday party to hand me some birthday cards. 

 I got three cards for my birthday. You'll see them in a minute.

Earlier in the week I wrote a blog post about what I might buy with my expectant birthday cash (and how I would celebrate if I didn't have to share my "special" day) ...but when I arrived at the party yesterday I completely forgot that anyone would give me anything.

I didn't open my cards right away, and I wasn't sure I'd open them at Bridget's party. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. But then, my brother-in-law handed me a large cardboard box.

And, taped to the bottom of the large box (with rolled scotch tape, not blue painter's tape) ...was the aforementioned three cards.
 
What's this? Someone put enough thought into my birthday to choose three single sports cards for my PC?

Joe has given me sports card gits in the past - but they've always been blaster boxes. And his father (who recently passed) often gave me blasters for Christmas so I assumed that without his guidance as to what I collect the card gifts would be a thing of the past. Boy, I was wrong!

This might be the first time in my life that anyone has gifted me singles without me first saying
"I picked out the cards I want. Now put some wrapping paper on 'em and put 'em in my stocking, Mom." So I would have been happy if one of the cards fit my PC. 

We're all Devils fans in my fam (they're the reason I became a Devs fan) so there had to be at least one Jersey card..and it's a jersey card. It looked familiar though...

Turns out it was a dupe. But hey, at least I can show off both sides of the quad now!

Joe isn't a baseball fan (Pop was the only one on his side of the fam) but he knows I love my Sawx. He had heard something about Manny Ramirez but wasn't certain if Man-Ram was dead or a PED cheater. That's ok though, I wasn't certain if I had this card or not...

I did have two other Ballpark Collection multi-swatch cards, but not this one. Here's how they look together:

 

Last but certainly not least...I used to have a bit of an Edmonton Oilers PC. They always seemed to have players I like - Jason Arnott, Ryan Smyth, Tommy Salo, Fernando Pisani, Georges Laraque.. Taylor Hall - so they were my favorite Western Conference team (and still are, I s'pose)

Joe must have remembered that when he picked out this gem:

Yeah, it's unlicensed and the players aren't actually pictured but.. wow. Nail Yakupov! And it's numbered to 55! 

(okay, maybe that McDavid guy is the draw here lol) 


This sure was better than a blaster. Heck, this might have been better than three blasters.  And that's not all I got for my not-quite birthday: there was $125 cash in those three cards (the greeting cards, that is) and $60 worth of lottery scratch-offs cause the fam likes to gamble:

I haven't scratched them off yet, and so I thought it would make a decent contest. Leave a comment with your guess of how much prize money these scratch-offs will yield and if your guess is exactly correct I will send you a bubble mailer full of cards (if there are multiple winners you'll each get prizes.)

If no one guesses the exact dollar amount, a PWE prize will be sent to whomever comes the closest. The conest will run until Wednesday, when I also reveal what I bought with my $125 cash.


Good luck!


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The Downside of COMC

Earlier this week I finally sold the last "high-end" card in my COMC inventory - this Nolan Ryan coin & stamp card from a jumbo box of 2015 Topps I bought earlier this year:

I hadn't sold anything in a while, and I had my eye on a Dustin Pedroia autographed card, so I accepted the initial offer of about $24. The Pedroia was $30, but I tried making a $20 offer..which was countered at $25.25. I countered at $23..the seller countered at $24.25. 

I really didn't want to lose out on the Pedey auto over a stinkin' quarter, so I had to accept. But first I had to do some COMC challenges. Once that was out of the way, I had my prize:

Dustin Pedroia 2016 Topps The Mint - Franchise Autographs ($24.25)

Cool trade, eh? And I had some spare change to spend on the site as a bonus. Thanks to COMC's connection to Upper Deck ePack there are truckloads of hockey singles available for 30-50 cents; I figured 75 cents would buy me two decent cards for my PC.

And with O-Pee-Chee Platinum Hockey hitting the site this week, I tried to be patient and grab some nice shiny chrome-type cards. But the prices were too good to pass up; this Alex Ovechkin logo crest insert was $0.35 when I added it to my cart:

..and $0.30 an hour later.

So I wasted a (free) nickel. So what? Well, it got me thinking about some of the other hockey card purchases I've made this year - specifically from product that later ended up on ePack. This Patrik Elias 1000 Point Club jersey was $9.47 when I bought it in April:

There's one on COMC right now for $3.99 :/


This Adam Henrique SP Game Used Frameworks jersey cost me $5.67 two weeks ago:

It would cost me $3.25 today.


I could go on, but you get the point. It's hard to know when to pull the trigger on a deal, and when to wait out the market. I've had my share of successes, of course. Even with constant flow of inventory from ePack to COMC I've managed to find some good deals:

paid $14.25 in May...

now: $45 (last copy on COMC)

paid $3.75 in May...

now $9.84 (on sale)

Time will tell what happens to the price of 2016-17 OPC Platinum cards as they continue to funnel onto COMC, but you can bet I'll be chipping away at Challenges to purchase some singles. And I'll be keeping my eyes out for more deals like this one:

Pekka Rinne 2016-17 OPC Platinum Retro Gold Rainbow #d/149 ($0.49)

 
...while trying not to stress over the singles I bought before Upper Deck ePack-ed them out:

Pavel Zacha 2016-17 OPC Platinum Marquee Rookies Red Prism #d/199 ($3.85)

Have you had any good(or bad) experiences with ePack? Do you purchase packs straight from the site, or wait until the singles hit COMC? Let me know in comments. 

Have a great weekend everyone!


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Quick Tour Of My Card Room

I borrowed my wife's camera to take some pictures of my backyard for a post on my "personal" blog (feel free to follow me) and so I thought I'd take a few pics of my upstairs room before I gave it back.

My bookshelf of figurines (and a few books), with Robin Yount as a centerpiece. The first shelf features a Jerry Rice bobblehead that I found on someone's trash table while walking home one day - and some Starting Lineup figures that probably aren't worth more than they cost 20+ years ago (except maybe the Neil Lomax.) Ignore the old Smashing Pumpkins posters in the background; I had nowhere else to put them or the rest of the music/movie posters from my teen years.

Shelf #2 has a Duke Snider autographed baseball (pack war prize) next to a Duke Snider SLU (my aunt bought it from me in a yard sale and my mom gave it back to me when she passed). The ball behind it is a foul ball from an independent minor league game when Rickey Henderson played for Newark. The ball on the far right, next to the DVD set, was signed by Don Mattingly (probably; I bought it when I was a kid and didn't get a COA.) The bottom shelf holds my books (I'm a huge John Green fan) and my VHS boxed set of Ken Burns' Baseball - and a Mariners sticker I just pulled out of a vending machine.

From my computer desk, facing out. That's not my bed; it's an ottoman that wouldn't fit in my living room. I threw an old Packers blanket over it and use it as a couch. My daughters might be able to sleep on it. The Devils pillow was a Christmas gift; it obviously doesn't match but I don't mind.

 

A closer look at the IKEA bookshelf, which just barely fits all of my card albums. It's a tight squeeze in some of those squares. These albums hold everything from commons (sorted chronologically by team and alphabetically by city) to team collections (Red Sox, Packers, Devils, and Whalers) to a player collection or two (my 600+ Brett Favre cards and my wife's Brendan Shanahan cards.) The rest are some of my favorite sets like 2017 Topps Heritage baseball and others that I want to look at rather than stuff 'em in a monster box.

Like this.

This is the closet where I keep all of my bulk sets, relics/autos, and graded cards. That black box is full of vintage goodies; its the first thing I'd grab if my house were on fire.

 

And finally, a wider view of the room - with a partial pile of my McFarlane collection and some replica Stanley Cup trophies stacked on top of my CD shelf. (the rest of my McFaralane figures are in boxes; I dont have room to display them all.) The white boxes on top of my IKEA bookshelf hold all of my inserts/parallels/rookie cards; there's one box of nothing but New Jersey Devils and one box that holds my 1956 Topps baseball set build.

The card table at the bottom left is my "work bench"; any time I'm selling or trading something I'll put the package together on that table. 

Hope you enjoyed the tour!

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Taking a Nap

My wife was headed to Target yesterday while I was at work, and so I asked her to pick me up a blaster box of 2017 Topps Archives baseball. She reported (as many on the baseball card blogosphere have) that there was slim pickins at the sports card aisle (that's aisle, not isle) and so I was unable to scratch my pack ripping itch. Which is just as well, since I have contracted poison ivy and have plenty of other itches to scratch. Or not scratch.

There was a card on my COMC watch list that I was saving up challenge credit for, and I thought that since I'd been unable to secure a blaster box of new product I could go ahead and purchase that card...and another...and another. 

Instead of acquiring 60 cards or so - five of which would be inserts/parallels, none of which would be Aaron Judge - I ended up with two cards that fit my collection...and something that caught my eye while browsing new sales.


I have never owned a tobacco card. I know I can't afford anything in decent shape, and I'm kind of picky about condition. But I make an exception when the card is this cheap:

1911 T205 Sweet Caporal Nap Rucker Factory 25 black back ($6.25)

This little gem is now the oldest card in my collection by far (at least it will be when I have my COMC haul shipped to me on Black Friday.) For the price of one pack of Stadium Club I acquired a 106-year old card of a pitcher who was not only a major league starter but an above average ace - Rucker led the National league in WAR in 1911 and 1912 (ahead of such legends as Honus Wagner and Christy Mathewson) and received Hall Of Fame votes in a number of early elections.

So how was I able to grab this card so cheap? Well, the front isn't so bad..but the back...

...is a mess. Definitely some paper loss there. The card number (if there is one) and name are unreadable, other than the "ER". Still, I'm excited to add it to my collection - along with the card I had planned to purchase before spotting the Nap:

1956 Topps Del Ennis #220 ($5.05)

I've been craving some vintage, especially a new '56 to add to my set build. This Ennis looks sharp, though the centering is not the best. Here's the back:

This brings my total up to 98 cards out of 340, or about 29% of the set.


The last card in my "COMC Blaster" is a much more modern one:

 2012 Topps Tribute Dustin Pedroia Superstar Swatch ($8.65)

I'm always on the hunt for low-numbered Pedroia relics and this was on my watch list for a while. When the seller lowered his price I swooped in and grabbed it. The case is pretty scratched up, I might jailbreak it when it arrives.

This trio cost a total of $19.95. I sacrificed the instant gratification that buying a blaster brings, but chances are I would not have pulled anything comparable in value out of one anyway.


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I Thought We Had Settled This

Remember my posts a while back asking readers to help me sort my card collection by deciding which players belong in my "star box" and which players belong in my commons binders?

I forgot to do hockey.

Well, it's not that I forgot so much as I got distracted and didn't think there were enough hockey fans on the card blogging blogosphere to have an opinion on how I classified such players as Chris Osgood, Patrice Bergeron, or Filip Forsberg. So I used my own judgment.

This past weekend I finally cleaned and organized my entire card collection. Everything is sorted and stored neat and tidy. My OCD is happy.. at least it would be, if I had put all my Pierre Turgeon cards in one place. 

Somehow I managed to split my Turgeon cards into both the "star player box" and the binders. This was strange for two reasons: all of the cards in the box were from his years with the Montreal Canadiens but his Sabres, Islanders, and Blues cards were in my commons binders (as if I subconsciously decided he was only a star in Montreal?) 

The second thing that irked me was that I really did not know which side Turgeon belonged on. He's not a Hall Of Famer (which would earn an automatic place in my box) but his numbers compare very favorably to many of his contemporaries - some of whom are in the HHOF (I've indicated those players in blue)

	first year	last year	Cups	Goals	Assists	Points	PPG
Doug Gilmour	1983	2003	1	450	964	1414	0.959
Mike Modano	1989	2011	1	561	813	1374	0.917
Mats Sundin	1990	2009	0	564	785	1349	1.002
Pierre Turgeon	1987	2007	0	515	812	1327	1.026
Jeremy Roenick	1988	2009	0	513	703	1216	0.892
Vin Damphousse	1986	2004	1	432	773	1205	0.875
Rod Brind'Amour	1989	2010	1	452	732	1184	0.798
Sergei Fedorov	1990	2009	3	483	696	1179	0.945
Joe Nieuwendyk	1986	2007	3	564	562	1126	0.896
Doug Weight	1991	2011	1	278	755	1033	0.834

 

Okay, so he didn't win a Stanley Cup or any major awards (unless you consider the Lady Byng trophy a "major" award) but he has a higher points per game average than anyone on this list, and I'm having a hard time separating him from first-ballot HOFer Mats Sundin. 

Jeremy Roenick is an interesting case as well. I'm not quite sold on his Hall of Fame candidacy, but there's no denying he was a star. Damphousse, Brind'Amour, and Weight are better suited for the "Hall of Very Good", though Brind'Amour's two-way play might get him in the HHOF one day. 


I never really thought of Pierre Turgeon as a bona fide star the way Sundin and Modano and Roenick and Fedorov and Gilmour were stars. (I never thought of Joe Nieuwendyk as a star, either.) And yet his career numbers tell me I should. No wonder I had his cards sorted in two different places!



Can you think of any deserving players who are not in the Hockey Hall of Fame?



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