O-Pee-Chee Wrap-Up

Some quick updates:

I'm getting my second Covid shot this afternoon, right after I get out of work. I plan to take tomorrow off, even if I don't have any side effects. I should be able to catch up with all of you if I do stay home. 

Thank you all for the support on my last post. I'm feeling much better now. Hope is a powerful thing.

John from Johnny's Trading Spot sent me a huge box of cards. I'm still sifting through them all. I'm gonna need another Red Sox binder. And a thousand penny sleeves. Are they still 'penny' sleeves, or should we call them 'nickel' sleeves now?

My best friend from high school called me last week. We hadn't talked since before the pandemic. Guess what we discussed? Sports cards. He's one of the crowd who returned to the hobby last year and started investing in high-grade rookie cards. It was great to catch up with him and speculate on which players might be worth investing in now, and sharing our buying/selling successes.

I've actually cashed out a lot of my graded cards. My 9th-ranked 1984 O-Pee-Chee hockey set has been dissolved.

Those last 56 cards were mostly commons. 40 of them never surface, and even if each card were readily available they would be well over $10 each at this point. I figured it would be easier to sell off what I have than to complete a slabbed set.

Surprisingly, it was. I received $3,000 (pre-fee) for three boxes of 100+ cards graded PSA 9 & 10.

Then I sold a lot of nine Wayne Gretzky cards for $611, PSA 10 singles of Paul Coffey ($63) and Dale Hawerchuk ($31), a PSA 9 Dave Andreychuk RC ($53), four PSA 10 Maple Leafs ($61) and three PSA 9 Canadiens ($21). I'm not sure how much the set build cost me over the years but after these sales I had more than $3,500 and I kept thirteen cards as a memento of my second most ambitious collecting project:

Keeper #1 is card #1. This Ray Bourque single is very tough to find centered, and I had to cough up $27.99 for this copy. That was actually a good deal; I've seen PSA 9 Bourques sell for up to $50. 

Here's the star of the set, or so I thought. I bought this Stevie Y rookie card $170.99 five years ago. It sells for close to $800 now despite being fairly abundant in this grade. 

By the way, most of these cards were scanned on my old scanner which is why they look a little grainy. 

This is the only Gem Mint 10 single I saved. Bought this Chico Resch for $20.50 in 2009, the year I officially started this set. I'm tempted to start a Chico PC someday.
 

Pat Verbeek played for two of my favorite teams - the Devils and the Whalers - so I'm definitely saving his RC. I think I have a raw copy in my Devils binder, but it never hurts to have an extra.

Hall of Famer Pat LaFontaine's RC is another top tier card in this set. I'd had my eye on this one since the early 1990s and brought it home five years ago for just $22.50 shipped.
 

Another Hall of Famer rookie card, this Doug Gilmour is a little extra special to me. I bought an ungraded set (for $140) in 2009 and selected a few singles to submit to PSA. This "Killer" RC was the best of the bunch; a PSA 9 copy sells for about $300 today.

This second year Scott Stevens pairs nicely with my PSA 9 rookie card from 1983-84 O-Pee-Chee. I might even decide to do a full run of OPC Stevens cards some day.

I've always considered the rookie cards of Hall of Famers to be the big draw of this set. However, when it comes to high-grade singles the Great One appears to have passed Yzerman in resale value. I sold my 1983-84 PSA 9 Gretzky but I don't plan to part with this card.

Jari Kurri's card is a keeper, too. I've always been a fan of Wayne Gretzky's wingman. 

Chris Chelios is my least favorite of the "big five" rookie cards in this set. I didn't necessarily need to keep it but I like having all of the key cards in my collection. 

To be honest I have no real reason for adding this Thomas Gradin to my 'keeper' pile. I just felt like keeping a Canucks card.

 

 

...aside from this Cam Neely rookie card, of course. This is the sixth rookie card of a Hall of Famer in the '84-85 set; the only one I sold was Dave Andreychuk. 

 

The last one of my keepers is this Tim Kerr team card. I considered saving the Sylvain Turgeon Whalers team leaders, which was a PSA 10. However this was the one subset single I wanted to keep because it was the last team leader card I needed - and it took me over a decade to track it down. 

I do have a few ungraded cards from this set but I have no plans to add any more at the moment. While it is one of my all-time favorites I've seen enough of it for a while. 


The Stanley Cup Playoffs are underway, and I'm not sure which team to root for this summer. I was happy with two of the past three Cup winners (Washington and Tampa) and it would be nice to see a second Caps cup. Other than that I'd be fine with the Islanders, Bruins, Knights, Panthers, or Oilers skating with Lord Stanley. 

And then there's this guy. 

If the Leafs emerge from the Canadian division I might have to cheer hard for them. I know Toronto fans would be insufferable if their team won the Stanley Cup but they've waited long enough. And I haven't wanted a Joe to win this much since November.

 


Who are you cheering for this postseason?

Thanks for reading!



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Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

Some quick updates as I'm on my way to Connecticut for the weekend:

I'm thrilled that the A to Z Music Challenge caught on. It's been fun to see so many lists. I wish I could have been more active in commenting this week. Think I saw six or seven A-Z posts :)

My daughter wanted me to play Pokemon Sword so I started a game this week (I wanted to play Animal Crossing) Also took her outside a time or two before dinner.

Most of my time has been spent listing cards on eBay. I made the difficult decision to break up my 2014-15 Panini Prizm basketball set and my 1984-85 O-Pee-Chee hockey graded set. Perhaps I'll write another post about these, but the only blogger that seemed to show any interest in my OPC set .. is no longer a blogger.

I haven't been writing here or at the 1993, but I have been working on a mysterious 3rd blog journaling all of my thoughts and experiences at work.

A. Aron Rodgers wants out of Green Bay. The Packers drafted a receiver for him in the third round. His name? A. Rodgers. lol

I wont get to see my mother on Mother's Day but I'm bringing her a gift: a pewter picture frame with postcards inside:
 

Ran across an eBay seller with all kinds of ephemera of our home town. I asked mom if she would want anything specific and she requested this white horse carousel. Childhood memories, you know? 

Naturally, it was the most expensive postcard by far. Cost about as much as the picture frame.

I picked up two more postcards for her. These were much cheaper:

I can't fathom that such buildings existed in our home town. You should see some of the things on the other postcards. I can't even picture where The "White City" would have been 80+ years ago.

The bottom postcard, Savin Rock Theatre, is in pretty rough shape. It was only about $3, and I figured the frame would hide some of the flaws. All three cards have unmarked backs:

I surely would have put pictures of my children in the picture frame but it's 2021. How would you even go about getting a physical photograph anymore? (don't answer that. I know how. I just dont have the DIY tools.)

Got another round or two of eBay selling to do, and then my Spring Cleaning will be complete. 

Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!

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Spring Cleaning

Mrs. Collector and I have been doing something we should have done during quarantine last year - cleaning out our old junk. We've spent the last few Saturdays bagging up clothes to donate and throwing out random items that can't be reused. I've also been selling a lot of stuff on eBay since they're about to cut PayPal out of the process and require sellers to provide bank account info to eBay. Um, no thanks.

This is all just a way of explaining that I've got a lot of cards to show off but not a whole lot of time to discuss them. Sometimes I just like to scan and post them here so I can get them sorted in my boxes. 

Steven from baseballcardstore.ca sent me an email offer to join a free break of 2021 Topps baseball. Unlike breaks that I have to pay into, the Red Sox were available and I happily claimed them.

About a dozen packs into his video I was starting to wonder if he'd pull any Red Sox. Sure enough they were clustered in the last third of the megabox. I ended up with five base cards and two inserts.

The Rafael Devers 1986 insert was part of an 8-for-8 trade with TCDB user Baseballdave.

I hadn't planned on placing another order at the online dime box but I couldn't let these Sox travel alone, so I added 80 cards to my cart and they arrived at the same time - but in different packages:

My All-Time Teams collection is nearly complete. I'll have another update soon. The Cardinal pictured here is Joe Medwick, who was apparently hated by nearly everyone according to Bo's blog.

My hockey boxes are full but I can't help pick out a few singles in every order. A 2021 Whalers card? Yes please. Ovechkin for a dime? O-hell yeah. The Ray Bourque is part of a Playoff oddball set my wife started. I'm trying to finish it for her but it's a bear. Also, the Devils are ass this year. Seems to be the new normal. :/

New basketball cards are nearly impossible to find for a dime but '90s favorites are still plentiful. Here's a pair of Mark Price cards, including a 1993-94 Ultra insert that proves he was a 1st team All-NBA selection (over John Stockton?!) in 1993. Robert Horry is here to remind you that he has more rings than Michael Jordan #HorryGoat

Most of the singles I need for nearly-completed sets have dried up so I've turned to set builds that are 20-30% complete, such as the 1999-00 Hoops Decade set. Here are 6 of the 11 cards I purchased. Note the Shawn Bradley in particular.

I noticed a post on the TCDB forums from user sfurukawa looking for a few 4- and 6- pocket pages. I just happened to have extras and I asked him to make me an offer. He initially offered me 20 singles from Hoops Decade, but I countered by subtracting four of them and adding two football cards.

Unfortunately I'd forgotten to check my baseballcardstore.ca order and ended up with an extra Bradley. Also the John Starks Shin sent me is a Hoopla parallel (no it's not scratched, that's my scanner.) Regardless I've got 25 new singles for this 180-card set, boosting my total to 65.

Here are the two football cards I requested. I also picked up three more 1987 Topps needs in a different TCDB trade and purchased a dozen 2019 Score football cards from Steven & Nancy.

I really like this updated version of the first Score football set. Panini gets a lot of flack, most of it deserved, but they got this right.

Guess I'd better get back to the piles of clothes and toys. Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!

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A to Z Music Challenge

My sports cards have been organized enough that all I need to do is put away new purchases, and so last night I moved on to my CD collection.

As you [can't] see, my CDs are all stored in a drawer. This drawer, which has one busted wheel, slides underneath my bed and gets quite dusty. After removing all the CDs to clean and organize them I noticed that I have a favorite band or artist for nearly every letter in the alphabet.

Once upon a time I participated in a blogging challenge that took place in April. We'd all pick an overarching theme and a daily topic that matched each letter. It was fun. Unfortunately the people who ran it showed their whole ass and I didn't want to be associated with them anymore. Still like the concept though.

So here's an idea if you have some time or you're out of blog topics: make a list of your favorite musicians from A to Z or do a Sporcle-style speed round and just type out the first ones that come to mind as quickly as you can. Here's my list of favorite musical acts by the letter:

All Time Low

This video gives me all the feels. I used the song in a story I wrote. Never finished that thing. Maybe someday.

 Bush

A surprisingly tough letter for me. Sixteen Stone is the only CD in my collection from a 'B' band. Is there a "Best of Bush" greatest hits CD? [edit: There is .. but its frigging expensive!]

The Cure

One of my all-time faves. I hadn't listened to them in years and then earlier this week I popped in Disintegration because it was raining (again.) Love it. A more current 'C' band I'm listening to is Chvrches. Thanks for pointing me in their direction, Shane!

Depeche Mode

Good news: Dave Gahan, Martin Gore & co. were finally elected to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame!
Bad news: They were elected last year, and the ceremony was virtual due to Covid.

E

Evanescence? Erasure? Echo and the Bunnymen? I'm drawing a blank here.

Fall Out Boy

 
One of my top three favorite bands of the last dozen years.

Green Day

Also receiving votes: Garbage

Jimi Hendrix

I haven't listened to Hendrix in years, but H is not a strong letter for me.

I Don't Know How But They Found Me

I saw them open for Silversun Pickups in 2019. They're good enough to knock Incubus off the list.

Joy Division

The cover art for Unknown Pleasures might be even more popular than the band itself.

Kent

 

They're a Swedish band and one of my all time favorites, even though about 80% of their recordings were in Swedish. The Killers are another fave, and I listened to a ton of Keane in college.
 

Linkin Park

I actually don't have any of their CDs. I've been planning to get at least one, likely a Greatest Hits compilation.

Muse

My wife's favorite band, and one of my top five. If you haven't heard them yet, hear them live first. While I'm on 'M' bands, I should mention that the restoration company I work for did an inspection at the home of My Chemical Romance guitarist Frank Iero. I was very excited about this. Naturally I was the only one in the office who'd heard of him.

New Order

I mentioned them on The 1993. Obligatory Nirvana mention here, as they're the reason I got into alternative music.

Oasis/The Offspring

Call it a tie between two '90s acts I liked a fair amount. Nowadays I listen to a little more Oasis.

Pvris

When I first heard "Fire" it reminded me of another female-fronted band, Paramore. I love Riot more than any single Pvris album, but Hayley Williams & co. lost me a couple albums ago. Use Me isn't my cup of tea in general but Lynn Gunn hasn't lost me yet. (Also, their cover of "Chandelier" lays waste to the original.)
 

Queen

I challenge you to find a better artist for the letter 'Q'. Really feeling this track lately.

Radiohead

I mentioned them on The 1993 as well.

SP

Smashing Pumpkins are my all-time favorite band. Silversun Pickups are my current favorite band. I listen to a lot of Silversun and very little Pumpkins these days. Love 'em both though.

Thirty Seconds To Mars

Number bands are left out of this exercise (sorry, 311) but since Jared Leto & co. spell out the word Thirty I'll tuck them in to 'T'. [bands that start with the word The obviously do not count here.]

U2

See Queen. I was just remarking to the Mrs. that I haven't listened to enough U2 lately. I'll fix that.

Van Halen

I wasn't the biggest Van Halen fan in the world but I do like their hits (and Balance brings back junior high memories) Here's a question for those of you who are fans: David Lee Roth or Sammy Hagar?

The White Stripes/Weezer

Another tie between two different but equally good alternative bands. I like more Weezer songs but I like White Stripes songs more, if that makes sense. Also I should mention that I'm kinda digging The Weeknd lately.

X

Ah, the dreaded X. I know XTC is a band that exists but I can't name any of their songs. And I can't count Lil' Nas X.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Another tough letter. This is really the only YYY song I like though I haven't dug too deep into their catalog. Yet.

Z

ZZ Top would be the obvious choice, or Frank Zappa. But I can't say I like them. Rob Zombie? His band had a song or two I liked okay, but those are listed under White Zombie. Rather than trying to come up with a 'Z' artist I like enough, how about Zooey Deschanel singing the national anthem at the 2012 World Series.

That's my list. What's yours? 

Thanks for reading & listening!



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Cheap Set Fillers

This has been a strange year for me. I've been doing a lot of re-evaluating, in my life and in my card collection. I'm continuing to sell higher-value cards on eBay while chipping away at lower-end set builds.

This Rhys Hoskins Players Weekend Variation cost $1.86 on eBay. It's about twice as much as I'd hoped to pay, but none of the online retailers I frequent had this card and I gave up on trying to trade for it. ~$2 is a small price to pay to complete the master set of 2018 Topps Big League (except for the ten "error" SSPs.)

Sirius Sportscards has some very nice vintage singles at affordable prices. These two NM singles complete the Dodgers and Padres All-Time Teams, respectively. With free shipping the total was just $6 + tax, or roughly the amount of eBay bucks I earned in the 1st quarter of 2021.

I picked up a half dozen football set fillers on Sportlots, using direct shipping. This lot cost just $2.93 after applying my store credit and a tiny amount of loot.

In total these nine cards cost just over $5 out of pocket - or just over $11 total. Some other purchases have arrived, and more are on the way. I'm not sure if I'll discuss them all. I've been in a wistful mood lately and the hobby hasn't inspired me to write nearly as much as it used to. My mind is ..somewhere else. 

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!



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