Sunday, March 17, 2024

My House Is Almost Full

I did it again.

I let a month go by without posting a thing.  I've had a few ideas, and still haven't written my definitive grading rant, but never sat down to put anything on screen.  Granted, I've been sick off and on and had my third (although painless) kidney stone migration all in the last month.  

But that's not what I meant...

The CDs were already there
I brought in another cardboard hoard.  Filled another floor of my townhouse with cards.  Now two out of three floors are stacked to the gills.  I'll be on Hoarders soon.  OK, maybe not - I can still walk around them.  They were unloaded on the ground floor about a month ago, and I carried them all up two flights last weekend.

This collection was from a friend of a friend who pulled it out of a storage unit after a prolonged stay.  So they were a bit damp and musty.  I actually ended up wiping down all the boxes and much of the contents to keep my sinuses happy.  My mission is to sell off as much as possible. 


Most of what is here is basketball and football from roughly the mid to late 90's, with a small percentage just outside that range.  Brands include Hoops and Skybox basketball, Pacific, Playoff, and Collector's Edge for football, and Fleer, Topps, Ultra, Upper Deck, and Collector's Choice for both.  As you can see from the photos, there is a mix of white bulk boxes, wax boxes and miscellaneous accessories.  More on that in a minute.  There is a small amount of baseball - mostly junk wax, and a little hockey.  There was also some non-sport, including a big batch of GI Joe cards, but I gave that back to the owner to take to a comic shop.


I'm sure there are many readers who get and flip collections all the time, but this is really my first time with such volume and diversity.  The first hoard was all monster boxes, so the sorting was pretty much one step and then consolidating with my other extras.

This time, I've taken a multi-phase approach.  

1. Sort out all the mixed bulk by sport.  I've cleaned out several long white boxes already into monster boxes.

2. Among those, sort into "chunks" of the same set.  There are some sizable quantities of several products, and there is a lot of just extra singles.  I would grab big stacks and put those together and then after I've seen groups of other sets, I'd go back through and put those together.  For some, I could pull them out and start complete sets. 

3. Then I tried to find wax boxes of some of the sets that I already found stacks for.  There is one unusual thing about 90% of the wax boxes in this lot, though...

The wrappers are usually all there, but...

The packs have already been opened!  Typically, the inserts have been removed (sometimes in a stack inside the box).  So there was no fun ripping packs.  And there were only a few unopened items.

That's where I'm at right now.  I sold two factory sets and a group of unopened boxes on eBay.  I'm now trying to gather as many hand-collated sets (or series) for the next round of auctions.  I should be able to trade for any missing singles in most of these sets.

Step 4 is to go through a couple hundred top-loadered cards that had been set aside as more valuable.  A few of those will go back into their sets, and the rest will either go on COMC or get sold to my local shop if he'll take them.  Depends on how many are for sale online.

As I mentioned, these have been in storage for a long time, so you know what the danger is...

Bricking!

Amazingly, the vast majority of these cards have popped apart with almost no visible damage.  I've got a 400 count box of snowy or bent cards bound for recycling, but that's it so far.

There are a few binders with some sets and inserts in various stages of completion.  That makes it a little nicer.

There's gonna be a lot of bulk extras at the end.  If you're looking for any basketball or football from the 90's, get your lists together.  I'll be offering up a lot of this for trade later - I don't do basketball, though I'm tempted to build a couple sets that I've been working on.

I will also give my readers a chance to snag some of the hand collated sets/series very soon.  A lot of them go for $15-20 on eBay, so it's easier and more fun to move them from here.

Ultimately, I will have a ton of bulk commons etc. to add to my TCDB For Sale/Trades as well.  I haven't even finished entering the extra stuff that I had before, so that may take a while.

Stay tuned!

Thursday, February 15, 2024

A Relatively Minor Purchase

A couple weeks ago, while I was browsing the forums on the TCDB, I stumbled upon a thread that asked where some collectors get their minor league cards from.  As a player collector of about 60 different guys, I have a significant list of minor league issues - mostly managers for the guys I'm looking for.  I see them on COMC and a few other places, but a lot of them are prohibitively expensive.  Sometimes you have to buy a whole team set to get one card, but I'm not doing that.

One respondent listed a couple sites that he had found.  It included GoSportsCards.com.  I checked it out immediately.

The site is searchable and soon I had plugged in most of my player collection list.  I came up with 14 items from five different players.  GSC's inventory is pretty good, but seems limited to the 2000's for the most part.  Which is understandable, since most collectors want current players and the latest things.  And it would probably be unmanageable to keep team sets back to the 80's unless you had a vast warehouse.

I got my order quickly and it was packaged very well.  Even included a little sticker with the website logo.

So here are the cards I got.  I scanned front and back.  (Which only took about 40 seconds with my scanner).  None of these was more than $3 apiece on the site.  I'm pleased.

Included are some playing day images so you know who these guys are.  This post is pretty lengthy will all the images.  On a regular screen, vertical fronts & backs will be side by side.  Not sure on a phone...sorry.

 Joe Ferguson played for the Dodgers and Astros.  Those unis - most excellent.

 
 

 Bud Harrelson played and managed for the Mets most of his career.  I have a few team issued cards of him as manager that I think of as minor league, but they're not.

 


Sparky Lyle pitched for the Red Sox, Yankees and Phillies.  Late in his career, he grew his signature mustache.


Cesar Cedeno started with the Astros and ended with the Reds.  Then apparently he came back to the Astros.

 





Grant Jackson debuted on that famous short printed card for the Phillies in 1966 and went on to pitch for the Orioles, Pirates, Yankees, and maybe Mariners, or not.  I do have a few of his minor league issues before this one.

I bet you won't see this many minor league cards on another blog this week.

Check out GoSportsCards.com if you're in the market for any minor league player since the Milennium or so.

Wednesday, February 07, 2024

View From The Club Level - Part 2

Continuing the previous post on my four "compact" boxes of 2023 Stadium Club.

Box #3 begins with an exclusive purple foil parallel.  Lee looks like this game is with the knuckleballer and he's not looking forward to it...


Another Oriole parallel - though I'm not familiar with Mr. Hall.  This looks like a chrome, but doesn't have the logo.  It's a little different....

Ah, OK.  Rainbow foilboard numbered out of 25.  That explains it.

Cool signed shot of Michael Grove for the Dodgers.  I think much of the appeal of Stadium Club photography is the wide angles.  It focuses on the atmosphere and not just the player himself.  Shades of 1973 Topps vs. the previous years.

The remainder of Box #3.  My only player collection hit was Keith Hernandez.  Still need pairs of Bo Jackson, Carlton Fisk, and Jim Palmer, plus all the parallels.  Got Bench and Brandon Crawford in red, as well as the Ohtani CPF insert, which was the first card that is already spoken for as I figured.  Black Burnes, Verlander CFP (regular), and Harper VV fill out the rest.

Last box.  There's that Burnes guy again.  This time it's the orange chrome refractor...

...out of 99.  This was the highest serial number of anything I pulled.

Another Orioles highlight (and keeper), a Beam Team Gunnar Henderson.  This may be my only representation of his rookie cards besides A&G.  And I won't bother trying to complete the Beam Teams either.  I've still got a few sets going from previous years.

And here is the rest of Box #4.  Wait, where's the autograph you say?  Well, I guess they're not necessarily guaranteed.  No last pack mojo in this one.  The next box probably has my Ripken auto in it.  

Betts CFP and O'Neill Cruz VV were the inserts.  And this one had red Bregman, Mitchell, and Jose Ramirez.  Jose also showed up in black.  And you saw Mitchell in a previous box in black as well.  Josh Smith was the second purple foil.  And I didn't realize it from the first one, but...

...They are numbered too!

Overall, I'd say these are a fun rip.  I can't speak to the value you get.  Don't know if I should really be disappointed about not getting a fourth auto.  And I wasn't too worried about getting enough of the inserts to be able to finish them either.  So I'm happy with what there is.  The only other factor will be collation.  Let's sort 'em out and see....

I didn't notice a lot of duplication until I got to the third box.  And even then it didn't seem like a lot.  I knew there were three of a few players.  Once I sorted them by numbers, it looked like there would be a significant number of dupes in the first 100.  And the 100's looked the weakest as far as set completion.

Sorting them down to tens filtered out the dupes.  I did have a handful of triples.  That's kinda weird when you consider I would be completely missing so many but get three of a few.  But the overall ratio of redundant cards is very low.  I'm pretty sure my dealer pulls them out of the case in a manner to reduce getting the same box twice, so that may contribute.  Either way, the collation is pretty good.  Only about 20-25% duplication.  And the inserts were pretty much all different, which is nice.

I'm going to put up my wants to my original trading group first, since I've neglected them after jumping in deep on the TCDB.  Then I will open up trading to bloggers and readers and Database members.  I'm really only after the base set and hope to get lucky with a few of my PC guys' parallels along the way.  And if it gets really intense, maybe finagle an auto of someone I know or a few more Oriole inserts.

Thanks for checking out my break!