Monday, January 30, 2023

It's 3AM And I Must Be...Addicted

Like something out of the Matchbox 20 song, I was up late Friday night on eBay.  I found a seller that was offering 40% off (actually two, the other was giving essentially the same deal - buy 4 get 2 free and I didn't notice it was different sellers until later), so I was racking up items in my cart.  There were tons of the "pick" type auctions from different sets, parallels, and inserts with long lists of cards to choose from.  I racked up $125 worth of stuff before I compared listings on SportLots and threw more than half of it back.  I ended up with 57 items from the one seller and 27 from the other.  

I was literally up until 3AM.

I got the smaller order today (Monday) after work.  Seller richindeals7 sent all this:


Three out of the last five to finish 2015 Topps Field Access.  This was a tough set to fill out.  I've got Drew Brees coming from the bigger order, so I'm finally down to card #1 - you guessed it - Mr. Brady.

The final four to kill 2002-03 Pacific Private Stock, my all-time favorite hockey set.  Well, it's at least the last ones to finish the first part of the base set that aren't jersey cards or serial numbered rookies.  So that's something. 

And as a bonus, also got the last three InCrease Security inserts.  Goalie inserts rule.  There's the back of the Potvin to balance the image and because the scans obscure the gold foil.

Now moving to baseball, but not for sets.  These will all be for player collections.  Knocked off a pair of pewter parallels (say that three times fast) from 2006 Fleer Greats.  They'll go with each player's other cards.  I need a few inserts for the set, but I'm not trying for the parallel sets.

This is an unusual one.  Torre completed the list of Italian American players from this set from which I also had Gene Tenace, Doug DeCinces, and Joe Ferguson.  The border is gold foil.

Picked up my two HOF'er guys from the 2013 white bordered Gypsy Queens.  


Got a second Fisk from the regulation-sized and shiny '88 Big from Archives. 

As for Palmer, got his Ginter X from 2019 and the more recent Chrome Platinum Anniversary.  I keep finding more of my PC guys in there.  Also found the '75 mini from 2011 Lineage.

Quintupling my total 2022 Topps cards, these four stamped, starred or shiny parallels to my only active player collection, Chad Kuhl.  I didn't even know about these until I searched him while shopping.  Got the All-Star game and Montgomery stamps, the gold stars, and rainbow foil, which scanned very weird.  I tweaked it a little to look more like shiny.

Saving the treats for the end, here's the bronze version of Paige's 2018 WWE card.  I have the base, but she's such a hottie, why not get a few from the rainbow?

And now the most obscure but most elegant card in the whole night's chase.  A rendering of Morena Baccarin as Inara Serra from Firefly.  This set is called "The Verse" which I believe is short for The Universe in Firefly-speak.  She qualifies for Ms. Universe for sure.  I have no words otherwise.

Stay tuned for the other order, and I should try to piece together images from a couple more batches that I've already received and put away from other sources. 

6 comments:

  1. Looks like some good pickups there. I haven't seen that Pacific Private Stock set before, but it looks sharp.

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  2. Until a few years ago, I had no idea who Paige was. But my buddy was part of a collectibles show a few years ago and she was one of the signers. Last time I followed her she was managing Asuka and Kairi Sane, but that was like 2 years ago.

    P.S. It was 3am, but I did recently spend a couple of hours sifting through the online dime box's inventory.

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  3. Rich n Deal, like Burbank, also sells on Beckett Marketplace. I've found that their prices there can be cheaper overall as they aren't as Beckett has a lower minimum listing price rule.

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  4. That Italian Heritage set is an interesting oddball I'd never seen before. Didn't know DeCinces or Ferguson were Italian.

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  5. Looks like you had better luck with them than I did. I ordered from them a couple of years ago and half the cards that arrived were garbage. After mentioning it to them, the guy half-heartedly tried to convince me that cards from the 90's are often in poorer shape (presumably because of their "vintage" nature). I ended up getting a refund.

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  6. I think your sleepless night paid off. I've shopped for cards until about that hour myself. It's always interesting to wake up the next morning and realize what you didn't realize you bought the night before lol.

    That Private Stock set was a favorite of mine, as well. I never attempted a complete set but I did try to get all the parallels of Ales Hemsky, for some reason.

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