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!

Stumbling On A Cure?

Since prices are through the roof for just about anything but dime box fodder, this may apply to a slightly larger audience these days.  It's going to take some more experimentation, but I might have found something that works to cure a problem that occurs with bulk commons, and that is Bricking.  Chunks of cards that are stuck together from being stored in damp environments that interact with the waxy coating.  With some more modern card finishes, you can snap them apart and they stay intact, but with others (I'm looking at you 2003 Topps), they tear little spots and come out speckled.  I wrote about this before in this post.

Recently, I bought a group of small extension sets to a junk wax football product.  They were all still neatly shrink wrapped, but when I opened them, they were stuck together.  Not completely, but it took some effort to get certain ones apart.  Long story short, I had an idea about another method to separate these cards. 

I got a new humidifier for Christmas this past year.  It's one of those that constantly puts out a large plume of mist into the air.  Looks like this:

Figuring moisture that dries is what sticks cards together, why wouldn't moisture reverse the process?

So I held the stuck cards over the mist stream, while pushing them gently apart so the mist could go between them.  

Not my best photographic work

After about 10 or 15 seconds, the cards seemed to come apart a lot easier.  They kinda separated on their own.  And they came out cleaner than the ones I pulled apart manually.  I made sure to wipe the water droplets off the cards when I removed them from the mist.

One disclaimer ~ the group I used the humidifier on was also in the freezer for about an hour or two.  Not sure if that contributed.  They didn't come apart immediately after removal from the freezer, so I don't think that helped much.  I've heard about other people trying that with mixed results. 

The card on the left was just manually pulled apart.  The one on the right got the mist treatment.  There are a lot less speckles on it.  Again, there are other variables at work here, like if they were all exposed to the exact same environment, position in the original package, etc.

Fortunately, I came out with two reasonably intact sets of these particular cards, which is all I needed.  If I had tried the humidifier trick on more of them, I may have ended up with less speckling on a lot of them.  But I hadn't thought of it until I had unwrapped almost the whole batch.

If you have a similar humidifier and come across some bricked cards, try this method and report back your results.

The Mythical Great One

Got a PWE today from Max, aka JacobMrley at the Starting Nine blog.  If you're a regular reader of his, you'll already know the punch line here, but for the rest, this is a landmark day.

It's my second foray into this level of star card.  "JM" offered it up for such a reasonable price, I couldn't refuse.  And it even leaves me one league leader variation from completing the set.

Cue the chorus music.

At the very least it's a $300 - 500 card out in the wild.  Graded copies over a 5 rating are four digits and up on eBay right now.

What do you think it would grade out at?  (If I was the grading type?)

The answer is zero.

Say What??

You see, it's the second time I've obtained a legendary star card that is completely fake.  The first time was the Jackie Robinson that I got for nothing at Chantilly back in October last year.

The colors are kinda close, but the texture of the stock is way off.  It feels like a glossy postcard or something.

And it fails the light test.  "If it's see-through, the joke's on you!"

But I knew this going in.  The price matched the expected grade.  Zilch.  I got it so I could make my trading buddy think I got one before he did.  (We both need Wayne and the #8 League Leader variation with the squished number to complete the set.)  He didn't really fall for it....immediately called it a reprint.  Ah well....

Thought I might put it in the binder to fill the space, but it's not even the right family of blue to blend in the least bit.  I'll put him in the cabinet with Jackie.

Thanks Max! 

The Big Freeze Of 1995

My friend Stuart brought me a factory set of 1995 Topps.  Hey, awesome!  Only a few more sets to go to have a complete run from 1969 through the present.  Not that that is really a goal of mine, but it's a nice piece, especially since I have the Cyberstats version of the set.  The factory sets came with two series of exclusive inserts - Cyber Season In Review (7), and Opening Day (10).  (We're still looking for some singles from these for Stuart's sets - inquire within).

There was only one catch.

They were a little stuck together.

I had this problem with a couple boxes of 2003 Topps and a couple other 1994 sets.  This factory set was a series of blocks of cards that I started to pull apart.  Some of them came off clean, but some were a little speckled.

I decided to try a technique I had heard about a few times before.

Stuck 'em in the freezer in front of the tater tots and fish filets.  (Yeah, it's usually a little fuller than that.  Have to make a grocery run soon.  Bachelor fridges are empty, but freezers are stocked because that's where most home prepared meals come from).

Left them in overnight and pulled them out the next evening.  As I leafed through them, I still had to peel them apart a bit, but it wasn't as horrible as the 2003's.  They were however, coated with a light film of condensation.  So I didn't want to leave them in the box next to each other just to get stuck again.  I had to air dry them somehow.

I just let them drop as I plucked them apart.  Don't think I killed any corners since it was all on the carpet.  Tried to sprinkle them a bit evenly as I went.  This way there's air around them but they don't take up half the house.  They actually sat this way all week.  (This is how much card activity there has been - hence the same with posting.)

This was a hell of a shot

But the casualty rate was still significant.

As I collected them back up today and sifted through, the majority were clean or almost unnoticeable as far as speckles.  I went through each one and determined if at first glance, do I see a clear picture, or do the speckles stand out?  Ended up culling almost exactly 200 cards out of the 677 count set that I will be replacing.

Some samples:

Ruth wasn't completely clean, but not bad.  Jeter Future Star wasn't so lucky.  I think I did about 50/50 on the big name cards.

Trachsel came out clean like a lot of them.

Thome is seeing some flurries.  Enough to replace.

Willis is pitching in a squall....

And ironically, J. T. Snow is batting in a full blizzard.

I'll have the list posted to my wants site soon.  Hopefully it won't last long.

Once the sidewalks are cleared and the roads plowed, this set can get back to normal life in the box.

Snowflake effect started 23 years ago

Topps Holiday set features snowflakes imposed on pictures of baseball players.  Normally, they wouldn't play baseball in the snow, but it may have actually happened before.  Circa 1994, and then in 2003....

You may have to click on the pictures to see it better...

There were just a few flurries to start.  The stars were the first to notice.  Neon Deion, Hawk, Rickey, Rock...

  

  

Seemed like it was only coming down in certain spots.  Like right over the pitcher's mound....

But it started coming down in other areas....in the field and the on deck circle....

  

in the outfield....getting slippery on the basepaths....

    

Started getting heavier..

 Jose Rijo had seen this before...

Hard to pitch with it blowing around, or sticking to your face....

Buehrle says, it's getting hazardous out here.  LaRussa thinks we might have to call the game....

 

No Jose, it's called a snow bunny.  Not a snow bunty.....

Papi says, put away your snow shovels, We gonna keep playin'!

Everyone got home safely, though.  They used the leftover sticky UV coating on the parking lot.