Capturing The Flag(ship) Via Trade - Chapter 1

I do most of my trading on the TCDB.  I have several sets that are in progress that I don't list on this website because they're easier to trade for than to list for buying at shows or shops.  Not to say that someone out here wouldn't have any available, but most of these sets are easy enough that I'd probably finish them before I could keep the listing current. 

Thought it might be interesting to see how long it takes for me to completely trade for a set.  And I have the perfect one.  2026 Topps Flagship football has been on my radar since it came out.  I already finished my Commanders team set and two PC guys, (and Angela's fantasy lineup), so I just need a complete base set and the inserts that catch my fancy.  It's still relatively new and active among traders.  I'm sure there are parts that they did for the baseball, but I've ignored that, so I'm unaware.

I'll do the Greatest Hits (or runs, or catches, or passes).  Have three in the initial batch plus this one in the team set - will need another.

Probably won't do the Big Ticket Players.  Standard Topps star insert.  Though half of Angela's team is among these.

  

Same for the NFL Stars and Pressure Cookers.  Suddenly Toppanatics likes white block text on everything...

Hard pass on the peacock tails of Struttin'.  Nice try - sort of original.

I did opt in for the PROfiles.  Hope Kyle has some interesting things to say about the same list of stars.

Will also try for these Greats of the Game.  Hey, any time they're putting out retired players, I'm interested.  Though these remind me of 2021 Topps baseball with the diagonal theme and unreadable text.

There are a couple of curious inserts that could be products of their own, or parallels.  The Flagship Collection is the stars in a different design.   Usually, I'd scoff, but these look nice and I know the players in this sport.

There are also a small group of "Companion Cards".  Which seem to be image variations.  In this particular case, it's an upgrade.  Love's regular card is an ugly throwback uni picture: 

Another short list is the five HOF electees.  Hope these short groups aren't super rare like Downtowns or something.

Same with these All Kings.  Jeanty is the only image so far on the database, but these are cool from this at least.

And finally, these might be scarce too, I have no idea.  Hope not, they're pretty nice and the checklist is interesting enough.  You might think "bulletin board material" would have come first and be about smack talk.

So anyway, that was more of an insert review than I anticipated.  But here's where I am Day One.

That's 87 base cards including the extra Commanders.  Add in three Greatest Hits, and that's all.  This is just the first trade.  Let's see how quick I can fill the rest of them out.   

Sneaking One In

Well, I feel like a liar again.  Or at least a cheesy salesman.  And sales is the last thing I ever want to do.  I've gone another month without a single post, and I was hyping up how all my collecting functions would be taking off in August since I am no longer burdened with full time work.

  

The major causes of my absence were - I sold my previous residence (finally!) - settled on the 20th.  I ordered a backyard shed - 10x12 barn style with loft storage, two windows, and a 5' double door - which also lead to ordering another contractor to come build a base for it.  Also multiple doctor appointments (everything is fine - following up from last year and getting new glasses lenses.)  And I went three different places to cut down trees or weeds for people.

I did add another year or two to my football trade stock on TCDB.  That took a few days.

TCDB trading has resumed, and was very steady all month.  It has trailed off a bit, so I ran a report and initiated a couple large trades myself.  (Typically I have all I can handle in incoming propositions.)  I passed 625 trades in August, and still have about 10 going on right now.

The slew of recent trades replenished my recycled painter's tape stock...

I've managed to put away a lot of the football set singles I've gathered over the last year or so.  The baseball stacks (2) are still on the desk.  As are a lot of the new player collection additions.  

Here's the back part of my sorting desk.  (Angela has the front for two rows of stacks of her four football player guys.)  The blue section is my PC guys.  The main ones have a stack and the others with smaller quantities are in the piles by the discs.  The pink section is baseball sets - the middle pile is about six inches high (hard to tell from overhead).  The yellow is JD5's and Jordan Addisons and the few football I just got.  And the green is all extras/dupes.  Mostly recent Allen & Ginter and 2023 Heritage.

Today, I took a major step forward that should help trading and clearing space.  The red section above is where the four stacks of Washington football used to be.  They are now on the other desk in piles by year.

Still have to do the 90's, but here are all the 2000's.  The first five stacks (2000 - 2004) have been checked off in my binder, so they're ready to file.  The binder covers up to 2008, then I have to type the rest into a Word document.  As you can see, there are a lot more from the last few years.  2024 so much so that I had to split it into two piles.  But at least now I'll know what I have and what I don't and won't have to sift through half of this to figure out if I need a card in trade.  I don't put these on the Database, except what gets there automagically through trade.  It's easy enough to consult my lists to fill out trades as I go.  They just haven't been updated in a couple years.  And you can see I've been bringing in a lot despite this.

So anyway, at some point I have a SportLots order to show.  And I'm sure I've mentioned or commented elsewhere on other post ideas that I've since forgotten (again).  I'll try to gather a few of those and put them out in September.  I'm open to suggestion if you remember one that I have lost.  Maybe another poll?  Let me know in the comments.  Thanks for stopping by.  

Extra Protection

Made a quick purchase the other week to reduce my want list of T205 New York Giants (how many of you have want lists like that?).  I had to laugh at the packaging.  It may have survived the recent hurricanes.  Kudos to seller Toppsaholic for protecting my investment.

Outer white paper wrapping.  Folded and sealed securely.

That was around a box section folder and wrapped in another box section sleeve.

Which contained another cardboard envelope layer...

With a bubble mailer inside of that...

Wrapped in two slab bags...

...was the final product.

This is the "W. A." variation of Latham's T205.  The more common version is "A. Latham" on the back. 

Now I'm down to four for the team set.  Of course, Mathewson is one of them.

When The Cardboard Gods Smile Upon You

You ever had the experience of beating the odds while handling your cards?  

I don't mean pulling that 1/1 out of a pack - that's collation and doesn't have much to do with you.  Unless you just paid for one pack out of a box and then reached in and randomly selected the third one in the center stack and it had the case hit...

But I'm not even talking about that much of a win.  More like the subtle little things that happen that just seem lucky or almost supernatural.

What inspired me was the other day when I was pulling cards for the TCDB trades that had stacked up late in the week.  One collector wanted a single card from my 1994 Pacifics among a whole line of other cards.  They are in a three row box, separate from my other trade stock.  It was a number in the 300's, so it would likely be right in the middle.  I reached in and flipped the center row forward, and the first card was the exact card I was looking for.  There was only one, even though so many of my dupes have multiple copies of the same card - up to double digits.  I hit the one card in the entire box that was the one I needed.  What are the chances?

I can't think of what these kind of experiences are called.  My knee-jerk reaction is usually "Damn, I'm good!"  I won't say it happens a lot, but it happens often enough that I either think I've been doing this so long that I've developed psychic powers, or that I need to get out more.

Like when you open a book (or a binder of cards in pages) to the exact page you want without it being marked.  Do things like that happen to you too?

Let me know in the comments.

Recycling

I try to use the top loaders, penny sleeves and some of the modified 9-pocket sheets that I get from trade shipments.  Mostly for shipping other cards out, since they generally aren't clean enough for display or long term storage.  It's better than throwing it all out.  There's enough plastic out there as it is.

The same goes for painter's tape.  If you're doing it right, you're using painter's tape to secure your card shipments.  If you're using scotch tape, deduct three bonus points from your collector score.

I keep mine on the front of the file cabinet next to my computer desk.  That way it's handy to grab some when I'm packing packages.  I've seen other bloggers do the same thing. 

Mine is getting full.  Thanks TCDB traders!

Three Shows In A Month - Part 3: Gettysburg, PA

This one will be rather brief. 

I heard about this show a mere two days before it took place.  My buddy Stuart said I needed to go, but I was hesitant since I had been spending a lot at the previous shows and other purchases recently.  (He would still go if he was dead broke and there was only one junk wax table among a hundred Pokèmon dealers).  But I actually had the time free and it was only a ten minute drive, so I gave in and went.

It was a smaller show in one of the ballrooms at the Eisenhower Hotel in Gettysburg.  It's situated right along the main road into the Battlefield.  There was a Coin show and a Civil War show also happening elsewhere in the venue.  Both of those had better signage directing attendees to them than the Card show - I parked at the far end of the building and ended up walking the length of the place to find it.

My first thought about small shows like this is that there will be almost nothing but slabs and new shiny stuff.  This one wasn't too bad in that way, but it was true that vintage was rare and the typical dealer was a young guy or guys with $1, $5 and higher boxes of singles that weren't sorted by sport, much less team.  There were also about a half dozen gaming (Pokèmon etc.) dealers.   

I did find some offerings that were sorted by sport and team, which makes it easier for me since I'm only looking for two teams in new football stuff.  

Sorry for the pale images, top loaders reflect really bad in my house.  The first couple of these are from 2013 and 2017.  The rest are from the last three years.

The other team is of course, the Vikings, for local kid Jordan Addison.  Really added some good ones this time.  I don't think Donruss was out when I first added him to my TCDB wantlist, so several of these weren't even on it.

And rounding out my selections, the Duke J is a pro uniform flavor of a Prestige rookie for my set. The Marshall is a unique addition to that player collection.  The Hernandez is the last base card of my PC guys in the latest Chrome Platinum Anniversary - now to round out the six billion parallels.  And the Ovie was a throw in to make ten $2 cards for $17 from one dealer.

It only took me from about 10AM or so until 1PM to gather all these.  I walked the whole thing twice.  I suppose I'd go back to this show again since it couldn't be much closer to my house.  Maybe there will be different dealers in the future.  (One guy had some decent vintage and whole dedicated boxes of Bo Jackson and Michael Jordan among others, but all the cards were several dollars apiece, so I passed.)

Anyway.  Now I've got a full table again the the card room to clear off and put all this stuff away from these shows.  Hope you enjoyed my hauls.

What's The Story With This Guy?

I finally finished entering all my recent baseball extras into the TCDB.  (Ok, full disclosure, I still have a couple piles of recently processed dupes that I have to sort yet, but the majority is DONE!)

Do you ever notice that the same guy keeps popping up either when you open packs or buy bulk lots or sort out your monster boxes of extra stuff?  (What? doesn't everyone have multiple monster boxes of trade bait? 😀)

While entering my last box - 2017 thru 2021, this guy kept showing up.  Not only on base cards, which wouldn't be anything special, (since a major percentage of my extras are Topps flagship base,) but in parallels, and even a relic.

This is the Database image, but mine is identical.

I looked up the list of all the Story's I have entered, and here it is:

2016 Topps Heritage - Black Borders (High Numbers) #THC-707 SP
2017 Topps #42
2017 Topps Bunt #49
2018 Stadium Club #299
2018 Stadium Club - Black Foil #299
2018 Topps #230
2018 Topps Big League - Gold #46
2018 Topps Holiday #HMW128
2019 Topps Chrome #183
2019 Topps Update - Gold #US44 AS, SN2019
2020 Topps Heritage - Clubhouse Collection Relics (High Number) CCR-TS
2021 Topps Big League - Souvenirs #13
2021 Topps Heritage #600
2023 Topps Big League #249 SP

Two short prints, two black parallels, and an insert.  And a diverse set list as well, but that's pretty easy to do for anyone with decent talent.

I wish Heritage would stick to colored borders instead of shiny.  It makes so much more sense for a vintage tribute product.

OK, these are actually the base and black foil parallel, but of course, foil comes out black on a scanner. 

Gold parallel

Abominable Snowman encounter?

 

 

And the only 2023 cards I have anywhere in my collection come from two packs of Big League that my buddy Stuart sent randomly.  Which year did he get traded / move to the Sawx?  I don't pay attention any more...

 

So anyway, if you're a Story or Rockies fan and need any of these, hit me up.  Trades are active again on TCDB, or email at the link in the upper right.  I've got a lot of other Rockies available as well.

Yes, 'Em Are Nice Cards

In what should be a much larger effort to purge stuff from Hivemind Headquarters, here's a stack of stuff that might be useful for someone.  I get these at the National Convention, but since I'm not into grading or the high end of the market, these are slated for the Recycle Bin unless someone wants them.  Trade me a few cards or some equivalent for the postage if possible.  I'll probably send them even if you don't.

I'll start with the oldest.  The orange book is Heritage Auctions' catalog, but is also a convention program.  Interspersed with the staff biographies and upcoming auction news and items, there is a map of the National floor and lists of the autograph signers and vendors present for the show.

The SMR (hence the title of this post) is the Sports Market Report.  I suppose this might be the precursor to the YouTube influencer videos that report the going rates of various graded star cards.  It's like a Beckett guide for slabs.  Like I said, I have no interest in this information, but a trendier collector might.

This pair is from the oldest show I went to - 2010.

The next year's SMR guide with Ernie Banks.  These generally feature stars from the cities that hosted the show.  A lot of them are Chicago as a result.

2012 brings Barry Larkin (Nachos....?) and two Heritage catalogs.  I'll ship out any combination of the two types of books.  You're not limited to the corresponding pairs.

2013 was the year they brought all those Cracker Jacks from that big find.  No, that's not a real slabbed card - it's just a photo on the cover.  Though they did pass out replica slabs of those things...

2014 was in Cleveland, so Bob Feller is the cover model.  The Heritage book is still about the same size, but they get a bit larger as we go.

Skipped a year, so here's 2016...

Jump to 2019, and Baker Mayfield, plus two Heritage programs.  Chicago again.

The 41st National was in 2021, since they skipped 2020.  Didn't put this together until I was writing this and had already taken the pics.

Didn't go last year, so here's the most recent program.  Not sure if the SMR's are obsolete at this point...

Hit me up if you'd like any of these.  They'll join the water bottles and junk mail if you don't.