Black Friday COMC Pick Ups... A Little Late

Here we are in February and I was going through my scan folder and realized I never shared my Black Friday pick ups.  Two or three years back I bought a lot of boxes of DACardWorld on Black Friday but for the past 2 years I have taken advantage of the COMC's sales and free shipping to put a dent in my want lists and add to my player collections.

They say better late than never so, in the midst of all the 2014 posts, here is a flashback to November of 2013.

This first scan shows my pick ups to help on my 2013 Heritage set.  Last year there were great sales on Heritage high numbered cards but this year they seemed to have pretty high price tags.  I was able to score 4 towards my set along with a few inserts.  This purchase still left me in need of a few including Mike Trout and Bryce Harper.  Since this purchase I have worked some eBay and Sportlots magic to finish this set at a somewhat reasonable price.  My collecting of Heritage has been hit or miss over the years and I suspect that this year's 1965 design is going to draw me in.

While my luck wasn't great in picking up Heritage SPs, the same cannot be said for my 2013 Archives set.  I was able to nab all 16 remaining cards off my want list and each was under $2 (I actually believe they were all under $1.50).  A quick look at these with all the different designs may appear to be a miss mash of base cards from very good but not great players, this is exactly what draws me to this set.

This purchase left me 1 card short of all the 2012 Panini Cooperstown insert sets.  I am still in need of that card and writing this post makes me realize I need to go track it down.  I am a huge fan of this set and cannot wait to see what Panini has in store for us in 2014.  I am going to limit the commentary on these inserts as I plan a nice review of the set once I get it completed.

I also scored 3 SPs during my Black Friday purchases.  The SPs are in color while the rest of the base cards are in black and white.  These are harder than Hades to track down at an affordable price and the guy on COMC who had the most of these had ridiculously high prices on his cards so I only scored these from others sellers.  I still need almost half (9) of the 20 SPs in this set.  I am not sure if I will ever complete this one but man do these look nice!

I put some finishing touches on my 2013 Topps insert sets and these coupled with some other purchases around the same time did put the flagship sets to rest.  I am glad there is a new insert set this year that mirrors the quality of The Greats set.  I also find it interesting that Topps combined the minis with the die cuts for a single insert set this year.  I am curious to see what Series 2 brings us.

I couldn't let a big purchase like this go forward without a few additions to the Giants binder.  The Mathewson is a repeat of the SP from above, I got one for the set and one for the Giants collection at a very reasonable price from the same seller.  I also scored an Archives gold parallel and a nice looking stained glass die cut insert of Willie Mays.  I wish I would have gone hard after the Gallery of Heroes insert set when it was release, I think the ship has sailed for me and any hopes of collecting it are gone.

I ran across this card by accident and it was so cool that I had to get it.  It is serial numbered to 1973 and is a great looking die cut.  I am a huge fan of any Reggie card featuring him on the A's and this one is one of the best.  

Speaking of Reggie, I also picked up his 1973 Topps card.  I already had one in my Reggie collection and needed this one for my set.  The set is coming along quite nice and I only need 17 cards to complete it. If it wasn't for that pesky Mike Schmidt rookie I would say this is easily within reach but it is going to take some serious shopping to get one within my price range.

I was able to score some nice cards for the Vida Blue collection. I scanned the back of the first two to showcase that they are OPC, not Topps.  I also need the Topps version of the MVP card.  I had an autographed version of the Sports Illustrated card but needed the regular card.  I also was able to pick up the Vida Ginter mini.

I also picked up a few Rickey Henderson cards I needed. The bottom row features some of the oldest cards I needed.  In searching through the Rickey cards on COMC I realized that I have most of his base card and despite the lengthy list of his cards that I need, most are inserts and parallels. I need to formulate a strategy on how and what to pursue of his moving forward in addition to any new releases.

My final scan shows 5 new McCoveys I added with this purchase.  Across the top, I now have 3 of the non-serial numbered retail inserts to match with my serial numbered hobby inserts.  The Legends card was the last parallel I needed from that set.  McCovey has 2 variations of Kelloggs cards so this pick up completes that duo for me.

So there you have it, almost 3 months later, my Black Friday COMC purchase.