COMC - Using Up My Free Shipping

During the Black Friday sale I received a bunch of scratch offs and won several coupons for free shipping. My normal approach on COMC is to put some money into my account every month or two, look for cards I want/need the buy them and stash them in my inventory until they make a free shipping sale.

In this case, knowing my coupons were about to expire, I went on a little shopping spree right before the end of March, picked up some cards and immediately requested the order get shipped.  Thought I would share the haul.

First up are some Chrome Giants from 2016.

The top 3 cards were listed as vending box versions - I am not up on my Bowman terminology and can't keep how they are released straight but couldn't resist picking up the trio of Giants.  The middle row are a base Bowman Chrome, a Bowman Chrome purple refractor and a Bowman Chrome Draft card.  The Topps Chrome Posey ROY Chronicles is a sweet looking insert, my favorite card of the bunch.

Next up are some additional 2016 Giants cards that fill in some gaps:

Whenever I pick up Tek cards I get excited, think about going after a rainbow then quickly forget about them.  Not sure what that says about my relationship with the set.  The Posey and the Mays in the middle row are reprints from a Topps Archives 65th Anniversary set.  I never bought any of that set and these are my only 2 cards from it.  The Nunez completed the Rainbow team set for the Giants for all of 2016. 

Now onto some vintage set needs:

I was able to pick up this excellent group of 7 cards including 4 Hall of Famers.  I have been checking COMC fairly frequently for vintage set needs and often come across pretty solid deals.  I don't recall how much these cost but I do know in each case I found these for less than comparables on eBay.  I am inching closer to the set but have some big names to knock off.

Finally a quad of 1971 Topps cards.  If you read my recent post, you would know I completed my 1971 Topps set.  This purchase helped get me four steps closer.  I am a big fan of the bottom 2 cards, the Browne swing follow through is a great photo and a young George Sparky Anderson early in his Reds managerial tenure.

A nice package of cards to finish off my free COMC shipping spree.

McCovey Monday #92 - A Pair of Postage Stamp Cards

My favorite player of all time is Hall of Famer Willie McCovey.  I have amassed a collection of over 1300 different  McCovey cards since I started collecting him in the late 1980s.  I will show off one of my favorite cards every Monday.  Stretch was one of the most feared hitters of all time and I am excited to show off my collection.

I have generally limited my McCovey Monday posts to a single card but with my infrequent posting I am accumulating new McCovey cards must faster than I can get them posted.  It also has limited my desire to pull older cards out of my binders to share.  Today I am breaking my typical mold and sharing pair of cards with a common theme.

I used to be a pretty active stamp collector.  My focus was on US Postage stamps.  I started as a kid and share the hobby with my grandmother - it was a lot of fun to compare our collections and talk about the history showcased in the stamps.  The shift to the self adhesive stamps by the post office, while easier on the consumer, took a lot of the fun out of it for me.  The stamps became harder to separate from a sheet and more challenging to mount in a stamp book.

When Topps began using postage stamps on cards a few years back it blended my two hobbies and while I saw a lot of negative reactions to these manufactured relics, I have always enjoyed the cards.

Last year, Topps put out a set featuring 15 members of the 500 Home Run Club in the Update set. I was happy to see Willie McCovey featured in the set.

The cards feature a postage stamp from the year the player entered the 500 HR club, in Willie's case it was 1978 - I remember the moment well.  I like the design of these cards, they look classic with a great subject.  With the print run on these being 375 cards, I have thought about chasing the entire set but never took the plunge.

My second card to share is this McCovey out of 2017 Topps Heritage:

This is the 3rd year in a row where Willie Mac has been featured on a Heritage stamp card.  Each year they are limited to just 50 copies.  This is the first year I have added one to my collection.  All those Heritage master set collectors have really driven the price of cards like this higher than I like to spend but I jumped on this one right after the set was released and got it for a fairly reasonable price.

This card features a stamp from 1968 which coincides with the set featured in the Heritage release.  It is a well designed and a great addition to my McCovey collection.

It is pretty cool when my two hobbies collide and my favorite player gets featured in the stamp/card set.

My Birth Year Set is Complete - 1971 Topps!

I can't express how exciting finishing a vintage set is to me.  I have always had a goal to finish all the Topps sets back to my birth year and with the completion of this 1971 Topps set from the year of my birth I am down to one set left. 

This set build has been a slow and steady build.  It started with a few star cards then some lots of commons.  I acquired a decent number of cards through trades and over the last few months I have been picking off the last high numbers I needed to finish off the set.

Here are the final 3 cards I picked up off of eBay:

The Dusty Baker/Don Baylor rookie card was the most expensive of this batch.  I struggled finding a card at a price I was willing to pay and this one finally popped up for just under $20. I pulled the Buy It Now trigger. The card is a little off center but not as bad as my scan makes it look.  Otherwise it is in pretty solid shape.  The other two cards came from different buyers.

The last cards I needed to finish off the set came in a COMC order I received last week.  Here are 7 of the 8:

As I seem to run across for vintage sets, the Yankees proved a little harder and a little more costly to track down.  I was lucky to find a newly listed Boog for a very low price compared to the others on the site and eBay.  I actually picked up 2 copies of the Jose Pena for some reason.

Here is the final card I purchased and the card I consider the last one for my set:

There is a little story here.  I had bought a copy of this card on eBay and a couple days before I requested shipping for my COMC order I realized the card hadn't come in the mail yet.  I checked the tracking number and it showed it had never been dropped off.  I contacted the seller and he had a story that he had issues with his mailing drop off station and he would check.  The next day he refunded me the cost.  I had won an auction for a pretty low figure so I think it was all BS.  However I got lucky and found this COMC card for a few cents less.

Denny McClain is card number 750 out of 752 in the set and as a very well known player, and the last pitcher with 30 wins in a season, seemed to carry a premium.  I think it is a fitting final card.  It does break a pattern (that will probably replay itself in my 1969 set) of the final card being one of the more expensive.

This set is all paged and bindered up and I was able to confirm that my want list was accurate.  My 1971 Topps birth year set is complete!

I plan to continue to try for those high numbers in the 1972 Topps set to finish the Topps run of my life.  I also have 1959, 1960 and 1970 complete sets so I suspect my goal will extend back for all the 1960s sets.  I am actually closer to 1969 that 1972 so my vintage set building attention will focus on 1972 and 1969.

The Joy of a Completed Insert Set - 2000 Topps Hands of Gold

Since 2006, in addition to the Topps Flagship base sets, I have been collecting most of the insert sets as well.  I little while back I decided to fill some gaps in my collection and pick up the Topps insert sets from 1993 to 2005.  While I do have all the base sets in that range, this was a period where I didn't do a ton of collecting.  Most of the sets have been picked up in factory form or bought complete without opening many or any packs.  I have decided to share the different insert sets as I complete them to document my progress and share the sets in case they came at a lull in your collecting as well.

I am a sucker for die cuts and even though this set is small at only 7 cards, I am a big fan.

I really like the design of this 2000 Topps Hands of Gold insert set.  In addition to the die cut top, each card features the player in a fielding action photo.  I have seen too many sets that celebrate hitting with a fielding pose or fielding with a hitting pose - Topps got this one right.  One minor complaint I have is the use of the same glove on each card.  It would have been nice to switch it up with a catchers mitt for Pudge and lefty mitts for Bonds, Griffey and Gwynn.  Otherwise a strong showing from my perspective.  All of these players have strong defensive pedigrees with lots of Gold Gloves on their mantle.  The gold coloring and sunshine rays in the background are a great compliment to the rest of the card.

The cards backs are nice as well with another photo and the fielding stats and a listing of the years with Gold Glove victories.  The write up rounds up a very nice card, both front and back.

COMC Vintage and Hits - March

First off - Happy Mother's Day to all the Moms out there.  I wrote this post on Saturday and will be off the grid for most of the day spending time with my wife and kids.

Time to finish up my March COMC delivery with a mix of vintage card and hits.  These two types of cards are on the opposite end of the spectrum but I don't want to draw this out any longer.

First up are some vintage San Francisco 49ers:

Some cool cards here from the 1960 and 1970 Topps sets.  My energy in going after the vintage 49ers has been strong of late but I was looking to mix up my purchase a bit and found these vintage beauties at very reasonable prices.  I really like the design of the 1960 set and now have 4/10 49ers.  This is a team set I would like to go after based on the aesthetics.  These 6 1970s matched with the 2 I already have get me to 8/10 49ers.  I am not as big of a fan of the design but my new closeness to finishing off the set will make this one a target as well.

Next up are 8 cards for my 1971 Topps set.  Since these acquisitions I have been aggressively seeking out the last few cards I need to finish it off and I hope to have a celebration post in the not too distant future.  No huge names here but a outside of the Sal Campisi card, I really enjoy the photos on all these cards.

Now moving on to the hits portion of the post.  I liked watching Josh Shaw play DB for the Trojans and found a quad of his auto cards on the cheap.  I really like the shiny one with the Go Trojans inscription.  I also like the fact he is wearing his USC uni in all the photos.  You may recall a story about Shaw in which he lied about how he injured his ankles saying it was rescuing a drowning a kid instead of an odd escape from his girlfriend's apartment balcony.  Not the greatest character but he went to my school :-)  The final card is a 2010 Topps Chrome parallel, not exactly a hit.  I was going for the Trojan rainbow back in 2010 which was a pretty daunting feat with 14 different players each having 8 cards (I wasn't going after the 1/1s).  This Damian Williams orange completed that color and I also have the base cards complete. Still missing 1 refractor, 6 x-fractors, 8 purples, 7 blues, 11 gold and 13 reds.  Kind of a crazy goal to shoot for back then but decided to at least finish off one of the colors.

Now for some Giant hits.  I was able to pick up all 3 of the Giant Topps Chrome autos for under $2 each.  The lack of value in these hits is the primary reason I haven't gone after any hobby boxes of Topps Chrome in a few years.  The odds are so long to getting a card that makes it worth while.  I now pick up a few packs of retail to get my pack busting fix then seek out any Giants I decide to go after.  The Williamson Diamond Kings card was really cheap as well and is a nice dual relic with an auto.  Pretty solid design on that card with the nice Giants orange in the background.

My final two cards are an auto relic of perennial Giants prospect Kyle Crick and a Heritage relic of The Freak, Tim Lincecum.  It doesn't look like Crick is going to pan out but I could resist picking up this card.  I am planning on putting together a checklist/want list of the Giants Clubhouse Collection relics so this was a nice addition.

I have one more COMC order that I had delivered after this one (my Christmas scratch off free shipping wins made it easy to do) and will probably get another delivery as well soon to finish off the 1971 Topps set - I cannot wait until Black Friday to get those last cards in my hand.

A Failed 1972 Topps Experiment

I am closing in on finishing up my 1971 Topps set which has me pretty excited.  I am also working on the 1969 and 1972 Topps sets.  The 1969 set needs include mostly higher dollar cards that I am slowing looking to see if I can find some deals on.  The 1972 set needs are almost all from the last 2 series and I have very few from a very tough high series.

In all honesty, I struggle to see how I am going to finish the 1972 set with my miserly ways - I find it hard to pay double digits for a base card of a non-star, particularly when the last series contains 131 cards.  A few weeks back I ran across someone who does vintage set breaks.  You buy a slot in the break and he does some randomizing and matches the purchased spots with different cards in the set.  I saw a 1972 Topps set break and thought it would be worth jumping on.  I thought it would be great to land on a star like Ryan or Clemente or Mays or Aaron but my primary thought was knocking a card or two off my high number want list.

I ran some quick math in my head, 787 cards in the set 131 high number cards, so the odds show I should get a high number card on out of every 6 slots.  I really wanted to get at least one but didn't want to break the bank so I jumped in on 10 slots for a total of $30.  Here were my results:

Well, you can see I didn't pull any stars and I will save you the effort of looking up any card numbers and share that I didn't pull even one high number.  The small saving grace is that I did need the checklist card and a couple of these were slight condition upgrades.

I don't blame the seller, he did everything on the up and up and everything was live streamed and recorded.  It was just my dumb bad luck and more evidence that leads me to the conclusion that my 1972 Topps set may never get completed.

COMC Big and Small - March

I have been on radio silence for over two weeks now so I thought I better knock out a quick post to make sure everyone knows I am still around.  Work and personal life have thrown me a couple curveballs lately, got the work one under control and still working through the personal one.  I really want to jump in on the 30 challenge that has been floating around but need some time to pull and scan some cards to make that happen - we'll see.  In the meantime, I thought I would share my biggest and smallest cards from my March COMC order.

I scored a nice 5X7 of Willie McCovey from the 2016 Topps Archives set.  As a team collector, I am not a fan that Topps has decided to put out these 5X7 and 8X10s of virtually every base and insert card but as a player collector I have had some fun picking some up.  This is the standard version numbered 31/49, there is a gold /10 as well.  But the biggest score of this shipment is another addition to the T206 Club collection, my second different card from Mike Donlin.

Here is a nice, up close look at this 100+ year old card - still looks great to me.

I have one more post from this shipment, prepare for some vintage cards and Giants hits.  Hoping I find the time sooner rather than later, Happy Collecting!