eBay Impulsivity

 

Just a few random cards to show today, trying to keep my streak of posts going a little bit longer. I miss card shows enough that I will sometimes jump on eBay and sort by ending soonest to find some fun deals. I snagged this Ryan for $10 (no one else bid on it!), for example. This card is notoriously off center like the example above.

Twins cards will often get a bid from me - I think this is my first Kiriloff autograph, when I am actively looking for them, they are too expensive!

Last but not least, this Griffey card is one I've probably seen 100s of times but never tried to bid on before. It's a "pre-rookie" card from 1988. I was the only bidder this time though! 

Do you impulse bid or impulse buy cards online? Find anything fun lately?

Thanks for reading!

Free Trade Agreements

The free stuff Friday train has yielded an unexpected but welcome bump in my trading life. Alex Andy (Sorry!)from Stadium Fantasium claimed a free card and offered me another in trade, this sweet 1969 Topps Rico Carty.

Yikes - I had forgotten about Rico's lost season due to illness, you can see he lost significant time in 1965 as well. Another one of those guys that you wonder what may have been if he was healthy for a full career. Thanks Andy!

Chris aka The Collector claimed some free cards and I received some sweet junk wax needs and Minnesota connected players as well. Brad Hand is from Chaska, MN!

Thanks again Chris!

Of course, as long as we're talking free cards, Let's talk about Jon and A Penny Sleeve for your Thoughts. This trio of food issues were too good to pass up, so I claimed them from one of his recent Free Stuff posts.

Last but not least, I bought a pair of Puckett customs on eBay last week - the custom card maker focuses on Don Mattingly, Jose Canseco, and Kirby Puckett customs. These called out to me while I was browsing some "real" Pucketts. I don't mind paying a little bit more for these, they are well executed and will be a fun addition to my collection. I received a few more great packages recently, I'll be sharing those in the next couple days as well. Thanks to everyone who has taken advantage of the Free Stuff Fridays so far, I've had a lot of fun putting them together, and I am happy to find new homes for cards that otherwise would just languish in a box somewhere. And thanks for reading the blog!

Letting the Chips Fall Where They May

Every once in a while, I like to head over to eBay and browse the auctions with no bids. I'm not a big fan of sniping, but it is what it is. I placed bids on about 10 vintage cards and then waited for the big hit to my wallet. Well. Steve was the only winner! The card was in very nice shape, especially in comparison to the beat up cards I usually bring home from the bargain bins. A little bit off center and the two bottom corners have some dings, but this might be the sharpest card in my collection from the 1969 Topps set.

I placed a bid of $10, and no one outbid me, so I was able to have this one shipped to me for single digits. Not too shabby for a hall of famer!

If At First You Don't Succeed . . .

. . . buy it online. So I dragged myself to two Walmarts this week, hoping to score some Bowman Platinum. Both places were sold out, but I had a back up plan already in place. My good friend, the Internet! I have been buying small lots of Twins from a seller on Facebook, and he let me know that he had a bunch of Bowman looking for a home.

Here's what the back of base cards look like, for those curious, nothing groundbreaking here. Similar to Finest.

Twins! Everybody wants the hits, but the base cards are all I was really looking to get.

Fernando! He's going to be called up soon to get his shot, I can feel it!

In addition to Bowman Platinum, there were some Twins-centric goods available. Max Kepler isn't a superstar, but he's speedy. He's a plus defender and has a sweet line drive swing that is still developing.

Miguel has continued to hit the ball hard after finishing second in the Home Run Derby, smashing two homers against the Yankees in the three game series at Target Field.

A Starter turned reliever, Tyler Duffey has been solid, eating up lots of needed innings for the Twins when their regular starters falter (which has been often this season).

And one more Romero for the road! This last one was found on eBay, it's serial numbered to 99 on the back.

Score-ing Some Fine Herb. (1956 Topps Set Build) (Get Yer Minds Outta The Gutter!)

I think of myself as a reasonably functional adult. I pay my bills on time, last week I took a day off work to get some topsoil delivered and did some DIY landscaping at my house, I don't have trouble remembering birthdays or other important dates.

But maybe I'm getting old? Today I set out for the local Monthly Card Show, which I had been looking forward to all week. I get out to the strip mall, which takes me about 45 minutes to get to, and it's a ghost town. The only people there are shopping for things that aren't even made out of cardboard!

That's because the show is NEXT week. I had some choice words for myself on the trip home, missing my chance to pick up cards towards my vintage sets, or any dime box hunting....

When I made it home, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I am smarter than I thought. I won this Herb Score 1956 Topps card on eBay late last week, and it was waiting for me in the mailbox. I had plenty of time to mow the lawn as well, content that I had beaten myself at my own game today.

If that wasn't enough, I've also been adding Topps NOW Twins all year, the bottom two arriving today. I show the back of card 150 because it is the Mother's Day special, and features an athletic grab by Byron Buxton on the back, but no Twins on the front.

Fernandomania in Minnesota?

The Twins called up Felix Jorge from AA Chattanooga to get a spot start against Kansas City this weekend. He's pitched well for the Lookouts, with an ERA of 3.26 and a decent walk rate of just 2.3 walks per 9 innings.


But the guy I want to talk about is Fernando Romero - I just received the card above from an eBay auction, and I'm trying to stay ahead of the game on his cards, I think he's going to be great.

Romero was promoted to AA to start this season, and in his last 6 starts he's 5-0, pitching into the 6th inning in each start. He's struck out 39 batters in that stretch against just 12 walks. In his last start he struck 6 in 7 shutout innings against the Pennsacola Blue Wahoos, which is Cincinnati's AA affiliate.

Romero is on the 40 Man, and should be in line for either a September call-up or a 2018 mid season audition similar to Jorge's shot this weekend.

Building 1964 Topps Venezuelan, Back to Front

I set a goal this year to make some serious progress on my 1964 Topps Venezuelan set, and so far I've been able to make steady progress. I would have liked to find some of these in person, but the fact is that these cards are just not very abundant in Minnesota. I've asked every dealer at the local shows and whenever I'm in a new shop I ask if they have any. No luck so far this year, so I've had to go to eBay to add cards to my set.  

The nice thing about eBay is that there are vendors online from Venezuela, so the availability of the cards is much higher.

I started the set back in 2015 , With a lot that was put together by my regular vintage vendor of all Twins players. For the most part, I've been building the set by trying to find similar lots of cards from the same team.

Now they've dried up for the most part, or the lots that remain are fairly expensive.

So instead I am cherry picking cards of particular interest that are roughly $10 or less. That's how I picked these 4 singles.

The best part -- no glue on the backs!

Just the 'fax, Ma'am

I'm usually not one to make a one card only post, however....

 I just landed this milestone card for my 1956 Set build, and I'm super pumped. At the card shows locally, there are a couple vendors that have a copy of this card, all in great condition. The lowest asking price - $125. That's too rich for my blood, especially when I'm trying to scrimp and save for the Mantle.

This card was foound on eBay, and it was pure chance as I was specifically trying to win a Kennys Vargas card. once that auction ended, I decided to peek at 1956 Topps auctions and this one was almost over. The card was graded (2)  and I noticed that no one had placed a bid on it yet. I put in an opening bid and ended up winning it 10 minutes later as the only bidder!

I'm now down to the final 25 or so cards in the set. Mickey Mantle looms large, but I can see the end of the road!

2 down, 48 to go ('64 Venezuelan)

Quick post today on my way to the first card show of 2017! I am going to make a run at building up my '64 set, so I went on eBay and ordered the two lowest hanging fruit needed for my set.

I have always been a fan of this card - DOOM!

Here are the backs, you can see the spots where the glue was used to paste these into the books distributed in Venezuela.

The seller also included the regular Topps Bauer card, so let me know if you need it (no glue on that one)!

Winning on eBay

Sometimes, it is a fun game to pick the low hanging fruit, other times you want to strike quickly.

 I won all of these with the filters of "Free Shipping" and number of bids "0" - I sort the list by lowest price, then pick my max bid (under a buck for each of these) and just wait it out. I win a little less than half the time, but the bargains, friends, the bargains.

 Here's a fun little oddball

 Coca Cola and Sonic team up to bring us the Minnie. I hadn't heard that Mickey and Minnie factoid before, that's neat.

 I actually lost this auction, but the seller had a second copy and offered it to me to Buy Now for the max bid I entered. SOLD.

 Pedro had just started his dominance there - 82 Ks in 77 innings? The best is yet to come...

 This one was not an auction at all - I was looking for the Kennys Vargas version of this card, but Perkins was on sale for $15. I snapped it up real quick.

It's the first Topps Clear in my collection, and I agree with everyone else that has stated that these are probably the coolest parallels that Topps puts out.

No Show This Weekend

Bummer.

No Card Show this weekend, I will have to do my dimebox digging online.

Do you have a preferred site for buying cards online?

Do you comparison shop before buying something (find it on eBay, then search Sportlots or COMC or Just Commons?) ?

Do you prefer the buy it now options or the auctions?