Small Card Show Recap - Part Two

If yesterday's Mike Fontenot relic was the appetizer from my local card show loot, today's cards are definitely the main course. The meat and potatoes.

This year, I've been so focused on figuring out what I have and trying to fill in gaps in older sets that I've virtually ignored most 2014 releases thus far. So I was very appreciative when I came across a table that had several monster boxes full of cards from the past couple of years. The pricing strategy was pretty simple. Unsleeved cards were a dime, penny sleeves were fifty cents (or 3/$1), top loaders were a buck and "hits" were priced as marked.

The unsleeved cards were sorted by set, but not detail sorted by number or team so it took a while to go through them to cherry pick the Cubs. It was like the dealer broke some boxes, pulled out some cards to penny sleeve or top load and threw the rest of the packs in the box. But not having seen a lot of the cards from other teams beforehand made it much more interesting to go through. I ended up with almost 50 of these.

This post was going to be so scan heavy that I relegated my 2014 base card pickups to the tab above that shows all of my 2014 Cubs cards. You've probably seen most of them already through Wrigley Wax's team set breakdowns anyway. I was able to complete team sets for Opening Day, Donruss, Bowman, Gypsy Queen and Heritage (aside from the Rizzo SP) for just dimes per card.

Ok, enough words. More pictures. Just because I'm not showing base, doesn't mean I won't show parallels!

How about some Gold?

Some Target reds.

Let's switch over to Donruss for a Career Statline and a Season Statline parallel.

The Anthony Rizzo is numbered out of 39 for his career home run total and the Travis Wood is out of 311.

I didn't find the base SP of Anthony Rizzo from Heritage, but I did come across a Chrome Refractor version #/565.

And I'll wrap up 2014 with a pair of Gypsy Queen minis.

All of the base cards (not shown here, but in the tab) were dime box pick ups. The parallels/minis above were all penny sleeved.

This particular dealer also had some 2013 boxes I wanted to look through, but I'm pretty good on the base team sets from last year and I wasn't as confident in my mental checklist for parallels as I was for my 2014s. That didn't stop me from picking up some cards I was absolutely positively sure I didn't already have.

Like these Chrome Refractors. Its hard to tell from the scan, but the Fujikawa is purple, not blue. I couldn't even tell you if chrome has a blue parallel.

And these black bordered Heritage Minors cards.

Those four cards above were all in penny sleeves but I also found some unprotected dime box cards from 2013. There were some logoless-yet-still-intriguing Hometown Heroes.

And a quartet of Panini Cooperstown.

These last two sets weren't a priority for me but now that I've started, I might as well find a checklist and try to get the rest of the "Cubs" from the sets.

At this point I was getting a crick in my neck and it was time to track down my son (who was looking through the football dime boxes I mentioned yesterday).

The grand total for this table was 78 cards for a nice round $10. I managed to avoid the $1 top loaders and hits but I'm sure I'll be back at this guy's table next month. Some of the cards I did pick up might not have been worth the 3/$1 tag individually but taken as a whole stack, mix in a little steeper bulk discount and subtract shipping charges I would have paid to buy them slightly cheaper online, I think I got away with larceny.

I hit one more table on my way out the door but that's a tale for tomorrow.

2012 Gold Prizm Tony Campana Parallel

Continuing my quest to build my Tony Campana player collection, I picked up a gold parallel of his 2012 Prizm card on eBay. These are numbered out of 10 so I figured if I wanted one, I'd have to act quickly. I first noticed a ridiculously priced one for about $50. The seller did not have the Best Offer option and I didn't even pay that for any of the licensed 1/1's!

Another one popped up a few days later but I missed out on that one. Good news was that it went for just over half of the Buy It Now one. That's precedence I can get behind. I sent a note to the original seller asking if he'd be willing to price match that second listing (or at least get closer) but didn't hear anything back.

Lo and behold, a third one popped up at a decent starting price. When all was said and done, I walked away with this one for even less than the second.

In the past, I've found waiting to be a good strategy to get a price break, but never on something as limited as this. This marks the third variation of this card I have (after the base and refractor). I have also seen a green one and am starting to see red ones pop up of various players but no Campana yet.

Trade with $30 a Week Habit

First, I wanted to give a shoutout to two brand new blogs. The first is called Golden Rainbow Cards written by Bryan. He just started his blog and contacted me about filling some of my 2013 Topps Want List. He seems to be a Braves fan so don't hold that against him and check him out!

Next, is a very good offline friend of mine that I've turned from a lurker into a blogger. His name is Ty and he's starting a new blog called League Leader in Italics. His introductory post was published today and from what I hear, he'll post a couple times a week. He even joined my Blogger Fantasy League (and you should too!)

Right now, I think I'm their only follower so please give them both a warm welcome to the community!

Now on to the meat and potatoes of the post. A few weeks Two months ago (yikes!), Robert from over at $30 a Week Habit posted about completing Series 2 from last year. He showed off a 2012 Anthony Rizzo Gold parallel card he had and I left a comment that I would be interested in it if it was up for grabs.

Some of you have noticed I've been catching up on emails so I was a little surprised when I saw one from Robert marked as read but didn't remember seeing it. I'm not sure what happened because I subscribed to the post like I normally do after leaving a comment. I just missed it. Anyway, last week I sheepishly sent out a response apologizing and that if it was still available, I was still interested.

Graciously, Robert said he did still have and it showed up in my mailbox yesterday with a couple of other fantastic cards.

 

 

A couple of Gold parallels, Rizzo /2012, Kevin Gregg /2009

Sparkly 2012 Topps Joe Mather

I was a little shocked when this next one came out of the package. Given my apathy towards A&G in general, this is a card I probably wouldn't have purchased myself but am more than happy to have in my collection. One of these days, I'm going to put that indifference aside and figure out which Cubs cards I still need from the A&G sets.



2012 A&G Kosuke Fukudome Mini Jersey



This last card is unfamiliar to me as it came from a time between collecting periods. It is refractory as you can see by the rainbow front in the scan. It also seems die-cut just for the sake of being die cut because the shape doesn't form anything specific that I can tell.

The focus of the card is Major League On-Base Percentage League Leaders. Sammy Sosa was 4th on the list with .437, hence the serial numbering. Kind of weird to think the player with a higher on-base percentage has more cards available. I would think the "better" player would be more limited. But then again, I've never seen an "On-Base Percentage" themed collection so maybe its a moot point.

Sammy Sosa is a huge hole in my Cubs collection just because his playing time didn't coincide with when I collected. Plus all those potential inserts and parallels is a little daunting so I don't even know where to begin with him. 

Anyhow, thanks Robert for the great trade!

PWE made of Gold?!?

We were at an all-day wrestling tournament on Saturday and another on Sunday so I was catching up on some blog reading Sunday evening. I was literally just reading JediJeff's Sunday post over at 2x3Heroes about some out of the blue cards in the mail when my wife brought me a PWE from Saturday's mail. I had already received all of my recent ebay/sportslot purchases so it was truly unexepected cards! And wouldn't you know it, it was from JediJeff! Strong in the force, he is with his Jedi mind tricks. And they were all gold cards to boot!

Topps Update came out last year when I was taking a small break from blogging. In the fall, I was in the process of starting big boy college after finishing up my associate degree at my local community college in the spring. I picked up a hobby box which yielded a complete set so I didn't think much of the tracking down the parallels.

JediJeff sent six (!) gold Cubs parallels from last year. He must have picked up a ton of Update to get that lucky with Cubs! One card was from Series One:

Starlin Castro (0599/2012)

One from Series Two:

Anthony Rizzo (1184/2012)

And four from the Update Series:



Brett Jackson (1502/2012)

James Russell (0900/2012)

Josh Vitters (1992/2012 & 0553/2012)

Thanks a ton Jeff! There will be some White Sox I've been saving up for you coming your way soon.