3 card Chicago Cubs SP lot (an EBay win)

Part of my morning routine is to wade through the "Saved Search" emails I get from eBay every day. If I come across something I'm interested in, but am willing to wait for a really good price, I save the search and allow the market to come to me. Not every save yields a daily hit. In fact, I would say I have about 75 things saved at any given time but only get 25ish emails. Sometimes a particular search only gets a hit every couple of weeks. Or months. I'm looking at you, Desert Shield Anthony Rizzo.

For some, even 25 emails would be too many. But most of them are really easy to speed through because there are only one or two new listings. In general, if the item was more prevalent, the price will gradually come down, leading me to buy one and take it off my list.

Some items have been in my list for a looooong time. My misspelled saved searches have netted me quite a few deals on Ryne Sandberg items over the years. Sandburg. Ryan Sandberg (although this sometimes brings up lots with Nolan Ryan). Even "Snadberg" pulls in an occasional result.

One of my collecting goals for 2018 was to pick up last year's Stadium Club Cubs Short Prints, so of course I have a couple of saved searches that will provide me with those listings. Sometimes, if I have time, I click the link and go down an eBay rabbit hole to expand my search.

About two weeks ago, I removed "stadium club" from the search criteria and just went with "cubs sp lot" as my search. On this particular day, I sorted by ending soonest. It didn't lead me to what I was looking for but I came across a listing that was too good to pass up.

The title for the auction was the same as this post:

3 card Chicago Cubs SP lot

That's not a whole lot to go on. No player names. No years. No brands. The thumbnail showed three cards but was too small to really make out what they were.The starting bid was $1.50 with $3.50 for shipping. Three short printed cards for $5 was good enough for me to click on the listing.

I know very little about the current Donruss line and their parallels. This card appears to be the same as the base, but has a magenta colored back.

Any kind of Kris Bryant insert/parallel seems to command a premium, even as far away from Chicago as I am, so I don't have too many.

And speaking of premium, Topps Triple Threads is generally something out of my price range. If Triple Threads is in my collection, they are definitely secondary market pickups. This bat relic card of the 2016 World Series MVP is numbered 19/27.

And the card most likely to be in my collection, but wasn't, was this SP Ernie Banks out of 2010 Topps. This is back when "short printed" cards weren't in every other pack like they seem to be now. I got back into collecting the following year so while I was vaguely aware of its existence, I hadn't picked one up yet. These "Legends" photo variations are now usually paired with someone from the same team, but this Banks card shares #590 with the Phillies' Ryan Howard.

Somebody had the opening bid already so in the final few seconds I threw a bid of $2.50 down. With shipping, that would be $6, or $2 per card shipped. Great deal, but not earth shattering if I didn't win. As luck would have it, it didn't even go that high as the other bidder barely went above the minimum. I guess he felt the same as I did.

Its been a long time since I pulled the trigger on eBay for something I wasn't actually looking for, but all in all, I'm happy with my pickup. The current lowest prices for the Banks and Bryant are each higher than I paid for the whole lot. The seller has low feedback so maybe with a bit more experience, they'll improve their listings.

As a side note, when did anything and everything that isn't a base card become an "SP" in listings? I mean I guess, technically, they are, but it makes searches tougher when any insert or parallel is given the SP tag. Even the gold parallels this year with 2018 copies seem to be labelled SPs.

Anybody else get an inbox full of eBay emails every morning?