A Night with My Collection

It's a blessing and a curse to get a package in the mail from COMC.  And one that included my Black Friday pickups was my largest ever at 300 cards.  The plus side?  Tons of new cards.

The down side?  Tons of new cards.  I've been working on being a little less anal about tracking my collection.  I've stopped tracking my Steelers, Pens, and WVU collections.  It just got too time consuming to maintain spreadsheets for each collection.  Especially when my additions tend to come in waves.

 Will I ultimately end up with some doubles in my collection?  Sure.  But my largest of the batch is my Steelers collection at about 1000 cards.  And even at that number, it barely scrapes the surface of what's available.

 Now my Pirate collection...

 That's a different story.  I keep a detailed spreadsheet of my entire Pirates collection.  And it's more than paid dividends for all the time and energy that continues to go into maintaining it.

 More than a few times I've nearly passed on a card I actually didn't have.  And even more frequently, it's stopped me from buying a card I already had.

 So tonight I'll be settling in, watching the NCAA championship game, and catching up on getting my spreadsheet up to date.  Things only a card collector (or accountant) would say...

Ending the Year in Style

I'll be settled in watching some college football all day today.  I've never been a big New Year's guy, but there probably aren't many who are happier to see 2015 turn into 2016 than this guy.  And while this year has been a roller coaster for my blogging, including a disappearing act for most of the year, let's send 2015 out in style.

In my COMC package from their Black Friday sales, I nabbed a couple big additions to my collection.  I was able to spear a couple cards that at one point topped my want list.  And there's no sweeter feeling than that.  But first up, I may have a addition to my favorite cards.

Vlad Guerrero has long been one of my favorite players.  I still vividly remember a game against the Expos where a friend and I were sitting in the seats directly behind home plate and being amazed by how big and athletic Vlad was up close.  At his prime, I don't know that there was any player more interesting to watch in my lifetime.  He could do it all.

I've been looking for a Vlad auto for a while, but haven't pulled the trigger.  But as I was browsing through a seller's sales, I saw this card for $8.  It was an impulse buy, but one I'm glad I made.  The sticker auto doesn't look so bad on the awesome foil stock, and I'm glad I was able to get a card that pictured Vlad in his Expos road uniform.

 But the real gem?  This guy.  This Sean Casey auto is his only picturing him as a Pirate, and is insanely hard to find.  Before my Pirate collection went full scale, I was working on just getting an auto of every player who had a Pirates certified auto.  And aside from a couple high priced Heritage Real One autos, I had them all.  Except this one.

And after years and years of looking, I had only seen one copy that was already in another Pirates collector's hands.  I nearly lost my mind when I saw a copy had been recently added to COMC during one of my routine mid-week searches.  Better yet, it was listed for a whopping $1.25.

I couldn't click buy fast enough.  It may not be a huge value card, but man does it feel good to spear a card that has been near the top of my want list for a full decade now.

 While the back story isn't nearly as compelling, I added a couple of these Japan Fractors.  They just look awesome.  End of story.

 And my first Santonio Holmes auto.  Now I just need another one to turn into an awesome custom idea I have.

 And for the third year in a row, Starling Marte autos continue to be very affordable on COMC.  I was able to snag this one for about $3.  On card and Prizm?  Yes, please.

 And despite the top side damage, this is just an awesome pickup for my collection.  My first tobacco card, and an awesome WVU card to add to my collection.  Amazingly I was able to add a card that is over 100 years old for a whopping $2.  The scan doesn't do the card justice - the gold on the card really pops in person, and has a slight fleck like quality to it.

 There is no such thing as a bad PMG.

 And more Marte!  This is, to date, my only card from the 2015 Tek release.  But I can only hope there will be many more to follow.

And last but not least, another former Most Wanted card.  At one point in 2008-9, this Pedro was at the top of my want list.  He was, after all, the future of the franchise and his Razor cards were his only autograph releases.  I think they actually still are.

These cards have seen some major swings (and misses) along Pedro's career.  I think this officially counts as buying low, though.  The card cost me about $3.  At various points, they were selling for well above that.  But so the hobby pendulum swings.

So here's to 2015.  It was a year I can't say I'll miss, but I did add some great new cards to my collection.  Hope everyone has a happy and safe New Year, and happy collecting in 2016!

Setting the Low Score

I've been scouring ebay more often than usual lately.  And while that has mostly mean I've just been getting outbid a lot, I have added some cool pickups for great prices.

Like this Starling Marte autograph.  Marte has been one of the players to see a big surge in popularity and card prices as the Bucs have been winning.  I usually snatch up any auto of his I can find on the low end at $4 or so, but even those are rare.

I had this one in my watch list, but it's not the most eye catching auto, so I figured I'd throw in a low bid.  But winning?  Probably not.

I was more than surprised when I saw that I had won for $1.25.  Shipping?  That nearly doubled the price, at a full $1!  Grand total?  $2.25.

And going off ebay's completed auctions, that's the lowest a Marte auto has gone recently by a pretty fair margin.

The Value of a Dollar

There's no question about it.  I'm a bargain shopper.  And that applies in spades when it comes to vintage cards.  The great thing about large shows is that they tend to draw dealers from across the country, which will knock prices down to about their bottom basement price.  The Robert Morris show has done wonders for my vintage team sets over the past few years.  The sheer selection has allowed me to knock out just about every common, with only superstars like Clemente and Stargell remaining from their early sets and those pesky short printed high numbers.

I actually didn't do as well on vintage this year as in the past.  That certainly had a lot to do with the influx of modern dealers.  Last year, I spent a lot of time digging through vintage boxes simply because there...wasn't anything else to look through.  But with more modern this year, most of my box digging was centered around the more recent stuff.  And the vintage bins I did look through mostly just had the same common cards I already had priced at $1 or $2.

But I was going through one dealer's $.25 box.  A lot was more or less junk - late 80's star commons.  A few serial numbered cards.  Lots of 70's commons.  And...half a dozen Pirate cards I needed.  Wait, huh?

The four cards above are definitely of the well-loved variety.  But at just a quarter a piece, they are welcomed placeholders that cross a card off my needs list, and can always be upgraded if a better copy ever presents itself at a great price.  And that's just what I did with the Rice RC.  I had picked up a really, really, really beat up copy off COMC for $.65 as a set filler.  While this copy isn't close to mint, it's a major upgrade in eye appeal at less than half the price.  Just ignore the crop job at the bottom, which is just a result of my scanner being a jerk

I'm always a little amazed how many great looking cards can be found in discount bins.  I had no idea this card even existed, but was thrilled to find a Quasar card of former Steeler and Mountaineer Amos Zereoue.  The design was actually reused in UD's Fleer Retro product, and there is a Geno Smith version I still need to track down.  Now the big question becomes which binder this goes into.

And at a buck each, I was thrilled to find two cards that had been sitting in my COMC watchlist forever, but priced around $5.

This Lemieux/Bradshaw just became one of my favorite cards in my collection, featuring two of Pittsburgh's greatest set in front of a beautiful painted skyline.  How much better can it get?

There just aren't any avenues that provide the kind of bang for your buck that card shows do.  I love COMC.  I love still buy on ebay.  And sites like Sportlots and Justcommons are great.  But there is a degree of maximizing profits that can be avoided at a show.  Most of the dime and quarter boxes I dig through are the leftovers from large deals that were long ago into the black for the dealer.  Anything else they sell out of their inventory is just icing on the cake.  And that always seems to equal great finds for my collections, and is far less irritating than the COMC seller willing to sit for years and years on a card priced well above what anyone is willing to pay, hoping just to find that one person willing to overpay someday.

I don't care how overdone Bowman is, or how watered down the checklist is.  A gold refractor of a Pirate is just too nice looking not to own for $1, even if the player will probably never hit AA.

Or to find oddball sets, like these Cooperstown Orange parallels that were only available in retail.

Or these Pinnacle Artist Proof cards.  This is apparently the blue version, which I didn't even know existed.  And I think I paid 20 times more attention to the set than the rest of the hobby did.  Again, I'd guess it was a retail exclusive.  But I honestly have no clue, and didn't find any info online.  Anyone have the inside scoop?

There's nothing that beats finding a big stack of cards from a dealer, and when all the dollar and quarter cards are counted up discovering that you just nabbed a great stack of cardboard you'd be hardpressed to even find elsewhere for less than the cost of a fast food lunch.  Long live the card show!

Who Needs Card Shows? My Flea Market Finds

I was talking with Kate Sunday night, telling her about some of the cards I picked up over the weekend.  I mentioned a couple cards I had bought with the intention to resell and defray some of the costs of what was, for me, a rather lavish weekend in spending.  I was probably rambling on and on about how could somebody not realize how hard these cards to find, blah, blah, blah when she just looked at me and said, "You realize you probably know more about baseball cards than most of these people, right?"

And I had, frankly, never looked at it like that.  There ended up being a pretty interesting discussion in the comments of my last post about dealers at card shows.  I'm passionate about collecting, and the overall health of this hobby.  Heck, you have to love collecting to take the time and energy to write a blog dedicated to it.  But some part of Collecting Mark is still that teenage kid that assumes, or maybe these days hopes, that the people who take part in the commerce of the hobby have some greater knowledge about both the cards themselves and the buying and selling of them than I, Willie Lowman, Collector.

I guess experience should have taught my better by now.  I've dealt with plenty of dealers who, simply put, had no idea what they were doing.  Sometimes it's pricing, sometimes it's knowing what the card or how rare, and sometimes it's just basic people skills.  After all, all it takes is a couple boxes of cardboard and a few bucks in your pocket to set up at a card show.  It seems pretty foolish to assume that some of these guys have some greater Warren Buffett-esque understanding of the more intricate underworkings of the hobby finances.

But for as dissatisfied as I was with my card show trip Saturday, Sunday more than made up for it.

 I woke up early, before Kate was even close to waking up, and headed up the road to the flea market card stand I discovered last week.  I'd be lying if I didn't say I had been looking forward to it since last week.  There were still so many boxes to dig through!

 For all the things that the dealers did "wrong," walking into the flea market was the complete opposite.  Even early on a Sunday, the welcoming atmosphere I gushed about last week was still there.  Even though I had only been there for the first time a week earlier, and maybe we spoke directly for 30 seconds, the owner Ken immediately jumped into conversation.  He apologized for forgetting my name, but remembered every other detail that came up in conversation last week.

I have dealers I have been buying off of at shows regularly for more than a decade who act like they have never seen me before, let alone forget my name.  I found a couple new boxes, and dug in.  The conversation alone was enough to keep me coming back.  But the cardboard didn't hurt either.

 I started out digging in the $.25 box.  Or at least I thought I was in the $.25 box.  I started pulling out some really great cards for my collection, like the three above.  I found a nice stack of Vlad Expos cards, the newest addition to my on again, off again player collection.  And the McGwire home run card?  I remember when those were $10-20 cards.

But then I looked at the box again.  My eyes had tricked me: these weren't $.25 cards.  They were $.05 cards!

 When I started finding runs of Topps Gold parallels, I had double check with Ken.  I didn't want to unintentionally rip the guy off if these cards had been mistakenly put in the wrong box, or if I was misreading the pricing.  Nope, 20 for a dollar.

 Welcome to collecting heaven.

 But that's the thing.  Ken and I shared pretty similar philosophies on collecting.   And it showed in the steady stream of people that kept filtering into the stand as it got a little later in the morning.  One customer noted, "There are more people in your stall than the rest of the flea market combined."  The math may have been a little off, but not by much.

 Every dealer has their own philosophies on collecting.  I can't necessarily say any one is right or wrong, simply that some line up more with my own beliefs and others less.  The "my card, my price" crowd aren't are certainly entitled to their opinion.  I realize some people do this as a business, and to them an extra dollar in their pocket is the ultimate end goal.  The road there matters little.  And perhaps that's just the way of the world.  But to every reaction there is an equal and opposite reaction.  And for me, there is no such thing as a "must have."  I've gladly walked away from tables that had a card or cards I really wanted, simply because I found the dealer to be an entirely unreasonable human being.

 See, my dad has been in advertising for the better part of 50 years.  And whether explicitly or through simply observing, I have always been a firm believer that the way you treat people matters.  I'm sure some may disagree.  But the little things have always gone a long way with me.  Something as simple as a manager stopping over to ask how our meal was at a restaurant, or those little trays of cookies they put out at the bakery in the grocery store can be enough to win over my business.  And the stubborn Italian in me never forgets a bad experience.

And one thing I can definitely say is that treating people well and pricing cards fairly was working out really well.  In the couple hours I was hanging around, there were probably $3-400 of wax broken.  It seemed like there was a pretty consistent crowd of regulars who stopped in, some just to pick up a few packs while others were there as long as I was, alternating between chit chat and grabbing a couple packs of Bowman Chrome or football products.

As my stacks grew, my biggest purchase was the Nippert auto for a whopping $.25 (actually $.20, since I found 5 cards for $1).  But the time spent talking about sports, the Pirates chances this year, and cards were better than anything I could pull out of a box.  And believe me, I was pulling out some great cards.  But it was the environment and the experience that stood in such stark contrast to the drab, deflated card show I had gone to the day prior.

I've driven home the point enough times by now.  But if you grabbed someone off the street who knew nothing about sports cards and put them in the car with me Saturday and Sunday (we will, for the sake of this exercise, overlook the fact that kidnapping is frowned upon in our society) and asked them what they thought the health of the hobby looked like?  I think you would get radically different answers.

The mall show was half a dozen dealers, and half of those were north of 70.  The dealers outnumbered the customers, and in fact a couple had abandoned their tables and were working out deals with each other.  I was far and away the youngest person there.

The flea market?  There were a couple other twenty-somethings or early 30's folks there.  Everybody was joining in the conversation.  Someone who had no knowledge of the state of the hobby or its ever shrinking economic footprint would probably think business was good.  And for this little slice of the cardboard pie, it is.

But enough about comparing apples and oranges.  The cardboard!  Between dime and nickel cards, my pile had started pushing 300 cards.  I decided it was time to cash out before I forgot how many cards I had or my precariously teetering pile took a tumble off the table.

The grand total for all that cardboard?  $10.  The prices were already dirt cheap - and then he knocked a few more dollars off the top?  I might be a little crazy, but I kind of felt bad.  As I said earlier, when I find a place that treats me well, I'm more than happy to give them my business.

I'm not the "cash burning a hole in my pocket" kind of guy.  Kate's favorite adjectives to describe me are "cheap" and "tightwad" (I prefer "frugal").  But I still had cash in my pocked, and I'd be damned if I didn't find some way to spend it with Ken.  He had a small row of some Pittsburgh autos and game used cards.  Most of the Pirates were more common prospect autos that I already had.  But I did spot this nice looking Marte jersey/auto.  I figured it might be a little more than I wanted to spend, but was worth asking.

The price?  $8.

Well, sign me up.  This is only my 4th Marte certified auto, so it's a welcome addition.  I think it's also my first relic of his as well.

There wasn't much else that caught my eye, but I figured while I was on a roll I would ask the prices on a couple of the hockey cards.  I'm not a big Penguins fan, but I do enjoy diversifying my autograph collection from time to time.

Fleury has been a bit of a divisive figure in Pittsburgh sports since he reached the NHL.  I like watching the guy play, but I can understand how his occasional inconsistency can drive fans crazy.  But I have wanted an autograph for a while.  His prices have dropped a little bit, but I was happy to pay $10 for this card, which seems to be about as low as his autos sell for.

I came away with one heck of a haul, and I think Ken was happy to see that many cards go out the door since most of his customers seem to be the wax only types.  There was one other card that had me nearly salivating when I heard how much he wanted for it.  But I was out of cash, and it was already getting to be lunch time.  So the card is on hold for me, which will probably have to wait until the weekend after Easter.  But I think it's safe to say it will be one of the biggest non-Pirate cards in my collection.

Card Show Pickups

I was able to triple dip over the weekend, stopping home for my mom's birthday, visiting with some friends, and hitting a mall show nearby.  Overall it was a great weekend, even if the show was a little weaker than usual.

Pirate cards were pretty slim 'pickins.  I managed to find a whopping 5 new Pirate cards.  But the other areas of my collection benefitted, including more than doubling my Geno Smith collection.  When Geno was heading into the draft, I had every intention of starting a super collection of my former student.  When the pick was announced that he was going to the Jets, the only thing I could say was "shit."  Not only was he going to a team that would quickly throw him into a starting job that he frankly wasn't ready for, he also went to the biggest market, undoubtedly driving his card prices higher than I would want to pay.

Obviously the last couple years haven't been that kind.  I still believe he can be a solid NFL quarterback, but I certainly hope it comes elsewhere than the media circus.

But the silver lining is that the rough season has finally pushed his cards into some of the discount boxes and into my collection.

A copy of the Crusade card had been sitting in my COMC watch list for a good deal more than the $.33 I paid for it.  And I was thrilled to pay $1 for the Prizm card.  I'm sure some people aren't happy with them, but I love the crazy number of colored refractors Prizm has added this year to their football product.

 In addition to these awesome cards, I grabbed a stack of 10 or 15 base new base cards for ten or twenty cents each.

 Finally my Geno collection will look like a collection, rather than a few sad cards in a page.

 And of course I haven't forgotten about the other WVU alums either.  Me like shiny.

 Keeping with the college theme, I snagged this sweet Randy Moss Press Pass card.  If you haven't had the chance, check out the RandU documentary on Nextflix.  I've enjoyed the vast majority of the 30 for 30 documentaries, though I think at this point ESPN has produced way more than 30.

 And what fun would a card show be without some dimebox digging?  I've been wanting a copy of this Wizard of Oz card for a while.  I wish we would see some of the goofy 90's painted Fleer cards again.

 And keeping up the retro feel, I love the border on this Verlander.  Panini did really well with the inserts in 2014 Donruss.  Now if they could just stop screwing up base sets...

 I can never say no to an auto out of a dime box.

 The Fleer Retro products UD put out are probably some of my favorite from the past couple years.  It's a shame to see them losing the college license.  But money talks in today's card industry.

 I started a small Wil Myers collection a few months ago.  But I may be on strike from adding his 2015 cards until the Padres make some changes to their godawful uniforms.

 The Pirate pickups were uneventful at best.  For whatever reason, Pirate cards as about as plentiful now as they were in 2006 when the Pirates were losing 100 games.

 I was happy to snag this SP'd Marte Diamond Kings for $.33, which completes my Donruss base set.

 I'm still kind of lost as to why the Pirates get so little local love.  In the 20 years the Pirates were losing, I'm sure many collectors turned their attention to the Steelers and Pens.  They were championship caliber teams with superstar players to collect.  But I am kind of surprised how hard it has been to find cards now that the team has turned things around.

 But the real star of this show?  As I was hitting the last table of the show, one of two dealers on the upper floor of the mall who didn't seem to be getting much traffic, I almost turned and headed home.  It looked like the typical ebay+30% table, where common autographs were priced in the dreaded 5/$20 box.  Nothing craps on a show like seeing cards I know I can buy for $1 on COMC grossly overpriced.

 But I decided to look through the dealer's cheaper stuff.  And boy am I glad I did.

 His dollar box looked pretty much on par with the autographs - Jeter base cards in toploaders for $1.

 But when I hit the Geno green/yellow Prizm, I figured I'd keep looking in hopes of finding some other cool Prizm cards.  Instead, I found about half a dozen parallels from 2014 Topps Tek.

 I've been excited about the Tek set since it was initially announced.  I decided not to order any boxes since Topps waited until the release date to put out a checklist, and after the the trainwreck that was Stadium Club, I didn't want a $50 box of Chris Owings.

 I asked the dealer if he had any other Tek cards, and boy am I glad I did.  He said he had been waiting all day for somebody to ask about them, and pulled out a big stack.  He said he didn't bother with all the variations, so just pull out whatever I wanted at $3/1.  Most were the common patterns, but I did find a couple of the more rare patterns.

 All in all, I now have 3 glorious binder pages of Tek cards, mostly of the 90's players from the set.  Better yet, when all was said and paid for, I paid about $.20 a card for the commons.

Add in the 3 autos I purchased for a total of $20 on ebay a while back, and I basically have the equivalent of 3 boxes and some spare base cards of Tek for a grand total of less than $30.  Sure, I didn't hit a coveted Big Mac auto, but I think I would still be pretty darn pleased had I pulled all these cards from a box.