Flea Market Shenanigans

It's been a pretty busy summer around here, which at least partially accounts for the lack of posting.  While it hasn't been as often as I would like, we've hit a few flea markets this summer with some great results.

These cards all came from a flea market trip two weekends ago.  My regular vendor at the flea market bought the collection of a friend who had died unexpectedly to help the family out.  He's more of an old school vintage guy, and really didn't know much about what he bought, but wanted to help the family out at least a little.  This is actually my second time digging through the collection.  The first time, I picked up some great cards (which I'll get around to posting eventually), but didn't want to spend toooooo much, so cut myself off after a while.

I was headed out that direction to help my parents rearrange some furniture since the nearly year long house remodel is almost over, and figured a little flea market stop wouldn't hurt.

 I felt pretty good that I had gone through the cards pretty thoroughly the first time through and pulled out anything that was a "must have" for the collection.  There were about six monster boxes.  But the vast majority of the cards were football rookies and baseball prospect cards from the last couple years.

 I imagine there was some really nice stuff in there at some point, but the dealer said the family shopped the collection around at the big Robert Morris show, and some dealers picked off all the best stuff.  So while it wasn't exactly a treat to flip through 300 2014 Bowman Jameson Taillon cards, it was worth it when I hit some gems.  The Newcomb above was a welcome addition to my long-long term plans to put together the 1960 set in any condition.

 Going through the boxes, the collection was a bit of a mystery to me.  There was a box with a fair amount of vintage, mostly early 70's commons and a few early-mid 80's star cards.  And then the boxes upon boxes upon boxes of commons from recent Bowman products.  How many Dri Archer and Alen Hanson cards does one man need?  Apparently the answer is "a lot."  I'm guessing the original owner was buying up a lot of those Bowman paper lots that flood ebay.

There was some 90's and early 2000's stuff too, but not a lot.  Though I did fine a nice run of Kordell Stewart commons that will fill in quite a few gaps in my collection. 

 Best guess?  The guy collected some in the 80's, narrowed down his collecting in the 90's, left the hobby when the game used/auto revolution happened in the late 90's, and then came back to the hobby semi-recently using some of those old school "hoard ze rookies!" mentality.

 Maybe I'm weird (I am), but I always find it interesting to see how other people collect.  There are so many ways you can approach the hobby, and I find it interesting to see what make other people's hobby radar tick.

 There were some interesting odds and ends still in the box, but the majority of my stack was just plain old commons.  I added a good chunk of my needs for 2014 Heritage, Gypsy Queen, and a few of the other sets from last year that I'm woefully behind on.

 When it was all said and done, I had a nice stack.  I asked him how much, and the vendor said just give me whatever you think they're worth.  It's an interesting system we have - he always gives me a fair deal on the stuff he knows prices on, and trusts me not to rip him off on the rest.  And I get the impression he doesn't have much into these cards.  For a cool $10, everybody was happy.

 When I got home, I counted up the haul.  I ended up with just over 100 cards, pricing everything out at about a dime a piece.

 Can I count this as a dime box haul?

 While nothing is exactly going to set the world on fire, I was able to add some cool new cards and fill in some holes in recent sets.  I do everything I can to stay away from all the prospect-centric sets, so it's convenient when somebody else does all the legwork for me and I can pluck up what I need for my binders.

If I'm out that way again soon, I'll definitely be stopping by for round three with these boxes.  They're probably picked over of all the really exciting stuff, but there were a few commons I realized I still needed and I may take a closer look at some of the Steelers and Pens cards just for the hell of it.

All hail flea market season!

Call Me Ishmael

I don't have very much to say that's particularly witty, punny, funny, or anything of the like.  But I just landed one of my whales.  Everybody knows I have a soft spot for early 2000's and late 90's cards.  Especially the ones I would drool over in the pages of Beckett as a kid.  And this guy was definitely right near the top of that list.

It's been a card I have wanted for years.  When I joined ebay in 2005, I remember searching for them religiously.  But copies consistently sold in the $15-20 range.  They've dropped since then, quite significantly really.  But every time I saw a copy pop up on ebay, it either was priced higher than the card's value today or the signature had darkened significantly.

But I had a copy in my watch list last week, and was amazed when it didn't go up past the initial bids.  I landed it for a cool $3.25 shipped.  Better yet, when the card arrived today the signature is a bold, bright blue that looks like it could be pack fresh as if it was just pulled.  Days like this, I love collecting.

Records Were Made to Be Broken

Baseball has a new home run champ.

...minor league baseball.

I came across this really cool story about Mike Hessman, longtime minor leaguer, breaking the all-time (affiliated) minor league homer mark.  When you think about the history of the game, and particularly of minor league baseball across all its levels, it's a pretty impressive feat.

I checked COMC and it looks like he has a few certified autos from Donruss products in the early 00's.  Looks like all the cheapie copies had been snagged up already, but he's definitely somebody who I would love to add to my autograph collection one of these days.

It's Aliveeeee!: A Huge Custom Card Breakthrough

I felt like Dr. Frankenstein (or maybe Doc from Back to the Future) last night, running throgh the house to tell Kate  of my breakthrough.  I finally did it.  I figured out how to get a custom "high end" card looking the way I wanted.  And the answer was literally sitting in front of me the whole time.  But I'll get into that later on when I do some type of tutorial on making these sparkly pieces of goodness.

For those of you who have been following my custom card making adventures, I'm pretty happy with my process for making standard cards.

I started experimenting with some various premium foil versions, but wasn't overly pleased with the results on the cards I made.  They still needed some more pop, since the images just sort of faded into the foil.

Over the last couple months, I have spent way too much time and energy trying to figure out where I was going wrong.  I enjoy solving puzzles, but tend to get really, really frustrated when I can't figure something out.  But...problem solved!  There is still some room for perfecting the process.  And I need to figure out why it looks like the name says Roberto Clfmente.  But I'm really happy with this card, and it's a big breakthrough for my card making.  The colors didn't come through as well on my scanner, but in person the card looks pretty similar to the Topps Canary cards from a few years ago.

Now back to the drawing board to see what else I can come up with.

No Number, No Cry

Unissued cards aren't exactly anything new.  For as long as companies have been producing cards, I'd bet that things have been slipping out the back door or getting sold off when the company folds.  But over the last few years, there have been quite a few cards popping up on ebay that are virtually identical to the pack issued counterparts, but missing the serial number.  Test sheets, replacements, and whenever else comes off of the printer.

I know some have mixed feelings on these cards.  After all, if they weren't pack issued, I can see why some people would consider them unofficial.  But to me, if the card came out as part of the original print run, it's all the same to me.

 And also a great way to save a pretty penny for my collection.

 One of my new projects has been picking up 1998 Donruss Signature autographs whenever I can.  Most of the base red autos are pretty cheap.  The green autos are limited to 1000 copies, and lesser players can be had for a buck or two.  But the rarest are the blue autographs, at just 100 copies.

 Iconic set.  Rare 90's insert.  Autographed.  Yeah.  Doesn't exactly jive with my collecting budget.

But I've found some sellers who have unnumbered versions of some of the autographs in the set available.  Sure, they aren't pack issued.  But if I can pay a couple dollars, versus $10 or $20 for the numbered version....sign me up.  After all, these blue autos just look amazing in my eyes.  And to be able to add a few players from the checklist, even if they aren't quite big name stars, makes me a happy collector.

Custom Creations: The Greatest of the Greats

After showing off my new Jim Bouton 2000 Fleer GOTG auto addition the other day, I felt like it was time to add some updates to such an iconic set.  

Throwback sets became all the rage in the early 00's, and the 2000 Fleer release set the bar incredibly high.  The set featured an impressive checklist and many players who hadn't been featured on cardboard in quite some time.  To see them in person, the cards are just stunning, and have a depth and shadowy effect that makes them look fantastic.

I can't say I was totally able to recapture the effects on this custom, but it's a good first step I suppose.  Right now, it's just a digital mockup, but I look forward to getting a few test copies printed out (and hopefully signed) in the near future.

Jack and White

If you had told me 15 years ago I could buy a jersey card for $7, I might have told you that you were crazy.  If you had told me 5 years ago I would pay $7 for a jersey card, I would have told you I was crazy.  

But so is the life of the player collector.  A plain white swatch of jersey.  ...that some company decided to limit to 15 copies.  Insert rant about artificial scarcity here.  

But the really amusing part is that the card itself?  It's identical to the base card.  And the swatch, more or less, identical to the patch version.  The patch version numbered to 100.  Yep, somehow the patch is six times more rare than this plain 'ole swatch of fabric.
But with how infrequently I'm able to land new cards from the ever-shrinking list of Jack cards I need, I was happy to overpay to land this guy.  It's the only copy I recall seeing for sale, and it's not like people are rushing to ebay to dump their really rare plain white jersey swatches of middle infielders not named Vizquel these days.  But as for me?  I couldn't be happier with my plain white swatch of cloth.