Card shop Friday

While everyone else is partying it up at The National Sports Collectors Convention in Baltimore (or rather, getting ready to), I’m “stuck” in San Diego.  I’ve got the card show blues, which can only be cured by one of two things – a Friday night card show or a trip to my local shop.

This week I’m opting for the shop.

The only thing I ‘needed’ were supplies, so I loaded up on some binder pages (for my ’10 Ginter set) and top loaders (for the massive amount of relics I’ve got sitting around, exposed to the harsh elements of my MCCS: an eight-month-old terror who’s becoming quite mobile.)

I couldn’t bring myself to buy any wax.  I refuse to pay extra for a chance at pulling a Strasburg, especially when I’ve purchased so many cheap hits from expensive products lately.  I could, however, bring myself to buy this:

Awesome.  The ‘oddball’ boxes were far more interesting than anything baseball related on the clearance table.

And obviously I had to pick up some bargain relics, including one from the newest Yankee, Lance Berkman:

A fairly uninspiring trip to the shop, but supply days will do that.

Guess the package!

Three clues:

1. It’s baseball cards
2. It’s from Blowout Cards
3. It’s a jumbo box of 2010 Topps Series 2!!!!!

I also picked up some supplies.  I could’ve either preordered at $87.99 and paid for shipping, bringing the total close $98, or I could’ve added $12 in supplies and received free shipping.  I chose the latter option, essentially getting five or six packs of top loaders for $2.

I’ll have a nice three day weekend to clear enough space in the man cave card shop for the box.

Card shop Friday

It’s been a while since I last paid a visit to the card shop.  With it being baseball’s off season, a newly hectic lifestyle with the baby, and various other everyday life happenings, I just haven’t been particularly interested in packs or boxes.  That’s not to say that I haven’t abused Check Out My Cards and have drastically increased the number of relics and autos in my collection – I most certainly have.

It is because of this that Friday’s card shop haul is mostly supplies.

First up, the always exciting three column shoe box.  My ‘hit’ collection has outgrown it’s current home in a two column box, so it’s time to upgrade.  The old box will now be designated as a holding place for Joseph’s collection.

Top loaders.  Check Out My Cards only includes them with some of the cards they send.  Relics come in all shapes, sizes, and thicknesses, so I’ve gotta keep a variety of top loaders on hand at all times.

Mini top loaders!  I only have one mini card even remotely worth protecting (a Pope mini from 2008 Allen & Ginter), but I’ve always wanted to buy these.  And get this – they come with mini sleeves!  I’m keeping one of these for myself, the other nine are on their way to the land of the Voodoo Donut.  Commence googling.

Penny sleeves.  My $2 relics receive the utmost care and attention.

Four packs of Topps Pro Debut.  I love minor league sets, and the relics from this set are NICE!

Three packs of All My Children cards.  My dad used to purchase these for my mom when I was young, and we inquired about them the last time he visited.  They didn’t have any, but referred us to another odd ball hobby shop (mostly comics… no offense) that did.  My shop stumbled across a few of these in recent weeks and set them aside for me – very cool!  Three for a buck, how could I resist?  You’re welcome for the clutter, mom.

Two packs of 2008 Upper Deck X.  My purchase was $2 short of a nice, round total, and these were a buck each.  I’ve decided to buy stuff like this instead of $1 relics (since the cheapy selection on COMC is far superior) with the ‘left over’ change, and will put them in Joseph’s box should he one day develop an interest in the hobby.  Which he will, because I’ll tell him to.  Kids always do exactly what parents tell them to do, right?

Nothing overly exciting, but it was great to be back at the shop, it’d been too long.  No matter how cheap cards can be obtained online, nothing will ever top the experience of an afternoon at a brick-and-mortar store.  I conveniently “forgot” to pick up some of the other supplies I’ve been needing, so “grandpa” and I will have to make another trip when he’s out here in a few weeks.  Perhaps we’ll bring the little one.

Card shop Friday

It’d been far too long since my last visit to the ol’ card shop – the holidays and just being flat-out exhausted will do that to ya.  Plus, I’ve had to actually work at work lately, which puts quite a damper on my collecting.  And really, there just hasn’t been anything I’ve wanted lately that I haven’t purchased online.

I’ve purchased three individual Sweet Spot packs which have already resulted in a 1/1 bat barrel autograph, a low numbered Sweet Beginnings autograph, and a “regular” sweet spot autograph – there’s nowhere to go but down.  Besides, there was only one pack left in the box, and I assume it’s from the same box my dad and I have already raided, which means the good stuff has already been pulled.  Come to think of it, I should’ve offered $10 for the pack since we know it’s a dud, relatively speaking.  Next time.

And up until a couple weeks ago I was set to purchase a pack of 2009 Ballpark Collection, but then I went and got all impulsive and bought an entire box of the ’08 version.  No need for more at this point, but I made a mental note of the price for future reference.  And I was oh-so-tempted to try my hand at a box of Bowman Sterling just for the sheer shine-factor of the cards inside each mini-box, but I forgot to make a withdrawal from my baseball card fund this morning (aka envelope with money inside), so I had a very limited budget with absolutely no wiggle room and Bowman Sterling would’ve meant NOT getting something that I actually needed.

And crap, now that I’m back at work, I just remembered that I’d wanted to check out the box of “vintage” Becketts.  Forgot about that… Again, next time.  So I walked away with stuff I needed and some stuff just for fun.

Supplies, booooooooooo!

Packs, yaaaaaaaaay!!!  Well, maybe.

Topps Unique hasn’t exactly been well received, but I wanted to try a few packs.  The box was basically fresh, so maybe I’ll luck box my way into a bat knob or MLB logo relic.  And I almost bought a couple packs of ’09 Allen & Ginter until I noticed that the price of 2009 Bowman HTA jumbo had been slashed in half.  With reasonable chances of some sort of autograph, I figured, why the heck not?  I’ve always like Bowman, but even the shop owners agreed with me that the product has become irrelevant, brought down in large part because of the 1,983,498,039 sets in each pack/box.  But I’ve always been a fan, and the stuff is cheap, so I still may go ahead and put together the 2009 base set.  That is, if I can figure out which cards in these packs are actually part of it.

Wish me luck.  I’ll post any hits, and if there’s nothing good you’ll see the results in a “one pic pack rip” down the road.

Playing hookie

Today will be a good day.  The baby only woke up twice last night, and only one of those was for a feeding.  The second wake-up was a changing, but I can handle those before the baby even knows what hit him.  So before breakfast things are already looking up – it’s nice to go in to the weekend energized.

I’m also playing hookie from work.

Yep – clean cut, salt of the earth Joe is leaving work early for a “doctor’s appointment”, but by “doctor’s appointment” I mean trip to the card shop with grandpa.  Yes, I normally ditch work for an hour or so on Fridays to go to the shop, but this time I’m not comin’ back!

Joseph’s ’09 Topps Updates and Highlights set is coming together nicely, as we’re still 39 cards from completion.  An Updates and Highlights “highlights” break is coming soon; Joseph and I (see, it doesn’t count as money that I’ve spent if we’re doing it together…) have purchased and been gifted about 10 packs in addition to the box, and I’ve already mixed all the inserts together, so a true box break is impossible at this point.  After the next round of packs are purchased I’ll scan and post the good stuff.  Without giving anything away, I’ll simply say that I’ve defied the odds with this box.  And I don’t even mind being 39 cards short, since I see it as a big enough window to justify more packs before turning to the blogosphere/checkoutmycards.com.

We also need more 9-pocket sheets to display them, so I’ll pick up a box of those, and I’ve got a hankering for more Sweet Spot so a box of the ’09 stuff will be purchased, too!  I’ve given myself enough time since the 1/1 pull that I don’t think I’ll be disappointed if all I get is a relic.

The only thing I’m uncertain of is how I’ll go about buying the ’09 Updates and Highlights.  My shop sells seven regular hobby packs for $10, which yields about 56 base cards (assuming one Ticket to Topps Town and one insert per pack), but for the same $10 I can get a jumbo pack with approximately 44 base cards but much better chances of a relic/auto (almost 1:3 odds).  Hmmmm… I’ll go with my gut when I get there.  The reasonable thing to do would be to go for the seven packs, but I’m oh-so-tempted by the chances of a relic!

I’ll be sure to post a picture of my haul.

Card shop haul

Friday is too far removed for this post to be reasonably titled “Card Shop Friday”, so you get the less familiar “Card Shop Haul”.  Same great content, same great reason for blogging about it:  I’m bored and want to post scans of the packs/cards I purchased at the card shop to share with the blogosphere since nobody in my household has more than a very mild interest, at best.

I already knew last Friday that I’d need supplies the next time I headed for my shop.  I’d initially planned to purchase supplies only, but quickly reasoned that it’d be a waste of time to not buy at least a pack or two.  I’m getting a bit weary of bargain bin products only, yet I didn’t feel like purchasing an entire box of anything.  After all, I’ve still got half a box of 2008 UD Heroes still to bust.  But I also wasn’t feeling a super high end, five cards per pack product, either.  What’d I do?

Bought a 50 card per pack product!

2009 Topps is fun, and I definitely plan on acquiring the entire set at some point.  Instead of spending large chunks of my budget on entire boxes, these jumbo HTA packs seem kinda fun.  50 cards per pack, 45 or 46 of which are base, plus three or four other guaranteed inserts per pack.  As an added ‘bonus’, relics/autos are inserted at a rate of slightly less than 1:4.

I went in to the shop planning on spending $10.  Between the Topps HTA pack ($10) and the supplies I needed (25 ct box of top loaders: $3), I had a horribly uneven total of 13 bucks.  More cards!!

By this point I was allowing myself twenty bucks and wanted at least one more nice pack before turning to the dollar bin.  The $4-$5 range seems to be my shop’s wheelhouse, so I stood deciding between ’08 and ’09 A Piece of History, various years of Bowman, ’08 SP Authentic, and the pack I eventually picked out:

Yep, believe your eyes, Priceless Pursuit is taking a peek in the Allen & Ginter bandwagon.  For now I’m just sticking my head in and seeing what it’s like.  I’ve got enough Yankees base cards and a handful of relics through trades to know that I do enjoy the product, even if not as much as most others seem to.  Price:  $5

$18 down, two to go.  For the first time I actually looked inside the display cases (which I’m pretty sure are consignment shelves, which seems kinda nice), and saw the most glorious site I’ve ever seen in the shop:  a box of $1 relics (or three for $2!).  There were only a couple baseball relics, so I got the one that I liked best (I already had a couple versions of the other that was in there), a 2005 Donruss Champions Willie Harris game used bat:

Very thick, very nice!  I figured I may as well get three to bring my total to an even $20, so I picked out two football relics.  The first is a 2006 Topps Turkey Red Trent Green:

And the second, a 2005 Leaf Certified Freshman Fabric Ciatrick Fason, serial numbered 0709/1499:

I’m glad the scan was able to capture how refractor-y this card is.  Though Fason clearly was not the running back of the future in Minnesota, the shine was too rainbowy to pass up.  And the Trent Green Turkey Red is simply classy.  In fact, all football card relics are classier than baseball relics.  At least the ‘basic’, one color swatches are an actual color.  I’ll take a plain purple or red swatch over a white/gray jersey any day of the week.

I could definitely have done worse with the $20.  I’m looking forward to my first pack of ’09 Allen & Ginter and to getting started on collating 2009 Topps flagship.  Regardless of what the packs contain, I’ve created a “no lose” situation for myself!  No matter what cards I pull, I’m still three relics ahead of where I was yesterday.  As always, the relics are for trade (I guess in case you’re a team collector of the White Sox, Vikings, or Chiefs).  Stay tuned for the pack rips

Card shop haul

Alright, finally forced myself to sit down and scan everything I bought from the hobby shop this afternoon.  As usual, I was tempted by the cheap old wax on the table behind all the newer packs, but I fought off my urges and stuck with what I set out for:  higher end new stuff with almost guaranteed hits.

Before I get to the haul, it’s safe to say that in the future ALL box purchases will be made online.  There’s just too big a price difference between the internet distributors and “the little guy”.  I’ll continue to visit my shop for supplies and the occasional higher end pack to fill out a $20 bill, but after doing a TON of “research” all morning long, I’ve realized that they just can’t compete when it comes to hobby boxes.  I’m sorry, but ’08 Upper Deck Timeline should NOT still be $47.  Until an online retailer does me wrong, I’m gonna have to turn to the internet for box purchases.

As for packs, they’re definitely more expensive at the shop than online, but I suppose come out somewhat equal after factoring for shipping.  Price difference between packs was a matter of 50 cents or a dollar, so nothing to get hung up over.  Plus, all of the “good” stuff needs to be retrieved so there’s no real chance of serious pack searching, and the shop doesn’t sell enough hits as singles to make me think they’d be the ones doing the searching.

One more thing to highlight before I post scans of the packs.  This guy was waiting for me on my front porch, discreetly (not at all) hidden under our welcome mat:

Hopefully I’ll get the remaining 30 or so cards I need to complete my set of 2007 UD Masterpieces.  I’ll post all the doubles after I break it in case anyone else is still trying to collate a set of it, too.  Gonna be a while, since I’m only planning on opening a few packs a day, but if you really can’t wait email me what you need and I’ll get the card(s) out to you.

OK, enough jibber jabber.  Here’s what I bought, starting with 2008 Upper Deck Heroes (hobby):

Guess I had Heroes on the mind today.  Hits are inserted at 1:6, so I’ve got a decent chance of getting something with these.  If not I’ll just have a decent start on the base set when I get around to putting it together.  Moving a little higher end, 2008 SP Authentic:

I was trying to get everything to come out to an even $40, so this was picked up near the end of the trip.  Odds of a hit are 1:5(ish) – not horrible for the cost.  If I’ve managed to pull a hit from these four packs, I’m off to a good start.  I’d better pull something from these next three, 2009 SPx:

Hits are 1:3.  Logic says that I’ll get at least one, which is really all I’m hoping for.  And I couldn’t just pretend that the bargain bin wasn’t there, like all of a sudden I was too good for it.  I picked up two packs of 2007 Upper Deck Future Stars:

I have no idea who or what is in this set, but at $1 each I’m guessing probably not much.  I never expect anything from the dollar packs so I’m never disappointed.

In addition to the packs, I picked up a box/pack/whatever you want to call it of 100 pt. top loaders for all of the crazy relics and autographs I’ll be pulling from these packs (which are too big for the cards I was talking about in the previous post. Grrrr…).  I’ve also got a handful of relics laying around the house that need to be put away; I’ve been putting off buying supplies for a while now.

I hope I get at least one relic or good autograph from these packs.  Two would be nice, and any more would be a great bonus. If by some chance I get NO relics or autos, I will never purchase another non-guaranteed hit higher end pack again.  Stay tuned – I’ll try to be quick with posting the results.

Quick question for the blogosphere

I’ve come to the realization that I have a decent sized chunk of 2007 Goudey, about a third of the entire set, due to retail packs being in the bargain bin at my shop.  I’m tempted to go all the way and put together a hand collated set, depending on one thing:

Do they make album sheets that’ll fit the oddly shaped, smaller Goudeys?

I can’t seem to find any that specifically state that it’ll hold cards of Goudey’s measurements (approximately 2 3/8″ by 2 7/8″), but someone out there must have some of these displayed in a binder.  All I’m looking for is something a little more snug than regular sheets that’ll hold the cards in place should the ever need to be moved.

Because if you can’t look at ’em, what’s the point of gathering the set?

Trip to the card shop, 6-26-09

I’m a few days late on posting my haul from last Friday’s trip to the card shop.  Between my two nephews visiting for the weekend, the normal Saturday routine of rec league baseball, and a Sunday too hot to do anything but lounge by the pool, I was short on time.  Not that you’re missing much, so if you’ve been incessantly refreshing your screen hoping for a glimpse of shiny new wax, I apologize in advance. It was a “supply day.”

Nothing too exciting about an unopened, 100 ct. box of 9-pocket sleeves, which seemed reasonably priced at $14.  I finally have a home for my nearly completed, hand collated set of 1992 Studio.

Of course, instead of breaking a twenty dollar bill, I figured the best option would be to buy some wax.  With the remaining $6 I’d alloted myself for the trip, I bought more packs of 2007 Goudey:

I enjoy retro themed sets, and these seemed like a better buy than three year old Fleer or Upper Deck.  I’m sure they’re of the retail variety, but I’m close to feeling motivated to complete the entire set.  At least it wouldn’t cost much, right?

Total spent for supplies (booooo!!!) and ’07 Goudey: $20. Since this coming Friday is part of an extended weekend – and the card shop is probably closed – I’ll be saving up for a “big” purchase in two weeks!  I’m leaning towards a box of UD Masterpieces, though I’ve learned by now not to get my heart set on any one product since I keep forgetting to take note of the shop’s inventory.