What I've Been Collecting

It's been all about my buyback franken-set project here on the blog recently, for a couple of reasons.  First and foremost, I'm just having a blast with it, but secondly I have a lot of buybacks already in my scans folder and quickly posting some pre-scanned cards is about all I've had time for lately.

Today I finally had some time to spend scanning and organizing for the first time in a while, and I figured it would be a good chance to feature a little more variety here and show off some of the other things I'm still collecting outside of Topps baseball buybacks...

...like Xander Bogaerts!  Xander's still my favorite player on the current roster, and has been for a few years now.  I search out new Bogaerts cardboard every so often, and today I've got a trio that I added to my electronic inventory this morning and have never shown before.  First up is my favorite of the trio, a Bowman Chrome Mini Blue Refractor RC.  This one's roughly the same size as a '75 Topps Mini.  A nice rookie for my collection indeed...

...especially since there are only 20 of these out there!

Here's a more classic rookie card, a Gold parallel from the 2014 Topps flagship set.  Between the parallels in the regular Topps set and its Chrome counterpart, I've got quite a few copies of this "same" card now.

As all Gold parallels were from this set, this one is serial-numbered to /2014.  Quite a bit more commonplace than the rookie I led off the post with.

Finally, an unlicensed Diamond Kings card from Panini.  I don't particularly like the artwork/photograph on this one, but I picked it up because it featured two different colored swatches from Xander's uniform...

...and is relatively scarce with just 25 copies floating around out there.  A nice enough card that felt like a steal for just a few bucks.

I posted my first 2016-17 Fleer Showcase '92-93 Ultra buyback a few weeks ago, and have picked up a few more on eBay since.  I am not going to pursue these with vigor, that would be a fool's errand with just 25 of each of them in circulation, but I do have a saved eBay search and have nabbed a couple of cheap ones.

For today I've got a pair of Whalers in Adam Burt, and team captain and fan favorite, the under-rated Pat Verbeek!  I know these are gimmicky, but I just can't help myself.  This duo makes for a unique little addition to my ever-growing Whalers collection anyway.

I've still been working away at 1959 Topps too.  In fact, I added ten more cards from COMC to my binder just this morning.

I won't show all ten here, just a handful of favorites.  This is a nice one, but might actually be one of the more boring Wes Covington cards out there as he received some really great cardboard representation over the course of his career.

My set is coming along nicely; I'm obviously still missing a boatload of cards including many HOFers, but I'm now up to over 250 in the binder which feels significant to me.

I even got a nice high-numbered All-Star subset card in this morning's grouping.  At #566, Roy Sievers here is the highest numbered card in my set so far (there are 572 cards in total).  I'm really enjoying collating this one.  Who knows if I'll ever finish, but the journey has been fun so far.

In my last couple of "COMC Blaster" posts I've featured one of these Tip Top Bread inserts from Panini Golden Age.  I'm going for the entire 10-card insert set, and Yogi here is my fourth so far.

I feel like these are a couple of days late in being posted, but I'm always on the lookout for cheap Star Wars cards, and I especially enjoy the Topps Tek acetate releases.

A nice trio from the 2016 set to show off today.  RIP Carrie Fisher.

One of my favorite characters from the franchise, I never tire of acquiring new cards of Yoda!

I'm also taking a stab at completing the entire 220-card 2011 Topps Chrome Atomic Refractor parallel set.  I've mentioned them many times before here on the blog, and I still think they're some of the more visually stunning cards to be released since I returned to collecting in 2007.  At 225 copies each, they're just rare enough to feel significant, but just common enough to make me think I could actually complete this one someday.  For now, A-Rod was a significant pickup that I used a few eBay Bucks on.

During the very early part of the year I posted a few of the high-numbered WHA cards from the '72-73 O-Pee-Chee release.  While I haven't had the time to post them (yet!) I've still been hunting these down.  I aspire to one day complete the entire WHA subset, which isn't as impossible a task as a couple of the others that I've mentioned in this post.

Lastly, I still pick up the occasional graded single, typically vintage baseball.  Here's one I've never taken the time to show before.  I really adore the 1922 American Caramel release.  I believe "Shano" Collins here is now the fifth Red Sox card I've managed to acquire from this release.  Not bad at all!

So, there's a snapshot view of what's going on in my little corner of the collecting universe.  See anything here that overlaps with your own collecting interests?  If so, I'd love to hear about it in the comments.  Thanks for stopping by as always, and enjoy the rest of your weekend!