Tuesday, November 13, 2018

eBay Dollar Boxin' - Blaster Edition

At the outset of this year, I picked up a lot of just shy of 50 hand-selected singles off of eBay at 99 cents per card with free shipping.  I posted some of the goods earlier in the year, including some Starting Lineup hockey cards, some questionable autographs, and even some 1st Day Issue Stadium Club parallels.

While tidying up my office recently I discovered I'd never scanned in the remainder of my haul from that seller.  Seems as good a time as any to get to it.  I just so happen to have 20 cards left to show, so let's think of this as an "eBay Blaster" I guess.  Here's what I grabbed...

I've mentioned this a few times on the blog before, but any Topps Finest refractor from the first three baseball sets (93-95) that I can find on the cheap is coming home with me.

The 1993 Finest refractors are some of the most coveted cards of the entire decade, so I've only got a couple of those.  I think the less popular '94s look beautiful still, and I'm not sure there are many more of them in existence than there are of their '93 counterparts.

In any event, I cleaned this seller out of his '94s at a buck a pop.

Ended up with half a dozen in total.

Not exactly stars, with Tom Gordon being probably the most successful of the bunch.

Still, for $5.94 I was pleased to pick up another batch of these.  I more than doubled my collection of these refractors in doing so, as I have just 11 in total now from the '94 set.

Topps Triple Threads is a mid to high-end product (I think?) that I'd never end up buying any of myself.  I scooped up a pair of Amber parallels from the 2017 release though, each numbered to /150.  Got Dustin Pedroia...

...and even more amazingly, Mookie Betts.  This was before the 2018 season began, doubt I'd be the lone bidder at 99 cents these days.  A nice duo for my Red Sox collection here.

Starting Lineup cards?  Love 'em.  Gretzky cards?  Who doesn't love 'em?  Both combined on one card?  Yes, please.  I was excited about this low-end addition to my modest collection of The Great One.

I picked up this '72 Topps card because I always enjoyed the World Series subsets from the old Topps flagship baseball releases.  Turns out I already had this one, however this was a nice condition upgrade from my previous copy which was fairly well loved.

I'll be honest, memorabilia/relic cards just don't hold much appeal to me these days except in very specific circumstances.  If you give me a chance to grab one of a guaranteed future HOFer from a retro-themed set for a dollar though, I'll bite.  Iginla gets no respect it seems.

Not hard to figure out what drew me to this one.  This seller really had a wide variety of cards available, but I certainly didn't expect a new die-cut parallel and hard-signed Whalers autograph. Easily one of this Whalers fan's favorite cards of this post.

Here are a couple more '72 Topps cards.  If I won the lottery, or if I didn't have a hundred other hobby-related projects already in the works, I'd seriously consider pursuing 1972 Topps.  It's just such a beautiful set.

For now, I picked up this pair just because they're relatively high numbers (both 600+) and in great shape.

While it doesn't strictly fit into my collection, I love the Brooklyn Dodgers and just couldn't leave this Duke Snider behind.  I partially grabbed it just because I love Starting Lineup cards, but it was mostly all about that awesome photograph.

Speaking of Starting Lineup cards, here's one last one for tonight.  I collected Will Clark big time as a kid in the early '90s, and I knew I didn't have a copy of this 1991 Starting Lineup card.  A sweet slice of nostalgia that was well worth the 99 cents I paid for it.

I was fortunate to score a couple of nice Red Sox parallels for my team collection as well.  Both of them are blue parallels, with Daisuke Matsuzaka coming from the 2008 Upper Deck Baseball Heroes set...

...and a Blue Refractor of Mike Lowell from 2009 Topps Chrome.

Just two cards left here, and this one might be the best bargain that I got in this particular batch.  The Canvas inserts have been tremendously popular from Upper Deck, and the short-printed retired legends Canvas inserts typically sell fairly well on the secondary market.

I actually had Brett Hull's Canvas SP from the 2011-12 set, but gave it away in an act of kindness to a collector I knew who was working on a 2011-12 Canvas master set.  So, I feel like this one falling into my lap for a buck was in some way a small result of karma.  Cheapest copy on COMC at the time of this post is north of $10.

Lastly, I may not want to drop $70 or more on a Patrik Laine Young Guns rookie card from 2016-17 Upper Deck, but I'll certainly spend a dollar on a rookie year card from the "Update" series of the very same set.  I like the photograph, and it was an easy call picking up a first year card of the sniper for such little coin.

Well, that's a wrap on this bulk lot of singles.  Only took me 9 months to get through it in the end.  About my usual pace, sadly.  See anything here that you would have grabbed for a dollar yourself?

Thanks for stopping by...

2 comments:

Fuji said...

Any post with multiple SLU cards is a winner in my book.

P.S. Those Finest refractors and the 1972 Series Celebration card are sweet too!

Chris said...

Lots of great dollar finds here. Since you asked, I would have picked all of the Red Sox and the Ranheim auto(obvs), plus the Bando and Hull. Maybe the Iginla, too. Those Finest refractors are awesome though. I was a huge fan of mid-'90s finest cards.

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