COMC Blaster - Preparing for Black Friday

My relatively small COMC Black Friday haul has arrived.  I'm excited to open the box, it's been such a hectic few weeks that I barely remember what I even picked up this year during the promotion.  Before I get to those cards though let's clear out some of my backlog of scans of previous COMC pick-ups.  Buckle up and get ready for a Monday night "COMC Blaster"!

A less common non-sport card kicks off this evening's blaster, showing just how all-over-the-map my COMC purchases tend to be.  I can never seem to get enough of the 1966 Topps Batman sets, and this one was in nice enough shape that I wasn't leaving it behind at $1.45.  I have 9 of these Black Bat cards now, not that bad considering there are just 55 cards on the checklist.

Without looking it up, I'd venture to say that Xander Bogaerts is easily within my top 5 in terms of players I've purchased the most cards of from COMC over the years.  I really, really, really hope the Sox don't deal Xander in the off-season here.  As currently constituted the team is going to get killed by the luxury tax, and I've heard Bogaerts' name thrown out there as someone that may be available.  I hope I'm wrong, as he's been my favorite player since his emergence in 2013, and I've built up a nice collection of his cards over the years.  Shelled out $1.13 for this Blue Refractor from Topps Finest, #'d to /150.

Alright, I know this isn't a particularly attractive card.  My reasoning here is that I was a 12-year-old rabid baseball fan when the Norwich Navigators (AA) team was founded, and a new stadium built only a few towns over from where I grew up.  I have many fond memories of enjoying summer nights of live baseball with my family and friends those first couple of seasons in the mid-'90s.  Worth the 35 cents I paid for the nostalgia factor alone.

Every one of these posts seems like it ends up containing one purchase that, while I don't necessarily regret, I would not make today.  This Bryce Brentz purple parallel from 2015 Bowman, at 48 cents, is that card in tonight's post.

I've shown these Allen & Ginter "Monsters of the Mesozoic" mini inserts before.  I'm fascinated by dinosaurs and plan to complete the 25-card set.  Tonight's post gets me three cards closer with Spinosaurus...

...Pentaceratops...

...and Triceratops.  Total for the trio was $1.56, picked up from the same seller.

The Spinosaurus in particular makes me chuckle.  This past weekend I was corrected by my soon to be 3-year-old nephew at his birthday party when I referred to a dinosaur on his birthday cake as simply a dinosaur.  "That's actually a Spinosaurus" I was told in a very nonchalant manner.  Duly noted!

If you've read any of these COMC Blaster posts here previously, it will probably come as no surprise that I have a few 1959 Topps cards included in tonight's.  I'm working on the set, but it's not my highest priority by any means.  Instead, I'm painstakingly picking away at it at a snail's pace over a period of years.  This Danny O'Connell has a soft lower left corner, but it presents well and that's really all I care about for this project.  64 cents and I took it home, not many remaining cards that I need for my set available at that price point.

Herb Moford checks two boxes, one card closer to a '59 set and also a new Red Sox card.  At 85 cents it's really inexcusable that it took me so long to pick this card up.

Just one more '59.  This one was not so cheap, coming in at $1.75, good for the third most expensive card in this post.  That's because it's a dreaded high number, from the final series of the set.  There's a small surface crease that you can see extends from the 'City' in Kansas City down to the bottom of the card.  Honestly, it looks great to me though, and you don't see cards from that high series in this condition at this price point very often.

One more card towards my crazy pursuit of a complete 2011 Topps Chrome set in Atomic Refractor parallel format.  I'm a whole lot further along than I ever thought I'd be, as Josh Thole here is my 183rd card.  37 left to chase out there.  My cost was 95 cents.  I don't think any of the 37 I have left are available at less than a dollar presently.  This is a project that requires extreme patience.

I grabbed this Xherdan Shaqiri Red & Blue Prizm parallel from the 2014 Prizm World Cup set for a couple of reasons.  First and foremost these parallels are among my favorite soccer cards, period.  Secondly, my favorite club Liverpool picked up Shaqiri for the 2018-19 season.  I've been enjoying watching him play in the club's Premier League fixtures, and wanted to have him somehow represented in my collection.  Mission accomplished for 81 cents.

I probably had ten copies of this 1989-90 Topps sticker insert of the greatest player to ever lace up skates when I was a kid.  I may still have one or two of those with my childhood cards, but wanted a nice mint one for my run of '80s Topps sets that I keep in binders on a bookshelf in my office.  A pretty nice Gretzky that can be had for under a dollar for those who are interested.  I snagged this one for just 74 cents.

Speaking of great ones, here's a cheap addition to my ever-growing Nolan Ryan collection.  I can't say I'm all that big on '88 Fleer, but I will quite literally take any Nolan Ryan card that I don't already own.  The price was certainly right here at just 35 cents.

After a serial-numbered parallel of Xander Bogaerts earlier in the post, here we have just a regular ol' insert from 2016 Donruss.  These were loosely done up in the style of 1982 Donruss, however like most Panini baseball products these days they suffer some from the lack of licensing.  Either way, another Bogaerts card in my quest to maintain the #1 Xander Bogaerts collection on the Trading Card Database.  Only set me back 50 cents too.

You've likely seen one of these 2014 Bowman Chrome Bubbles Refractors here on my blog before.  They're gorgeous if you ask me.  Enough so that I've accumulated 23 of them now, despite their relative scarcity (each is #'d /99).  I always liked Evan Longoria during his tenure with Tampa Bay, and happily spent $1.13 in credit on this one.

Here's a card that maybe outdoes even the Bubbles Refractors in terms of pure shine.  Back in 2015 I got hooked on these Topps Chrome Update cards that were available in the holiday retail boxes at my local Target.  So much so that I completed the 50-card set.  There were a couple of parallels available, this one is obviously the Gold Refractor, numbered to /250.  These parallels have really held their value, so even a guy like Eduardo Rodriguez who doesn't generate a ton of hobby interest still cost me $3.63.  By far the most expensive single card in tonight's post.

Apparently Topps put out a set called Star Wars A New Hope - Black & White sometime this past year.  I don't recall hearing anything about it, but I did like this card when I stumbled across it.  It's actually a Sepia parallel (really Topps?  A Sepia parallel in a set called Black & White?), which I don't care about, I just love the photograph.  Besides, at 75 cents it was a lot cheaper than most of the other cards from this set seemed to be.

Funny, I just showed my first Anders Bjork card a few days ago, sent to me by my pal Kin, and here we have another.  If you like shiny cards like I do, O-Pee-Chee Platinum is good for an interesting parallel or two each year it seems.  From last year's set, I particularly like these "Violet Pixels" parallels.  Thanks to the e-Pack promotion between Upper Deck and COMC the majority are available for less than 50 cents too, although I paid $.75 for Bjork.

Throwback to my childhood here.  I know I had this one as a kid, and for 43 cents I can now say that I own it as an adult as well.  I can understand that they're not for everyone, but I was at the perfect age to really enjoy the caricature-style All-Star subsets in those early '90s Score releases.

Finally, how about one more nice Nolan Ryan?  ---insert obligatory comment about how I would love to own every Cognac parallel in existence---  I'd been looking for a copy of this Ryan in particular for a very long time, but refused to pay north of $5 for one.  Patience paid off when a seller accepted my low-ball best offer of $2.25.  Score!

That last Nolan Ryan actually takes our running total for tonight up to $20.50.  Whoops, went over by two quarters there!  Let's pretend I used a 50 cents off coupon and call it a blaster, okay?  Hope you saw one or two cards that interested you, and either way thanks for stopping by!