COMC Black Friday 2019 Countdown - Part 1

This year I once again participated in COMC's Black Friday through Cyber Monday annual sale.  I didn't go too crazy, and a few buybacks aside (which will be featured in a future post) I ended up taking home 55 singles over the course of the four-day sale.  Not a single card even reached double digits in price, and most were had for mere pocket change.

My shipment has arrived, and I thought it might be fun this year to do a countdown of my favorite purchases from the weekend.  In part 1 of 2 tonight we'll look at cards #55 through #26 from my spoils.

Get your popcorn ready, and prepare to see some of my Black Friday pick-ups.  Let's get on with it!

#55 - 1973 Topps Marty Pattin - $.55

One pattern that you'll note over these two posts is that I made an effort to get a little further along with some 1970s Red Sox team sets.  It's really inexcusable that after all these years of collecting I still haven't managed to knock off the Red Sox team sets from some of my favorite flagship Topps sets.  I snagged a few '73s towards this goal over the weekend, and Marty Pattin here represents the first.

#54 - 2019 Topps Chrome Sapphire Edition Eduardo Nunez - $.58

I've gone on record many times admitting that I'm an absolute sucker for the Topps Chrome "Atomic Refractor" technology.  Imagine my surprise when I discovered that they were rebranded as "Sapphire Edition" cards for 2019, and were available cheaply!  I grabbed a small handful of Red Sox in a package deal, so you'll see a couple more of these coming up.

#53 - 1973 Topps Bob Veale - $.50

While browsing the site during the sale, I had another browser tab open with my collection on The Trading Card Database, so that I could easily determine which cards were needs.  I could have sworn that I had this '73 Bob Veale already, but TCDB said otherwise.  It turns out that the copy I had was in buyback format.  Nice to add the regular old base card to my collection at last.

#52 - 1988 Donruss Nolan Ryan - $.45

My pick-ups over the course of the sale weren't all baseball, but they were certainly mostly baseball.  One of the things I did was to search for some of my favorite childhood players and pluck some low-hanging fruit to flesh out my player collections of those guys a bit.  That was absolutely the rationale behind this 45-cent Nolan Ryan.

#51 - 2019 Topps Chrome Sapphire Edition Rick Porcello - $.48

Yep, another "Sapphire Edition" card.  Just look at this shiny thing of beauty!  48 cents?  Are you kidding me?  If you enjoy sparkly cardboard I can't recommend these enough.

#50 - 1972 Topps Bobby Bolin - $.70

1972 Topps is another release I tried to do some damage to with respect to my team set.  This one's a total pain due to the brutal high number cards, but Bobby Bolin here isn't one of those so I picked up this totally mint copy for just 70 cents.

#49 - 2018 Topps Archives Nolan Ryan - $.65

Baseball absolutely dominated my purchases over the course of this year's sale.  I did manage to get some good variety in within that one sport though, with cards in my haul from every decade between the 1950s and the 2010s.  This 2018 Nolan Ryan had an image that I don't ever recall having seen before, and was just too cool to pass up.  The 115th unique Nolan Ryan card in my collection now.

#48 - 2019 Topps Chrome Sapphire Edition Bobby Poyner - $.48

I get really excited when I'm able to add cards of random bullpen arms to my team collection.  Sure, getting your 150th David Ortiz card is nice and all, but I enjoy getting a card of Bobby Poyner equally as much.

#47 - 1959 Topps Dan Kravitz - $1.46

I made some good headway in my 1959 Topps set quest this year.  I could have done more damage in terms of sheer cards hauled in had I gone with some cheaper low-series cards, but instead I took the approach of trying to add some tougher high-numbers to my set binder.  Love this shot of catcher Dan Kravitz at Seals Stadium.

#46 - 1985 Topps Cal Ripken Jr - $.94

Cal Ripken Jr was another player who, like Nolan Ryan, I pretty much worshiped as a kid.  I turned an impressionable 13 years old only days before Cal broke Lou Gehrig's consecutive games played record, so it's not a big surprise I suppose.  I'd like to collect all of Cal's mainstream (Topps, Donruss, Fleer, Score, Upper Deck) cards from the 1980s, and didn't have a copy of this one yet.

#45 - 2006 Topps Heritage Mike Lowell - $.76

A recent cube of Red Sox cards that I received in trade from Billy Kingsley reminded me of how much I enjoy the 2006 Topps Heritage set.  Because of that, I searched out a couple of Red Sox from the release over the course of the sale.  Great picture of World Series MVP Mike Lowell here!

#44 - 1973 Topps ERA Leaders (Carlton/Tiant) - $.52

A couple of solid arms on this card!  I'm really glad I targeted some key vintage team set needs because there were some very reasonable prices to be had.  You'll see Luis Tiant again further down the countdown...

#43 - 2019 Topps Chrome Sapphire Edition Ryan Brasier - $.57

Another great bullpen card for this happy team collector.  Ryan made 62 appearances for Boston in 2019, all in relief.  If you get the call that many times, you absolutely deserve a trading card.  Thank you, Topps.  I swear this is the final of these Sapphire Edition cards you'll see in the countdown.  Very happy with the four I landed though, and will probably seek out more.

#42 - 1986 Donruss Cal Ripken Jr - $.95

Another Ripken, and one I have virtually zero recollection of.  We all have those cards from when we were growing up that are forever imprinted in our minds, but this is not one of those cards for me.  Still, another card closer to that goal of obtaining all the '80s Ripkens.

#41 - 1959 Topps Harry Bright - $1.93

Another '59 and you guessed it, another tough high number.  I didn't realize when I started on this beast of a set years ago just what a challenge it would be.  Part of the problem is that I just have way too many hobby interests, but equally problematic is the sheer size and difficulty of the set.  I consider it a lifelong collecting endeavor though, and sliding a high-series card like this into its binder slot feels very satisfying, even if it is only the second card in its 9-card sheet so far.  A long way to go still...

#40 - 1985 Topps Nolan Ryan Record Breaker - $.57

As a Nolan Ryan collector, I can't believe I was missing the Record Breaker subset card commemorating his ascending to the top spot on the career strikeouts list.  For 57 cents that problem was remedied here; thank you COMC!

#39 - 2011 Topps Chrome Atomic Refractor Hunter Pence (#'d /225) - $1.84

The 2011 Topps Chrome Atomic Refractors are just stunning, and I got one card closer in my insane attempt to knock off the 220-card set with this Hunter Pence.  I long ago abandoned my threshold of $1.00-or-less for singles I still need, and was willing to pony up nearly twice that to cross this number off my want list.  The problem is, most of the 24 cards I have still to go are not available on the site for any price.

#38 - 2006 Topps Heritage Trot Nixon - $.46

Here's the other 2006 Topps Heritage card I picked up that weekend.  Trot was a fan favorite, and has gotten some attention a few times of late here on the blog.  Good stuff.

#37 - 1959 Topps Gene Snyder - $2.27

Another '59, another high-number.  I'm pleased with myself that I was able to stay focused enough during the sale to land as many of these as I did.  This Gene Snyder in incredible condition was a real steal at $2.27, compared to what these typically go for.  Love the contrast between the pink and blue.

#36 - 1986 Topps Cal Ripken Jr - $.55

Just another classic Ripken here.  After the dust has settled on this order I really need to see what I'm still missing for his early-career cards.  It's probably a small enough list at this point that I could consider wiping out the rest of them in my next order.  I don't love too many '86 Topps cards, but I have to admit I find this one aesthetically pleasing.

#35 - 1965 Topps Bill Monbouquette - $1.00

As time has gone by, the 1965 Topps set has really grown on me.  It's a top-three set from the decade if I were to rank them.  My logic here was that I'd have plucked this beautiful Bill Monbouquette from a dollar box any day of the week, so why not shell out a buck for it during the sale?

#34 - 1971 O-Pee-Chee Rick Monday - $.56

If I had more money and more time, I'd have liked to have plucked more '71 OPC baseball.  As it was I scored just two of them during the sale, with Rick Monday here being the first.  The front of the card is nice and all...

...but '71 OPC is all about those glorious floating head backs.  The greatest baseball card backs of all-time?  Perhaps!

#33 - 1994 SP Die-Cut Cal Ripken Jr - $.67

Even though I don't have the same aspirations of collecting Cal's 1990s cards as I do his 1980s releases, I couldn't leave this one behind.  I would have killed for this die-cut back in the summer of '94, so it felt pretty satisfying to bring it home all these years later for 67 cents.  One of my sneaky, under-rated favorite pick-ups of the sale this year, as odd as that sounds.

#32 - 1987 Leaf Nolan Ryan - $.63

I enjoy the Leaf baseball releases of the '80s, and so I happily added this '87 Nolan Ryan to its Donruss counterpart within my collection.  You'll see at least one more '80s Leaf card later in the countdown.

#31 - 2019 Topps Chrome Sepia Refractor Xander Bogaerts - $1.35

Oddly enough, the only card that I purchased of my current favorite player Xander Bogaerts over the course of this year's sale was this Sepia Refractor.  I did really well with some pick-ups of another young Boston star, but you won't see those cards until the second part in this series.

#30 - 1984 Topps Cal Ripken Jr All-Star - $.61

Yeah, I guess I really went a little nuts with Ripken that weekend.  After this '84 All-Star subset card there's only one left in the stack still to be featured, so the second and final post in this series won't be as Cal-heavy as this one was.  The handful of Ripkens in tonight's post put me at 48 and counting in my collection on TCDB, just outside being a top-20 player for me as far as baseball goes.

#29 - 1959 Topps Larry "Bobo" Osborne - $1.72

Here's the final '59 card in tonight's portion of the countdown.  I wish I could buy the rest of the high-series commons I still need in this shape for less than $2; I'd fill up my cart and check out right now.  I'm closing in on the 60% complete mark for this set overall now, by far my most complete set of the '50s at this stage.

#28 - 1994 Stadium Club 1st Day Issue Jeffrey McNeely - $.74

Surprised I have this one ranked as high as I do?  1994 Stadium Club is a total guilty pleasure set for me, and one that I have very fond memories of from childhood.  The 1st Day Issue parallels in particular were absolute gold growing up.  I loved the players who had their debut date from the previous season listed on their cards as well, so to have both those things converge on a Red Sox card for less than a dollar was just perfect.

#27 - 2007 Goudey Al Kaline - $2.75

The very first set that I picked up a pack of when I returned to collecting as an adult in 2007 was this Goudey release from Upper Deck.  The 88 short-printed high numbers in the set are so brutally difficult to find on the cheap that I'm still working away at completing the set all these years later.  I've eyed this Al Kaline for years now, and when I realized I was probably never going to find a copy for cheaper than the $2.75 this one was on sale for, I finally went for it.

#26 - 1973 Topps Luis Tiant - $.85

We started tonight's post with a 1973 Topps card, and we'll end with one as well.  I have no idea what's going on with Tiant in this picture, that's certainly an odd facial expression.  A beautiful and colorful card though of one of the most charismatic players in the game during this era.

So, there are the first 30 cards that I plucked over the course of the weekend a few weeks back.  I hope you saw a card or two that interested you.  I'll be back soon with the second part of my haul, featuring #'s 25 through 1, soon.  In the meantime, thanks as always for stopping by!

Did you participate in the COMC Black Friday promotion?  If so I'd love to hear about your haul (or see a link to your post) in the comments!