Cardboard Keepers - My Best Card Flip Ever - Part 2!

Welcome to the conclusion of my best single-card flip ever.  If you missed yesterday's post you can click here to see how I turned the above Kylian Mbappe National Treasures card, which I paid $4.99 for back in July of 2018, into...

...a playing-era Mickey Mantle flagship Topps card...

...a Mario Lemieux O-Pee-Chee rookie card...

...and my oldest Willie Mays card to date!

Any single one of those cards would have been a win for me over the Mbappe as far as appreciating the card and having it fit well into my collection.  To get all three of them was just nuts.  Like I said at the end of yesterday's post though, the market on Mbappe cards is so crazy right now that even those three amazing singles somehow did not deplete all of my profit from the sale.

I have two more significant cards to show today that I grabbed before the well went dry.  First up...

...a 1955 Topps Ted Williams!  I'm still in a bit of disbelief over this one.  I knew I wanted at least one of the cards I bought here to be a significant Red Sox card.  While I briefly debated going for a Carl Yastrzemski RC, my goal for this year was to make some good progress on my 1950s baseball collection.

Ted Williams became the obvious choice in that realm, and I spent a couple of hours hemming and hawing over different examples of his cards from the decade that were available on eBay.  This one was an easy choice after all that research because it immediately becomes my oldest Ted Williams, it's from a set that I've actually made really good progress on and am now more than 25% of the way through with, and lastly...

 ...it's just plain gorgeous!  My 1955 Topps set attempt instantly gains some legit credibility with a pick-up like this.  I had just one other HOFer in the set build prior to this (Ernie Banks), so like the Willie Mays yesterday this instantly becomes my best card from this particular set.  Great feeling to score my most significant 1955 and 1956 Topps cards as a result of this sale.
 

Again, a nice, clean back here.  As with every card in this post, and with just about every card I pick up period nowadays, I really spent a lot of time researching and making sure that I got an example that I'll be happy keeping for the rest of my life, one that I'll never feel the need to upgrade due to an obvious flaw.

Yeah, that Ted Williams is a real beaut', and instantly becomes one of the cornerstones of my Red Sox collection!

One more big gun left here, and it's potentially my favorite of the five I scored as a result of this flip.  I've coveted this particular card for over a dozen years now, and it feels amazing to finally have a copy of my own...

Thanks to the Kylian Mbappe flip I am now the proud owner of a third-year Yogi Berra card!  This card is not only the pinnacle of my very small 1950 Bowman collection, but honestly one of the crown jewels of my entire baseball card collection.

I've mentioned this on the blog before, but one of my earliest childhood card memories was my dad buying me a 1950 Bowman Maurice McDermott at an antiques store in Putnam, CT when I was probably just seven or eight years old.  It cost just a couple bucks I'm sure, but it was my first vintage card and one of the absolute collecting highlights of my youth.  That card and the memory of that day were the catalysts behind my love for the early '50s Bowman sets, as well as my love of baseball cards in general.

Aside from being one of the absolute best, arguably the best, catchers in baseball history, Yogi got one hell of a card in 1950 Bowman.  I love the perfect pose and fantastic look at 1940s catcher's gear here.  Yogi squatting in classic catcher's pose, with his mitt resting on one knee in an open field, backwards hat, ready to throw the ball straight to you.  The trees in the background, mask in the foreground, just wonderful.

Yogi's 1948 (RC) and 1949 Bowman cards are wonderful in their own way, and certainly iconic cards that I'd love to one day own.  For my money though, based on aesthetics alone, his third year card is the best of the three.  This feels as much like a small piece of art as it does a baseball card.

I couldn't be happier with the shape this is in now that I have it in hand.  There's always a degree of risk purchasing high-end cards sight unseen online, and in this case after doing all of my research that risk was a bit greater with the Berra card as the copy I liked best didn't exactly have the most quality scans from the seller.  I went for it though, knowing that eBay protects my purchase in the event that I got a nasty surprise when it arrives.  Centering can be a real issue with these, and this is one of the better examples I've seen in that respect, almost perfect actually.  Bright, vibrant color too, just a stunning card overall.

The reason this one graded a 2 is that there's a crease running from around Yogi's wrist down and to the left border of the card.  It's tougher to make out on the front, but you can see it better here in the upper right on the back.  Again, an amazingly clean and legible back, those reds really still pop even 70 years later.  I absolutely love the fact that the write-up references Yogi coming from the "Missouri sandlots"!

Well, there you have it, the story of how I obtained a 1968 Mickey Mantle, a Mario Lemieux RC, a '56 Mays, '55 Ted Williams, and a 1950 Bowman Berra for about a dollar a piece all said and done.  I'm still in a state of disbelief even now, after receiving positive feedback from the guy I sold the Mbappe to (and even becoming email buddies at that!), and getting my return in hand here.

Sure, there's a chance that Kylian Mbappe becomes the next Pele, and that National Treasures card multiplies in value.  He's still only 21 years old though, so there's also a chance that something like injury derails his career and years from now people are saying "remember when his cards went for insane prices?!?!".  Whichever way it goes, I'll take these five new cards over that one I sold all day long!  Besides, I've got other Mbappe cards...

That's 35 cards down in the baseball Cardboard Keepers collection altogether now, 965 to go.  You can see the virtual album here if you're interested.