Cardboard Keepers - My Favorite Card Acquired During Quarantine

Today's post is in response to a prompt by Tim B., who blogs at Cardpocalypse (I Love the Smell of Cardboard in the Morning).  Recently Tim laid out the 7-post Trading Card Challenge depicted above, and invited and encouraged other bloggers to partake.  I'm a little late to the party, but today I'm answering the first challenge, which is my favorite card acquired during quarantine.

Since my wife and I have been fortunate enough not to have our household income impacted by the pandemic to date, something we are incredibly grateful for, I have actually picked up a few different cards during quarantine.  I wanted to select a card that I hadn't already blogged about only recently though, and just yesterday the perfect candidate arrived in my mailbox.

This is a card that in some sense I never even knew existed until I stumbled upon it while browsing eBay, but that I absolutely had to have once I located it.  It was listed for less than $80, but features multiple HOFers, and may be the only copy like it in existence (or one of just a few, at most).  Intrigued?

Well, before we get to the card, the way that I acquired it was actually via an "eBay flip".  I've really been digging this process lately.  As I have been using my increased free time the past few months to fast-track the ongoing purging and thinning down of my collection, I've begun selling cards on eBay and bundling up the proceeds from those sales to acquire fewer but much more significant cards.  The best example yet was when I flipped nearly three dozen graded cards for a Michael Jordan RC.  Today's flip may not exactly be on that level, but I love the end result equally as much.

For this particular acquisition I parted with my 1977, 1978 and 1979 PSA 8-slabbed Yaz cards.  Many years ago I thought I'd try to chase every base card that Yastrzemski had in the Topps, Donruss and Fleer lines from his 1960 RC through his final cards in 1984.  It didn't turn out to be as fun a quest as I'd envisioned, and I'd already sold off some of the '80s graded versions a while ago.  Since I already have all three of these cards in raw form as part of complete sets, it made perfect sense to part with these three.

On their own, each is no more than probably a $15-$20 card in a PSA 8 holder, so for efficiency I batched them up and listed all three together.  Got close to $60 within a few days, which I was more than happy with!

I was still just a few bucks short on covering the cost of today's card after the Yaz sale, so I went ahead and listed one of my two doubles of Mookie Betts' Stadium Club RC.  Mookie's cards haven't been quite as red hot as they were say a year ago, but they still do alright and I hauled in $15 for this base card from just a few years back.  About what I'd expected based on checking the prices of other recently completed auctions prior to listing.

The good news is that was enough that, when paired with the proceeds from the Yaz trio, I was able to click "Buy-It-Now" on today's gem without it truly costing me a dime!

Alright, thanks for sticking with me through that lead-in.  Here's my favorite card acquired during quarantine at last!

Whoa!  I don't even recall what led to me stumbling across this one to be honest with you.  All I know is that, as I mentioned above, the moment I saw it I knew I wanted it in my collection.  For those who aren't hockey card collectors, this is the NHL Goalies Wins Leaders card from the 1971-72 Topps hockey release.  It depicts the top three (or in this case four, since two goalies tied for third place) netminders from the previous year in terms of games won.

Someone took the time to have all four subjects autograph this card, then submit it to PSA for authenticity/slabbing.  The above image is a scan from my flat-bed scanner, but here's a better look courtesy of my iPhone...

There are so many things going for this card.  First of all, I think it's fascinating to consider the amount of effort someone must have gone through to get this signed by all four subject, three of which are enshrined in the Hockey Hall of Fame no less!  I suppose maybe at some point these gentlemen were all at the same event, but it's much more likely that the collector who got this signed had to work it as a long-term project, bringing it to multiple events over an undetermined period of time.  It's fascinating to think about the stories this card could tell.

Secondly, this autograph hunter was apparently a pro because you could not ask for more clear, legible, bold signatures than this.  Even in such limited space, all four signers did great work.  The signatures themselves are fantastic, and they're placed just perfectly to avoid covering their faces even.

Talk about four solid subjects right there.  Of the four, only Ed Johnston is not in the HOF, and he was no slouch with a decades-long career in playing and coaching, two Stanley Cup championships, and is also the last goaltender to play every single minute of every single game for his team for an entire season (in the early '60s).  Cheevers, and of course Esposito, were cardboard heroes of mine and legends in my mind based on sports cards alone when I was a kid collector.

Lastly, this set itself is just fantastic.  If it weren't for the 1979-80 set that many collectors (myself included) feel is the best hockey set ever created, this would be many hockey collectors' favorite set of the '70s.  I know it's my personal favorite from that decade after '79-80.  Plus, during the season this card came out the Bruins won the Stanley Cup behind the play of two of the guys who signed this card.  Simply awesome.

Obviously the back isn't really the star of the show here, but there it is in case you want to see the other guys who racked up some wins in '70-71.

So, there you have it, my favorite card acquired during quarantine.  This is an absolute gem, and goes straight from my mailbox to my "Cardboard Keepers" collection in record time!

I'll try to get to the remaining posts in Tim's challenge in the coming days.  In the meantime, the non-baseball Cardboard Keepers collection is up to 21 cards in size now, and can be viewed here.  I've still got a long way to go, with 979 cards remaining to be selected.  I'll be back soon with the next card or group of cards for that project as well, but until then thanks as always for stopping by!