COMC Blaster - Touching the Five Major Sports

Today's "COMC Blaster" post will touch on all five major North American sports; baseball, football, basketball, hockey, and even soccer.  Let's dive right in and see what $20 of store credit netted me this time around...

We'll start off with what might be the star of the show today, aesthetically speaking.  I rag on Topps every so often for their generally uninspired inserts over the last number of years, so I have to give credit where credit is due with respect to this Turkey Red insert from about a decade ago.

This Yogi Berra is so visually stunning that I knew I wanted a copy the moment I saw it, even though it's not a strict fit for my collection generally speaking.  Between this card and the fantastic vintage Berra that I recently scored, my small collection of Yogi is looking pretty good these days.  Maybe the smartest 75 cents spent in today's post!

Moving on, here's a Young Guns hockey rookie card of a player that casual fans of the game may not be familiar with, Noel Acciari.  This one cost me just 40 cents, since modern day Upper Deck cards are so prevalent on COMC.  Aside from being a Bruins rookie I didn't have, what was my interest in this card?  Well, we'll have to flip it over to see...

To the right of the Bruins logo we see that Noel Acciari was born in Johnston, RI, which just so happens to be the town where I live and have owned a home for about 12 years now!  Noel grew up right here in Johnston, and as the back of the card indicates played his college hockey in my small state as well.

Primarily a fourth line scrapper with Boston, Noel did show flashes of goal-scoring capability.  He signed with the Florida Panthers for the 2019-20 season and really blossomed.  In fact, he had reached the 20-goal plateau for Florida before the damn coronavirus shut the NHL season down.

A nice personal connection to this card made it a no-brainer for 40 cents...

Surprise, surprise, 1954 Bowman.  I feel like I've been featuring this set a ton on my blog lately.  Two more nice singles bite the dust here, with Sid Gordon setting me back $1.15...

...and Al Robertson and his glorious catcher's mitt just 92 cents.  How on earth does a card this old and beautiful cost less than a dollar?  I'd also like to note what fantastic penmanship both of these '54 Bowman subjects had.

Let's transition to basketball briefly, with the "I'm not collecting them, yet they somehow keep appearing" 1970-71 Topps tallboy set.  I don't know the first thing about center Darrall Imhoff, but I know these cards just fascinate me.  While this card won't be sent off to PSA for grading any time soon, it's in pretty good condition given that it set me back just 59 cents!

I always show the backs of these too.  Did Imhoff really head the 76ers' season ticket staff?

We covered baseball, basketball and hockey so far, let's finish things off with the two versions of football.  First, the global "football" with this Donruss Optic Holo Antoine Griezmann.  Antoine is one of the top few dozen football players in the world, and was a big part of France's 2018 World Cup-winning national team.  A cool, obscure single for my steadily growing soccer collection for a mere 60 cents.

Then we have a card from the North American football front, a buyback of Patriots wideout Stanley Morgan!  I don't have more than a few of these Topps football buybacks, they're not as much a collecting interest for me and also seem far less prevalent than the baseball ones.  For $1.39 I've now acquired my fourth one.

I love Atomic Refractors, which is basically what these 2019 Topps Chrome Sapphire cards are.  Long-term I'd love to complete a Red Sox team set, but for now I'm content just plucking low hanging fruit from time to time.  Can't go wrong for 48 cents.

While we're on the shiny card theme, how about a few more of these 2014 Finest X-Fractors?  In this latest blaster we have Ryan Braun at 75 cents...

...and Braves star Freddie Freeman at a whopping $2.27.  I have to say, Freeman certainly has some dedicated collectors and fans out there, as his cards seem to demand a premium on the rare occasion when I need to acquire one for a project like this.  As much as I was hoping I could score this card for less than a dollar some day, it just wasn't happening, so I pulled the trigger at $2 and change.

One more X-Fractor, again 75 cents.  This trio has me at 60 out of 100 of these in hand (or, in binder).  When shipping from COMC becomes a thing again I've really got to try to put this project to bed once and for all.

The best bargain of today's post is this card, by a long shot.  I picked up this blue holofoil parallel of Xander Bogaerts' 2014 Topps Opening Day RC back in 2015, for just $2.38.  Nowadays this is more like a $20 card when you stumble across it.  The crazy thing is that I had one on my eBay watch list and had nearly pulled the trigger before pulling this from my COMC backlog for today's post.  Forgot that I'd already purchased it, that was a close one!

Here's the back, though it's difficult to make out this is serial-numbered to /2014 in the upper right there.  Awesome to land yet another variation of Xander's Topps rookie card!

I've been a fan of Rick Wise's since learning of his two-home-run no-hit performance in the early '70s.  Doesn't hurt that he was the winning pitcher for the Red Sox in what some consider the greatest World Series game ever played, either.  Somehow I'd yet to acquire his 1970 Topps card, a beauty at that, until now.  For 67 cents that wrong has been righted!

Hey now!  Here's something you don't see too often in these COMC posts.  My decision to sell my graded 1953 Topps commons last year really liberated me in a sense, and I've been having a blast collecting the set in much cheaper, raw format.  I'm not looking to pay a premium for mint cards, as long as they look visually appealing and don't suffer any major damage like holes, missing pieces, etc.

Joe Rossi was a single I needed, available for the very reasonable price (in this condition) of $2.45.

One of the greatest card back designs of all-time.  This card is significant as it now puts me over the 25% complete mark as far as my second run at this set goes!

Just so happened to pluck a trio of Red Sox cards from my "to be posted" stash next, starting off with this Black Refractor (#'d /100) of Clay Buchholz.  Any numbered Topps Chrome Refractor of a Red Sox player from the 2010-2015 sets that can be had for less than a dollar is probably going into my inventory.  Clay was 85 cents, and is just my second Black Refractor from the 2012 set.

I actually paid 90 cents for this Bryce Brentz Sepia Refractor from 2015 Topps Chrome.  Between this card and the Rusney Castillo that was in my last COMC blaster, I'm getting really close to a complete team set of these.  I believe I have just two more to track down, one being Dustin Pedroia.

Closing out today's proceedings is yet another '53 Topps card!  This one does double duty towards my set build and my Red Sox team collection.  This was purchased from the same seller as the Joe Rossi above, and for the same price ($2.45).  Just awesome.

This is actually also a significant card in my '53 set build, as it's the 70th card to enter my second iteration of the set!  While I don't consider myself a set builder at all when it comes to modern products, it's an awful lot of fun to pick an older set to go for casually, without being too worried about condition.  The pair of '53s in today's post has really motivated me to keep going in this quest.

That brings our running total to $19.75, so we'll call it there for today.  Certainly a random mix of cardboard in today's blaster, hopefully you saw at least a card or two that you found interesting.

Sheltering in place has resulted in more free time for me, which has benefited me in many ways.  One of those ways is increased posting here on the blog.  This is the 12th consecutive day that I've posted now, which I think is the longest streak for me in well over a year.  I've got plenty of other great cards to get to and hope to keep extending this streak.  Upcoming posts include my first purchase direct from Topps in years, another amazing eBay flip of a soccer card for a playing-era HOFer, and much more.

I hope you'll continue to check in and read along, and thanks as always for stopping by!