Signature Sundays - Calle Johansson

We're back this week with another autographed card from the set that started it all for me on the hockey side of the house, 1989-90 Topps/O-Pee-Chee!

I have both the '89-90 Topps and O-Pee-Chee complete sets these days (they're cheap enough and easy to find), plus my original binder of childhood cards as well.  Since this was before the days of tough-to-find hits and inserts, I'd pretty much collected these two releases as much as anyone could.  A while back I got to thinking though, and as a new way to enjoy these sets all over again I've been picking up some autographed cards here and there.

This "Super Break Certified" Calle Johansson is my latest example, at $2.50 with free shipping courtesy of eBay.  While he may be a name that modern fans of the game don't instantly recognize (unless they happen to collect junk-wax-era hockey cards), Calle carved out a lengthy 17-year career manning the blue line at the NHL level.  He may never have been the top defenseman on a Capitals team that had some great ones over the years (Scott Stevens, Rod Langway, Al Iafrate to name just a few), but he was an integral part of the team for a decade and a half nonetheless.  They don't keep you around that long unless you're providing real value.

Man, these card backs take me back!  Calle was a Valentine's Day baby, meaning my buddy Douglas of Sportscards from the Dollar Store collects him as part of his shared birthday collection.

A nice signature from Calle here in bold, blue marker.  Very pleased to add this one to my slowly growing collection of these '89-90 autographs.

For the first time I tallied these up earlier this morning, and I'm now up to 17 autographed 1989-90 hockey cards in my small sub-collection.  For those who are curious, I've started a Google Photos album to keep track of them as I (hopefully) get more over time.  You can see the current set of 17 here.

Have you ever started a collection of autographed cards from a particular set?  If so I'd love to hear about your experience in the comments.  Thanks as always for stopping by, and enjoy your Sunday!

Cardboard Finance - An Investment Time Capsule

During the course of last year, I took an increased interest in the financial side of this hobby that I enjoy so much.  Yes, I know that baseball cards are supposed to be fun (they sure are to me!), and that some consider it sacrilege to even mention something like dollars and cents in the same sentence as baseball cards.  To each his own!

I'm a nerd who works on computers for a living, and an amateur math geek to boot (probably one of the many reasons I enjoy baseball so much), and I can't help that I've got an interest in finances as well as sports cards.  I'm sure the fact that I'm a child of the late '80s/early '90s, when the hobby was in the first stages of "investment frenzy" mode, may contribute to my curiosity about how these two passions intersect as well.

Anyway, last year I sold off some parts of my collection that I realized I wasn't enjoying as much any longer, and used most of the proceeds to bulk up my small, start-up investment portfolio.  I learned a lot through the process about investing, which was cool given that it's a topic I was pretty much totally ignorant on up until a couple of years ago (and am now only mostly ignorant on).

During that process I realized that, while not my intention, I'd turned a tidy profit on some of the cards I'd sold since purchasing them about a decade earlier.  It brought up a question in my mind that I've tossed around a few times, and that is "If done carefully and knowledgeably, is it viable to think one could make a solid profit investing in baseball cards?".  Is it any crazier to put your financial faith in your favorite player's rookie card than it is to put it into a faceless, emotionless mega-corporation?

My gut instinct answer to the question is that yes, baseball cards can be profitable, but only in very select circumstances.  With few exceptions, I don't think buying tons of modern unopened product and locking it away for the future is ever going to work (unless you were smart enough to snatch up and sit on, say, a case of 2011 Topps Update baseball!).  Didn't work out for the folks who did it during the '80s and '90s craze I mentioned above, wouldn't work out now.

I do firmly believe, however, that certain cards will absolutely increase in value predictably and significantly in the coming years.  For example, I'd bet that if you had the means to pick up a mid-grade Michael Jordan Fleer RC today, which will run you around $1,500, that it will be worth at least twice that amount within a decade.  Obviously nobody knows for sure, but I've seen it happen time and time again with key, iconic cards of the greats of the game within my own collection over the years.  Think Mike Trout's 2011 Topps Update RC.  Connor McDavid's Young Guns RC on the hockey side, or the Wayne Gretzky at the top of this post.  Those types of cards.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to test the validity of sports card investing through a real-world experiment, one that I know at least one other blogger (Fuji) has considered as well.  Throughout the course of last year I worked slowly at accumulating a dozen different cards that I predict will increase in value over the next few years, with the thought of locking them up in a "time capsule" and revisiting them down the line to see how my "investments" have done.

As the calendar flipped to January of 2020, I attached a post-it note to each of the twelve cards indicating what date in 2019 I purchased them on, where I picked each one up (eBay or COMC), and most importantly what I paid for each.  I then bundled them up and stashed them away in this old Calvin Klein cologne box I've kept lying around because it's sort of a cool storage mechanism.  It's going to serve as my time capsule for these dozen cards for the next five years!

Now, obviously I'm not in a financial situation where I was able to stuff this thing full of Mike Trout and Michael Jordan RCs by any means.  I don't think those are the only types of cards that could become profitable either, though.  The selections I've packed away here were acquired from January through the end of December of last year, and ran me anywhere from $1.50 on the low end, to one significant card that went well into the triple digits.

My plan is to open this box in January of 2025, five years from now, and do a series of blog posts covering the results of how my "cardboard portfolio" performed.  I think it will be a fun exercise, and an interesting real-world test.  Maybe I'll be able to prove that an informed collector can make for an effective investor, or maybe we'll validate once and for all what many claim is true; tangible items like sports cards and art are almost never good investments.

Or, maybe the truth will land somewhere in the middle.  I think this is the most likely outcome.  There are one or two cards in the time capsule that I feel fairly confident will be solid picks and perform well, and then there are a couple of others that I'm unsure about at best, but were fun to include anyway.

That's all for now.  So begins the most drawn-out two-post series in the history of card blogging?  I'm not sure, but if you're still around and I'm still around (and blogging is still a thing), check back in January of 2025 and we can see how I did!

Until then...

Cardboard Keepers - T206 Red Sox!

Time for the next installment of "Cardboard Keepers", a thought experiment where I theoretically whittle my entire collection down to just 2,000 cards; 1,000 baseball keepers and 1,000 other keepers.

For this installment we go way back to feature some of the oldest Red Sox cards in my collection, from the infamous T206 tobacco card set!

We'll start things off with my newest acquisition, and a card that has yet to see the light of day on the blog until now, Heinie Wagner!  There are two different versions of Wagner T206 cards out there, with this one being the "Bat on Left Shoulder" variant as indicated by the PSA label.  This is one of my better-condition T206 cards for sure, a real beauty.

Heinie was a longtime member of the Red Sox, winning four World Series championships as a member of the club including the 1912 championship when he served as team captain.  He later served as the team's manager for the 1930 season as well.  He was known for being a strong fielder, who was fleet of foot.  In fact, his 141 stolen bases in a Red Sox uniform are still good enough for Wagner to hold 5th place on the team's all-time leader board at the time of this post.

Clean Sweet Caporal back on this one.  I don't pay attention to the many available back variants in this legendary set, I only hope to acquire one card of each Red Sox subject regardless of the brand name on the back.  Speaking of which, I'm inducting not just this card to the Cardboard Keepers collection, but also the other seven Red Sox I have from this set that have already been shown here in the past.

In alphabetical order by subject, here are those seven cards...

Red Kleinow is my personal favorite due to that awesome mask!

It's easy to see why this set remains one of the most prized baseball card releases in existence, more than 100 years after people were pulling these little gems out of cigarette packs.  These eight cards absolutely deserve a spot in this project!

That's 26 cards down in the baseball Cardboard Keepers collection altogether now, 974 to go.  You can see the virtual album here if you're interested.

I'll be back with more keepers soon, in the meantime thanks for stopping by!

Grabbing Gretzky's - Graded Sticker

Time for the next installment of "Grabbing Gretzkys", where I highlight new pick-ups of the most prominently-featured player in my hockey card collection, the great Wayne Gretzky.  Today's card is actually a sticker that I grabbed late last year just because it was dirt cheap:

This is from the one-per-pack sticker insert set that was included in 1987-88 Topps hockey.  As was customary for the time period the first few cards in the set feature the previous season's All-Star starters, and the remainder of the set is comprised of team logo stickers.

I've actually got the entire 33-card '87-88 sticker set already, and have it in the binder with my 1987-88 Topps set, so this isn't a new Gretzky for me per se.  I like it enough though that I couldn't resist a graded copy for my Gretzky collection since the price was right.

Here's a look at the back, which was fairly standard across a few of these sticker insert sets at the time.

1987-88 was another dominant season for Wayne, as he led the league with 109 assists, and finished second in points with 149 (bested by Mario Lemieux!).  To be fair, Gretzky appeared in only 64 games that year, the lowest total of his career up until that time.  These days a 100-point season is considered incredible, back then Wayne was putting up 100 assists despite missing a decent chunk of time.  Incredible.

That's all for today, maybe not an earth-shattering addition to my Gretzky collection or anything, but a satisfying cheap pick-up nonetheless.  I've got a few more of Wayne's cards to show off throughout the course of the year, but this was a nice way to ease in.

Thanks as always for stopping by!

One Card Post - Dineen RC at Last!

What:  1985-86 O-Pee-Chee #34 - Kevin Dineen RC
Where:  COMC
How Much?:  $2.50

Why?:  Completely inexcusable that I call myself a Whalers collector, yet never tracked down a copy of Kevin Dineen's O-Pee-Chee rookie card until now.  One of the best players in franchise history, longtime captain of the team, and fan favorite.  I'm not sure it's possible to make a better contribution to my Hartford Whalers collection for $2.50 than this card.

Hockey Cards from the Dollar Store

With just a day or two left in 2019, and finally caught up on posts thanking folks for inbound trade packages, I checked the mail to find a large bubble mailer from Canada awaiting me.  A quick look at the address and I knew instantly that my longtime hobby friend Douglas of Sportscards from the Dollar Store had struck again!

This was a hefty mailer too, a brick almost, which I really appreciate especially given the insane postage costs to ship between our two countries.  There were too many cards to lump into a single post, so I'm going to break things down into a few smaller posts instead.  First up, the hockey cards!

I'm certain that Douglas has busted more 2013-14 Panini Rookie Anthology than pretty much any other human being on the planet.  If you read his blog then you know that he's been through multiple cases of the stuff by this point.  I've been the beneficiary of many of his Score Update and Score Update Hot Rookies cards from those breaks to help bolster my set.

This time around Douglas threw in an entire 100-card base set of Rookie Anthology!  How awesome is that?  It's not every day that you receive a complete set by surprise in the mail.  Since I'm trying to downsize my collection and be a little more selective about what I hang onto these days I'll probably enjoy these for a while and then pay it forward to another hockey collector.  Very cool.

Somehow, some way, Douglas continues to be a source for Hartford Whalers cards that I don't already have.  Or, in this case, Hartford Whalers cards I never even knew existed!  When this very small sticker fell out of the package, wrapped individually in cellophane, I had no clue what it was or how to go about cataloging it.

Thanks to The Trading Card Database, I discovered that it's a 1988-89 Frito-Lay Sticker!  What an amazing Ron Francis oddball for my team collection.  I'm very surprised I'd never heard of these before.  Looks like there is one other Whaler on the checklist to track down at some point.

The Frito-Lay Francis (that has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?) wasn't the only food-related card to be found, as I also received this awesome 1991-92 Kraft Pat Verbeek.  These could be hand-cut from various Kraft products at the time I believe.  Again, I didn't have a single one of these for my Whalers collection until now.

Rounding out the new Hartford cards is this 1990-91 Upper Deck Daryl Reaugh RC.  What's that, you'd assume a Whalers collector such as myself would already have owned a copy of this?  Well I do, but this is the French version!  Just my second card from the French team set believe it or not.  I should really get on Sportlots at some point and just knock the rest of that out, at probably 18 cents per card.

Three much-appreciated additions to my favorite hockey collection there!  There was more hockey to be found, however, including a few that are absolute keepers going into my collection despite my downsizing.  Those would include...

...a couple of cards of Jake DeBrusk.  He seems streaky and certainly has cold stretches, but I enjoy this kid's game overall and when he's on he can be every bit as dynamic and exciting as the first line forwards that are the darlings of the league.  Douglas threw in this Factory Set Blue parallel of his 2018-19 Upper Deck MVP card...

...and his base card from 2019-20 Upper Deck.  This will show you how little modern product I seem to pick up these days; this is my very first 2019-20 hockey card, period!  I actually had to create the '2019' folder on my hard drive to store the scan.  Kinda sad that it took me until January to do that.  This wasn't the only 2019-20 Upper Deck card I found in the mailer though.

I also received this Teuvo Teravainen, which I've wanted badly since learning of its existence.  The obvious reason why is that the photo is from one of two games last year where the Hurricanes donned the old Hartford Whalers sweaters against the Boston Bruins (once at home, and once on the road in Boston).  I knew about this card but hadn't picked it up yet because it was going for more than a base common should on COMC.

This one had completely slipped past me though!  Had no idea that Dougie Hamilton's card featured him in Whalers gear, but this is great!  It's actually my favorite of the two because you get a great look at the bench full of "Whalers" in the background there.  Based on the way Upper Deck cropped these photos, I'm wondering if they are avoiding showing the logo for legal or other reasons.

These technically don't count as Whalers cards for my collection on TCDB, but I will absolutely cherish them nonetheless.  There's a 50/50 chance I could have been at the game when either of these photos were taken, too!  I think the Dougie Hamilton photo came from Carolina though based on the red trim along the top of the boards there.

Finally, as I mentioned at the outset of the post, I've been the lucky recipient of a whole lot of Rookie Anthology Score cards from Douglas over the years.  This time was no different, as I got a pair from the Score Update portion of the set, headlined by this awesome Bobby Ryan photograph.  It's widely known that Bobby's had a tough life, and has been going through some struggles lately.  I hope he's able to get well and eventually return to the game.

The other Update card was Mason Raymond of the Leafs.  With this pair in the set I now have 32 of the 35 Update cards.  I'm eyeing the final three on COMC, which is pretty incredible given how long I've been at this set.

The very end of the Score master set contains 65 Hot Rookies from Rookie Anthology.  I was at the point where I was missing only four to complete the run.

Well, guess how many Douglas included in this package?

Yep, four!

The Hot Rookies portion of my set is done at last!

After all these years of collecting the 2013-14 Score set, the end is finally in sight.  According to my collection on TCDB I'm missing only those three Update cards, and a single card from the 650-card basic set (the Maple Leafs leaders card, oddly enough).  I'm pretty sure I have that Leafs card around here somewhere, if I can put those final three Update cards to rest I'll complete probably the toughest hockey card set I've done in the past few years!  I wouldn't even be remotely close if it weren't for Douglas and his ongoing generosity.

So, there are some great hockey cards from Canada.  Thanks Douglas for all of these, and as I said this is only the tip of the iceberg as far as this package goes overall.  I'll be back with more soon!

Signature Sundays - Ray Bourque

Coming out with a big gun for the first Signature Sundays post of the year, and of the decade.  Yes, it's one of the all-time great defensemen in NHL history, Bruins fan favorite and member of the hockey Hall of Fame, Ray Bourque!

I'm genuinely ecstatic to have obtained a copy of this card.  Though I was a die-hard Whalers fan for much of Ray Bourque's NHL career, even I had to respect the clear-cut best defender (and best overall player) on their arch-rival team, the Boston Bruins.  Ray's legendary career in Boston included over 1,500 points scored in over 1,500 games played.  To this day he has more career goals, assists, and points than any other defenseman in NHL history.

Bourque won a Calder Trophy as Rookie of the Year, five Norris Trophies (awarded to the NHL's top defenseman, if you didn't know), and finished in second place for the Norris a further six times.  Just let that sync in for a minute.  If you ask Ray though I'm sure the one statistic that stands out above all others is the single Stanley Cup that he won at long last in the final game of his career, with the Colorado Avalanche.

As for the card, this is my latest in a small grouping of these '92-93 Fleer Ultra buyback autos that were included in the 2016-17 Fleer Showcase set from Upper Deck.  The standard buybacks and these autographed ones were tough pulls, serial-numbered to just /25 each (tough to see the numbering along the lower left edge of the card, but this one's 11/25).  A nice on-card autograph, and Ray did a great job keeping it within one of the lighter sections of an overall darker photograph.

As is customary with early '90s Ultra, I have to show the fantastic card back.  The only difference here from the original is the authentication hologram from Upper Deck.  Which of course...

...links the card with the associated CoA.

Generic, boilerplate language on the back of the CoA.  You get the drift...

So, there's one of my absolute greatest hockey autograph scores of the past few years.  I can't promise that every Signature Sundays post this year will be this exciting (or even half this exciting), but I wanted to kick things off with a significant one.  I'd say this fits the bill, and there's a high likelihood that this card will make another appearance at the end of the year in my "Top 20 of 2020" countdown.

Thanks as always for stopping by.  I've got more content queued up for throughout the coming week, and another autograph ready to go for next Sunday, so swing on by any time.  Until then!

COMC Blaster - First of the Decade

I've been doing these "COMC Blaster" posts for years now; the basic idea is that I take the $20 I would have spent on a retail blaster at Target and see how far I can stretch it on COMC instead.  Let's get right to the first COMC Blaster of the decade here...

1966 Topps Batman Black Bat The Joker in Jail - $1.25

Going random right out of the gate.  Like many collectors, I enjoy the affordable Batman cards that Topps produced in the 1960s.  I wouldn't say I'm pursuing any set fervently, but I occasionally search for them and grab any cheap examples that I still need, like this one.

1959 Topps Carl Furillo - $1.47

Made some progress on  my slow 1959 Topps set build with a pair of new cards here.  Carl Furillo forced me to break my rule of typically sticking to $1 or less for non-HOF players, but Carl was no slouch as a player and there are a ton of Dodgers collectors out there as well.

1959 Topps Tom Brewer - $.63

The other '59 Topps card in today's post was long overdue to enter my collection, as it serves as a new Red Sox card as well.  I did a much better job in 2019 of targeting vintage team needs like this one, and plan to continue that trend in the coming year.  I'm at 342 cards and counting now as far as this set goes; with a little luck and some focus maybe, just maybe, I can hit 400 before 2021.

2011 Topps Chrome Atomic Refractor (#'d /225) Cameron Maybin - $1.15

I knew pursuing a 2011 Topps Chrome set in Atomic Refractor format would be a challenge, but I never realized just how big a challenge.  I'm much too far along to give up now (this Maybin puts me at 198 of the 220 cards), but these last couple dozen are proving to be brutal.  If anyone can find me an Andrew McCutchen, Joey Votto, or Freddie Freeman I will pay handsomely!

2011 Topps Cognac Diamond Anniversary Manny Ramirez - $.53

On the "much less focused" end of the spectrum, here's one I picked up simply because it was shiny, cheap, and a player I somewhat enjoy collecting.  That's really all I can say about this card.

2019 Topps Chrome Pink Refractor Mookie Betts - $.58

I love a good Topps Chrome colored refractor, and the pink ones in particular have always appealed to me.  I was surprised and delighted to stumble across a pocket of these that was on sale for cheap coin.  Scooped up Mookie Betts immediately at 58 cents...

2019 Topps Chrome Pink Refractor Xander Bogaerts - $.89

...and then went back for Xander Bogaerts for a bit more than that, but still less than a buck.  These are really fun parallels for folks who enjoy shiny cards.  Looks like there are only five Red Sox in the 2019 Topps Chrome base set too, so I may have to search out the other three of them to form a Pink Refractor team set.

2014 Topps Finest X-Fractor Troy Tulowitzki - $.69

One of my more realistic shiny card projects that I could theoretically finish in 2020 is the 2014 Topps Finest set, in X-Fractor format.  These aren't serial-numbered, and don't carry the premium that the 2011 Topps Chrome Atomic Refractors seem to.  Tulo here puts me at 48 cards down out of the 100-card release.  As I near the halfway point there are plenty of others that I still need available for $1 or less.  Would be amazing if I could stay focused and put this one to bed in 2020.

1964 Topps Ted Abernathy - $.52

For this next pair, I just searched for 1964 Topps cards that were available cheaply, and chose two where I enjoyed the photograph.  That strategy netted me Indians pitcher Ted Abernathy...

1964 Topps Dave Nicholson - $.52

...and ChiSox outfielder Dave Nicholson, each for the paltry sum of 52 cents.  Yes, I'm sure I could eventually have found this pair somewhere for less money, especially as part of a lot, but these two are in "I'll never need to be upgraded" condition, so I'm more than satisfied.  Besides, I spend more than $1.04 on a coffee and don't bat an eye.

2018 Panini Diamond Kings Red Framed Dom DiMaggio - $.45

Don't think I need to explain this one much.  I received the base version of this great Dom DiMaggio card in trade recently from Joe Shlabotnik, and now I've got this awesome red framed companion for it.  For just 45 cents?  Yes, please!

2013-14 Select Fire on Ice Stars Blue John Tavares - $.55

I picked this John Tavares card up way back in 2016, though I only just plucked it from my COMC "to be posted" stash now after all these years.  Honestly, it's a card I wouldn't really purchase these days, as I just have a much narrower scope of what I want to bring into the house and hang onto.  I'll probably offload this one in trade someday as I continue to thin things out around here.

1979 TCMA Richmond Braves Seymour Baseball & Chief Powa-Hitta - $1.25

Yikes!  I became aware of this incredibly insensitive card on another blog, I think it was Sportscards from the Dollar Store if I recall correctly.  Anyway, for a little over a dollar I felt compelled to add one to the completely random portion of my baseball collection.

2014 Topps Finest X-Fractor Derek Jeter - $3.25

Alright, here's a relatively big gun for my 2014 Finest X-Fractor quest.  It'll certainly end up being in the top 10 as far as most costly cards to complete the project, as there are just a ton of Jeter and Yankees collectors out there.  $3.25 seemed fair enough, and I'm right on the precipice of the halfway point now with 49/100 cards!

2016 Panini Diamond Kings Miller Huggins Artist's Proof (#'d /99) - $.93

While we're on the Yankees, here's another.  I really enjoy the retired stars in the Panini Diamond Kings releases, since the lack of licensing/logos doesn't really detract from the look as much as it does with modern players.  It's not every day that I get an opportunity to add a Miller Huggins card to my collection, either.  In fact, this would be my one and only card of the man who won three World Series at the helm of the Yankees in the 1920s.

2008 Upper Deck Masterpieces Black Framed Nolan Ryan - $3.25

I thought this beautiful parallel from Upper Deck Masterpieces (RIP!) was a cool and significant less-than-$5 addition to my modest Nolan Ryan collection.  The base version is one of my favorite modern Ryan cards, and these framed parallels were some of the best parallels of the 2000s in my opinion.  Tied for the X-Fractor Jeter as the most expensive card in today's post, but worth every penny to me.

1979-80 O-Pee-Chee Ron Low - $.74

Completing the 1979-80 Topps hockey set, including the Gretzky rookie, is easily one of the most satisfying accomplishments I've had since I returned to collecting as an adult.  Since then, I've been passively picking up O-Pee-Chee high-number cards from the same year that weren't part of the Topps set.  This one is just absolutely fantastic, maybe my single favorite card in today's entire post.  That Sher-Wood stick brings back the memories!

2013 Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects Top Prospects Blue Wave Refractor Xander Bogaerts - $2.65

Man, just pronouncing the name of that card is tiring.  In typical Bowman fashion, there are quite a few versions of this card.  In my own collection alone now I've got the base version, Silver Ice, Red Ice (#'d /25), a Black Wave Refractor, this Blue Wave Refractor, and even a Silver Wave Refractor (also #'d /25).  Believe it or not, you can still find this Blue Wave for under $5 presently, which is a steal if you ask me.

Well, this Bogaerts pre-rookie brings our running total for today to $20.05.  We had a handful of relatively expensive ($2.50+) cards in this blaster, but some cheap ones rounded things out nicely and in the end there were still 18 cards featured in total.  Not too shabby!

Thanks for stopping by, and if you like autographed cards come back around tomorrow for the first Signature Sundays post of the new year!