A Barrel of Bogaerts

A few of the blogs I read have mentioned placing orders on CardBarrel.com, and the results of their shopping have been intriguing to me.  I finally decided to check the site out myself a week or two ago, putting together a small order.  If you spend $25 then shipping is free, so I figured I'd just load up a cart until I tipped past 25 bucks, then check out.

For those who haven't used it yet, the deal with this site is that they specify in commons and other "low value" cards.  While I don't see myself using it all that often given that I'm trying to purge and reduce the size of my collection, it is a nice way to fill in some base card needs without overpaying for them on a site like COMC that's really designed more for mid-value cards in my mind.

The first thing I did for this order was to search for my favorite active baseball player, Xander Bogaerts, to see what low-hanging fruit I could nab for my ever-growing collection of his cards.  I picked up quite a few cards spanning the last few years at less than a quarter a piece for the most part.

Can't believe I never bothered to track down this Archives card, featuring my favorite player on the set from my birth year.

Managed to snag some shiny examples, like this one from Bowman Platinum.

Or this one, from Donruss Optic.  I really enjoyed the 1990-inspired design from this particular year of Donruss.

One from the short-lived Topps Bunt release.

I think this might have been the most expensive Bogaerts card of my entire haul.  I have many Red Sox cards from the 2014 Topps Mini release, but was inexplicably missing Xander's rookie until this purchase.  I'd nearly shelled out $4 plus shipping for a copy of this on eBay recently, and was pleasantly surprised to find one available for just $1.25!

While I was at it I grabbed his mini card from the 2016 set as well.

Between this and my most recent COMC order I've got the majority of Xander's various Allen & Ginter releases from over the years at this point.

For 2015 Donruss I picked up not only the base card...

...but its Optic counterpart...

...and, while it's difficult to tell from the scan, an Orange parallel (#'d /199) from Optic as well!

Not to be left out, there were cheap copies of last year's Donruss...

...and Donruss Optic available too, and into my cart they went.

Seeing double here with a Topps Chrome base card...

...and one from Opening Day.

Earlier in the post we saw Xander on the 1982 Topps design, and here he is pictured on an '81, also courtesy of Topps Archives (2018).

Had the Gold parallel from 2018 Topps Big League, but lacked the base card until putting this order together.  Box checked.

Love me some Topps Fire!

Another case of seeing double, his 2018 Opening Day card...

...and that same card, getting the Topps Holiday treatment.

I loaded up on some more recent Bogaerts needs while I was at it, scoring his Allen & Ginter card from 2019...

...along with his Topps Archives card, featuring Xander on the '93 Topps design.  I bought a lot of packs of Topps cards in 1993, and I have to say that Topps did a great job reproducing these if you ask me.  While I didn't scan it, even the back was pretty spot on.

2019 Bowman's Best, a set I don't recall ever having seen before quite honestly.

A nice "turning two toss" here on Bogaerts' 2019 Gypsy Queen release, complete with Green Monster backdrop.

As much as I love a good parallel, the sheer number of them has gotten problematic over the years.  Case in point, in this order alone I picked up five different versions of essentially the same horizontal 2019 Topps Bogaerts card.  We have a 150th Anniversary stamped parallel...

...the Opening Day base card...

...the Topps Chrome base card (of which I featured the Refractor in my most recent COMC post)...

...the Gold parallel from the flagship set (serial-numbered to /2019)...

...and the Rainbow Foil parallel from the base set.

I've also got the regular base flagship card, and pink and sepia Topps Chrome refractors, and after all that I've still barely seen the tip of the iceberg as far as variations on essentially the same card.  In fact I know I have at least a few more I just haven't found the time to scan or process yet.  It's kind of fun to see how many I can accumulate, but I can also see how it might frustrate some folks.

Closing things out we've got the base card from the All-Star Game subset in 2019 Topps Update...

...and his 2019 Topps Big League card.

Wow, that was an exhausting amount of Xander Bogaerts cards to scan, crop and organize.  In case you weren't keeping track, and why would you be, that was a full 32 new additions to my player collection of the Red Sox shortstop.  With these in hand I'm up to 188 unique Bogaerts cards and counting now, with more sitting in my "to be processed" box still.

Best of all, with the unbelievably cheap prices on cards at CardBarrel, this lot of Xander Bogaerts cards that you saw today didn't even come remotely close to the $25 I was looking to spend to get free shipping.  I'll be back soon with the other half of my CardBarrel order, but in the meantime thanks as always for stopping by...