The New Book Value (more from the card show)

When I go to a card show, I'm keeping an eye out for cards I need for my collection (guys I collect, set needs), and sometimes just random cards that interest me, and of course I look for trade fodder for my regular trade partners.

And sometimes I buy a card because I suspect it's a great deal. I spend enough time reading card blogs and such that I can usually spot a rare/valuable card hiding in a stack of lesser cards. I mean, I'm sure there are plenty of variations and rare inserts that get by me (and plenty of stuff I don't know much about from the decade I stepped away from the hobby), but I'd like to think I'm pretty good at finding diamonds in the rough.

I rarely take the time to look up a card value while at a show, but once I get home, I'll look some of them up and try to determine my best deal of the show.

For me, the new "book value" is the cheapest one on COMC. I suppose another good way to find out what a card is worth is to check completed eBay listings for it, but that is a little more work and can have other influencing factors, such as time the auction ended and the seller's feedback. So while it's not infallible, I find looking up a card on COMC is quick and usually gives me decent idea what it's worth.

I think this might be my best deal of the show according to COMC. Brandon Morrow has been a key arm out of the pen for the Dodgers this year. This 2007 Bowman Chrome Prospects X-Fractor /275 cost me a quarter, but the cheapest on COMC right now is $15.25. Fifteen dollar theoretical profit!

Here's another "(Gold) Blue Label". After pulling a Cano auto recently, I'm tempted to get a little PC going for him. This one isn't on COMC currently. The Tim Anderson card falls into that "hmm, maybe this is a valuable card?" category and is a 2017 Topps Stadium Club Chrome refractor. It isn't on COMC right now either, but the regular Chrome parallel (non-refractor) is priced at $5.25, and I assume the refractors are tougher pulls. The Fisk 2013 Panini Hometown Heroes State parallel is a PC need. This White Sox card isn't on COMC, but his similar Red Sox card is $0.99.

A couple Beltres and a Brock. I've really enjoyed bumping up my Beltre PC over the past year or so. Finally pulled the trigger to kick it up further, which will be coming in a future post.

A nice Nolan Arenado trio.

Brown mustard Bowman RC parallels of Alex Gordon and Mike Moustakas. These both run under a buck, but not bad.

A couple fancy Giancarlo cards. Billy was asking about those Bowman Platinum "Ice" parallels the other day.. yeah, when I was thumbing through the boxes, I pretty much zoomed passed any Bowman Platinum card unless it was a parallel, as generally speaking, I'm not into that line of cards (not a big fan of foilboard cards), but those bubbly cracked ice parallels look pretty cool in the light. This one goes for $1.25 according to COMC. It surprisingly beats out the /650 2013 Topps Triple Threads card available for only 89¢.
Dee Gordon /250 is also $1.25, while the Trevor Story goes for 95¢.

A couple 2017 Heritage High Numbers here. Honestly, I was just looking to get any ol' Eric Thames Brewers card, since his start to the 2017 coming back over from Korea was just awesome. Turns out this is the action variation, so my 25¢ investment balloons to $4.57, if we're going by the gospel of COMC. As for the Carlos Asuaje, as I mentioned recently, I'm a sucker for any blue burlap parallel, but I was especially happy to find this one of a promising Padres rookie. This one isn't on COMC right now, but the cheapest blue burlap card of any player on there is $3.50.

A pair of shimmering mini Padres here. The Renfroe is /150. It's worth over a buck, safe to say. And while listed at over a quarter (no cards are for sale on COMC for under 30¢), the Austin Hedges might be my "worst" buy of the day, using our COMC guide, as it's listed at only 31¢. But heck, I like it.

And we'll close today with some more San Diego goodness (I refuse to acknowledge the Padres traded away Eric Owens to the Marlins). For what it's worth, the Lamet ice is on COMC for $3.75, the Colin Rea "Missing Black Plate" $1.13, and the Owens 2001 Traded refractor at 85¢. Really though, that Eric Owens may have been my personal favorite pickup of the day, if we're judging by how high my eyebrows raised and my mouth smiled when I saw it. Always love stumbling upon a card I need from a somewhat obscure player I collect.

Still another post or two from my quarterbox haul to go. Thanks for sticking with me! Have a great weekend, everybody.

Judson and the Night Owl: Fighters for Justice

Got a couple great trade packages in this week. One I had been waiting on for a few months, and one surprise.

Last fall, I swung a couple trades with Judson of My Cardboard Habit. The wait for the second batch seemed to stretch for a while, but I figured he was just busy and I didn't worry about it. I finally got around to bugging him about it, and turns out he sent it but it was a victim of the USPS, disappearing into darkness somewhere between Judson's place and mine. But he graciously put together a heck of a replacement package right-quick.

Love this Cory Spangenberg Topps Chrome RC refractor auto! He missed most of 2016 with an injury, but hopefully he can come back strong and build on his earlier success.

Speaking of promising young Padres getting sidelined for significant length of time, Colin Rea is likely out for 2017, but I'm still really high on him... perhaps it's the underlying Star Wars reference:

(image by @LobShots)

But yeah, thrilled for this pair of autos!

I'm excited to see what Hunter Renfroe does in a full season after a terrific late call-up. This Heritage Minors black parallel is a sweet addition to my growing PC of the guy.

And Judson hooked me up with my first auto of Padres top prospect Anderson Espinoza. Topps chose a derpy photo of the kid for this card, but I still like it. He's been sorta inconsistent in the minors thus far, but he's got a ton of raw talent and is still a teenager, so looks like he's likely got a nice career ahead of him, knock wood.

Great stuff.. Thanks, Judson!

- - - ---o

The other package to mention today is from blogging royalty, Night Owl, dropping an unexpected bubble mailer on me.

Nice A&G lot of Manny Machado.

Some Red Sox favorites.

Dodgers dupes of dudes I collect.

Sparkly lot of 2011 Topps parallels for my frankenset.. all of them needs!

Great looking trio of Trouts.

Here's a pair of Chris Sale cards, including my first parallel from 2017 Topps.. kinda weird, like he's being impaled by brown ("gold") spikes.. but yeah, I'll take it!

More guys I collect. The Conforto Future Star is pretty neat.

Ha, I love Parks and Recreation, so it's nice to finally get a few cards from the show.

Thanks a lot, Greg! I've already scrounged up a few cards off your wantlist, so expect those to show up later this week.

See you guys next time.

Oh wait, I just sketched out a quick idea for a comic book based on the title of this post:

An incredible mega lot of cards from Rod

It's time! I finally sorted out the tons of cards that Padrographs Rod gave me the Sunday before Christmas. It's really been the gift that keeps on giving. He's been been narrowing down his collection lately and I've been lucky enough to be on the receiving end of many cards he's been shedding. Per the downsizing, he doesn't even want any cards in return from me, though at least I can help return the favor here and there by helping out with photoshop work for his various projects.

I thought about breaking this up into a few posts, but I think I'm just going to do this one jumbo-sized post.
Ready? Let's do it!

Kicking off with the game's best, Mike Trout. Great selection of cards from the past couple years here.

The Bry Guys.. A couple of the other biggest stars of today, Kris Bryant and Bryce Harper.

More hot players. Love the /999 Mookie Betts.

Some good Cub cards. Great photo on that Jackie.

Some more decent Topps inserts from this past year, plus a new David Denson for my Pride PC.

With Rod being a Padres fan, it's no surprise that there was a heavy dose of San Diego cardboard included. Well, hey, I'm a Padres fan too! So that works out nicely. Some highlights here are Jake Peavy with a numbered Heritage parallel and a jersey relic. There's talk of him returning to San Diego as a free agent, and while he probably doesn't have much left in the tank, I'm sentimental enough to hope we sign him. The Tyson Ross refractor in the corner is the lowest numbered card in the lot at /35. He just signed with the Rangers.. I wish him the best of luck getting his career back on track in Texas.. and not just because I've got a bunch of pretty good T. Ross cards.

And of course, lots of Gwynns and Bips. Not many cards of Bip with the A's out there. Very cool.

Hits! The Waldrop is available if any Reds fans are interested in trading. Colin Rea is a guy I like a lot, even though he'll be shelved for a long while, so that Ginter mini auto is one of my favorites of this entire lot.

Let's take a break from baseball for a moment. Cool 3D Iron Man sticker. Relic of Gennady Golovkin.. I don't really follow boxing, but seems he's pretty good ("As of January 2017, he is ranked as the world's number one middleweight by BoxRec," according to his wiki). And check out the auto of Olympian Katie Uhlaender. Pretty sweet. Also a couple nice Star Wars cards and an addition to my new sprinter minicollection, inspired by Tony Burb's runner minicollection.

Basketball cards? Yes, there were basketball cards. The highlights for me were these fine additions to my Kareem Abdul-Jabbar PC.

Here are some other keepers I picked out from the ample selection of B-ball. A couple Steph Curry cards, some Shaqs and Kobes. And autographed custom of former Blazers head coach Kaleb Canales. And I thought that Gary Payton card was pretty funny.

Here are a bunch more autographs, mostly gotten by Rod in-person at games, I've gotta believe. Lots of Eugene Emeralds. A couple Topps cards signed by Alex Dickerson at the end. Awesome stuff.

Some postcards, including a couple Bips plus autos of Mark Parent, Harold Reynolds, and Sandy Alomar, Sr.

A few minor league team sets.. these are always fun.

Mike Trout makes another appearance thanks to this sealed AL Standouts set. I'm probably gonna open this before long for my various PCs.

Here are some non-card items, including 3 great Tony Gwynn patches. And looks like Rod isn't too sentimental with his old ticket stubs, as there were several in there among the cards n' such.

These are all Berger's Best reprints. (Yes, it's really dumb of Topps to put out a 2016 reprint [Schwarber] in their 2016 product.) As you can see, I've got dupes to trade of Winfield, Wizard, and Gwynn, if anybody's working on that insert set or anything.

Top row: some attractive women to add to my Girlie Card collection. Bottom: a few more Star Wars cards and a Howard Stark card which I will shoehorn into my little Howard Hughes PC since he kind of inspired the character.

Now onto the TRADE BAIT portion of our journey!!

Lots of non-sports that don't really have a place in my collection. Anyone want to trade for any of this? While I've got wide reaching musical taste, modern country is (the) one genre that I avoid at all costs. And I've never been too into Garbage Pail Kids, to be honest.. I'll thumb through them for a chuckle, but I don't need to hang onto them. And there ain't no way I could ever collect political cards. I had to put Karen Kasich, a handsome looking women, on the top of this stack because nearly all the other cards make me sick to my stomach, regardless of party affiliation. Somebody please speak up and trade me some baseball cards for them so I can get them out of my house. As for the Captain America cards, yeah, I'm not big on superhero movies. The thick manurelic is kinda neat, though.

Anybody working on finishing off 2016 Topps? Looks like there was about a hobby box each worth of Series II and Update among the lot. These are ticketed to be sorted out by team into my tradeboxes, so please speak up if I can dump any on you.

Blasters-worth of some other sets.

Lots of 2015 and 2016 Bowman cards.

And some more various baseball cards. Up for grabs.

I didn't realize what a big hoops fan Rod is, but yep, a few hundred basketball cards were in the lot. As I said, I've plucked out a few that I was interested in, and would now love to thin these out in trades, so let me know if you're interested.

And we close out with a bunch of Olympics cards. Some are from 2014 and some from 2016. Again, I picked out a few to hang onto, but the rest of these are available for trade.


A super huge thanks to Rod for hooking me up with this megaload of cards. I had a lot of fun going through them and came away with a ton of keepers for my collection.

Skinny-dipping in the Topps Vault

Man, Topps may have sent me a cease & desist a while back, but there's no hard feelings between me and the only game in town as far as officially licensed baseball cards in this day and age.

I recently snagged 4 discounted items from the Vault on eBay in a combined shipping order. Let's check them out:

Klesko may be a That 70s Show caliber name these days (no, wait, that's Kelso), but I have fond memories of Ryan being in the heart of the lineup for those Padres teams from a decade or so ago. I figured my Ryno PC could use a "1 of 1" to give it a little legitimacy in the eyes of the cardboard elite, and this 2016 Archives blank back fits the bill (even if it is a bit of a ploy as it was never packed-out but rather created specifically to be eBayed). I consider this to be a "finishing touch" to that PC which I'll probably post about one of these days.

And here's another one. Colin Rea is a guy the Padres are really counting on blooming if they're going to contend have a shot at being over .500 in the next few years. I too am banking on him flourishing as a top of the rotation guy, and this is the 2nd 1/1 blank back I've picked up of the guy, though I don't think I've shown off the 1st one yet. One of these days.
(UPDATE: And now he's traded to the Marlins. *sad trombone*)

Ok, now here's a quirky item for my Greatest Gavins minicollection. A back-up catcher for the Twins, 92-94, Derek GAVIN Parks doesn't seem to have any official certified auto cards out there, but I was able to add a certified auto in the form of this Topps contract! He didn't sign his full middle name, but did include the G at least! I'll take it! It's the first legal document in my little collection of Gavin and Gavin-related cards and card-related items. March 1st is my longtime friend Chris' birthday, so I'll give it some bonus points for the date. By the way, if you're interested in a similar Topps contract signed [or stamped or autopened] by Mr. Sy Berger, I've still got a few I'm looking to unload, trade or sale. I bought some up a while back thinking I'd flip them for a profit but it didn't turn out that way for me, unfortunately. This one up here isn't a Sy, but rather Philip Carter, who also seems to be pretty prolific at signing ballplayers to card contracts/extensions. [...] A quick google reveals Mr. Carter is currently "Director of Sports/Licensing at The Topps Company, Inc" (via LinkedIn).. Cool. Good to know he's been able to stick around among all the changes and employee turnover Topps has seen since then. I doubt there are many others still there who've been with the company since at least the early 90s.

We close with another "blank back 1/1", this of Braves prospect Touki Toussaint. He's not doing great this year in A ball (3-7 4.32), but still has a shot at being a solid major league pitcher in 2 or 3 years. I think of this as an investment to probably eventually send one of my Barve-collecting buddies when I find myself in the need to hit them back with a quality card sometime in the future.

- - - ----o

[now some rambling which you can skip past]
Matt, your 800th Post prize package has officially been dropped in the mail. Mr. Hoyle also has a package enroute. Shane, your runner-up prize package is packed up and ready to go but didn't make it out today. See, I went to the post office today after work but the damned automated machine is still on the fritz. Anticipating this, I brought a bunch of stamps, which is how I was able to get Matt and Mark's stuff out. But unfortunately I didn't have a good combination of stamps to fit on your small (but powerful!) package. But I think I'll be able to mail it out tomorrow. I have to go to the post office for work (I basically just burn and ship dvds as my job; I work at a big data archiving company.. it's not bad), so I'll try to mail it then. ON THE CLOCK! Lol, no, I'm salaried now (hallelujah!!) so whatev's. I use Stamps.com for my work packages, but not for my own stuff. (Shipped out a bunch of international packages recently.. damn, that shit's expensive these days!) But yeah, as for me.. Gotta stand in line for that. And no automated machine at the downtown post office. But again, I'm working, so I don't really care if it takes me a few extra minutes. Hey, I don't always take a full hour for my lunch, so it's cool. I try to workout in the building's gym a couple times a week when I can, but haven't had time this week. I gotta get my monthly DVDs out by the end of the month, so this week is a bit stressful for me, but I think I'm gonna make it. I'm rambling a bit now. I'll usually ride on the stationary bike for 22 minutes while I watch an episode of The Simpsons or The Onion Sportsdome (RIP.. this was a fricking hilarious sports show! Sad it only lasted one season. Sports and comedy are hard to pair just right for the masses, I guess), and then do some weight/machine work for a few minutes, usually arms and abs (my legs and glutes are good as is, not to brag, lol). Really would like to get my beer belly under control. I'm not "fat" but after a meal it looks like I'm smuggling a basketball in my shirt. My least favorite part about the gym is the occasional guys who linger in the locker room. It's like, dude, do you get off on catching glimpses of flaccid wieners? Don't just hang out in a locker room. Not cool. Oh, and one time the combination on my lock jammed after I had taken a shower.. I'm standing there for like 10 minutes in nothing but a towel desperately trying to unlock my locker and get to my shit. It was an ordeal, let me tell you, but finally I finagled the combo just right and it opened, thank the Lord. I also am a member of a local gym now, thanks to my wife who uses it more than me but Work reimburses us so why not add me to it too. They have a pool, which I'm excited about, although I'm more or a "splashing in the water" guy, not a "swimming laps" guy. We tried to go last weekend, and I had suited up and taken my pre-swim courtesy-shower and everything, but then we found out it had closed early that day for a swim meet. That sucked. It was my first time at the new gym (it's actually and old gym, kinda like a YMCA, but my first time there.) At least I spent a couple minutes punching a heavybag to get a tiny workout in and take out some frustration with the situation. Maybe we'll try again this coming weekend. Swimming is pretty great. Ok, I'm done rambling.

That's it for this time.. thank for reading!