plain white envel-NOPE

Heads up for users of the online card marketplace Sportlots that "Loot" (seller-specific store credit) now expires after 90 days, and in case you haven't noticed, it's been about 85 days since that policy went into effect. So if you've ever used Sportlots much, you might want to log in and check out your loot account. Click "My Loot" under the "My Account" menu option in the upper left, and you get a list of sellers with whom you've got loot.

I've got a bunch of sellers listed there where I've only got a few cents of credit with them.. not a big deal to lose out on those few cents, but I've also got a couple sellers with over a buck in credit where it might make sense to at least make a small order from them to apply a discount towards so the loot doesn't go to waste.

Oh wait. They don't want you making small orders anymore:

"...Sportlots has implemented a Minimum Value Fee. Orders under $5.00 will incur a $1.50 fee. The $5.00 minimum is calculated by adding the card values, shipping, sales tax (if applicable), and subtracting any applied loot." 

So after adjusting for the Min Value Fee, my loot discount that should have been $1.68 comes to just 18¢. If I added a 5th card, hoping to get out of "under five bucks" territory, the shipping rate from this seller jumps from $1.50 to $4. So yeah, I'm screwed in this scenario. THANKS, Sportlots. Guess I'll just let all that loot disappear. Lame.

Sure, I make big orders on the site sometimes, but I like to place a small Sportlots order every once in a while, in part because it's nice receiving cards in the mail on the regular, you know? A day without cards in the mail is a downer. PWEs trickling in helps keep the non-card-getting days from piling up. 

Sellers can adjust their minimum shipping rates to deal with their transaction fees, so I don't think a minimum value fee is necessary. Hell, some sellers let you know they don't like doing small orders by having their minimum shipping rate be like $6 or more, even for just 1 card. But other sellers like making sales, the more the better, and don't want to just hold out for the occasional large order.

So yeah, just another instance of greed making things worse than they used to be. I know I've been saying it here for a long time, but this year FOR REALS i'm gonna get my for-trade cards logged into TCDB and try to focus more on trading, especially now that COMC and Sportlots have gotten crappier. Let's hope TCDB remains usable for the foreseeable future. I know they've been adding more annoying ads lately as the site owner looks to generate additional revenue, causing some users to grimace, but fingers crossed the site will last a long time before things really go tits up there. (With my luck, the site will be sold to PSA/Fanatics and get gutted the day after I finish logging all the stuff I'm planning on logging, LOL.)

Anyways. on that general topic, my latest TCDB swap netted 3 needs for my Dick Allen PC.

User herkojerko is a prominent Phillies collector on the site who proposed a 3-for-3 card swap, all Phillies, with my return being the above trio of Dick Allen needs. I showed off the Blue Ice parallel of that 2025 Prizm a few posts back, and so now I've got the base card to go with it, plus the 2025 Ginter SP #350 with child. Must've been Phillies dupes for herkojerko. One of the cards I sent his way was one of my Dick Allen dupes, fittingly, and helps him keep place as the #2 (tie) ranked DA collector on the site.

There's your current top 10 leader board. Absolutely fascinating stuff, right? :P

Thanks for the trade, herkojerko.. Good luck with your collection, just don't overtake me on Dick Allen cards, please. ha 

Before wrapping up, I've got another small piece of mail to show, a 1-card (plus a sticker) envelope imported from Japan.

Fun Maggie Simpson sticker along with a signed Royce Lewis card, courtesy of blogger bud Zippy Zappy. Royce seems to be a pretty good ballplayer who'd likely blossom into a star if only he could stay healthy for a while. Cool to add an early autograph of his. And as I said a moment ago, always brightens my day to receive cards in the mail, no matter the quantity. Thanks, Kenny!

Tony Gwynn #19!

Following up on the post a few weeks ago where I began logging my Tony Gwynn collection at the Trading Card Database, I'm more or less wrapped up now. Unfortunately I fell short in my lofty goals of either hitting 1k cards and/or cracking the top 10 in the site's rankings. But I ended up with a pretty cool consolation.

Yep, I'm ranked #19 on the site! I will rep this prestigious "jersey number" position with pride. I know collectors sometimes toggle their collections between public and private, and so there could be a shakeup at any time that either bumps me up or down, but I'll hope to stick around at #19 for a while if I can. (...not that it means anything, just a fun little thing to smile about.)

Currently I'm just narrowly above #20 (another guy, like myself, on the cusp of 900 unique TG cards) and about 40 cards from #18. It puts me in the funny position of not wanting to add a bunch of new Gwynns, thereby possibly forfeiting my special rank. But yeah, I would like to eventually hit a thousand cards. Tony is my "top guy" after all. But my hobby funds/interest gets pulled a lot of ways, with me working on those pricey Topps Retired refractor autos, ATFF refractors, and several vintage setbuilds in addition to having a bunch of "PC guys" of varying priority. I wonder if that YoRicha guy at #1 has time for other hobby interests, or if being a Tony Gwynn supercollector consumes his entire experience in the hobby.

Anyways, let's take a look at some more cool Tony Gwynn cards.

I didn't collect in 1995, so when it was time to sort out to this pair of cards, I was sure one must be a parallel. The card on the left has "Extreme Corps" in rainbow lettering, while the card on the right features the same text all in red. But nope, TCDB considers these the same exact card. Turns out 1995 Stadium Club used multi-colored foil that resulted in variances like this but they aren't considered unique cards. Ha, try telling that to a player collector with 2 different looking cards! If I did a "my count" of my Gwynn collection, it'd likely hit a thousand already, counting things that TCDB doesn't, such as the above foil variant, plus a bunch of customs, mods, and other unofficial variations and whatnot that might not be considered "real cards" but are close enough for me.

Logging my cards also gave me the opportunity to "see what's out there", and discovering this "Complements" insert from 1999 Finest on TCDB lead me to search out one. There are 3 flavors of this card: full refractor, or having the refraction limited to either side. I had never heard of a partial refractor before, and as I've been becoming more of a refractor enthusiast in recent years, was compelled to look around for a good deal on one, and lucked into this "Gwynn refractor / Boggs not" in my latest COMC order that arrived a few days ago. I'm really tempted to peel off the protective coating, especially seeing how it's directly over Tony. If I had gotten this for my Wade Boggs PC, I'd feel better just leaving it. Should I do it? Gah, the collector's conundrum.

But when I've got a dupe of a card with a protective film? Then it's an easy call to peel. I pick to peel the one where the text is most obtrusive. The above pair aren't too bad (top half of body unaffected), but I went with the card on the right since the text covers more of Tony.

That looks a lot better. I should probably be less precious with my protective films and just remove them from any "keeper" of mine. It's my understanding that chrome cards all still get manufactured with a similar protective film, but they remove it before packing it out now rather than leave it to the collectors since we can't be trusted to do it ourselves, lol. (But yeah, I get it, if that's how it comes from the manufacturer, then to peel is technically altering the card from its original, packed-out state... if that means anything to you.)

Speaking of altering cards, I think I've found my niche in the "cardart" landscape: Border art.

I've been going nuts making "mashups" or "full bleed" artsy homemade parallels lately. Tony is typically my guinea pig for stuff like this since I have so many dupes of his junk-era cards. I know these are silly (and no doubt some collectors look down on the cardboard vandalism), but it's fun getting creative turning a dupe into something that's no longer a dupe. And sometimes they turn out pretty cool looking!

Ok ok, let's go ahead and peel that '99 Finest.

Ahh! That looks terrific and so much nicer without the tire tracks over Tony!

To close us out, here's a card that just arrived today (actually it's still out for delivery as I draft this post and it feels like I'm tempting fate by typing that I already have it because you never know, but I'll snap a pic as soon as I get it) and it's a big one, hitting multiple bullseyes for me.

Boom! I've been picking up 2005 Topps Pristine Legends refractors at an accelerated clip over the past few months, now nearly a third of my way through completing a refractor parallel setbuild of the 140-card set of past greats. This card was a need towards that project.. plus San Diego State cards of Gwynn are kinda like the closest thing I have to a "focus" in that PC. I showed off my SDSU Gwynns recently, coinciding with this year's Aztecs making an incredible run to the Final Four. As seen in that post, I already had the base version of the card (graced with a faded in-person auto, to boot) and I'm happy to be able to pair that with the refractor now, a whale I had been after. Helps make for a satisfying conclusion to getting my Gwynns logged. #19, Baby! I'll take it.

Puttin' in the Gwynn

I don't expect to ever get around to fully logging my card collection into the Trading Card Database, but I'm adding a little here and there, and my current focus is entering the biggest player collection I've got: Tony Gwynn. My hobby interests pull me in too many directions to ever truly vie for the spot of his #1 collector, but I've got a pretty solid PC, and as I log it, I'm also sorting in the very many Gwynn cards I've gotten in the past year or so from Rod at Padrographs as he narrowed his collection.

Data entry can be tedious-- and often a pain figuring out unfamiliar cards/parallels-- so I came up with some goals to help keep me motivated:

- rank among the top 19 (jersey number) Tony Gwynn collectors at TCDB
- 1000+ unique cards
- get in the top 10
- in the top 5 maybe?

Well, here's the current leaderboard:

Yep, Tony Gwynn is a popular guy to collect! 1500 cards won't even get you into the top 10. I'm not likely to crack the top 5 anytime soon, if ever. As I type this, I've already added roughly 2/3 of the PC and currently rank #30 with 687 unique Gwynns. I'm guessing I'll ultimately settle in around numbers 12-14, but cracking the top 10 could be something to shoot for. For the record, I'm not going to blanketly "add all missing cards to wantlist." But occasionally I've been adding neat Gwynns to my TCDB wantlist, like certain refractors or cool-looking inserts or whatnot, and could see myself going after some cheap low-hanging fruit on Sportlots or something if I really wanted to get my total up.

It's not just healthy competition motivating me, of course, because it'll be great to have a solid idea of what I have and don't have when it comes to Mr. Padre. My memory ain't always great, so it'll be nice to be able to easily check what I've got.

Anyways, I thought I'd feature a few "non-TCDB cards" in this post.. that is, cards that I consider unique in the PC, though for the most part I agree they're not different cards, and were it not a main PC of mine, I likely wouldn't bother treating them differently. Regardless, I think these unofficial variations are more interesting than "real" variations where there's a period missing in the copyright line on the back or something else you likely need a magnifying glass to even notice.

The above HoloGrFX cards seem to be different shades of blue, though that's not an official parallel. Probably just a printing variant or maybe one was displayed in a sunny spot for a while by a previous owner.

Here's another example of the same card looking different. Technically a dupe, but they're both staying in my PC as "dark version" and "light version", respectively. Could be noted there is a "black gold (/499)" parallel to this 2001 Fleer Futures card that I don't have.

These 1998 Skybox Dugout Axcess "Double Header" game cards only come in one flavor, according to the menu, but look at the player name and tell me these are identical cards; You can't do it! The foil-printing machine seems to have been on the fritz for the card on the right-- I don't think Skybox did it on purpose-- but yeah, I'm hanging on to them both, considering one an "inverted foil" printing flaw variation or whatever.

Well, those are what I've taken pictures of so far, and I've got more examples I'd like to document on the blog, but I think I'll call it good for today and then probably do a follow-up post or two once I've finished logging the Gwynn PC. Thanks for stopping by and have a pleasant weekend, everybody.