Cleve's Auction Night: "This Is Getting Ridiculous, Napkin"

Yeah, I might have a problem.  I mentioned in my last post about the super awesome card auctions every Tuesday night at Cleve's, that for a couple of weeks I would be unable to attend while on business trips.  I also said I could go in and put down some write-in bids on anything that caught my eye, but that I wasn't going to. 
That was a lie only in the sense that I wound up going in and putting down a whole bunch of write-in bids.  But they were lowwwww bids, and I got some good stuff again.  Let's move beyond the lovely wife's reaction when I came home with the goods Saturday afternoon.  I think she's getting numb to it.

Let's review, shall we?

1960 Fleer Lajoie and Foxx

These were the cards I really, really wanted from this auction.  This 1960 Fleer set is one of Fleer's first, is chock full of HOFers, is only an 80 card checklist, and is relatively inexpensive to build.  Those are facts.  Add to that, I love the looks of the set, and this set is a new top priority for my collection.  I missed out on a couple of pages of "commons" from this set at this last auction, as obviously my write in bids were not enough.  But I did manage to land these two at $2 each, which gave me great joy.

Of course I bought some goodie binders...

I don't mean to repeat myself, but for most of these binders, the value is in the pages and the binder itself.  That is true for the most part for the 3 binders I got this week.  Here they are by binder:

Binder 1: 80s Stars Binder

I paid $5 for this one, mostly because it had several George Brett and Mike Schmidt cards- players I didn't collect much earlier in my life, but now realize how great they were.  I also wanted the Tony Gwynn and Darryly Strawberry pages too.  There are about 50 pages in this binder and also included stars such as:  Mattingly, Boggs, Puckett, Clemens, Ozzie Smith, Gooden, Dawson and so on and so on. 

Binder #2a:  1990 Donruss near complete set

Before you do a spit take over the thougt of someone paying real money for an INCOMPLETE 1990 Donruss set, allow me to interject and inform you this binder was a package deal with this binder:

Binder #2b: (10) Mid 90s Beckett Monthly Magazines

This was what I wanted, and didn't mind taking 1990 Donruss set (and the near 80 pages I will have once I remove the crappy cards from them) to get it.  And don't scoff at me buying old Becketts either.  I have a side project I am working on and I need the data from them.  And as I've said before, I like the old articles and advertisements.  And there was nice little bonus that I didn't even notice when I was initially looking through the binder when I placed my bid:

A quick scan of ebay shows these are nothing special, but they look cool to me.  I was a broke college kid in the mid 90s so I wasn't able to afford McDonalds fine dining to get these cards.  A $1.97 combo at Rally's was my idea of splurging..

So how did I grade out?

1960 Fleer Foxx and Lajoie:  $4 Total-  A+  Plenty to like here, with two of my favorite vintage stars.  1960 Fleer is now on my radar too, and I think I can build it in a couple of years.

1980s Stars Binder:  $5  B+  Nothing special in these albums, and I might have won this with a write in bid of $3, but what's a couple of bucks?  Again, the pages, Gwynn and Strawberry cards were the key.

90 Donruss and Beckett Package:  $4  A-  Yes, I'm sure paying for 1990 Donruss should instantly cause me to lose credibility in the card collecting world, but repeat after me:  It's the pages that are the value!!!!  80 pages people!  And they are nice, non-cloudy pages too.   I consider the Becketts more supplies than collectibles, and the McDonalds cards are a nice bonus. 

A total of $13 bucks this week.   I think that shows a lot of restraint myself.  When I went in to pick up my cards Saturday, I looked over the Tuesday night fodder.  Lot's of really nice 50s Bowmans...  What will the lovely wife say Tuesday night I wonder?  It's going to be bad...

Oh, in case you are wondering, Big Fun Game participants will be announced today!