Black Friday COMC Spoils Part 4: Gypsy Queen Green Paper Framed Set

I’m 75% done with this set, and they look fantastic in the binder (strangely enough even at 75% complete, I don’t have one single page that is complete yet).  I snagged these three at great prices:

Postcards From The Hall

The lovely wife and I bought new bedroom furniture recently, and before it was delivered, we cleared out all the crap that was under our old bed.   (As an aside, we splurged and bought a tempur pedic mattress.  Holy crap, it is the best money I have ever spent!)   I found a few boxes of stuff I had kind of forgotten about, and SURPRISE, most of the stuff was related to baseball.

Before we had children, the lovely wife gave me the gift of a lifetime by booking a trip to Cooperstown NY, (and some time in NYC) to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame.  One of these days I'm going to post pictures from the trip, but that is not my purpose today.  I also won't spend a lot of time explaining that if you have never been to the Hall, you absolutely should.  Because you should.  I am chomping at the bit to go back, and when the kids are a little older, we're going.

No, today, I just wanted to show some cool postcards I bought while at the Hall, including the above postcard of the Hall of Fame itself.  I also picked up a handful of other really beautiful post cards of paintings by Arthur K. Miller.   I don't need to wax poetic about these, other than to say I really wish there was a card set based on these paintings.  (Who knows, maybe there is.  Is there one, you experts?)   Here are the ones I have:

Babe Ruth

Ty Cobb

Joe Jackson

Jackie Robinson

Honus Wagner

I don't remember buying these, as the trip was almost 10 years ago.  But I sure wish I had bought more of them.  I'm going to have to do some searching and see if these are available anywhere else because they are incredible.

Big Cards This Week At Cleve's Including A '33 Ruth

I usually go by Cleve's Friday or Saturday each week to pick up cards that I won from the previous auction,  and to see what is on the docket for the upcoming week.  This Tuesday is going to have some pretty primo stuff and I thought I would give you a taste of some of the stuff that comes through these auctions:

This is a view of one of the 4 display cases that are filled with auction items.  This week there are several high end cards from Triple Threads and Topps Sterling as you will notice on the top shelf.  The middle shelf is where it gets interesting.  See if you recognize the heads that are popping up below the Sterling Relic cards in the bottom left corner.    One is a very nice 1958 Mickey Mantle:

 Cleve has quite a few Mantles come through, and one of these days I'm going to nut up and get one.  This one is a beaut and will go for way more than I can afford.  But it won't go for more than this beast:

Yep, that's a 1933 Goudey Babe Ruth, and it is in unreal condition.  The seller has a min bid of $1,500, so it  may not sell, but it's amazing to see one of these in person.  Still, after looking at these on eBay, $1,500 for a card in this condition is a pretty good buy if one could afford it. 

There are a ton of great vintage cards this week (and every week really) including this 1956 Sandy Koufax.

Back to the cards little leaguers like I can afford:

 I put in a decent bid on this Tony Gwynn Sterling relic/auto.  I'm hoping the big spenders blow their budgets on the other stuff and this falls to me.

Here were a couple of other cards I am targeting.  The Pence card is 1/3 and the patch is utterly ridiculous.

As you can see from the top picture, there are tons of other gems this week.  Again, I will be competing via write-in bids, so I don't have much control over how things go.