Cleve’s Auction Night: Razorbacks and Minis

I had another good haul from Cleve’s auction last week, which makes two decent auctions in a row for me.  I doubt I'll make it three though because I didn’t put in a whole lot of bids for next week.     What did I get, you ask?

How about a huge stack of about 150 Gypsy Queen Minis?   I’ve had some luck picking up lots of these cards from the auctions lately.  There were several duplicates in here, but I’m not complaining at $4  ( under $.03 a card).

 
I also scored a small lot of sepia minis, numbered to 99.  No way am I going to try to build this parallel set, but I thought they would be good for Listia, or as trade bait if anyone is interested. 

Woooo, Pig Sooie!!!  It wasn’t a conscious plan, but I would up getting several former Razorback cards this week.   I'm stunned that I was able to get this Jarius Wright for only $5, especially here in Hog Country.    Jarius will go down as one of the greatest Razorback receivers ever, and is the currently the all time Razorback receiving yards leader.

I also picked up this nifty card of the guy who through the ball to Wright for most of those yards, Ryan Mallett.  This is a nice looking card and I dig the snippet of football leather sandwiched between the fabric relics.

Rounding out my Razorbacks was this Felix Jones relic.  Glad to see him start having a little success again recently.

Finally, unrelated to either minis or Razorbacks, I picked up this Jim Palmer manu-leather card.  Don't really need it, but it's still a cool card.

Grades:

150 2012 Gypsy Queen Minis  $4:  A+  Great bargain here, and put me in great shape to complete this set.  A full album of a mini set is going to look awesome.

2012 Gypsy Queen Mini Sepia Lot  $3:  B+  This should help me rack up some points on Listia.  They're also available for trade if anyone is interested.

Topps Inception Jarius Wright Auto $5:  A   This is a beautiful card, and I'm not going to find it cheaper than that anywhere.

Ryan Mallett Triple Relic Card  $6:  A+  I love Ryan Mallett and I love this card!

Felix Jones Stadium Club Relic  $2:  A:  Nothing flashy but only $2.  Great for my Razorback album.

Topps Manu-Leather Jim Palmer:  $3  B:  Eh, it's a neat card, what can I say.

The Sepia Minis and the Palmer are available for trade, the rest are staying with me.

Etopps Football Tracker 11/13

There have been major problems with the "Pigskin Challenge" over the past several weeks at Etopps.  The Pigskin Challenge is a weekly fantasy game where you use cards from your portfolio to set a 4 player lineup.  Cards can only be used once per season, which encourages trades and purchase of new cards, and was a smart move by Etopps.  Historically, the popularity of the game has helped inflate prices on players who put up big stats, which I think is great, since it helps give value to cards based on how good the players actually are.  I'm thinking the recent technical problems with the game have to have something to do with the ever declining values on these cards.  Again, there is almost always a drop off on the value of the cards, but it usually happens after the season is over.  Here are the values of the cards based on what I could get right now if I sold them on www.cardtarget.com:

Note the Cal Ripken T206 card on the list.  I purchased a Demarco Murray card last week, and based on the odds of this card peaking immediately and dropping later, I traded it for an Etopps T206 Cal Ripken card:

Someone offered this for the Murray, and it was too hard to turn down.  I'm not sure I'm satisfied how I'm reflecting the performance of the trade with the above chart. I'll show the value of the Ripken card against what I paid for the Murray card, but also show the value of the Murray card in the group of cards I didn't purchase.
Being a Cowboys fan, I hope Murray keeps it up, but I think the odds are he falls back, either because that's just usually what happens with Cowboy running backs (see Julius Jones, Marion Barber, Felix Jones, Tashard Choice etc.), or the return of Felix Jones will take away some of his carries.  The Ripken T206 was a safe play, and I might try to trade some of these other Football 2011 cards for other T206 cards before they fall off too far in value.  Or I may just sell them all on Cardtarget.com and buy some donuts.

Cheap Card Collector, But Not a Cheap Trader!

I have been out of town for a few days if anyone has noticed a lack of posts for a few days.  One of my favorite things about coming back from a trip, besides of course seeing the lovely wife and kids, is ripping open any packages that have come my way, even though I know what is in them already.  One of the packages that came in this weekend had more than I expected though, and it made my day!

Cheap Card Collecting is the kind of blog I aspire to run.  It has a point of view (how to collect on a budget) and looks great too!  Anthony from CCC contacted me about a couple of Bowman Platinums I pulled, and we worked out what I thought was a 2 for 2 trade.  This is what I knew I was getting:

2 Bowman Platinum Christian Colon (Base and Purple Parallel).  Colon is a top prospect for the Royals and plays for the Northwest Arkansas Naturals who are nearby the Doon household.  My hope is to get one or both of these autographed. 

But not only did I get the cards I wanted, Anthony also added some very cool Felix Jones cards:

The Certified card on the left is numbered to 250!    And the Topps Magic card is very, very slick. My eyes may or may not have welled up when I saw these.

And to top it off, he added a card of my man D-Mac, and a Topps Diamond Duos card of Josh Hamilton.  Bullseyes all around!

I assume if you are a serious card collector, you are aware of Cheap Card Collecting.  If not, do yourself a favor and check it out!