Cleve's Auction Night: Part Two- "Are You Serious, Napkin?"

I am serious.  And don’t call me Shirley.  Airplane.

I mentioned in yesterday’s post that instead of goody boxes, I got goody binders.  These were $2-$3 each, so even though I admittedly didn’t know what they had, I bought them anyway.    I also got 3 Topps Traded sets for $2.  Two 1990, with nobody significant, and one 1989.  The 89 set has a Griffey Rookie, so that covered my cost.  I looked in the boxes and these cards are pristine.  I’m pretty sure I didn’t have either of these sets, and for about 65 cents a pop, I thought, “Why not?”  We’ll say I paid a buck for the 1989 and $.50 each for the 1990s.  That doesn’t seem so bad.

Here was the gist of binder #1:

1993 Stadium Club

 Nolan Ryan Pacific

I guess Stadium Club did team sets in 93.  I’ve never seen these before, but complete team sets are great for trading.  Teams included in this binder are : Cubs, Rangers, Rockies, White Sox, Marlins.  Each set is 30 cards.  There was also a whole bunch of Nolan Ryan cards that I’ve seen before but don’t know much about.  This binder was $3, which equates to about $.50 per team set/Ryan lot.  Eh, not great.  However,  I can box these and make better use of the pages and binders.   Hell, the pages and binder would have cost around $5 alone.

Binder #2:

Again, this was $3, and again, the real value is the 50 pages in this binder and the binder itself.  The pages consisted of 1990 Sportflics, and base 86-88 Topps.  Nothing special.  But I like Sportflics, so I’m ok with these junk cards.  And there were some decent stars inside that can go in my star player binders and boxes. 

Binder #3:

This was also $3 and the best of the 3 binders.  There are about 20 pages of various Bowman chrome, and some good players (Ripken, Gwynn, Piazza and former Razorback David Walling for my Hogs album).  I love the Bowman Heritage Chrome TV cards, but these shown were the only 2 in the binder.

The best part was this complete SP set from 2000.  90 cards, with no cards missing.  I love complete sets as you may know.

Grades:

Traded Sets:  B+  Super cheap, and I needed both years. 

Binder 1:  B-  : Team sets will be good to trade, and Nolan Ryan is Nolan Ryan.

Binder 2:  B- :   I can’t give myself a grade below B when the cost was only 3 bucks, and at a minimum I can use the pages and binder.  But these cards are totally unnecessary to my collection.  I basically bought the pages. 

Binder 3:  A :  Shiny cards and a complete SP set make this the best binder of the 3.  

I’ll give myself some bonus credit for the 90 blank pages that will come of this after I take all the cards out.  That would be about $15 in a store.  And they are the nice pages, too. 

Everything but the traded sets are up for trade for anyone interested.  Sadly, this will be my last auction for a few weeks.  I will be on business trips each of the next two weeks.  I could probably go into Cleve’s and do some write in bids for anything that looks good, but I should probably knock it off for a while.   I’m sure the lovely wife would agree with this.  However, she should know that Allen and Ginter is coming soon.  And Topps Marquee has my attention.  And truly, if Topps Lineage is as cool as I think it is going to be, there may be some trouble in the Doon Household.

Checklist Chipaway- Hammer Time + Some Cliff Lee

For anyone who checks my blog Monday for the eTopps alert, I apologize for missing it today.   I have been slammed at work lately and the morning passed by before I even had a chance to look up.  I was happy to see a Mike Moustakas offering today, but it was $8 with a pretty high print run so I passed and will get it later when it comes down in price.  I did order a Mark Teixeira at $5 with a 499 print run. 

I am currently on hold with the 12 days of Brycemas project as I patiently wait for key cards for "Day 4" to come in.  These have been on order almost 4 weeks now and I'm getting pretty frustrated.  The seller on sportsbuy.com sent me a delivery confirmation number last Tuesday and said they were on the way.   Nothing is showing up yet for this number on USPS.com.    I still don't have the cards and am getting annoyed.  It was a big order of about 80 cards and my little song is in limbo until they come in. 

A couple of things did come in today though.  First, I sent a card of Cardinals prospect Matt Carpenter to Justin at Justin's World.  He was going to have an opportunity to get the card signed, so I gladly sent it over to help out.  For one card, I was just happy to help a fellow blogger,   However, Justin graciously sent me a handful of cards of one of my all time favorite Razorbacks and current MLB ace, Cliff Lee:

I'm always happy to build my Lee collection, so a big thanks to Justin!

I also wrapped up a small insert set off the Super Duper Checklist:

This completes my Hammer Team insert set from 95 Sportflix. 

I don't care if it looks or sounds like a silly insert set, I love the looks of it.  I also love how Sportflix built this set (as well as the Detonators insert set) in multiples of 9, making it conducive to pages. 

Gwynn Wynn

Man, eBay and PayPal just make it really difficult for a card addict like me to stay in control.   It's too easy to say "yes" to an auction.   My lovely wife may disagree, but I think most of the time I am relatively disciplined on buying cards.  I don’t typically buy expensive items or boxes, and I usually don’t pull the trigger on something that I know is a steal unless it falls under my collecting solar system.  I also don’t buy general “lots” of cards that don’t list specifically what those cards are.

Last week I made a couple of exceptions to my rules.  I bought one rather expensive jersey card and will post about when it arrives.  I also bought this:

A lot of 200 Tony Gwynn cards.  I stared and stared at this auction as the time to bid ticked away.  I don’t need 200 Tony Gwynn cards.    I want 200 Tony Gwynn cards, but I don’t need them.  The item description didn’t list the cards either, other than listing some of the brands in the lot,  so I knew it was likely a bunch of junk wax.  But no one had bid, and if I could win with the lowest bid, the cost would wind up being pennies per card.  Not a bad way to build the binder of one of my favorite all time players.  I put in my bid and watched the auction come to a close, alternating from hoping I would win to hoping someone would outbid me.  I wound up winning.

The box arrived yesterday and with a slight sense of dread, I dug in to see what I got, mostly expecting a bunch of this:

Some junk wax, but cards of Tony Gwynn are cards of Tony Gwynn, so no problem.  So that was part of the box, but I was pleasantly surprised by the overall contents.  There were a lot of shiny cards:

A few Topps Finest, as well as the Super Cool Plastic EX cards, one which I already had (1999), and one which I didn't (1998).  Maybe I should try to build the 98 set once 99 is done. 



And there were several of hologram/sportflics type cards that I dig:

I love those SPX hologram cards.  And these are my first UC3 cards.  The little pinwheels in the background of the Cyclone Squad card spin around when you move the card.  I'm sure I looked like an imbecile watching them spin 'round and 'round as I drooled over this card last night. 

I’m glad to say that I didn’t already have at least 50% of what was in the box.  My Tony Gwynn collection is now my largest single player collection, surpassing Darryl Strawberry.