My Latest COMC order

    It seems to be pretty popular here in the blogosphere to do Black Friday COMC shopping and show off the spoils.  I've done COMC show and tell in the past, and so I'll throw my hat in the ring and show some of my favorites from this batch. I usually only ship cards that I buy on COMC once a year so this shipment of 266 cards was even larger than normal.  I rarely ever load money into my account and just spend what I am able to sell on my own.  This year I actually put sixty extra dollars into my account for the Black Friday sales.  In total, I spent $368.13 and got 266 cards.  I spent $1.38 per card.  I'm a value shopper to the extreme.

    Here's a shot of my invoice.  I was targeted to ship in early January but I actually got it right before Christmas.  I'm just late posting....
 

    These three fill some sets. The Gorman Thomas was the last Diamond King I needed from 1983, Harper was the last of the 15 Chase it Down I needed to complete that insert set. The Pro-Vision Sheffield is from 1993 and the price was right.  1993 Pro-Visions are actually much rarer than other years.

    I added the Post cereal box cards from the early 60's to my Orioles team set lists and binders.  These three are in pretty good shape and exceptionally cool

    Trey Mancini has been a favorite of mine since he carried the O's through a dark period.  I read he's trying to make a comeback this coming season, so I wish him well.  Since he left Baltimore, his stats have declined severely so we'll see if a team gives him a shot to see if he has something left in the tank.

    More Mancini hits.  His cards are really cheap right now.  I'm happy to take them off of the hands of the sellers.

    Austin Hays is another former Oriole (although more recent) that I have a PC of.  His cards are also cheap and I'm more than happy to grab a few nice hits at a low price.

    Jordan Westburg is a player I've really taken a liking to.  He reminds me a lot of JJ Hardy and Cal Ripken with their steady play, are all business between the lines but have easygoing, soft-spoken demeanor off the field.  It also doesn't hurt that I ended up talking to his parents the whole game when he was in the minors.  When he was with Double-A Bowie, they were in town to play the Flying Squirrels, I ended up striking up a conversation with a couple during the game.  I didn't know it until after the game was over that I had been talking to Jordan's parents the whole game!

    Of course, I had to indulge in Cal Ripken cards.  This Cal to Greatness is #11 of the 15 card set and finishes off the insert set for me.  Cards 11 thru 15 of the Cal to Greatness set are actually much tougher to find than cards 1 through 10.

Its not often I'm able to find numbered Cal cards for less than ten dollars.  I was ecstatic to get this Big Boppers from 1998 Upper Deck Retro for a great price!

Diamond Producers was quite rare (case hits) back in 1997.  It took me a while to find a Ripken at a price I could stomach.  It was a near instant buy when I saw it pop up.

I bought this card the night Corbin Burnes was traded to the Orioles.  He was great for the Orioles this year.  I'll miss him every 5th day but I understand why he wanted to play for the Diamonbacks.  Good for him and good for D-backs fans.

It's not often you run into Albert Belle relic cards.  ESPECIALLY ones where he is pictured as an Oriole.  Old school Pacific is just the best.  

I'm not going to bore you with all the team set fillers and such that I got in this shipment.  This was just the highlights that I wanted to show off.  Hopefully, you've all enjoyed the cards as much as I have.

September 7th & 8th Raleigh Card Show: Still Learning

     I was able to get away this past weekend at the request of my good friend Blake to the card show in Raleigh, North Carolina.  Sports cards are his business and livelihood. He doesn't believe in the financial burden of a physical shop but he is a very successful streamer on Whatnot (has the largest store on the platform) and sets up most weekends at  shows all over Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina. We're about the same age, and our card collecting background is pretty similar.  We both appreciate the nostalgia of cards from the '90s and have large PC's of our favorite teams (he's a Twins fan and I don't hold that against him!).  This lead to a quick friendship he trusts me and my knowledge (of baseball cards at least) enough to help him keep an eye on the table and charm customers into buying cards they don't need.

    I was happy to make the trip down and help out for the weekend.  It was a busy show with lots of foot traffic.  It wasn't all work and no play however.  The perks of being a dealer at a show is getting in early "to set up" and prepare for the day.  Our set up takes 10 minutes at the most to set up so that leaves plenty of time to go shopping for ourselves.  While he was working on deals to bring in more inventory, I found some cards to bring home to the nest.  

    I've been on the look out for the Orioles from the Kellogg's sets since fall of last year.  They aren't terribly expensive and I could grab them off of COMC at any time.  Its about the chase though.  You knew that already, though.

    I grabbed a handful of insert set needs from the cheap boxes.  I'm one card closer to the Dick Perez Diamond Kings set (1982 through 1996) with the Eddie Murray.  I thought the Heart of the City cards from Topps Chrome were really cool as well as the All-Aces and Black Golds from the last few years.  I'm always on the look out for them.

    

    Some PC pickups here.  I love Raywave refractors of any kind which probably stems from my real life job. The Mancini will look nice in my PC of his cards.  Bundy is a nice pickup for less than a buck.  I think that Beam Teams are a box hit.  I had never seen the Brooks card before and at a quarter, I'll definitely take it.  The Grayson was 2 bucks and I love green cards of any kind.  Easy buys.

    Oh Austin Hays, I'm sad that he's gone from the Orioles but I know why they made the trade when they did.  Either way, both being numbered parallels, being orange, and of a favorite player make these some of the easiest buys of the weekend.

    This particular weekend I made some awesome pickups for my Cal Ripken PC.  I usually struggle to find Ripkens I don't have.  I was able to add this pretty new Ripken All-Star relic card from 2024 Topps. I love 1989 Topps and especially the All-Stars subset.

    The next Ripken I picked up was this Etch-A-Sketch insert from 1998 Topps.  I had assumed that Topps made this insert using some sort of computer program or something.  Not so.  This is an actual Etch-A-Sketch "drawing" by an actual person.  Wow, I had no idea until I read the back of the card. The guy who made the real life Sketches had some serious talent.

    My favorite Ripken pick up of the weekend was the insert from 1999 Skybox Molten Metals.  This is from the Heavy Metals Fusions insert set.  It a decently rare insert that I knew I needed when I saw it.  I used to think that Skybox and Pacific were rip off brands and didn't really pay them that much attention when they first came out.  I guess at this juncture of my collecting life I've really come to appreciate the risks that some of the "off the beaten path" issues took back then.  Case in point is this card.  The dots that you see on the right side are actually tiny pinholes which classify it as a die cut.  The scan really doesn't do justice to easily my favorite pick up of the weekend.

    I'm still learning the higher end of the card market.  I have stayed in my comfort zone of the card industry for quite some time.  It may have something to do with how I was brought up and cherishing every pack of '92 Topps I bought from the local grocery store or the '93 Donruss I bought from the drug store.  I totally understand the lower end of the market and Blake has been kind enough to show me the ropes of buying and selling higher dollar raw and graded cards and I am grateful for his tutelage.  I am just as grateful to have another card collecting buddy to call a friend.

All that being said, the weekend was quite enjoyable at the card show in Raleigh and I picked up some great additions to my collection.