When I first considered starting this blog, I’d intended to focus on the various Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, thrift shop, and garage/estate sale finds that I’d discovered in the past, and assumed I’d continue to find in the future. The 18-months that followed saw a sharp decline in those types of finds, which shows me for trying to make plans. At least until the purchase I made to close out my summer.
Near the end of an earlier post, I mentioned that I found a collection on Facebook Marketplace for the first time in ages at the end of August. When I’ve had time, I’ve spent the last several months sorting and integrating the keepers from that group of cards into my collection, finally finishing today when the last of the basketball keepers made their way into my boxes. Since baseball has been over for a while, the photo below shows clearly this has been a time-consuming process.
There were some really great additions to my collection, but nothing that was super valuable – which is why I was able to pick it all up for just over $100, plus about an hour of road time. The best baseball card was the Mike Trout Bowman Platinum parallel shown above. However, this was precisely the kind of thing I love finding in a box full of mostly ho-hum 90s cards, especially when combined with a handful of vintage commons (plus Carew).
I was able to add a bunch of great local minor league sets to my collection, filling a few needs in obscure players I collect, including two cards from the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes retrospective set shown above, both of which I’ve only seen listed on eBay once for over $10 a piece. The team sets also included early Tim Lincecum and Pablo Sandoval cards, which aren’t shown since those sets were still sealed, as well as more recent ones such as the one featuring Mr. Bart. There were also some 1980s bagged sets I never knew existed (such as a glossy Mike Schmidt Star set numbered to 1000), late 90s Pinnacle Mint coins, and a huge amount of 2002-2005 baseball that fits nicely into a gap in my collection that coincided with the years where I had the least disposable income.
There were a couple thousand 90s basketball cards and probably another thousand or so football, most of which were commons or in relatively bad condition, however I was able net a few dozen Michael Jordans, a few Ray Allen rookies, and some Kevin Garnett rookies. I think the Kobe Bryant cards were previously sold – except for the Z-Force one shown above. There was also a complete set of Nestle Slam Dunk cards, which were kind of cool to find.
The biggest surprise were the unopened blasters (plus one opened one). Based on recent eBay sales, I might be able to make these pay for the whole lot. I had to open the re-pack blaster though.
Based on the packs that were in the re-pack blaster, I think I did pretty well by getting Jose Abreu and Jay Bruce rookies, a Jeter I didn’t have, and the Harper Beckett card that I’ve seen in dime boxes before – but anything in those was always going to be a bonus.
When the dust settled from sorting and cataloging, I ended up with about 15,000 new additions – probably about half of what I bought. I’ll ultimately add a bunch of these to my Sportlots store, but that project is still very much in the “build” phase, with baseball additions stalled at about 1999. It’ll probably be my winter project to get the rest of my baseball extras added there, since I’ve clearly backslid in my stated goal of paring down the collection. But it was a deal!
The cards that didn’t make the cut here were donated to Goodwill – these were mostly over-production era commons or damaged cards- an offering to the Goodwill Gods that if I believed in such things, I could credit for a December hot streak there that I’ll feature here in the coming days. More backsliding!
I’m jealous, $100 for all that and the entertainment value of going through them all. Great buy.