a day for cards from canada

it's canada day, eh? grab a molson (or labbatt's) and take a look at some cards that i ordered from baseballcardstore.ca.  like most others, i found the site to be a little clunky to navigate, having been spoiled by comc, beckett marketplace, and sportlots. still, i was able to hone in on 100 cards that i unfortunately split over two orders. i was quick to close out my first order lest some cards become unavailable, and shortly after doing so i remembered that i had wanted to search for some other cards, too. in all i wound up spending $19.98 (just about half of that in shipping), but i think i got my money's worth. i was happy to see that they have since instituted a "wait to ship" option, and i already have another 100 or so cards on "layaway".

the cards that i've received included a few cards for my collection, a few to send to trading partners, and yes, a few to flip. in fact, i've made most of my money back after selling just a few cards over the last couple of weeks.

as for the keepers, i'll start with a former nefarious 9 want, a 2000 topps gallery adrian beltre card

in addition to coming off of my most wanted list, that card completes a team set, for me, so good times. 

this next card also completed a team set, in that it was one of i think two cards in the insert set featuring dodgers

finding a 2013 topps chrome connections die-cut card of adrian gonzalez for a dime was nice. i saw in a recent post that dimebox nick picked up the other dodger card from this insert set (matt kemp) from the site. everybody wins.

the most recent release i found was from 2020 panini donruss, and i picked up a tony gonsolin card

as a result. of course, i have since received three more copies of this card thanks to a couple of trade packages, but one of the dupes will make a fine addition to my dodger stadium mini collection. it's also nice to see a card with the players' weekend uniforms that isn't a short print.

speaking of my mini collections, i wasn't able to search for them as well as hoped due to the lack of photos, but outside of targeting specific cards that i needed to complete team sets or were part of my most wanted list, i found it easy to search by set or parallels.  as a result, i found a few more dodger needs like these silver signature parallels from 1996 upper deck collector's choice

and these black gold cards from 1992 leaf

and a couple of gold/gold rush parallels of professional pinch-hitter dave hansen

one of the sets i searched for was 2002 topps 206 which i am still trying to complete. i did find one card that i needed

jason pridie was drafted out of high school in 2002, but received a card (and variation) in this set. he didn't hit the majors until 2008 with the twins.

another easy way to search the site was by player name, and one name i searched was mike piazza. i have mentioned a few times here and in comments on other blogs lately that i am continually amazed at the number of piazza dodger cards that i don't have.  i found two cards of his to add to my collection

so that's a start. these are from the 1994 baseball aces playing card set by bicycle. brett butler and tom candiotti also have cards in this set, but they weren't available on the site.

another player i searched for (along with a "dodgers" filter) was milton bradley. not sure why his name came to me, but i came away with a couple new cards of him 

yes, that prosigs card on the left is a dodger card even if bradley is still wearing a cleveland uniform.

one of the searches that prompted my second order on the site was vladimir guerrero. i was perplexed by the 2018 topps update walmart exclusive hall of famer highlights insert set and was looking to add some non-parallels from that set. i was able to find one, which was nice.

after searching for a large number of sets, parallels, and players, i gave some thought to what else might be out there. and then i remembered, you can't go wrong with pacific. i found a few cards to add, including some crown royale cards that hit a few different collections for me:

in hindsight, i should have cleaned out their stock.