Friday, April 2, 2021

i used to be a plastic toploader

i don't think i've ever bought a toploader in my life. however, i have bought a large number of cards that arrived in toploaders. i'm a binder guy (except for my hall of famer collection which is housed in mostly one-touch magnetic holders), so i don't need toploaders. i use them and semi-rigid holders (which i have purchased before but would happily accept any that you don't want as part of a trade) to mail out cards, but i still have an excess of toploaders numbering a couple of thousand or so.  many of them are riddled with tape or yellowed with age. they sat in a couple of boxes until sometime last fall when i sold a priority box full of them.

that was pretty easy, so i sold another box. then another, with the third one selling for twice the price of the previous one. crazy.  i used some of that money to add this card to my collection:
what a great looking card. the 1957 topps ted kluszewski is certainly one of the highlights of the set, and i definitely wanted my version to show good color, which i think it does.  i also added this richie ashburn card:
with the same windfall. i still have a ways to go with the set build, and this is definitely not the right time to be looking for 1957 singles. however, i will persevere.

and now i've already sold a fourth box of toploaders. each has contained about 240 pieces (mostly toploaders), with some snap or hard cases thrown in, too. so far the four boxes i've sold have netted me about $160, so i'm still quite a ways ahead. i also see that comc is now trying to buy back toploaders.  these are crazy times. i encourage you to take advantage and trade used toploaders for cards! 

one more note about 1957 - i see that topps is going to use the design in this year's archives release. along with 1963, 1973, 1983, 1991, 2001, and 2011. i can think of a few players who missed out on those designs the first time around, and i hope topps includes them - a '57 jackie robinson would be nice, as would a 1973 hoyt wilhelm. it should be interesting!

16 comments:

  1. I've got a ton of lightly used top loaders in my garage that I'm going to use eventually when I set up at a show. Well... that's the plan. I've been saying that for about 5 years now.

    Personally... I'm a top loader guy. I use them for most of my PC cards. I'm one of those guys who insists on using new ones for my PC cards... and was just thinking about how long this shortage is going to last. As luck would have it, I stocked up a few months before the pandemic struck... so I have enough to last me a few years. But I've already started using Card Savers for some of my lower end cards.

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    1. the ones i've sold have run the gamut from very slightly used to plastered with scotch tape. i assume the buyers are sellers rather than collectors.

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  2. I'm wondering if I should put my vaccine card in a toploader. Unfortunately I don't see a good solution that will protect it AND let it fit in my wallet.

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    1. the newest wallet card craze! i haven't got mine yet but hopefully soon.

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  3. Wow, trading toploaders for cards like that is a great trade.

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  4. COMC just offered an option to buy back clean toploaders at a dime a piece - I almost never use them but I've accumulated tons from past card purchases. Definitely planning on trading them in for credit.

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    1. I saw that too. Definitely worth looking in to if you have clean ones.

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    2. They don't cover the shipping though, so when it's all said and done, you're paying for more credit than you've actually earned from trading in the toploaders.

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    3. Sure you'd have to send enough to have it be worth it, but if you are sending them cards already I think adding toploaders would be worth looking in to.

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  5. I never worried about top loaders until I started college and we bought them to house our Star Wars and Star Trek CCG decks. No way we'd be scuffing up our Captain Picard or Darth Vader cards!

    Congrats on putting your top loaders to good use!

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  6. Wow, glad I got some before the prices went up! Great 'flip'!

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