the card show must go on

hold on to your hats, 

we are going to see some cards!

after skipping a few card shows since last fall, i decided to check out the first show of the year. it was the monthly club show held on january 8, and i was looking forward to digging through the 5/$1 boxes that had yielded some solid bargains in my last couple of visits. unfortunately, someone at the december show had bought all 9 of that dealer's 5/$1 monster boxes and he said that he hadn't had time to reload.

i persevered and dug through his 7/$5 and 3/$10 boxes instead. here are a few of the cards i found, in addition to the 2018 topps chrome sapphire edition yasiel puig card up top:

2021 topps silver pack mookie betts and cody bellinger

2021 topps heritage high numbers tommy kahnle

topps made this card a short print. it's a guy who spent all of 2021 on the disabled list.

2018 topps corey seager gold parallel

look at seager lunging for that pot of gold!

2009-10 upper deck hockey johnny weir autograph

ok so i will watch ice skating with my wife sometimes during the olympics and i don't mind weir and tara lipinski. i also enjoyed the "family guy" episode that featured them (not sure if they voiced themselves or not). with the winter olympics coming up, i figure i can flip this pretty easily.

2011 topps chrome julio teheran autograph refractor

you will see a few braves cards here. i am reloading for trading!

2014 panini national treasures wei-chung wang jersey/auto

i was intrigued by the taiwanese signature

2014 topps chris sale future stars that never were gold parallel

2017 topps chrome alex reyes autograph blue refractor

i think someone in portland can look forward to seeing this in their mailbox someday in the future

2018 topps johnny cueto 1983 black parallel

i might be running in to a giants fan in the future so i need to be prepared

2018 topps update trea turner jackie robinson day commemorative medallion gold parallel

i bought this one for my "42" collection. didn't notice it was a gold parallel until i got home

2019 topps gary vee direct 360 live your hobby bryce harper and clayton kershaw

i knew these were online only cards, but not much else. i suppose i should have just taken the kershaw. not sure who wants a gary vee bryce harper card.

2019 topps update mookie betts rainbow foil and gold parallels

2021 topps 3d xander bogaerts

some red sox stuff that caught my eye.

obviously, this trip turned out to not be quite as good of a deal given the pricier boxes, and there were definitely cards in those boxes that probably belonged in a 5/$1 box, but i still muddled through. i wound up with $60 worth of cards that he let me have for $50 which was nice. six of those cards came from the 3/$10 box, so i guess that means i found 62 cards. 

here are some more of them:

that howie kendrick card in the last scan is from the sapphire edition of 2020 topps chrome and is numbered to 10. if only i were a kendrick supercollector!

i found some more cards from a couple of other bargain boxes from a different dealer. this one guy who always has a couple of dime boxes is also always frustrating. you have to keep straight which cards came out of which box because i guess he sells a box for a friend of his and wants to keep track of how much money that box is generating. this time was even more frustrating because he had dime and quarter boxes, but the cards weren't in sleeves or marked in any way. i am pretty sure i got a couple cards confused by the time i was done, but i only spent $3 with him so i couldn't have messed up too monumentally. that was 18 cards, by the way. i think these are the 18:

but i might have mixed some of them up with the cards from the first dealer. i was happy to find that 2021 topps heritage corey seager card, regardless of who it came from. there were some random 1984 donruss cards in the dime box, but none of the five cards in that first scan are actually from 1984 as i am sure you can tell.

finally, i found another regular dealer who had some vintage marked down and i picked up three more cards for my 1957 set build:

i now own just over 90% of the set!  he also had some vintage bargain bins, and there was a snap case with some 1971 o-pee-chee cards in it. i misread the text on the case and thought he was selling them for a quarter apiece. no, he was trying to sell the lot for $25. still, he gave me four of the cards for a buck which was nice. here are three of the four i chose:

he was kind enough to point out to me that these were different than their topps counterparts! i resisted the urge to tell him about my blog. the fourth opc card was this classic

that i've already sent elsewhere.

all in all i spent $63 which was not too bad. there was another show the following weekend that i skipped, but i do plan to be at the show held earlier today. supposedly, the 5/$1 boxes will be back in full force. stay tuned!

factoring in refractors but not at that price

last year i placed a bunch of orders on sportlots. 61 orders to be exact, which has me wondering why i wasn't a bit more organized. sure, some of those orders were placed separately to take advantage of optimizing shipping costs (sometimes it's cheaper to order cards from sellers in separate orders rather than pay a higher shipping cost in a single order) and i did use the box order option a couple of times, but i probably could have done a better job to consolidate some orders.

when it comes to sportlots, i am a proponent of adding cards to max out the shipping cost per card value. for example, if i have 3 cards in my order from a seller, i will add a fourth to get one more card without increasing shipping costs. one way i do this is to search for refractors within sellers' inventory. they are easy to find and easy to confirm a need on my part. as a result, i added quite a few refractors to my dodger collection this way.  here are some of them in no particular order:

2018 topps chrome sapphire logan forsythe

2004 topps chrome refractor shawn green

2006 topps chrome refractor jayson werth

2004 topps chrome refractor todd hundley

2011 topps chrome xfractor matt kemp

2011 topps chrome xfractor andre ethier

2018 topps chrome prism refractor corey seager

2018 topps chrome sapphire dodgers team card

2018 topps chrome sapphire tom koehler

2018 topps chrome pink refractor alex wood

2018 topps chrome pink refractor kenley jansen

2018 topps chrome pink refractor kenta maeda

2018 topps chrome xfractor kenta maeda

2018 topps chrome pink refractor corey seager

2018 topps chrome sapphire chris taylor

2018 topps chrome xfractor justin turner

2018 topps chrome prism refractor alex wood

2018 topps chrome update refractor kenley jansen

2019 topps chrome refractor clayton kershaw

2018 bowman's best refractor clayton kershaw

2018 bowman's best refractor brian dozier

my attempts to maximize shipping backfired a bit, unfortunately. one of the orders i placed that included a couple of these refractors added to get to the seller's shipping limit resulted in the worst sportlots experience i've had in the 9-plus years i've been using the site. i ordered 4 cards in may of 2020 from a seller named jordan25 using the budget shipping method. a week or so later, i received this from my mail carrier:

yes, there was $7.50 due in postage because this seller slapped a tracking number on a pwe.  there was a letter explaining the charge attached to the envelope:

a couple of things there. the letter says the item was being returned, which in hindsight would have been the best thing. however, someone decided to go ahead and deliver it to me postage due. i have a great postal carrier, and i am not blaming him if in fact it was his decision to bring this to me rather than return to sender. i figured that i wanted the cards and that this was clearly a mistake on the part of the seller, so i had no problem accepting the envelope and heading off to sportlots to be reimbursed.

i am not completely sure how the $7.50 amount was arrived at, but i filed an issue with the seller to let him know that the cards had arrived with this postage due. long story short, after a bit of back and forth, he denied my request which, by that time, had been reduced to just the value of the cards (about a buck) since the issue resolution within the sportlots site does not allow for more than that. even the sportlots site moderator pushed back on me, asking if i could have rejected the delivery of the envelope. well, yes, but i assumed that since it was not my mistake i would be reimbursed. anyway, i wound up with no reimbursement and no relief. very frustrating as i was not the dumbass who put a tracking sticker on a pwe. the seller even told me that if i had given him the receipt, he would have reimbursed me (this is after he denied my request). i informed him that the fact that i have the cards is the receipt, but he never responded. 

anyway, i've placed a few orders on the site in 2021 but i think i will try to sell my inventory that is currently listed there (about 50,000 cards) locally on marketplace and be done with it.  no amount of shiny refractor goodness will fully remove the stain of this experience.

playing catch up

i've fallen behind in my trade posting, and still won't be caught up after this post. between giveaways, contests, and straight up trades, there hasn't been much of a slowdown in incoming cards during the pandemic.  here are some cards to prove it.

cards from diamond jesters

these 2019 topps holiday cards were a return for one of my "almost free stuff friday" trade bait posts, and are an appropriate trio of cards to kick off this early december post.

cards from gtt

these three cards are also part of a "almost free stuff friday" trade. the 2007 fleer ultra saito at the top reminded me that it is tough to tell the difference between hobby and retail versions of these cards. the hobby versions have rainbow foil, i believe.   a new-to-me ryne sandberg lurker card and the tatooine bobby bonilla parallel card fit right in with a couple of my mini-collections.

cards from it's like having my own card shop

daniel and i exchanged a few pwe's over the summer, and these were some of the highlights. the 2003 upper deck 40 man dave roberts card is a rainbow parallel, which is great. the rest are inserts or parallels that were new to me. i suppose i should have shown these cards in october, given the pinkness of the 2016 topps chrome trayce thompson card.  speaking of pink...

card from card hemmorrhage

i claimed this 2019 panini donruss max scherzer franchise features pink firework parallel from one of jay's giveaways.

card from cards that never were

i won this custom card from john in a giveaway. you can buy packs of customs through his blog - they look great!

card from the diamond king

i won this 1979 topps comic nolan ryan card for correctly guessing that kevin had a dupe of it.

cards from nachos grande

i claimed the 103rd trade stack. you can see all of the cards that i obtained by doing so here, but i was really in it for the 2020 topps allen & ginter gavin lux card. the 1996 leaf limited hideo nomo was the other dodger in the stack, and i thought that the 2000 pacific private stock tim hudson mini was neat enough to scan and show here.

cards from fuji

these cards are from the oldest trade that i had yet to post about - sorry about that mark! lots of great cards including the 2001 upper deck decade the 1970's willie davis relic. one of the nice things that resulted from waiting on posting these particular cards is that i can now say that all 8 of the players shown are world series champions. of course, a couple of them (rafael furcal and manny ramirez) won their rings with teams other than the dodgers, but they are champions nonetheless.

thanks to all that trade or offer cards on their blogs - it is appreciated! and, i still have a few trades to post about and will try to get caught up in the new year.  in the meantime, check out my wantlists and let's trade!