2024 Some Sales YAY!

 

This past year for my card sales over at Ebay I only sold one item an Adrien Peterson relic card. In attempts to get things to sell on Ebay a few times I have played with lowering shipping (which I shouldn't do and it bit me on this sale) and lowering the asking price of items. Yeah I did both of those for that card and ended up losing about $1.50. Dems is the breaks over at my Ebay with only 67 items now.

Meanwhile over at COMC (previously "Check Out My Cards") I had a record year in sales. My biggest year in sales over there. My first year 2009 I had 9 sales for $25 ($24.90).  Sold 40 cards in 2024 for a total of $65 ($64.59). My previous biggest year was 10 cards in 2015 for $4.45. Thinking back this surge in sales is mostly in part to adding 364 cards there earlier in the year with them being added to the site in May, which was a month into my medical leave from last year. 

UPDATE: On 31 Dec 2024 two more cards sold for a dollar thirty so my grand total for 2024 is actually $65.89 thirty.

2022 Topps Archives 1972 Fan Favorites Certified Autogragh

 A fairly recent buy from Ebay was a 2022 Topps Archives Fan Favorites Autograph card of San Francisco Giants hitting coach Alyssa Nakken. The autograph is on card in blue sharpie, and at some angles it looks like it is a blue ballpoint. 1972 Topps Baseball Design.

2022 Topps Archives Baseball Fan Favorites Certified Autograph

72FF-AN Alyssa Nakken San Francisco Giants

In May of last year I blogged about a Topps Now card of Alyssa (here) which I guess is her RC?

Two Andromeda Autos Trance

So a couple of weeks back got a second autograph card from an actor from one of the Sci-Fi shows I like. The first one I got ages ago. This is from the show Andromeda. A sci-fi show created by an idea from Star Trek Creator Gene Rodenberry. A few months back I had posted an auto card of the show's star Kevin Sorbo. The cards I am featuring for this post is Laura Bertram who played the alien Trance Gemini.

The first of the two cards I like better even though the signature is not as legible,  and is the one I had gotten a few years back. It was also an oddball type of card as it was originally a sealed "Uncirculated" card, however the gold seal sticker was damaged and was hastily "repaired" with some scotch tape. I don't think I had done that, but maybe. Anyway I probably debated if I should remove and ditch the damaged seal which just adds other problems including not being able to view the entire card. I'm just going to ditch the useless sticker. Maybe back when I got it I thought the seals were cool, but now I don't care. I liked if I could get them, but always hated that they cover up too much info. Also sellers will charge way too much extra for the seal. Anyway that is the older of the two, even though it is from a later series of the cards.

The second more recent acquisition has its own story. I got it from Ebay and even though I paid over $20 ($26 and some change $20 plus postage and tax) the seller sent it by the new Ebay standard envelope. Cards valued over $20 are not supposed to go that way. (update: OK technically my card was just at $20 so it just sneaks by) Which I don't care for. Mostly because the tracking marks the package as "delivered" when it reaches your area's main hub post office, not necessarily your "home" post office that serves your address. I got it a day or two after it was marked as delivered. This has happened with another card I had received via the standard envelope as well.

2001 Inkworks Andromeda Autograph A4 Laura Bertram as Trance Gemini

2004 Inkworks Andromeda Autograph A5 Laura Bertram as Trance Gemini (with Uncirculated Seal)

2004 Inkworks Andromeda Autograph A5 Laura Bertram as Trance Gemini (raw)

Strive For '65 Saturday: From Mom & Pop At Ebay

STRIVE FOR '65 STATUS:

29 May 2021 Strive for '65 | 1965 Set Build | Master Want List Current card count: 300/598 (302/600) 50.2%

Here is the link to my last update from March of 2019. WOW. Somewhere I have a card I got between then and this batch, but I didn't record it here. I'm pretty sure it was in one of my COMC orders. That single card itself didn't get me past the half-way point, and it isn't in the official tally yet. However these six cards from Mom & Pop Cards on Ebay did put my percentage collected over the half-way mark. Yes that is the name of their Ebay store "Mom & Pop Card Shop". Some of their prices are a bit steep but man do they have a great selection of stuff. I also got some football cards from them, but I will only discuss the 1965 Topps Baseball I got from them in this post of course. The prices ranged from $3 to $6 and averaged at $3.83 per card. Not bad and the shipping was FREE.

Friday 23 Apr 2021:

Got a small Priority Mail box filled with some goodies including these 6 cards for my Strive For '65 Set build. As I mentioned above.

Here are the cards:

117 Wes Stock Athletics

126 Los Angeles Dodgers Team Card

271 Don Wert Tigers

299 Jerry Zimmermann Twins

352 Jerry Lumpe Tigers

378 Chuck Estrada Orioles

To the best of my knowledge Chuck Estrada is not related to actor Erik Estrada in any way. When I first saw the back of the card I thought there was some paper loss on the comic image, but it was part of the flames coming off of the fast ball.

The Latest Additions:
Friday 23 Apr 2021:

117 Wes Stock Athletics

126 Los Angeles Dodgers Team Card

271 Don Wert Tigers

299 Jerry Zimmerman Twins

352 Jerry Lumpe Tigers

378 Chuck Estrada Orioles

Since getting this lot I have gotten a few other cards for this build through a Sportlots stores splurge. They will be in my next update sometime soon. Not all those next batch of cards are in yet.

Losing Interest A Little Bit

Lately I have been losing interest in collecting a little. As the end of February was approaching I was even losing a little interest in blogging a bit. Of course some of this was my renewed efforts to get back into selling on Ebay. This month I have concentrated on my Ebay. As a result of making an effort to list new items and actually get them up on Ebay I went from having 6 stale listings and a last sale about 3 or 4 months ago for a 3 inch button that sold for $1.50 with Free Shipping to 30 listings. Over the last few weeks I have sold 5 items from 4 listings. I sold 2 books, and 16 packs of Football Cards (11 packs of 2016 Leaf Draft Football and 5 packs of 2018 Leaf Draft Football) I didn't know those things were so popular. Personally I don't like the Draft cards since they are undrafted players in college uniforms. Eventually some of those guys go on to have professional careers but many don't.

To reflect my Ebay sales I have tried to update my trading posts on this blog. I think they are current now. Anyway it is almost midnight on 29 February and I need to get this posted to make the deadline. For the full details (or at least what I could recall) check out my post over at my regular Blog "Kirk's Knook": Back To The Swing of Ebay Selling

Topps Now: Harper Now

I did a little Topps Now splurging on Ebay a little while back. I purchased a total of 8 Topps Now cards from this year and last year. The ones from last year I've been sitting on for a little bit. You could say they were all technically Washington Nationals related, but yeah, technically these cards I'm about to show are not Nats cards they are Phillies cards with Bryce Harper. Huh? Oh yeah that tiny contract thing.

Now that Bryce is on a different team any new cards of him I get in his Philly uniform I'll yak about here on this my main blog. Old Nats Hawper cards I'll chat about on my Curly W Cards blog. I suppose I could also post the Harper Phillies cards on my Nats blog but I don't want to. Occasionally I will post Nats Alumni in team uniforms from their post-Nationals career, but I probably shouldn't. Then again these are my blogs my rules.

Before I get into the two new Harper Now cards I'll show the two copies of the technically first Bryce Harper as a Phillie card. Another blogger showed a new Bowman card which is the first released in packs product so he considers that one Harper's Philly debut card I hear that one is another dang super short print. UGH first 2012 Topps Archives SSP RC and now this? ACK! Anyway my "first" Bryce as a Phillie card I posted about on Curly W Cards when I ordered the two copies and gave the pertinent details of the order. The images I showed there were from the Ebay listing the images here are the actual copies in hand.

 I might eventually purge down to just one copy someday.

2019 Topps Now Baseball: ST-3 Bryce Harper Phillies

Now onto the other Now cards. Both I got from Ebay two different sellers. The first one is his Spring Training Debut with the Phillies I got for $7.50 Free Shipping.

2019 Topps Now Baseball: ST-4 Bryce Harper Phillies

The other card I got for $8.00 Free Shipping it is from the regular season. Harper's First Home Run as a Phillie.

2019 Topps Now Baseball: 24 Bryce Harper Phillies

I don't like the Now backs with no description of the event. Sometimes the card title on the front is not enough. And NO I will not pursue Bryce's "First Homer vs The Nationals" or "First Grand Slam vs Old Team".  You have to draw lines somewhere sometimes.

Catching A White Whale: 1968 Style

Well "Thar She Blows" I snagged a White Whale for my vintage PC on Wednesday 26 September 2018. [OK this post has been sitting in the queue a while]

The Classic Tale of a White Whale

This particular Ivory sea monster is the rookie card of a huge superstar and a childhood hero. When I was in elementary school from about 3rd grade to 6th grade the school principal had a yearly school-wide "write a book" project. Long story short my first year of that project my book had a cameo of this childhood hero. A children's book written by a child that reads like a child wrote it. Maybe one day I'll blog about it on my regular blog ( I started a draft for the post). One year, I think it was that same year, a kid wrote a story about "Charlie's Angels" but misspelled "Angels" as "Angles" so it might have been a math book.  but I digress...

This featured card is a card that easily starts over priced at over $50 at beginning bid on Ebay with BIN fixed rate prices of $100, $200 or more depending on condition and occasionally which variant it is. Yes this card has an Error version and a Corrected version. I got the corrected version. It would be nice to one day get the error version but I'm not going to hold my breath on it as it goes for at least twice what this version goes for.

I got my reasonably good conditioned copy for a nice price, not quite a steal but hovering around the high end of my comfort range. Not quite to my Maximum but getting close around the starting to sweat zone. I got it from Ebay at the opening bid price of $29.95 with $2.95 shipping. Around the same time I won this copy looking at completed/sold auctions I saw a miscut copy (listed as being "mint") that went for $18.51 with only 2 bids. Some reprints have gone for $2 to $12. So I didn't too to bad.

Smart collectors can tell that I am delaying the identification of the card for dramatic reasons. If this were an episode of Pawn Stars we would cut to a commercial break for even more suspense.

The White Whale Card I harpooned back in September of 2018 is:

1968 Topps Baseball: 247 Cincinnati Red 1968 Rookie Stars:

Johnny Bench and Ron Tompkins

I mentioned I had the corrected version. Some may wonder what the "error" of this card is. On the back the mini bio for Johnny starts off  "Johnny impressed the Reds..." the error misspells the word "the" as "tne" using an "n" instead of an "h". As I said I have the corrected version.

BTW: I still have another White Whale post in my draft queue that has been sitting there for years. My biggest procrastination delay for it of course has been not scanning stuff (The white whale plus some related cards from it's set). That White Whale was a more determined to catch it than this one was. Sort of. I had been watching this card off and on for several years at Ebay. I also had it as number 3 on my Capt K's Coveted 10 list and forgot it was on it til around 10 Jan of this year 2019.

Washington Wednesday: By The Classic Numbers

Washington Wednesday: By The Classic Numbers

10 Oct 2018

When I first noticed this pair of cards on Ebay I was a little leery of their authenticity. What with the odds of one seller "pulling" these specific numbers from a pack and the sellers other auctions for cards with some of the more sought after serial numbers. D'oh OK so one of the special things about the cards I purchased were they are serial numbered. Another thing that chased the warm fuzzies away was the auction title calling them 1/1s. This seller has a bunch of listings using the 1/1 keyword. Even though the auction title also had the actual serial numbers shown it was titled as a "1/1 lot" indicating each card in the lot is a 1/1. OK semantics I guess. Even with the red flags and warnings going off I decided to grab this pair before anyone else did.

2018 Panini Classics Football: Timeless Tributes Gold: 188 Joe Theismann Redskins #d 07/99 and 99/99

The pair of cards I got are these 2018 Panini Classics Football: Timeless Tributes Gold 188 Joe Theismann Redskins #d 07/99 and 99/99 from Ebay for $14.99 Free Shipping. Like I said the seller titled the auction using their serial numbers and using the old "Ebay One of One" labeling trick. The serial number is on the front hard to see left hand side under the "Classics" logo near the top.

2018 Panini Classics Football: Timeless Tributes: Gold 188 Joe Theismann Redskins 07/99

2018 Panini Classics Football: Timeless Tributes: Gold 188 Joe Theismann Redskins 99/99

The dealer also sent these 5 Chiefs cards as a bonus. ?Redskins and Chiefs? Guess it is an Alex Smith connection, or the Indians Connection, or the seller just got confused and thought they were all the same team.

That one is vintage so it is a keeper by default.

1974 Topps Football: 34 Elmo Wright Chiefs

Then we have a card from the "Wave of the Future" insert set of 6 cards to the 1994 Fleer Flair Football set. I was going to toss this into the tradebait pile but in checking the player's team history saw he played for the St. Louis Rams in 1998 so it is a keeper.

1994 Fleer Flair Football: Wave of the Future: 3 of 6 Greg Hill Chiefs

Next up one of those annoying "two sided" cards that is a card with two players sharing the card one player on each side. Confusing the collector as to which face is the "front". Not really since this is a serial numbered insert and at the time the serial numbers were put on the back of the card, but that practice varies from company to company and from set to set it seems. I don't normally like this kind of card so again it is one of these was going to toss in the tradebait pile card but one of the players was a Redskin in 2001. The "front" player Donnell Bennett.

2000 Donruss Quantum Leaf Football: Double Team: DT-13

Donnell Bennet and Elvins Grbac Chiefs #d 0475/1500

The final two cards are tradebait and technically are the "same" card. You can't tell from the scans since they are separate scans but one is the mini variant of the other.

2014 Topps Chrome Football: Fantasy Focus: FF-JC Jamaal Charles Chiefs

2014 Topps Chrome Football: Fantasy Focus: Mini FF-J Jamaal Charles Chiefs

Out of five cards I originally didn't want to keep I am keeping 3 of them for now. The vintage one (wasn't ever really tradebait since it's "vintage") will be added to my 1974 set build (if I don't already have it). The other two "keepers" are just keepers for right now. 

UPDATE: 10 Mar 2021 - The 2 Jamall Charles cards have been traded away. One a few months ago and the other one just recently.