Adventures in WWE SLAM Digital Trading Cards

Topps seems to have cornered the market on Digital Trading Card Apps.  First with Baseball and Bunt, then Football with Huddle, onto Major League Soccer with Kick, moving into the entertainment world with Star Wars and The Walking Dead, moving to the octagon with UFC Kick, and finally most recently the WWE and SLAM!

All the apps function basically the same, you get free coins each day you log in, you can spend those coins on digital card packs containing at least 5 cards usually.  There are inserts and hits including highly sought after digital Signatures and Relic pieces.  These cards can sell for big bucks on eBay.  Yes, digital cards.

In Bunt, the baseball game, Signature cards have sold for hundreds of dollars.  In Star Wars the first "insert" card ever released, so called "Vintage Han Solo in the Cockpit" went for a couple hundred at it's peak.  Yes, digital cards.

Now I have gone on and off with virtually all of the apps, and at this time I'm in all of them except Soccer.  I really only care about Star Wars and WWE Slam.  I was into Star Wars on Day 1, but took off a several months, only recently coming back.  I've got a decent collection, but I missed a ton of releases.

In Bunt I'm only collecting Angels, and Mike Trout specifically.  I'm not collecting anything specific in other apps.  This allows me to cross trade, which can be a bit tricky some times, you always run into the possibility of being scammed or burned.  But if you're smart you can mitigate that risk.

So there's an app for The Walking Dead.  I started playing it a couple months ago, before I had even watched a single episode of the show.  I have read all the comics, but only started binge watching the show in mid June.  I got up to the beginning of Season 5 before I had to take a break.  I'm not collecting a lot, besides the Fan Choice set and the free daily teal singles.  I have completed a base White, Blue and Red set (your standard Common, Uncommon and Rare base).  Since I don't really care about collecting, I can and usually do stash my coins for when the Fan Choice hits once a week.  the last couple of weeks I've managed to get more than one of the Fan Choice weekly card within a few packs, so by yesterday I had over 200K coins stashed.  I decided to blow a few on some packs and went for the 10K Base expansions.  I pulled an Aqua Variant of Daryl Dixon, with a card count of 31.  Yup thats a big hit.  Ebay has it going for $15.


Over on WWE SLAM I've been watching the insert releases and noticed something awfully interesting.  Most of the insert sets have had a similar pattern, they're releasing 6 or 7 card sets with three different variants.  The "easy" variant is a 1:10 pack pull, but once a card is released it's available for the run of the set.  The mid-range variant is usually a 1:15 or 1:20 and available for only 24 hours, then sold out.  The "hard" variant is either 1:25 or 1:50, and capped at 750 or more commonly 1500 cards.

As the releases went on, a pattern began to emerge: the "easy" variant of the last couple days' releases were actually the lowest number card count.  The final trading day before the award is released there's a frenzy in the fan feed looking for the final card for the "easy" set, and there just aren't enough to go around.

Here's an example:

The first Insert card set was "Charisma" - a 7 card set with 3 variants, Blue (1:10), Purple (1:15), Pink (1:25/1500 CC).  Day 1's Sasha Banks has over 6400 cards, the purple has 2391 and the Pink has 1500.  By Day 6, Booker T there's between 1012 and 1124 of the Blue, 2083 of the Purple and 1500 of the Pink.  Wait a sec, why don't I know the true card count?  AHA, the "easy" tier has the card count hidden from view.  You can still estimate by sorting the ALL CARDS listing by Card Count and guestimating from the cards with a count on either side.  The final days' release, Enzo Amore has only between 525 and 542 Blues, 2368 Purples and 1500 pinks.  So while there are several thousand of Day 1s there's only a few hundred of Day 7.  Anyone trying to complete a set that doesn't pull the day 7 1:10 has to trade, and there aren't very many to trade.  In fact, once the award was released, there were 290 Blue awards, 374 Purples and 484 Pinks.

Same thing happened with the Speed Set and it's final card Finn Balor, same thing happened with the Power set and it's final card Braun Strowman.  Same thing happened with the earlier Aerialist set (which only had 2 colors) and the Warrior Tribute (which had FOUR colors).

See by the final day, there are multiple releases available for that 1:10 pull.  So your 1:10 is a 10% chance to pull ANY of that set's releases.  Obvious math indicates that it's a 1:60 or 1:70 pull (depending on how many cards are in the set) for the final day's cards.

THIS week we had two insert sets ending on the same day, FLIGHT and "Family Ties".  Both with 3 variants, and both with 6 cards.  They both ended on Thursday August 11, and coincidentally (or not maybe) Topps chose that day to release a brand new huge set, HERITAGE WAVE 1, which funneled off a ton of pack purchases.  By the end of the day, there were a total of 769 White Charlotte Flights and 533 Black Uso Family Ties.

Now I did buy a couple of Heritage packs early in the day for 10K coins (the Insert sets are only 5K) but as soon as I realized I needed to finish my Family Ties set, I stopped and started going for Family ties packs, and actually managed to pull the rare Black Usos.  At that time I still needed the day 5 card, the Rhodes Family, but I was able to make a trade for that.

Remember what I said about The Walking Dead cards earlier and cross trading?  Well watching the fan feed I found someone who wanted Walking Dead for their Slam, and had a White Charlotte Flight for trade.  I made him an offer he couldn't refuse.

I gave up the Aqua I got the previous day, plus a couple of other rare base expansions and he traded me the Charlotte Flight.

So once I got it, I immediately advertised it on the WWE Fan Feed and on reddit in R/TOPPSWWE.  My minimum trade was for a signature card, which at that time were selling for at least $5.00 and more like $8 to $15.   After a couple of hours of truly awful offers, I decided to put it on eBay with a fixed price at $14.99 or best offer.  The first offers came in and they were pathetic, less than 1/3rd of asking price.  BY that time I already had trade offers of at least 3 mat relics from Heritage (which are selling for between $1.50 and $4.00 depending on who they are, the ones I was offered totaled about $10).

I finally accepted a great offer, $8.00 cash via Paypal and a Dean Ambrose Signature (worth about $8.00 right now) through eBay.



So here's a spreadsheet with all the current insert cards and their population.

My Topps user name is Grendelsen unless noted

Remember I'm cross trading:

Walking Dead (mattiasgrendels)

Bunt (wildwill) 

Huddle (wildwill)

Knockout

For

Star Wars 

&

WWE Slam

The first set of 2014-15 Hockey IS HERE! Upper Deck MVP is live

I just got back from my LCS (hi Matt and Zack) and purchased my first few packs of the new season.  Of course I'm still buying 13/14 products, but since I'm almost done with my Upper Deck sets, and I'm pretty much giving up on anything Panini related, it's going to be an easy transition.

MVP is a budget product, or at least it's supposed to be.  Hobby boxes are running $46 at DA Cardworld and they are $48-60 at brick and mortar.  Boxes are 24 packs with 8 cards each.  In each pack you get 1 silver script and 1 SP high number.  The set is 300 cards and there are multiple inserts.

Upper Deck is following Topps parallel program it seems, not only are there the silver scripts, but "super-scripts" each numbered to 25 and then the extremely confusing "colours and contours" set, which are die-cut and have multiple levels of rarity from 1:6 to never gonna find it.

Besides the nifty autos and relics, the inserts are actually rather decent this time, celebrating the season that just ended rather than just another insert-set with bad graphics and the same old tired checklists.  MVP includes Rookie of the Month, 3 Star Players of the Month and 3 Star Players of the Week.  I like this idea better than the old paradigms because it actually focuses on the games rather than careers or even single seasons.  Plus there's plenty of Kings to chase here.

There's a four part Rookie Redemption set that are separated by conference (one for each) and are case hits.  Obviously we don't know who are in the sets yet, but these should be pretty popular I would think.  There's also a single Young Guns card with long odds as well.

So what did I pull in my four packs?  Well I only got one King, but it's Marian Gaborik and it's a short print.  It's my first Gaborik in a Kings uniform, because I don't buy high-end Panini crap.  I got one nice 3 Stars of the Week insert, featuring Sidney Crosby and Patrick Marleau.  And I pulled two box hits.

Yes you read that right, out of the four packs I snagged two box hits with 1:36 or higher odds.  The first was a Contours/Colors Gold Die Cut of Valtteri Filppula (there's one on the bay of e for $7) and the second, well, the second was pretty darn cool.  Here you go:

That's #05/25 of HOFer Patrick Roy as a Canadien.  Not that I even *LIKE* Roy because I still hate his guts for beating the Kings in the '93 Finals, but hey, it's a good card and if I can flip it I can buy some Kings cards.  I put it up already.  There's one other (#10) and they want $33 on the BIN with 2 days left.  Mine is priced a bit higher, but it's a lower number and it's from the US.  Plus I offer free domestic shipping and I tried to reprice the international shipping to just it's actual cost to me.

I don't know if I care to put a set together, I'm not 100% sure yet.  I will be chasing the Kings though, that's for sure.

Adventures in eBay - LA Kings Stanley Cup Playoffs Edition

Because I've been able to parlay a couple of nice pulls into PayPal money recently, I figured it was nigh-time to bring in some new cardboard under the auspices of the bay of E.  Basically that was a long winded way to say I sold some cards and bought some cards.

Here's what I got:


Upper Deck 2013-14 Series 2 - Young Guns Martin Jones and Linden Vey.  I paid $1.00 for both of these, what a steal right?  Naw, I had to pop $6 for shipping from Canada.  I checked though, his shipping only cost him $3.50 something.  Needless to say his star ratings on his shipping price was very low, and he took forever to ship too.

Various lot of Kings cards from Artifacts, Score, Upper Deck, OPC and Titanium.
Upper Deck 2013-14 Artifacts Tandems Jeff Carter and Mick Richards
Upper Deck 2013-14 Artifacts Luc Robitaille Dual Jersey #9/125
Upper Deck 2013-14 Black Diamond Dual Jerseys Anze Kopitar and Dustin Brown

I got all of these from the same buyer, decent prices and I got combined shipping, but again I got ripped on the shipping.  It cost him only $3.30 to ship to me and he charged me two bucks extra.  Again didn't get good shipping star ratings.  Great cards though.

I don't know what it is about jersey cards, but I really dig 'em, always have.  I kind of hate the fact that they're so hard to pull, and so basically worthless, unless they're numbered to some ridiculous low number and signed.  See I really like these double cards with two players and two swatches.

Or One player with two swatches (numbered to some ridiculous low number)

Or they're puzzle pieces!

I really dig these Black Diamond dual jerseys.  There's two more Kings in the set, Drew Doughty and Jonathan Quick and they have a different Kings Logo in the middle.  I'll need to be on the lookout.

These last few cards are from previous purchases

The top two I bought in previous auctions for less than a couple bucks each.  The Quickie I PULLED last week.  I do believe it is the first and only Kings memorabilia or limited card I've ever pulled.  

There are ELEVEN Kings in the standard UD Game Jersey set this year, I checked because I figured I had three already, I might want to go for the full set.  Here's the rest of the set and their odds:  

GJ-MR Mike Richards F 1:23

GJ-WG Wayne Gretzky A 1:3481

GJ-AK Anze Kopitar C 1:65

GJ-DD Drew Doughty D 1:57

GJ-DU Dustin Brown C 1:65

GJ-LR Luc Robitaille D 1:65

GJ-MR Mike Richards B 1:2901

GJ-SV Slava Voynov D 1:57

The Jeff Carter is Group E 1:39.  Marcell Dionne Group F 1:23.  Jonathan Quick Group C 1:65

Now I've looked online, most of those single swatch jerseys are a couple bucks, shouldn't really be a problem, but that damn Gretzky is a short print.  There's only one on eBay right now and they want two hundy.  I ain't paying no two hundy for a single swatch jersey, I don't care how rare or who it is.  OK maybe if it was from Babe Ruth...or Joe Jackson.  Whatever.

Here's a card so nice I bought it twice

That's 2011-12 SPx and it's a 1:18 insert, so not really very rare I guess.  When I bought that one I inadvertently bought several duplicate cards.  It's never a bad thing to have dupes, especially of Kings.  Gives me something to trade.

Adventures in eBay - Lego From My Childhood Edition

If you grew up in the time period roughly from the mid 1960's to today you probably played with Lego Bricks at one point or another.  The Lego company traces their existence back to 1916, and their brick toys to 1947.  Suffice to say the growth of Lego toys seriously impacted virtually every kid at one point or another.  Lego seems to be a toy that grows with kids, and kids never really grow out of them.  I stopped buying Lego kits sometime in my teens, but as soon as I moved out of my parents house and had a job of my own I started buying them again with a vengeance, and I never really threw away my Lego.  I still have most of my bricks and instructions, if not the boxes themselves.  Over the course of time I've been trying to reacquire a few sets from my youth that I didn't keep intact.

My first Lego sets were the Universal Building Sets, which now are simply tubs of bricks.  These were the sets that had no real models to build, just whatever you wanted, and the best thing was that they came with large base plates you just don't see much anymore.

I do recall my first large set, that would be #585-1 Police Headquarters which was one of the last few sets BEFORE real mini-figs came out in 1978.  I know for a fact I still have some pieces left from that set.  My second major set was #6929 Star Fleet Voyager and I remember getting that for Christmas somewhere in the early 80's.  While I don't reasonably expect to ever repurchase a Police Headquarters, and with the static old-school proto-mini-figs I really am not sure I'd want one.  But I do check out eBay and other places for the Star Fleet Voyager on a regular basis.

The last of my three original kits that I desired to repurchase was the smallest: the simply elegant 6648-2 Town Dump-Truck, and thanks to a recent eBay purchase, I now have one.  I paid $6.99 plus $5.95 shipping.  Considering it's a vintage kit, with instructions, I think I did OK.  I recall that the original price my Grandparents paid was about $5-10 but that was at the Los Angeles Children's Museum, which isn't there anymore, and it was over 30 years ago.

The vehicle is all of 41 pieces, most of them yellow or black and all pretty much standard.  The only real "specialized" pieces here are the rollbar, the windshield, the truck bed and the hinge piece that lets the truck bed dump out.  It's a really simple build that took all of about two minutes to complete.  It is a thing of beauty.  Lego just doesn't do small vehicles quite the same way.  Now the cabs are all one piece and the wheels are tiny.

My original set wasn't kept as a truck very long.  I loved the bed with six wheels and the tilting rear, so I designed a small airplane using most of the same parts with forklift type sleds in the front to make it look cool.  It flew off the back hinge as a launch ramp.  This one though, it's staying on my desk.  Without being put together with the Kragle...because hey, the driver does kind of look like Emmit from the movie doesn't he?


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By the way, the pictures were all taken in my new light tent, nifty hunh?

Blatant eBay Plug - Please Buy My Hockey Cards

Check it out, here's the link to My Ebay Page.

If you leave me a note when paying that you read my blog I'll throw in something free for ya...


Thanks.

Will

Adventures in eBay Selling 2011 - February Edition

So as I probably blogged, last Wednesday I put up 50 items on eBay, hoping to score some cash before I go out of town this weekend to visit the in-laws and stay up at a cabin at Sundance. Yes, the Sundance, the actual hill, not Park City. Nice eh?

21 of the 50 items I listed were single trading cards, mostly Chrome stuff that I've been keeping for just this purpose. I put all of them on for a 99 cent start price, with only three exceptions (and they only started at $1.99), with free shipping. Just for giggles I figured out that if I sell an item for 99 cents, I end up making a whopping 8 cents. So that paradigm isn't really going to work for me, except that hopefully I'll get some nice feedbacks and every item I sell counts towards getting a discount on my fees. It also gets rid of a bunch of cards, and those who want them get a pretty good deal.

So I'll keep doing it, even though I'm not going to make a whole lot, I really need to get rid of most of the stuff that I don't need, and honestly I can't keep track of trades anymore.

What WAS nice is that a couple of lots of Comics sold for decent cash. Not that I didn't lose money on them, since you know I bought them at cover price or near cover price when they were new, read them and stashed them away. "Y The Last Man" #2 though #38 sold for $50, which isn't bad, except that I paid 37x$2.95 apiece for them. I also sold about 20 issues of "The Amazing Spider-Man" from a couple years ago for $25. Again, a little more than $1.00 per issue, which cost me somewhere between $2 and $3 per issue.

Still I'm not complaining, at least that stuff is selling. I have tons of stuff I can't off-load because I will only use Priority Mail Flat Rate (because frankly I'm not going to bother buying boxes or envelopes, and I like the fact that I KNOW how much shipping is going to cost). The thing is, when you're buying 5 or 6 comics at buck apiece, adding 6 bucks to ship doesn't work out very well.

In any case, I now have about $60 to play with this weekend. And that's the important part.

I Bought a pack of Hockey Cards!

Yes, I bought a pack of Hockey Cards for the first time in over five years. It was a 99 cent Score pack, and honestly I can't say I'm going to buy many more. I would like to buy more Topps Baseball update, but I'm so not interested right now that I can't bring myself to even purchase the odd pack here or there. This is monopoly in action folks. Topps baseball products this season were a solid effort, but so unspectacular that I know I'm not the only one going, "meh" over their entire line.

FYI my next pack of Baseball update will be my second. I'm burning up with the fever over here.


The fever to

SELL STUFF ON EBAY

yes, that's right, I've got more items on eBay, mostly comics, but some pretty rare ones. I'm planning on posting many more comics in the coming days, it's Christmas and all, and I've found that everything sells on eBay better during Christmas.

Once again, if you let me know via comments I'll refund 10% of your final bid if you buy one of my items. That's a special present from me to you for reading my blog.

And if I get any smarmier, please shoot me.

Thanks.

Jim Rome's Rookie Card?

Jim Rome is a polarizing figure in sports talk radio and television, to some he's the greatest talking head on tv/radio, and to others he's a pompous jackass who's not much better than Rush Limbaugh. My own personal opinion is more on the positive side than the negative, since I've been listening to him for YEARS.

That's right, I count myself as an original clone. I was listening to Rome waaaaay back in the early 90's when he did his Saturday Scrub Show on XTRA 690 in San Diego. I even remember calling him up about some boxing match sometime in 1992 or 1993. Why I can recall sitting next to Natrone Means in the stands at Charger Training Camp while he was being interview by the young Pimp in the Box.

Once he got moved to the day-time shifts I became an avid, daily listener. I compiled lists of "Jungle Glossary Terms" before the Internet is what it is today. I remember the first couple of Smack-Offs too. I have though, never called the show because mostly I don't have a take and if I did, it would suck.

Now I haven't listened to Rome on a regular basis the entire time he's been on radio. There were a number of years where I was working when I couldn't have a radio at my desk so I never paid that much attention. Today though I get to listen to him when and where I want to, thanks to the internet and 570 AM KLAC's streaming coverage, oh and my car radio. So while I think the days of him calling athletes women's names are over, he's still up to his old antics.

So this brings me to his "rookie card." This is a set of trading cards that 690 used to hand out at events and I managed to snake one over the years. IN fact, I managed to get at least one of the autographed - the late, great Chet Forte was kind enough to his card for me, as did his partner and still a Loose Cannon Steve Hartman. You don't see these sets pop up very often, in fact I can't find another reference to the set on the internet machines. Cool hunh?

And hey, it's another post about sports cards, go figure. At least I'm not pumping my eBay auctions. Oh wait...see what I did there?

More Ebay Items

I've listed a bunch more comics on eBay, and if you're a reader of this blog - you wanna buy something, let me know in the comments and I'll throw in some free bonuses!


Check them out will ya?

FINALLY A Sports Card Posting - Well Sort Of

I know, I don't write about sports cards much anymore. Mostly because I'm not really buying a whole lot. Between Upper Decks Baseball fiasco 2010, and my lack of interest in pretty much most of Topps releases, I'm just not spending a lot of money on cards. I still buy an occasional pack of Topps Series 2, and I've purchased a whopping 2 packs of Allen & Ginter and 1 of Heritage. Lack of funds really has me in a buying depression.

BUT that's OK, because I can still SELL SELL SELL right? Well, yeah, I could. I still need to send out trades from LAST NOVEMBER, so I'm erring on the side of caution with Baseball. I do have a decent amount of Hockey cards though, and I've just pulled them out of storage, which coincidentally is where I think the Baseball that I need to send out ended up.

So here's my first foray into selling Hockey Cards, three single player lots of arguably the most recognized three stars of the 20th Century, Mario Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr and the Great One, Wayne Gretzky.

I also have quite a few rookies and Young Guns from the early 2000's and I'll probably be putting those up later this week, most of them I'll start at $1.00 with $1.00 shipping or $2.00 with free shipping. I may also just put the 3200 count box and the overflow boxes outside tomorrow morning for our yard sale and see if someone wants a good deal.

Meanwhile, as always lately check out my Ebay Seller Page AND if you buy something from me, and let me know you read about my items on my blog, I'll REFUND 10% of your sale price back to you! Just a way of saying thanks for reading.

Buy Some Comics Please?

We're having a bit of a budget crisis in the Budget Collector's household, so I'm selling some comics on evilBay. These are some of my oldest and most valuable books and as much as it pains me to sell them, keeping the family fed and clothed is more important.

The process of putting stuff on eBay is getting more and more complicated it seems, and my browser/net connection isn't really helping me out this morning. I can't tell you how many times it took me to get Young Allies #20 up.

Young Allies #20 - My Oldest and most valuable single issue. It KILLS me to sell this, BUT I have no great affinity for the Golden Age of the Marvel Universe and whatever I make on it will be pretty much pure profit. I don't think it'll ever be more valuable than it already is, so selling now is probably the right timing.


Wolverine Mini-Series Complete - Bought this at the SDCC many, many moons ago, time to go bye bye I think.

If I come up with more, I'll do another post.

Adventures in eBay - Part of an Ongoing Saga

Howdy all, I'd like to call your attention to some items I'm currently selling on eBay. I need to get rid of some older sets of cards that I no longer have a passion for, namely wrestling cards.

Yes, I know wrestling isn't real, it's scripted. I've known for years and years, but it doesn't bother me. The entire "sport" and what it's become bothers me, but for sheer entertainment value, you couldn't get more bang for your buck than wrestling in the 80's and 90's. I've collected a LOT of sets in my past, from all sorts of subjects besides sports, and wrestling cards were always a favorite. My wife is very glad that I haven't delved into the recent Topps Heritage WWE cards. ESPECIALLY since 95% of my favorite wrestlers are now retired.

So on the Bay you'll find an odd assortment of wrestling cards that I no longer want or need. Some are complete sets, others are just short. I hope you might find something you like and will buy it from me, and if you do, and as an added incentive, if you inform me that you read about my latest auctions on my blog, I'll give you a 10% discount on your final purchase price as a rebate (meaning I'll refund you 10% of your final purchase price when you pay).

Adventures in eBay - Part 2 in an Ongoing Saga

Today I realized that I've been buying and selling on eBay for almost nine years! Wow, somehow it seems longer, but the first feedback I ever received was in December of 1999, I remember I purchased the Pink Floyd: The Wall Movie Tie-In book that had eluded me since 1982. I had never even seen the thing for purchase at a used book store, and I checked EVERY SINGLE ONE I went to for well over a decade. Suddenly this eBay thing was my favorite site.

Over the years I've purchase much more than I've sold, but I've made some really, really good sales. Of course right now I have 45 items up for sale (down from 49 already, I sold 4 items between yesterday and today, and made about $20!), so get to bidding would ya?

One of the cool things about eBay is that you can go back and look at what you purchased, for the last 60 days (you can actually go back farther than the 60 days in My_ebay, you just have to look in your paypal account, if you use paypal for payments, which I do).

You should already know that I sold the Fukudome Japanese short print from Upper Deck Series 2 for $46.00, to a gent in Japan, so I had some dough in my account. What did I purchase? Well, not a whole lot actually, I spent quite a bit of that windfall on packs and toys at brick and mortar. Here's what I did buy on the bay in July:

06-07 Topps Luxury Box Jordan Farmar RC #1/19

This one cost me a whopping $4.25 plus $3 for shipping. Normally I don't like paying that much for a single, but I love Jordan, and I didn't have that particular RC. Plus it's serial #ed 1/19, which I really liked. Yes, I know that makes me a Joe Collector but I don't care. I don't have any other cards with the first serial number. So there.

A bunch of UCLA Bruin Cards, including 3 Autos

I can't say that I NEEDED most of these cards, though there were a few in the non-autos that I didn't have. I didn't have a single card of JaRon Rush, so getting an auto, out of an UD product, is pretty sweet. On the other side though, I already have several Gadzuric autos, and the Zidek auto makes the third different version of that card that I own now, two of them are autoed. I spent a whopping four bucks on this lot, including shipping.

07-08 UCLA Basketball Media Guide & Final Four Guide

I love media guides, I have a dozen from the Los Angeles Kings, dating back as far as 87-88, though since I have at this point, basically given up on the Kings, I focus on the UCLA Bruins, my alma mater. This was a great lot that set me back less than THREE BUCKS! Considering the cover price of the guides at the student store is something like 20 bucks, I consider this a steal. I'd like to go back and fill in the holes in my collection, but since I only have about a half-dozen Bruin guides, that's going to take awhile.

Oh and I don't have ANY Angels Media Guides, so if someone out there has them and wants to trade, let me know.

Lot of 200 Angels Cards

It wouldn't be a proper entry for me if I didn't mention the Angels SOMEWHERE. I got this lot of 200 cards for a PENNY plus $3.75 shipping. You have to be careful with large lots of the same team, not that the lots aren't worth the dough, usually they are, it's the shipping that can get outrageous. I've seen folks who try to make their money on the shipping and handling, rather than the price of the item, and it's just not right. In my estimation, $3.75 seemed a reasonable amount to ship a couple hundred cards. Of course, I've seen people try to charge twice or three times that for the same amount. Sad isn't it?

Stupendous Start to Second Half

With an extra day of rest that the Halos certainly needed, our current arch-nemesis the Boston Red Sox were swept out of town yesterday after our SECOND come-from-behind victory in a row. The hero on Saturday was pinch hitter Erick Aybar who TRIPLED with the bases loaded in the bottom of the 7th driving in the tying and winning runs. Yesterday the heroes were Howie Kendrick and Casey Kotchman with HUGE RBIs in the 8th. The Angels have now taken five out of six against the BoSox this season, and swept them for the first time in 7 years. This is after Manny Ramirez' spectacular whale impression in the Sixth that allowed a couple of runs to score and begin the rout. Pictures can't describe this moment, and after about ten minutes of searching, I found the OFFICIAL highlight video. Leave it to MLB to take the fun out of this, it was originally posted on YouTube, and then removed

Mitigating this joy are two things: One - the Sox were without David Ortiz and Two - it's only July. The Angels really need to prove that they can defeat Boston in October, seeing is that they've killed us in three out of the Angels seven total playoff appearances. I, for one, will NEVER forget the 1986 ALCS when the Halos blew a 3-1 series lead, with ONE out to go and the lead, and Donnie Moore gave up that two run bomb to Dave Henderson. In fact, no true Angel fan should ever forget that moment, because it lead directly to the Bill Buckner error in the WS, and also to Donnie Moore taking his own life several years later. While one player's mistake lead to beloved infamy, the other lead to suicide.



In the immortal words of Marvin the Paranoid Android: "I'm not getting you down am I?"

Sorry about that.

ONTO better things, at 60 and 38, the Halos have the best record in Baseball at the moment, the vaunted Cubs and Rays are both a couple of games behind the Angels currently. We also have the largest lead of any first place team at 9 games. Should we start prepping for the post-season already? HECK NO! There's still two and a half months of baseball to play, and as the late Gene Mauch proved in 1964, no lead is ever safe.

Still, it's an exciting time to be an Angels fan. I'm really, really hoping to get down to the Big A this season, I've made it to at least one game each of the past three seasons, and I don't want that streak to stop. When I lived in San Diego I made it to the Murph on several occasions each and every season, and I don't even LIKE the Padres. For that matter, when I first moved back to L.A. from San Diego in 1998 I went to several Dodger games, and I HATE them. You'd think that I'd be able to get to a few more Angel games each and every year. Damn traffic.

Adventures in eBay - The Continuing Saga

So the Fukodome UD SP sold for nice $46 to a collector in Japan. I shipped the bad-boy out this morning (top-loader inside of a re-used bubble envelope, inside of a USPS Flat Rate International Envelope). I charge an extra $5.00 for international handling because it causes me to actually GO to the post-office, instead of printing out my postage online, and that infuriates me. I'm down with the postal restrictions due to 9/11, but come on, it's a FREAKING CARD.

The auction was a sight to behold to be honest. I did my research first, I checked the closed auctions for ALL Fukudome cards and discovered that only THREE of these SPs had been sold in the last 90 days. That's not a whole lot when you consider how many auctions are on eBay every day. The sold prices didn't vary that much, a high of $53 and a low of $48. I figured that my BIN price of $45 might actually work, but as of the morning on the closing date, there were NO bids. Not even at my starting price of $14.99! I didn't sit and watch the auction all day, I went out, and when I came back the price had ballooned up to it's final price. I was hoping that someone would snipe and drive the price up even further, but alas, $46 for a card out of a $5 pack is pretty good to me.

Of course, after paying eBay and PayPal fees (which TOTALED about $7) my profit is down a bit, but hey, this is 'found' money that I can use on other eBay items, and I have already. BUT that's a post for another time.

Adventures in eBay - Part 1 of an Ongoing Saga

Good morning, and it's a fine Saturday out on the left coast. It's not too terribly hot outside (yet), and the day is fresh and new. Time for a new blog entry.

Today I'll look at the wonderful cards that you can get on the largest of the large auction sites, eBay. One way to be a budget card collector is to narrow your focus to exactly what you want, and only buy those cards. For example, my primary focus in Baseball are Angels players. You may think that's not that small of a subset of Baseball cards, and indeed it isn't. There's 30 teams in MLB, so my direct interest is 1/30th of all of the cards out there today. Of course, I can't actually afford all of the possible Angel cards on eBay, so I try to focus a bit more when shopping. Of course, I have a favorite player, currently that's Vladimir Guerrero, and since he's a super-star in the elite tier of super-stars, there's an AWFUL lot of Vladdy cards available (currently over 500 different auctions). Of that number, I instantly discount any auction that starts at more than a certain amount, which for me is really, really low, say $2.00.

Sticking to a budget on eBay is no easy task because of the inherent flaws in the auction system you are almost forced to pay more than you really want to some of the time. Fortunately, not all of the time, and deals galore can be had all day long, IF you look for them. Don't forget that when you do a search on eBay you can sort the results by a number of different factors, the two best are "ending soonest" and "lowest price+shipping". Using those two sorts you can find all sorts of juicy goodness at el-cheapo prices.

Here's what I have purchased in the last couple of months, with actual prices.

2008 UD Premier Vladimir Guerrero Premier Stitchings PSTI-VG 14/25.

In budget collecting you really need to strike while the iron is hot. When UD Premier hit the street back in late March these cards were all over eBay, now they've dried up and you can't even find anything similar for a reasonable price. This one cost me $0.99 plus $3.00 for shipping. This set was outrageously expensive at retail, with ONE pack boxes going for $220 to $300! Sure, you got seven cards in a pack and they were all supposed to be "hits", but give me a break, when am I EVER going to be able to spend that much on a single pack of cards? I can buy a freaking Nintendo Wii for that price. The crazy thing is, while this card looks fantastic in a picture, it's not that great in person. The "patch" really isn't a patch, it's a nice large swatch with an Angel logo, but that's about it. It's not a real-game used swatch (as most of Upper Deck's swatches aren't specifically game used these days), this one was actually "Created" for the card. Authentic? Nope. Nifty? Sure. Worth four bucks? Absolutely. Worth $40? Nope. Where'd $40 come from? $282 list price for the pack divided by 7. It's early in the morning but I can still do math.



The sad thing is that there are variants of these as well with personalized "logos" that UD came up with for the players. Vladdy's is quite nice with a "Vlad The Impaler" logo, and I would love to pick up one of those, but alas, I probably won't be able to, this one sold for $11.25:

2006 Vladimir Guerrero Colorized State Quarter

Now, THIS item isn't specifically a "card" though it does have a card with it, no it's a colorized state quarter, of Vlad. I've been collecting the State Quarters since they started in 1999, and have all of them released so far, at least with the 'D' mint stamp, the 'P' mint stamp is a bit more difficult for me to find on the West Coast. I enjoy oddball items like this one, and I certainly don't think it's investment material, but it is kind of cool, and it was very, very cheap ($0.99 plus $2.25 for shipping).

2005 Fleer Vladimir Guerrero "Follow the Leather" Jersey

Always remember that there is more to card collecting than just this year's cards! Often times dealers and collectors will sit on older cards in the hopes that they'll be worth more in the future. With current players, that's not necessarily going to be the case, and deals on older product are always available. For example, here's a nice Fleer card from 2005, which is before UD bought them out, and as such, one of the last true "Fleer" cards.


I spent a whopping $2.00 plus another $2.00 for shipping, and while it's a nice card, complete with a stripe, it's not perfect. Had I looked closer at the picture, I might not have bid, since there are minor creases in the card at the corners of the die-cuts. Caveat Emptor as always.

2006 Upper Deck Ovation Vladimir Guerrero Ovation Apparel

I liked this card because of the free shipping, sometimes that's all it will take for me to slap down a bid. I paid $2.47, roughly the price of one pack of this product for this 2006 Ovation jersey insert. I believe that these are the standard one hit per box insert, so we're not looking at anything spectacular, but it is still a nice jersey.

2002 Skybox eX Darrin Erstand Hit and Run Bat Relic

One cannot simply collect Vladimir Guerrero cards, one should remember that there are other Angels in the skies, and Ersty was always one of my favorites. These were one per box inserts, and parallels at that, but for a quarter, who cares? Yes, I bought this card for $0.25 plus $1.49 shipping. Whenever I can get a relic card of an Angel for under $2.00 including shipping, I'm a very very happy man.

2003 Playoff Piece of the Game Rod Carew Game Worn Jacket

Carew is my all-time favorite Angel, so it's only natural that I'd want to try to buy some of the many Carew relics that have hit the market in the last five years. Only problem is that half of the relics feature him in his Twins days, and I don't want those, so I have to be careful. That's not to say that I cannot find Angels relics for Rodney Cline Carew, they're nowhere NEAR as hard to find (or expensive) as Nolan Ryan Angel Relics or Reggie Jackson Angel Relics. This one cost me $0.99 plus $2.50 for shipping, and it's not a jersey! It's a piece of a warm-up jacket, which is fine by me since it's a little different than your standard swatch of jersey, it actually has a seam bump on the piece.

2008 UD Premier Vladimir Guerrero Premier Memorabilia #17/25

This triple swatch card comes from the same set as our first card, which is always nice for continuity's sake. While the swatches aren't exactly exciting, there are three of them, and it's numbered to 25. These are showing up all over eBay right now, as are the numerous variants, which include quad swatches, and quads with die-cut letters spelling out VLAD (or something equally silly for other players - there's a Steve Carlton spelling out "LEFTY".) This puppy set me back $1.95 plus $3.00 shipping, making it the most expensive single I purchased in this batch.

2004 ETopps Vladimir Guerrero

eTopps is a product that is unique in card collecting, each card is offered initially as a "public offering" for somewhere between $6 and $10 depending on the player and set. Each "IPO" is limited to a certain number, these days in the 600s, but this particular card had over 1900 produced. The IPOs are only offered for a week at a time, so if you miss out, you have to buy them on the official secondary market, which is not-surprisingly eBay. When you buy an eTopps, you are actually "reserving" a card at Topps, and if you actually want the card, you have to pay them to ship it to you. I dabbled with eTopps back in 2002 buying two hockey cards of players that I thought were sure fire hits, Sergei Federov and Paul Kariya, my $12 investment went belly up shortly after, and by the time I sold them both on eBay I don't think I got back more than $2 apiece. No, eTopps is not for investing, if you want to invest, buy stocks or bonds, not Baseball cards.

This eTopps, which is Vlad's first as an Angel cost me a whopping $1.30 to buy on eBay. That put the card into "my portfolio" on eTopps, but since I really wanted to hold the card in my hands, I claimed it, sending them $4.95 in shipping. I should have my card in a few days.


So there you have it, my recent adventures in singles. Not too shabby, a nice collection of swatches and oddball releases. I don't know what I'll feature next time, since I'm still bidding on singles, and do so quite often.