Black Friday Shipment #2

The big reason why I only got vintage cards on Black Friday is that my budget doesn't allow me to get them consistently throughout the year. If I spent all of my normal budget on vintage cards at a card show, I'd only get around 15 cards. It's a lot more satisfying to get a couple hundred cards from the dime box, even though I really like older cards. Occasionally, I get some vintage cards from a card shop, but's that's pretty much it.

So I was really glad to get a lot of cards from the 1950's and '60's at bargain prices. Actually, the most expensive card in this post was the 1957 Topps Ken Boyer, which was just 82 cents.

I really like infielders, and getting cards of infielders, and I think these two cards do a very

good job of showing why.

You can make a pretty good hall of fame case for Ken Boyer ( 11 time all-star, 5 time gold glove, 282 home runs, and a MVP award).  Anyway, I thought it would be nice to get a card of him.

I might end up completing the 1957 Topps set some day, as it's a very nice set ( as I have said), and it's fairly cheap. I think the only expensive rookie card is Frank Robinson, which can be had for less than 100 dollars.

The card on the left is Earl Battey's rookie card. He ended up playing until 1967, and was a 4 time all-star, so I think I got a pretty good deal for his rookie card, at 70 cents. The Camilo Pascual was just 70 cents too. Camilo Pascual ended up being a pretty good player too, playing until 1971 and winning 174 games.

I wanted a Bobby Avila card for my collection after reading about him a little in the New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. Bobby was on the down end of his career by 1957, as he hit .224 in 1956, and retired after 1959. Billy Pierce is kind of underrated as he won 211 games, and was probably  better than Don Drysdale, Jesse Haines, Rube Marquard, and other hall of famers.

Jack Harshman had an interesting career, as he started out as a 1st baseman . He hit 40 homeruns for Minneapolis in 1949, and 47 for Nashville in 1951 in the minor leagues, and reached the majors leagues as a 1st basemen,  but only played 14 games in the major leagues as a position player before he converted to the mound. Clint Courtney was called both " Scrap Iron" and " The Toy Bulldog", which I think justifies the purchase.

I think it's funny how Topps never really decided how to spell Lew ( Lou ) Burdette's 1st name. It was nice how I got two of his cards so that I could compare.

I, for some reason, have always had an odd fascination with utility outfielders who hit .300, walk a lot, and have no power. Elmer Valo definitely as he hit .282 in his 20 year career with a .398 on base and 58 home runs. The only other player I can think of who fit the description is Greg Gross, so it's a pretty select group.

I really like the Christmas colors on the Zack Monroe card. His card is also made interesting as he never pitched in the major leagues after 1959, and that Topps apparently mispelled his 1st name ( Zach). I also like the catcher-outfield-1st basemen designation for Elston Howard.

I'll close out with Pedro Ramos at the start of his career, and 10 years later, and worse the wear after leading the league in losses 4 times.

Anyway, thank you all for reading and have a merry Christmas! Or more likely, considering that I posted this at 8:30 PM central time, have a merry December the 26th!

Black Friday shipment #1

Last Saturday I was very disappointed because I had to miss a card show for a practice speech tournament. The tournament wasn't too bad, but going to a card show is one of my favorite things in the world.

However, the disappointment was lightened by my 1st Comc shipment of cards! It was great going through the cards! I mostly got Topps cards from 1954-1960, but I also got three relatively big cards for me. I'll start off by showing what is now the oldest card in my collection, one of the three "big" cards I got:

I got this 1887 Sweet Caporal card for less than $5! It doesn't really fit in with anything I collect, but it was really cheap, really old, and the background is very interesting. ( I'll show the other two cards at the end)

I really like the towels behind Dusty Rhodes, and I like 1957 Topps. I remember way back when when I didn't like 1957 Topps because it was too boring, but I've come to appreciate it.

I like how it was the 1st set ever with the now standard card size, and, as a baseball statistics nerd, I really, really like how it was also the 1st set ever with complete career statistics!

Another set I like is 1960 Topps. It's nice and colorful, and I think the font is very interesting, as it is in different colors and the letters aren't in a perfectly straight line.

I've always been interested in Eddie Yost, which is kind of funny because I basically never walk in little league. This is my 2nd card of him, and my 1st of him as a Tiger. In 1960 he hit .260, and lead the league in walks with 125, but just spent 2 more years in the big leagues, hitting .215.

Fun fact for the day: Johnny Antonelli was elected to both All Star games in 1959 ( they had two for a couple years back then), getting the win for the 1st one.

I think somebody drew glasses on my 1954 Bowman Tom Gorman, and it has a lot of creases, but I thought it was a good deal at $1.06.

The condition notes for the Mike Garcia card said it was trimmed, but I got it anyway. It's pretty noticeable by a regular '54 Bowman card.

1956 was Johnny Kuck's big year, as he won 18 games, but he never won more than 8 games in the majors outside of that year. He finished his major league career with a 54-56 record.

I really like the yellow background on this 1954 Topps Roy Sievers. And here are two "big" cards, which I've probably been overhyping:

Play ball! I really like Play ball in all of it's 3 years, so these were nice. It looks like somebody carved some random things on the surface of this card, but it's in good condition otherwise, and it was around $5.

The other card was a 1940 Play Ball card of "Buddy" Hassett. I'd never heard of him before I got his card,  but he hit .292 over 7 years before the war stopped his career, including playing the 1942 season with the Yankees. As a bonus, it's my 1st Boston Bee card, because that's what the Braves were called back then.

I still have one more Comc shipment ( explained in my last post), so hopefully you'll be reading about it soon.

Black friday #2: A learning experience.

 
Last year's Black Friday was my 1st time getting baseball cards on Comc, and I'd like to be able to write that after that seasoning I fully took advantage of Black friday this year. Except I didn't. I got a very good haul, including the two cards above, but I also made various errors which  didn't help:

On Friday I didn't know that cards are cheaper when your logged into your account, so I spent significantly more than I needed to. I had planned to just buy all the cards on Friday, but because I didn't get as many cards as I thought I would, I didn't feel quite satisfied, so on Saturday I was looking on Comc when I realized that the prices were a lot lower than on Friday.

After a little experimenting, I realized that it was because I was logged in to my Comc account, while I wasn't on Black Friday. Thankfully, my Dad offered to pay for shipping if I got another order on Saturday, so I was set to get some more cards. And it worked very well except that I unfortunately forgot about getting Bowman cards, which was definitely too bad. But I still got very good deals. A good illustration for how different the prices were was the 1956 topps Roy Sievers, which I got on both Friday and Saturday. The copy I bought on Friday was $1.05, while the one I got on Saturday was 61 cents. That isn't quite a very comparison because the one I got on Friday was in better shape, but certainly not that much better. Here's the two copies side by side, the one I got on Friday being on the top:


Even though I spent more than I had to on Friday, and forgot about getting Bowman cards on Saturday, I still made out very while, and I'm looking forward for the cards to arrive. Hopefully I'll put it all together next Black Friday.