Make Sure You Know What You're Buying

One of these days I will learn to pay attention.  If you read my old blog, you might have seen this post about buying a card that I thought was something else.  The difference with today's post is that I bought these cards online.

The acquisitions were from Sportlots, where there aren't images for every card.  That's where I messed up.  It's all me.  The cards were listed as Auston Matthews but I had a brainfart and didn't pay attention that the card number was 400, which is a checklist.

I bought the card pictured on the left first.  It showed up later the day that I bought all of the others and realized my mistake.  I can't lie, it ruined my evening.  Oh well, at least I got another Stephen Johns out of the transaction.

If you shop online and haven't signed up and used ebates yet, you're missing out.  I also use it on eBay to get money back.  Between referrals and cash back, I've gotten over $100 in about seven months.  FREE CARDS!  If you're on Twitter, please give me a follow.  Happy collecting!

COMC Mail - Three Gold Stars

After more than six months, I'm still trying to figure out "values" of Compendium cards.  COMC and eBay are the only gauges and numbers are not relatively consistent in my eyes.  What I do know is that there aren't too many copies of the gold parallels available out there.  Because of this, I likely value the cards higher than others.  Perhaps the fact that I have done the legwork for every gold card that I have plays a role in it.  

This post is in honor of the three gold Dallas Stars cards that now reside with me.  

2016-17 Compendium Gold #85 Tyler Seguin

2016-17 Compendium Gold #88 Antoine Roussel

2016-17 Compendium Gold #587 Stephen Johns

The Tyler Seguin and Antoine Roussel cards are going into the card show box.  The Stephen Johns is all mine.  I wonder how many copies of this actually exist.  It can't be more than a handful.  

If you shop online and haven't signed up and used ebates yet, you're missing out.  I also use it on eBay to get money back.  Between referrals and cash back, I've gotten over $100 in about seven months.  FREE CARDS!  If you're on Twitter, please give me a follow.  Happy collecting!

COMC Mail - Young Guns

On an earlier post, I showed the Stephen Johns Gold Foil Rainbow Young Guns.  There were other Young Guns in the shipment.

Yes, I picked up this many Stephen Johns Young Guns.  As cheaply as they can be had on COMC, I can (hopefully) sell them at shows and make a few bucks.

2016-17 Upper Deck Exclusives #481 Stephen Johns

On the Upper Deck ePack site, I got a hard-to-find, and desirable, card.  I sent everyone that had a Johns Exclusives an offer for it and one trader took it!

2016-17 Upper Deck Silver Foil #481 Stephen Johns

This was a card that I "made" by combining five Young Guns cards.  Most of the silvers I combined into golds, but I needed one copy of this.

2016-17 Upper Deck #225 Jesse Puljujarvi

Jesse Puljujarvi is a card that was very desirable on ePack, but I didn't feel people were offering enough to get from me.  So, I elected to send him home.

2016-17 Upper Deck #451 Patrik Laine

If you're not going to get an Auston Matthews, Patrik Laine is probably the card you want to pull.  There was no reason for me to attempt trading this on ePack, because I didn't want to trade down.  I already had two Auston Matthews Young Guns, so I didn't need to trade up.  

I love ePack.  

If you shop online and haven't signed up and used ebates yet, you're missing out.  I also use it on eBay to get money back.  Between referrals and cash back, I've gotten over $100 in about seven months.  FREE CARDS!  If you're on Twitter, please give me a follow.  Happy collecting!

COMC Mail - Somewhere Over the (Gold) Rainbow

To be honest, I wasn't the biggest fan of what ePack was during the 2015-16 hockey card year.  They GREATLY improved things this year, with the gold rainbow foils.

In the 2015-16 flagship product you could combine ten of the cards to form a silver foil board, physical card.  That was it, though.  For 2016-17 they added the gold rainbow level.  If you combine ten silver foils, you can create the gold rainbow foil cards.

Last season's silver foil boards can be had for just a few cents on COMC and there are hundreds of them just sitting there that may never leave that facility.  The creation of the gold parallel hasn't raised the "value" of the silvers, but it has decreased the supply.  I searched John Klingberg's silver versions from the last two seasons.  There are 490 copies of the 2015-16 version on the site with a lowest asking price of six cents.  You can get the 2016-17 version for five cents, but there are "only" 141 copies of it available.  There are 11 of the gold versions available.  If the gold wasn't an option, it would likely close to double the amount of silvers available.

My hope is that next year Upper Deck will make a third level, as they have with their Compendium set.  You can combine base to make blue, red and gold versions.  It's possible that there are players that have less than a handful of gold cards.  People are quick to get blue versions (that only require ten base cards) and flip them to COMC.  Every one of those creates ten less cards that can be combined for red and golds, unfortunately.

Anyway, on to the cards...

The scans don't show how beautiful the gold foils really are.  I decided to take a picture of one under light to get you a better idea.  It still doesn't do them justice, but it's a bit better than the scans.

2016-17 Upper Deck Gold Rainbow Foil #61 Jamie Benn

One of my common complaints about modern sports cards is how every photo is pretty much the same.  I give Upper Deck a lot of credit for using shots that aren't your run-of-the-photos more than the other companies.

2016-17 Upper Deck Gold Rainbow Foil #62 Jason Spezza

2016-17 Upper Deck Gold Rainbow Foil #63 John Klingberg

2016-17 Upper Deck Gold Rainbow Foil #311 Tyler Seguin 

2016-17 Upper Deck Gold Rainbow Foil #314 Antoine Roussel

2016-17 Upper Deck Gold Rainbow Foil #348 Andrew Shaw

2016-17 Upper Deck Gold Rainbow Foil #481 Stephen Johns

I will probably only keep the Andrew Shaw and Stephen Johns cards.  The rest I'm going to put into the box for the next time I set up at a card show.  Well, maybe I only keep two of the three Johns that I have.

If you shop online and haven't signed up and used ebates yet, you're missing out.  I also use it on eBay to get money back.  Between referrals and cash back, I've gotten over $100 in about seven months.  FREE CARDS!  If you're on Twitter, please give me a follow.  Happy collecting!

Break of a Different Kind

About a year ago, I gave up on group breaks.  You lose more than you win and don't even get the joy of opening cards.  The final straw for me was paying $50 for the Blackhawks in a break where they had the most hits in the set.  I walked away with 0 cards.  For $50.

I have done a few vintage set breaks with Burl's Sports and will do more in the future.  No matter what, you still at least come away with a vintage card in every spot.

LINK: 1956 Topps Baseball Set Break from BurlsSports.com

While searching eBay for Stephen Johns items, I came across a seller (collect_edition_montreal  on eBay) that was doing breaks by player.  I'd heard of them before, but had never participated.  The one that intrigued me was a half-case break, the starting bid was just 99 cents and shipping was free.

I ended up winning the auction for Johns (for $2.01) and Stan Mikita (for 99 cents).  With the free shipping, my total was $3 and it was coming from Canada.  If I had walked away empty-handed, I wasn't going to be upset at that low of a price.  

A half case should yield 36 Young Guns.  There are 50 in series 2, so odds were around 65% that a Stephen Johns would come out.  One did.

2016-17 Upper Deck #481 Stephen Johns

It wasn't a UD Exclusives (/100) or a High Gloss (/10), but for $3, I am thrilled.

To be honest, I didn't even know what Stan Mikita card was in the set.  I figured it was a stick card of some sort and odds would be long.  It was worth a 99 cent shot.  It paid off.

2016-17 Upper Deck Canvas #C255 Stan Mikita

I was watching the live stream and did a double take on this one.  The breaker was in Canada and had a French accent, so I thought maybe my ears were playing tricks on me.  Nope.  The Retired players Canvas are 1:192 packs (1:8 boxes) and there are 15 players in the set, making the odds on this 1:120 boxes.

For me, that was $3 well spent.

PWE + Sportlots = Happy Me

I love Sportlots for the reasonable shipping that a lot of sellers offer.  On a low end purchase, I'm willing to chance a PWE.  I did that on this one and shipping was just $1.  The card I wanted most in this transaction was the Stephen Johns, but I added the others since I'm going to work on the Parkhurst Red parallel set.

Yay for cheap shipping!!!