Monday's Mailbag #2 Part 2: eBay Boogaloo

Yesterday I showed off the blogger portion of Monday's Mailbag, today is eBay's turn.  I mentioned how my cabin fever led to shopping on eBay more than usual which led to some questionable purchases.  One of those purchases continues to be questionable at this moment, but it could still turn out okay.  The other 3 that arrived on Monday ranged from a strong leadoff double to 3 run walk off dinger in the bottom of the 10th.  Let's take a look at the eBay gamble lots for this week. 

First up is what I would consider the weakest of the four by far.  This is a lot of 24 2020 Bowman Platinum cards.  In reality it was likely the content of one person's hanger box.  I don't know what I was thinking with this buy because I almost always look for value when buying lots, even if it is just for sale or trade.  This just doesn't have the value that I paid.  Of the 24 cards, 20 were regular base cards.  Two more were the above ice parallels, which are the most common parallel.  I did get a couple of serial numbered parallels, a pink vet out of 199 and a gold prospect of out 50, but both were smaller names.  They will show up on future Sunday PWE Trade Bait posts.  If I had to do it over again, I would not purchase this lot, but that is precisely why I call them gamble lots.  You don't always win.  Although I may just build this set because I do like the design.

 

 

 

Next up we have what a consider a good buy.  This is a lot of 2009 Topps Sterling cards.  This purchase was a case of the seller being new and me getting lucky and spotting the auction.  This auction was a random allotment of 5 base Sterling cards and 1 lower numbered card out of the 30 cards he had pictured.  The most important thing about an eBay auction is the title and this lot was listed as "Baseball cards lot."  That's it.  No mention of Mantle or Clemente or Sterling or anything else.  That helped me get the lot for the opening bid.  However, after I paid, I reached out to the seller and offered him advice on how to sell his cards in the future such as losing the random lot aspect and being more descriptive in the title.  He was appreciative of the advice and as a reward, he let me choose whichever cards I wanted in the lot.  There were some nice ones including 2 different Mantles and a Stan Musial #'d to 14.  I didn't want to get greedy so I just asked for 1 of the 2 Mantles and the Clemente.  I got them along the Musial and Schmidt pictured along with a Barry Bonds not pictured.  My special card ended up being Johan Santana, probably the worst of the good cards, but for 5 dollars, I am not complaining one bit.

 

The other thing I didn't mention was that the seller threw in 3 serial numbered Hall of Famers from 2007 Topps Triple Threads.  I had no idea they would be included.  When was the last time you heard of a serial numbered Nolan Ryan being included as filler?  And I got all of this for around the price of a retail fat pack.  Buys like this, along with the lack of retail product available, is making want to give up retail altogether and just buy lots.  I won't get the big "mojo," but I don't really want that anyway.

 

The third lot is another one that was incorrectly listed.  The title of the auction was "2020 Donruss lot."  I found it looking for parallels for my rainbow set, but once I looked I couldn't resist putting an opening 99 cent bid and leaving.  Never did I think I would win at that price, but I did.  What was in the "2020 Donruss lot" you ask?  Well that would be 130 short prints and inserts from 2020 Panini Diamond Kings.  There were 13 dupes, but 58 cards of Hall of Famers were a part of the lot.  Including shipping, I paid a grand total $12.13 including shipping and taxes for this lot, or less than a dime per card.  That's about the cost of 3 hobby packs of 2021 Topps.  I'm just going to showcase one card for each insert set and then the card numbers that I have from that set to trade.  I figured this would a perfect way for me to have a good supply of inserts to trade for my 1986 Topps insert project.  

Keep in mind that these are the cards I have to trade.

 

Gallery of Stars - 4, 5, 14

In the Zone - 1, 2, 5, 5, 6, 6, 8, 8, 8, 11, 11, 13, 13, 14, 14, 15, 15

Artist's Palette - 4, 4, 7, 10

DK 206 - 2, 5, 7, 10, 12, 13, 15, 15, 18

Aficionado - 1, 2, 3, 5, 9, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15

All Time Diamond Kings - 1, 2, 4, 6, 12, 15, 22, 25, 27, 29, 30

DK Originals - 2, 5, 6, 7, 8

The 3000 - 1, 4, 8, 9, 12, 13

Base & SP - 82, 116, 117, 123, 125, 142, 143, 148, 149

Framed Blue - 39

Artist Proof Blue - 19, 42, 61

Framed Red (from the 2019 DK set) - 81

A lot to take in there.  I probably should have dedicated a single post to just this buy.  There is just so much here.  But hey some of you can trade me some 86s (or other cards I collect) and then write about this set as much as you want to. 

The final lot for today was one of my mystery Colorado Rockies gamble lots.  I go into these purchase knowing that I will end up with far more cards that I don't need than cards that I need.  When you have a nearly 25,000 card Rockies collection, it's hard to get large lots that hit needed areas.  I picked up this 132 card lot for the cost of a fat pack at $5.82.  Of that 132 cards, 107 were dupes including 11 inserts and parallels.  Even if I threw those cards in the garbage (which I am not doing BTW), that still leaves me with 25 new Rockies at a cost of about 23 cents per card including shipping.  I'll take that all day every day.  Here's a sampling of my new Rockies.

Most of the cards in this lot came from late season Topps products.  The Topps Fire Gold Minted Kyle Freeland was one of 2 for that parallel set I got.  Topps Fire has never been that big with me mainly because it is a Target exclusive and the closest Target to me is over 50 miles away.  The Topps Chrome German Marquez is a purple refractor #'d to 299.  In recent years these #'d color parallels in Chrome have become increasingly expensive to obtain.  Just another by-product of the boom that I really hope ends soon.  The Sam Hilliard is a black foil parallel from 2020 Stadium Club.  I actually overlooked it the first two time I went through the cards.  It wasn't until I was organizing the dupes to put into the Sportlots box that I spotted the black foil.  I often wonder how many parallels or photo variations I have just flat out missed over the years.

The best thing about this lot is that it gave me complete team sets for both 2020 Topps/Holiday and 2021 Topps Series 1.  Now I probably have the entire 2021 Series 1 set of 9 cards in the hands of Nachos Grande since I am in his first Breakers Club group break.  But they haven't been mailed yet, so I used this lot to check them off the list.  A surprise inclusion was the relic of Nolan Arenado from 2020 Topps Holiday.  It is only the 6th relic I have of the now former Rockies great.  It's a surprisingly small number considering I have over 50 of Todd Helton.  But relics have never really been a big part of my collection.  Lastly, I want to talk about the Arenado photo from 2021 Topps.  The design is awful.  It looks like a giant is picking him up by the head with an oversized pair of tweezers.  Who thought that looked good?  Ugh.

Without a doubt the strangest inclusion in the set was this 2017 Topps Purple Nick Hundley graded 10 from BCCG.  So many questions here.  Why would anyone send this card to be graded?  Do you think the original owner that sent the card in was just giddy when he saw the 10 on there?  Why are 10s called Mint or Better?  What is better than mint?  No seriously, why would anyone send this card in to be graded?  Anyway I was going to keep this on a shelf as a lark just to remind me of how silly some "collectors" are when it comes to graded cards.  Then I noticed that this card was on my wantlist.  Since I don't collect plastic blocks (no offense Lego collectors), I decided to break this guy out.  I watched a quick Youtube on how to do it safely and it worked like a charm.

Here is Nick free from his plastic prison with no damage whatsoever.  I know there are some people out there that will just gasp and get angry over me "ruining" a 10, but I am keeping the card.  And it's not like there are a ton of Nick Hundley collectors clamoring for the 10 in order to make their PC just a little better than all the rest.  Although if there is a Hundley collecting contest, this one is my 33rd in the Rockies binder. 

I have really started enjoying these gamble lots, although I can see space becoming an issue before too long.  Regardless for a gambler, getting 3 wins out of 4 attempts is definitely a day worth remembering.  Even the loss may lead to a new set collection, so it may turn out well also. 

Thanx for reading.