Monday's Mailbag (I know it's not Monday, but I Like Alliteration)

Welcome to the slightly late Monday's Mailbag.  Okay, significantly late.  In the future, this will be a regular feature on Mondays, on a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly basis depending on how many card packages come in.  As I mentioned yesterday, this week mailbag was delayed due to weather and useless holidays (except for teachers Fuji).  

The Mailbag is a simple concept that you have seen many times before: I get cards in the mail, I show off cards here.  Don't laugh, I said it was simple.  

Today the mailman was actually able to deliver, and I got 2 card packages from eBay and 1 blogger PWE in along with the 1 blogger PWE I had in hand already.  Let's start with the bloggers just because I want to.  

The first PWE came from the wonderful Dodgers fan GCRL from Cards as I see Them.  Jim was the first claimant on my inaugural Sunday PWE Trade Bait posted and claimed a Takashi Saito card.  In return for that and a few other Dodger cards, this is what I got.

 

 

To me, the star of this show is the 2013 Topps Archives Dual Fan Favorites Bichette/CarGo.  Not only are they two of my favorite Rockies ever, but until Jim offered the card, I didn't know it existed.  I am very meticulous about my checklists, but some of the ones that haven't been reexamined in some time are missing some cards that may have been mislabeled by Beckett in the past.  The two rookie cups are a product of my being forgetful and not picking up the 2020 Series 2 cup cards yet.  They are very much appreciated.  

The Dan Johnson goes toward my 2005 Rookie Cup rainbow set.  The Garrett Atkins is somewhat interesting.  Jim offered me the card because he said it was on my wantlist, but I remembered having the yellow Atkins.  I checked the online wantlist along with my offline checklist and both said I didn't have it.  Then I checked the Atkins album (yes Atkins has an album all to himself) and there was no yellow, so I told Jim to send it along.  As I was in the process of putting the Johnson in the RC album, I spotted something.  Turns out I did have the yellow Atkins in my Rookie Cup set, but not in my Rockies collection.  Usually my Rockies collection comes before any other project, but I missed this one.  Thanks to Jim, I don't have to worry about that anymore.

The second PWE came from The Diamond King from his eponymous blog.  Kevin claimed a Mookie Betts and an Adrian Beltre from the same Sunday post.  From him I got this trio of cards.

The Todd Helton is from the 2001 Royal Rookies set which is so confusing.  I know I need the card, because I don't have it, but that set is so convoluted that I don't really know exactly what it is.  Something to work on, I guess.  The Juan Uribe is an orange parallel from 2005 Donruss Champions #'d to 75.  One year I hit that parallel set pretty hard, but the oranges were hard to find.  The Uribe is only the 3rd out of 10 Rockies that I have.  Finally, the strange looking Larry Walker card is an insert from 1997 Pinnacle.  Pacific gets a lot of justified credit for their imaginative inserts, but Pinnacle deserves just as much.  The plain looking Walker is actually a folded card which looks like this unfolded.

Much better, right?  Of course it suffers the same problem as any fold out card, it is hard to showcase the best part.  For now, Walker will take his place in the binder folded.  Thanks Kevin for the trade.

As for the eBay packages, they fall under the category of what I like to call "gamble lots."  I rarely buy single cards on eBay.  When shipping is factored in, they are just too expensive.  But I will buy gamble in two different ways and buy lots to make the per card price a little more in line with what I want to pay.

The first type of gamble lot is when I spot a card I want mixed in with other cards I may not want.  That was the case with this purchase of 2020 Bowman Platinum cards.  I spotted the Casey Golden blue out of 150 along with some other serial numbered cards from the set.  There were 8 cards shown in the photo, but the seller sent 10, plus a couple of Golden base cards, following a quick question from me about the lot.  If bought separately, the Golden could have set me back a buck or two, maybe a little more with shipping.  With this lot, I got each card for just a little over 50 cents each.  So I got the card I wanted along with 9 other cards (from collected teams, not just Minnesota) that will show up on future Sunday PWE Trade Bait posts or be posted on Sportlots for $1-$3 each.  Either way, I should come out ahead.

The second type of gamble lot is the riskier kind.  That is when you buy a lot of a certain kind of card, in this case 20 serial numbered and/or refractor Colorado Rockies cards), but you don't know exactly what is included.  The seller showed a few of the cards.  The 2013 Bowman Prospects Gold Refractor Tom Murphy is the card that caught my eye, so I put in a bid.  Those golds are out of 50 and hard to track down for cheap even for non-stars like Murphy, so I took a gamble.  I ended needing only two more of the 19 cards I received, but I would still call it a somewhat successful purchase.  

The 2014 EEE Sam Howard is much like the Murphy, a middle of the road prospect that played a little bit with the Rockies before being waived and catching on with another team.  Man, the Rockies never get anything out of these guys.  Moving on.  The last one I needed was the 1998 Bowman Chrome International Refractor Larry Walker.  This card is a parallel that is VERY hard to find for a decent price.  Up to now, I only had Edgard Clemente (Roberto's nephew) from the 16 card Rockies team set.  The remaining 17 cards included 9 serial numbered cards (mostly Topps Gold) along with 8 unnumbered refractors and X fractors ranging from 2006-2014.  For a price of 45 cents a card, I am okay with this because the ones I don't need can be put on Sportlots for around $1 per card.  It's not a guarantee by any means, but given time, I could even profit from this purchase.  Or I might run into a fellow Rockies collector that might need one or more of them.  Overall, I am happy with the impulse buy.

Thanx for reading.