Mining for Gold ... Literally

A few days ago, someone emailed me a list of their baseball cards that they wanted to sell. I took a look over the list, and saw a few cards I was interested in. I called up the seller to ask what he wanted. He mentioned the collection was valued at $20,000 and he was looking for 40 cents on the dollar.

I let him know that no one would pay him 40 cents on the dollar, but I would love to take a look at the cards. He seemed a little stand-offish and said he would call me on Friday so we can setup something. I figured I wouldn't hear from him because he had that kind of "don't call me, I'll call you" tone.

To my surprise, I heard back, and we ended up meeting in a restaurant parking lot. He pulled off into the grass, and opened the back of his truck. After we introduced ourselves to each other what he said next dropped my jaw...

"I must apologize, because I forgot that I had sold a number of the better cards to a dealer about a year ago."

WHAT?!?!? I was NOT happy. Sure enough, the cards that were nowhere to be found were the ones I wanted most. One of which was a Mariano Rivera autograph. URGH!!!!

After I told him that I wished I would have known that before making plans for an hour round trip, I dug into the cards. I mentioned I probably wouldn't be able to pay the prices he wanted for everything based upon our conversation...especially since lots of the good cards were gone, and I would hope to find some cards I could buy from him to make the trip worth it.

He wasn't buying it.

He said he wanted them all, all, all gone. To my surprise, we were able to make a deal with fairly painless negotiating. Aside from the multiple mosquito bites, I was happy as a clam to load everything up into the cardboard-mobile and drive off.

Today, I was able to process through everything, and post everything up for sale that I didn't want to immediately keep...to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. The chaff looks like it is going to easily cover my expenses for everything, and then some. I love when that happens! I'll love it even more when someone actually buys said chaff.

So, with all that said, I wanted to take some time to show off some of the treasures - I made a 3 row box of cards in holders that I'll either list as singles, or sell as bulk. Here are some of the treasures from the box:

Bagwell and Williams - The Williams has an actual diamond on it, and the Bagwell has actual gold in it! A Mo Vaughn card similar to Bagwell just sold for $100.

Old school double rainbow all the way! Certified Mirror Blue, Red & Gold Biggios....

and Bagwells...

and more Bagwells

Correction and Error inserts. The Jeters go for about $50 a pop.

Flair Showcase Row 0 Jeter Ripken Griffey

The Zenith Jeter is an Artist Proof

Certified Blue Jeter Thomas & Chipper

Certified Blue Griffeys

Blue McGwire, Mirror Blue Ripken, nice rare Thomas die-cut

Gold Team Jeters Bonds & Ripken

The 2 Jeters go for about $50 or so each

4 nice David Arias (Ortiz) rookie inserts from 1997 - I didn't even know these existed!

Artist Proofs and rare Silver Griffey

Artist Proofs and Rare Thomas

There are tons more, but those are my favorites. I was super happy with all the 90's inserts! Included in the collection were rookies of OJ Simpson, Steve Garvey, Ozzie Smith, Rickey Henderson and a 1969 Topps Hank Aaron, not to mention a complete set of 1996 Certified Red ... and 94 autographed from 1996 Leaf!. 

Such a Strange Sensation

Well, here I am - at my desk, blogging.  Aside from 8 of the 9 1986-87 Fleer BGS Graded cards I have sitting on my desk that I got the other day, I am cardboard free. 

These past few months have been a whirlwind of wheeling and dealing.  All of the collections I have purchased, all of the card show transactions, etc.  Everything is gone. 

Well, let me back up a bit here - I do still have my Canseco cards.  I actually just put up the bulk of that collection for sale too.  I have some sort of a problem - whenever I sell out of stuff, I can't just be content.  I have to keep trying to sell.  The last time this happened, I started selling the pictures on my walls in my office! 

I am going to amend my initial statement of running out of everything with this:  I still DO have about 3 million cards that my friend has.  I have access to them only whenever he gets them ready for me - generally in lots of 100-200k at a time.  So don't go sending donation checks to me yet since I am cardboard destitute.  Wait, scratch that ... if you are feeling the desire to ... do it!

But either way, as of now, my house does not look like a card shop exploded in it, for the first time in a long time!

It is funny to think that very recently, my garage was stuffed with cards AND comics, and now it is looking sparse ... comparatively, that is.  It is also strange to think that mere days ago, my office was nearing impossible to navigate successfully to the computer without some sort of a game plan, thanks to all the boxes that were all around. 

I'll use the rest of this blog as a bit of therapy - mainly because it is bitter-sweet.  A few days ago, someone asked me if I had a collection to sell.  With only the "gravy" cards I had left - that is, the cards that sparked interest in me from collections that I did not want to sell immediately, I told him I did have a large lot ready to go. 

I took several videos, and he was interested.  Lots of big name players, and even some cards in the $50-$70 range.  Most were of the $1-5 variety though.  It was an impressive lot, and I thought that I wouldn't find a buyer for all of them at once, due to the price being so high. 

After mulling it over, he said he would sleep on it, and so I went to bed.  I went to bed with excitment ... could I really be on the cusp of having run out of EVERYTHING?  How would that feel?  What would I do?  I don't know what really excited me so much about running out of everything.  Perhaps a sense of accomplishment; that I had made all kinds of purchases, and though it was all profit anyway, that it was success upon success, if that makes sense. 

When the buyer said yes, I was elated!  Before that happened though, I wound up pitching in other miscellaneous things, and ended up settling on a bit lower of price, but I was satisfied.  That satisfaction quickly turned into irritation, when it took me the better part of the afternoon packing up the entire collection. 

After all was said and done, the 62 pound package was packed, insured and sent off to the new owner.  I spent the rest of the evening, and today wondering "did I do the right thing?  Did my lust for conquering a 100% empty level cloud my judgement?"  There was, after all, good money to be made on those cards.  It was for some reason also rewarding to get down to a record low # of listings on ebay as well, though, I don't know why. 

It could, perhaps, go either way - I could say yes, it was a good move because it could have taken countless hours and several months to move everything or $200-$800 extra dollars perhaps.  But on the other hand, it plays perfectly into the game I play whenever dealing cards.  I love being able to see what I could get as a lot, then end up breaking the lot over and over again, and tracking how much further I can get with the financials if I do the work myself. 

As a matter of fact, part of the meloncholy feel I have from this sale is that it prematurely ended a few of the "games" I setup on my spreadsheet to see how far I could go in terms of making the biggest return on my investments. Now, after selling it all, it is just like this one big mass deal that can scarcely be separated to make sense of what financials should go where. 

Yes, I love, love, *loooove* my phone caCHINGing whenever I have an offer or make a sale on ebay.  it is so much fun. 

I guess in the end, this is a lesson for me.  While I did succeed, and ended up doing what I was going for, I learned a lesson - that it isn't just about selling; it is also about the thrill of finding the buyer and making the sale.  Almost like watching something that you plant, grow successfully into something big, strong and beautiful. 

So I guess I'll leave it at that.  Thank you for listening ... errr ... reading.  This has been good therapy for me.  On to my next deal!  I've been interrupted (and thankfully so) a few times in this blog by my phone caCHINGing at me...perhaps we are close to dealing away those fleer bgs graded cards sooner than later!

SOOOLLDDDDD

For the past few months, I've been selling off a massive collection I purchased.  It was fun, but was getting cumbersome and, well ... old.  After rapidly selling through my 3,000 count boxes of stars, rookies and inserts, I was still left with about 50,000 cards. 

It wasn't just one collection though.  It was comprised of a lot of other little collections that I have been accumulating. 

- HUGE collection sorted mainly by players
- Leftovers from a few other collections I had purchased
- What was left of a hoard of newer complete sets
- Over 200 in person autographs
- 125 or so jerseys / autographs

A guy I have done big deals with in the past picked up some cool '86-87 Fleer basketball BGS graded cards, including a Jordan rookie.  I love me some Jordan (who doesn't?) so I looked into considering doing a deal.  Not only did we trade his BGS graded fleer cards, but he also bought some super nice lots I had of Derek Jeter, Albert Pujols and Josh Hamilton.  These included the 93 SP Jeter, a 93 Stadium Club Jeter PSA 9, a Jeter autographed baseball, a Pujols autographed baseball, 9 Pujols rookies, a Pujols autographed baseball card and Josh Hamilton '99 Topps Traded autographed card.

Now if you know me, you know that I love all 3 of these players.  This is just proof that I am pretty much not attached to anything!  Things seem to get old pretty quickly for me,  Plus, I am in love with starting fresh with something.  In my book, the thrill of the hunt ALWAYS trumps the pleasure from having a card. 

Here are the new beauties!

 

 

It feels a ton better having this tiny stack of cards on my desk, rather than 30+ boxes scattered all over my office!  Plus, I *may* have a buyer for the cards above, minus the Jordan - we will see. 

So, aside from several autographed baseballs I'm holding for another buyer at the end up the month, I am left with 1 final box of stars/rookies/inserts, and a gravy lot. 

What is a gravy lot?  You might ask ...

Well, this is a lot that I generally end up with when everything else is gone.  It is cards that I may pull from collections to keep for a while.  The majority are baseball, and I would guess there are about 6,500 or so of these cards.  I'm selling them all at $1,500.  It may be difficult to find a buyer for them due to the price, but it is very much so a money making lot. 

It is really strange to have so few cards right now!  It is somewhat exhilarating to have almost gone through everything, and will feel odd if I ever am able to get through the rest of these.  I really hope I can, but with these, I'm not in too terribly much of a hurry because it is really cool stuff that I haven't had much time looking through. 

Keep in mind, I'm not counting the 3,000,000+ cards I still have coming to me from a deal I made a while ago...I'm talking about in my home right now. 

So, now that I have all this room, I decided thursday evening to start organizing and cleaning my holders.  After years of buying collections, I have not done it before that I can recall, so I figured I would tackle it. 

It took a while longer than I thought. 

You don't realize how many of these things you accumulate over the years!  I will probably sell off a bunch of it.  Heck, I think I have dozens of penny sleeve packages from deals I did 5 years ago.  If I haven't used them yet, will I ever? 

Some cool pickups!

So, I've been on a bit of a buying binge! 

When I was in San Antonio on vacation with the family, I met up with a guy on the way out of town, on our way home and picked up these beauties:

 

We will forget the fact that on the way, I backed into a concrete wall.  It's ok - I was only going a few miles an hour, and besides, I didn't buy the cardboard-mobile for her pristine looks!  The back fender was disjointed, and I was bummed, but decided to take a knee to it, and it popped back in place.  Now, she has a matching scar next to what my wife did to her a few years back. 

Anyway, back to the cards ...

I flipped them pretty quickly, which was kind of nice because it helped pay for a bit of the vacation!  Plus, I don't know why, but I always have some sort of satisfaction in having owned some of these cards before - I don't always have to own these items myself to feel fulfilled.  If only I can be that way about eating!  You know - take a bite of cheesecake, then spit it out instead of swallowing. 

Jordan Brown, a baseball player for the Marlins called me up and talked to me about the USA autographed baseball I had.  He said he was interested in trading for it, and mentioned he was talking about it with his hitting coach ... Tino Martinez!  How cool is that?  Martinez resigned today, apparently, due to some internal problems. 

Anyway, I ended up selling it to someone else, but thought it was cool that I got to talk to a ball player for a while about it...who called me ... AND who spoke to Tino Martinez about my ball. 

With my family out of town this weekend, I found myself doing a lot of buying ... and talking to my dogs, but that is neither here nor there. 

I was trying to clean out my office a bit, and remembered a purchase from January's card show that was overshadowed by meeting Jose Canseco.  A 1986 Mother's Cookies promo with Jose Canseco and Will Clark that was signed by Canseco! 

It has just been sitting behind an always open closet door of mine, so I decided to get creative.  A month or so back, I grabbed a framed movie poster of Mandy Moore that was autographed.  I took it out, rolled it up, and put the Canseco item in its place.  it was much smaller than the poster, so what I did was I ended up pulling a few Mother's Cookies cards from my collection, and put them in at the top!  These cards were obtained by me as a child by trading with neighborhood friends, a kid from my little league team and opening Mother's Cookies boxes with my dad.  With all that said, here it is!

This may just be Canseco's biggest rookie card ever!  The cards I put in there will serve as a reminder of how fun it was collecting cards as a child.  My Canseco collection are the only cards I have left from my childhood.  Nothing else is off limits when it comes to selling!

So, back to my buying spree.  Here are a few other items I bought this weekend!

 



Autographs of HOF'ers Lefty Gomez, Steve Carlton, Don Sutton, Lefty Gomez and Billy Herman.  The Herman has an AWESOME inscription.  I've never seen one like it!



Yogi Berra Autographed Baseball



Ralph Branca / Bobby Thomson Autographed Baseball - Thomson hit a homer off Branca in the 1951 Playoffs to give the New York Giants the win against the Brooklyn Dodgers.  It was dubbed "The Shot Heard 'Round the World".

Jim Palmer - An inscription that I think has something to do with his alma mater.

 

Don Drysdale!

 



Sandy Koufax!!!

Pee Wee Reese

1996 Orioles team signed baseball with Cal Ripken Jr. 

I was most excited about the Drysdale / Koufax autographed baseballs.  Truly iconic and dominant pitchers for the Brooklyn / LA Dodgers. 

I also picked up nearly 10,000 cards which are mostly 2013's.  This is a bit of a gamble here, because I don't know too much of what is in them. 

I am still waiting for my autographs and cards to come in.  I can't wait!  I may possibly check out someone's 75,000 card collection this evening or week.  Apparently it is supposed to be all stars, rookies, inserts, etc.  So we'll see what happens. 

You know you are a collector from the 80's & 90's when...

I run into people all the time who are coming back to the hobby, be it for themselves or for their children.  I thought it would be fun to put together a list, so feel free to add to it!

You know you are a collector from the 80's & 90's when...

1. You carefully inspect each corner of a 25 cent card before buying ... with a magnifying glass.
2. Your retirement plan consists of a closet hoard of 1988 Donruss complete sets, and a nice stash of guys like Mo Vaughn & Albert Belle
3. You still refer to Todd Van Poppel & Shawn Green as hot prospects.
4. The card you always wished you had was a 1986 Donruss Jose Canseco rated rookie
5. You think your '85 Topps McGwire is worth $200.
6. You have an impressive run of Becketts from 1986 to 1996
7. That Kid Griffey sure is something, isn't he?
8. Your go-to haggling argument always starts with "but the book value is..."
9. Super collecting a player means you have over 100 of his base cards and one, MAYBE two of his autographs
10. The cards of Phil Plantier, Mike Greenwell, Tino Martinez, Kevin Mitchell, etc. that are in holders are worth less than the holders they are in.
11. You got angry when Score entered the picture, because it made collecting complicated.  Topps Fleer and Donruss are enough!

Mining for Black Diamonds and the Case of the Missing Bautista

Greetings from hot San Antonio!  As I write this, I am in the hotel with my family.  I took them for a vacation to Sea World this 4th of July weekend.  I have been meaning to update my blog, so with my wife passed out on the bed from lack of sleep, and my son on his ipod, I figured this would be the perfect time!

This past week has been another busy one.  First off - a few gems!  I picked up a cool small collection of autographs.  A Nolan Ryan autograph, a Tom Seaver vintage autographed baseball, a Whitey Ford autographed 3x5 and this ...

A game used 1984 USA Olympics baseball signed by the whole team!  Yes my friends, that means that the signatures of Mark McGwire, Will Clark and Barry Larkin, among others are on it!  Very pumped to have this in my collection .... until it finds its rightful owner!  :)

Now, onto a few others pickups here.  I found a few people selling their collections.  One was about 30,000 and the other, about 100,000.  I decided to drive one evening to check out both in one swipe. 

The 30k collection was asking a good amount.  She was a reseller, but didn't know much about cards.  She mentioned that the cards would go for much more on ebay.  I told her cards are my bread and butter, so I would let her know if it were true or not.  Right off the bat, I opened up a 1987 Donruss set, and sure enough, a few of the sealed packages were open.  I told her the McGwire rookie was missing, so probably others were too ... though the Bo Jackson was there. 

I went through a few of the mix boxes and noticed a few Jeters, so I thought it would be worth a try, provided she accepted a fraction of what she offered them up for.  I'm definitely not into picking up collections unless I have an interest in them and can make money on them! 

I got home, and was pleasantly surprised!  A few of the boxes were nothing but the red 2000 black diamonds.  Not too big of a deal, but these boxes yielded over 50 each of Jeter, Bonds, Ripken, Clemens, Griffey, Maddux, etc!  There were some SP Authentic of the same guys, as well as some inserts.  Nothing high end, but about 800 cards of super stars.  I was very happy. 

The next collection was interesting.  The guy claimed he had cards from the 50's to about 2005.  He said this was his collection; that he hadn't looked at it for years and years.  That he bought packs and that is how he got most of the cards.  Something seemed strange, but I figured why the heck not ... so I decided to check it out.  He mentioned most were 2000-2005 and not many at all were 80's to 90's junk.  He mentioned there will be a lot, and I mean a lot of good rookies from the 00's. 

On my way out the door, I noticed the email address ... remember this story?  Yeah, the lady who I was speaking with via email was the same lady who offered the mis-cut Cobb that someone else had offered.  Something is up. 

I went over there and the husband mentioned he was moving.  I asked where to, and he said he didn't know.  He said that he used to buy a few storage units a week and such, too. 

I dove into the cards, and you guessed it ... cherry picked to the bone.  Much of it being 80's 90's stuff!  I find it hard to believe that a collection had not been gone through ... and recently ... when you go through a box of rookies where there are multiples of everyone, except for Jose Bautista ... the star player who has only emerged worthy of being pulled from such a box within the past few years. 

Very interesting.  /strokes chin.

The one thing that saved it for me is that I was able to get them for a price decent enough, and that one box had about 2,000 cards from the 70's.  There were a small handful of 50's and 60's cards. 

This was only part of the story, due to my limited writing time today, but I continue to be baffled by the people that continue to lie.  It seems like every time I buy a collection, someone is trying to bs.  I don't get it!  Come on people - that is not how to treat others. 

Anyway, in the end, I am happy with the purchases, and I got a few good stories/experiences out of them. 

My little slice of Puig-Mania

It has been nearly a week since my family have gone anywhere - because we have all been sick as dogs.  Today, we are feeling like we are on the upswing collectively, and decided to run a few errands.  While we were out, I decided to try and catch some Yasiel Puig fever, like I did with Strasburg a few years back.  1 blaster box of 2013 Bowman for $21.50 @ Walmart. 

First of all, kudos to Bowman for making clean cards now!  Sorry, but 2011 and before were just plain ugly.  These look slick. 

As chants of Yasiel Puig ran through my head (and some slipped out audibly as well) while I was opening them up in the car, WHAMMO ....

2013 Bowman Chrome Top 100 Yasiel Puig

Yay!!!  I remembered hearing a mini refractor of his had gone for $50-$70, so I thought this may be $10-20.  Nope ... A mere handful of hours after opening it up, I sold it for $45 shipped! 

Why, oh why, do people buy these singles when they are at the peak of their popularity?  I would be willing to bet that within 30 days, this card will not even be selling for half of that. 

Oh well - thanks Puig!  Not only do you drop my jaw when watching you on tv, you also got me a free box of Bowman, and a $20 bill in my pocket.  You are alright by me!  #puigmania