Posts

Mail day from sick bay

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 A cold or flu certainly wreaks havoc on a household. The children had it and now Mrs. and I are down with it. Cards have kept coming into the house this past week but with no energy or motivation to show them off we have this half-hearted post today.   A little envelope with a purchase I made through TCDB with  tinyzinterfere that I have done business with at least a dozen times begins things.  Chipping away at some random sets with this bunch.  The highlight of this deal is this 2020 Stadium Club - Rainbow Foil, numbered out of 25. When Randal became a Blue Jay in 2018 I became a fan and started the one and only player specific binder in my collection. Even though he has left the team and fallen off my radar, I'll grab his short printed/numbered cards when the price is right.  This little lot of early 1900's cards came in. A couple are in rough shape, but they were cheap enough. To the type binder they go.  The final item that arrived this week...

Buying lots on TCDB - Part 2

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Happy Groundhog Day, if you celebrate it. Today we have the culmination of the TCDB lot purchase we started yesterday These are all set build cards unlike yesterday which was Blue Jay team set heavy. Good progress was made but nothing gets me over the finish line though. 2019 A&G is down to 12 to go.  The same for 20 A&G, a dozen to go. I am not sure why but I still keep chipping away at Capstone.  2020 Archives got a lot of help here. 8 to go. The seemingly random GPK are 1986's. I like to pick up vintage non-sports when available cheap.  My love of artsy cards extends into football as well. the 2014 Topps Valor is such a nice set. 80% done. I had never seen these cards until they were the Random Card of the Day a couple of years ago on TCDB so I ordered a hobby box right away. Damn nice cards.  The 2012 Ignite set is down to one card. Next COMC order should finish this.  There had to be some vintage included. Here are the few that were available that h...

Buying lots on TCDB - Part 1

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One of my favorite approaches for growing the card collection is through bulk buys. Not from one of the usual places mind you, but through TCDB. What?!  Occasionally members will take to posting on the forum that for whatever reason they have become motivated sellers. This is good for me as I have an extensive wantlist set up in the system. With a few clicks away we go and I await the lot price.  I reckon that in the past three years I have made over 100 purchases there. From a handful of cards to a 5300 card buy. All from trusted and reputable members so it really takes the worry of being swindled out of it.  Here is the first one of these deals of 2025, from member  80s90sHoopHead  ,120 cards all from my wantlist. All killer, no filler! I've broken this into two posts as there is so much good stuff to show. We'll go oldest to more recent baseball in this first part.      A ton of empty slots in the Blue Jay binders getting filled.  The Cruz...

Showing off 2004 Fleer InScribed

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 Today we showcase the 2004 Fleer InScribed issue. A complete set all paged up. Why? Because it is so clean, classy, innovative, and why not. This is another re-pack inspired set. One card in hand, I had to work on this! Trading for these on TCDB was a real challenge. There weren't many available. It seems like the early aughts are a real missing era of cards for trading.  In the fall of 2019 I bought a box. Just for laughs today I checked eBay to see if any are available. I found one box, at more than double of what I paid. Not unexpected. If you want one you best get it soon. I don't think there are many more out there.  Let's begin the page turning, The black bordered legends start at #76 and are serial numbered out of 1000. They are quite pretty in hand.  The final 15 are the short printed rookies, numbered out of 750.  Here are some insets and parallels I have picked up along the way. I don't think I am going to chase any of these sets. None of these really...

Three sports, three hanger packs

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Shoppers today seemed a little crankier today while waiting for the poor cashiers to do their thankless jobs. It's contagious. I was getting cranky listening to the crankiness, so I wandered away form the cart and Mrs. TnT.   Our store has two card sections, and I ended up at the display nearest the front of the store. Here they have the clearance packs, the odd new packs, but mostly the stuff no one wants anymore.  I could see the look of disdain in her eyes as three packs were placed at the driver's end of the cart. What? I silently said.  I don't remember if I had opened any of these Chronicles packs. It's hard to keep track. Let's see how this twenty bucks did. First up, basketball. Interesting, but meh. Football time, Indifferent. Archives time, Nothing spectacular. I guess my mini hot streak is over.  What did this twenty bucks get me. It gave me an escape even if it was for only a little while.  Thanks for reading and keep collecting. Let's try to ke...

Looking back on 1974-75 - Part 1

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My first season of serious collecting and card activity was the winter of 1974-75.  With my allowance and the money my grandfather - grandparents are the best - would give me on the sly, I managed to get to nearly complete the 1974-75 OPC hockey set. One short! Well, actually I was really good at our version of card flipping games. In Toronto back in the seventies kids played "knock down", "topsies" and "farsies". If you don't remember or know of these games they all included firing cards at the brick wall outside of our grade school. Any wall would do though. Winners either knocked down leaning cards, landed on, or landed closer to the wall than the other kids' flicks. These games certainly rounded the corners, but I couldn't let my mother know why. She did not approve of me gambling so I let her believe I was just a shrewd trader to get the missing cards.  One card that eluded me be it in packs, trades, or games, was the Stanley Cup special ...

Archives auto hit and some Buffalo culture

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While watching the Bills hang on to a win I had to rip the Archives blaster I picked up the other day. I'll get to that in a moment. I think the game against KC is going to be a close one. I'm not a fan of either team, nor am I a hater, but if I have to choose a team to root for it will be Go Bills! Now to the business at hand, seven packs of eight cards. Here's what we got, The expected four black parallels. A decent mix of players. Not too shabby. Next the three expected inserts. NO there is not a pink parallel of these . That's my scanner behaving badly. Good god, I will need to work on some settings.  And here we have a very unexpected auto! Sweet! Checking all of the usual places I cannot find pack odds for these. As of yesterday some sites were still listing the odds as TBA. Others did not even have them listed yet. If anyone knows please add in the comments below.  My overall take on this product is Topps Archives has been a little more casual in their "trib...