Hello and welcome to This Week in Cardboarding. This week has a bit of a story to go with my acquisition. So while searching the bay for Longoria cards I came across an 08 Topps card I had never seen before, so I go to Longoria authority,
Fielder's Choice Blog, and check out his list and sure enough, a 08 Topps card number17 is sitting there on his list.
Since I have no idea what this will go for, I must decide the value to me and bid with what I would pay. I decide nine dollars with three dollars shipping, is what I will venture. Outbid pretty fast, no worries, but what if I never see this card again. Well, what should i do ...., I place another bid 11.75, keeping it under $15 dollars is how I justify the bid, two more bids with seconds to go and I am no longer high bidder. I guess a few others were thinking the same thing because it ended at 12.25. Thank goodness I did not win. It is so easy to get wrapped up in an ebay bidding frenzy. I'll have to keep an eye out for another one, because it is a sweet photo.
Two days pass and the seller gives me a second chance offer for my high bid, he has another one, now I am suspicious. Are these not that rare, so I look up 08 factory sets and on every set is extra rookie pack, most say five then I spot this:
Yep, ten exclusive rookie variation cards, so I compare the different sets, look at every description for the auctions posted. Most are Buy-It-Now for 35-40, plain ridiculous. Then I find a real auction 9.99 with no bids, I put in a bid, make sure I watch it, and win it for 14.24, eight for shipping. If I would had won the first auction at 11.75 plus 3 for shipping, I would have spent 14.75 on one card, not really that good when I got a whole set for less than that. So, for about the price of that one card I get my first factory set since 99 and I win the set and ten exclusive rookie variation cards.
Here are numbers 11-20 (minus Longoria #17)
Some great names Votto, Bruce, Cueto (all the Reds are together, nice) and Scherzer and Buchholz.
The original seller has since sold two more Longoria Variation cards (both ending around 5.50) with a third ending shortly, well below what the first one went for. He obviously has an untouched market since nobody else is selling these but I think he is wasting a prime opportunity by flooding the bay with all three so soon, I personally would have trickled them out trying to get top dollar for each. I guess he was absent the day they taught supply and demand.
I am truly amazed Topps does this, its like slapping all the set builders out there in the face. Not to mention there are twenty cards, so you need multiple sets and a whole lot of luck to get all the variant cards. Bad Topps
What did I learn from all this? EDUCATION is sooooooooooo important.Two dollars and 24 cents over budget, but I was about eight dollars under budget last week so I am all good :) Are you asking yourself, did he just buy a whole set for one card, not at all, I love the 2008 Topps set and have wanted to buy it for awhile now. It is actually one of the things that helped me return to the hobby. The Design is a favorite of mine, it is has that classic vintage feel but of course it is a recent set, the cards are glossy but don't stick together like 07, and have foil names that are easy to read, and along with some nice photography, makes for a fun set. I actually bought more than one blaster in 08, because I genuinely like the cards so much. When the sets were released at Target, I really thought about picking one up, but thought $50 is truly to much money for a base set, so I am very happy with my twenty-two dollar pick up.
A fun thing I like to do is put all the little gold trophy cards together
They are in card number order
At first I thought they had four Outfielders and no third-base man, but a quick look up and Braun played 3B in 07
* Carlos Ruiz, C, Philadelphia Phillies
* James Loney, 1B, Los Angeles Dodgers (unanimous selection)
* Dustin Pedroia, 2B, Boston Red Sox
* Ryan Braun, 3B, Milwaukee Brewers (unanimous selection)
* Troy Tulowitzki, SS, Colorado Rockies
* Delmon Young, OF, Tampa Bay Devil Rays (unanimous selection)
* Chris Young, OF, Arizona Diamondbacks (unanimous selection)
* Hunter Pence, OF, Houston Astros (unanimous selection)
* Brian Bannister, RHP, Kansas City Royals
* Hideki Okajima, LHP, Boston Red Sox
One thing that shocked me about this factory set was that it wasn't in order, at first I was perturbed, but as I went through the cards arranging them in order, getting to enjoy each one, I quickly became happy that the cards weren't in order. I just pretended I bought an unique blaster that had every card plus 10 inserts and I had to put them in order :) Fun time!
Here are some Rays cards I enjoyed coming across
As always, thanks for checking out TWIC and please check out my Sketch Cards at
chroko cards. Take care and have an awesome week, and best of luck in your cardboarding endeavors.
