2013 Topps Opening Day R.A. Dickey Photo Variation (Again) - Patience is a Virtue (That I Don't Have)

One thing I struggle with is patience. When I want something, I want it immediately, not later. Many times I wind up spending more than I should on things because of that. I think that Black Friday is a good time to post about that shortcoming, as it's one of the biggest shopping days of the year. I usually spend too much on this day. This year I didn't do too badly. I mostly avoided the big card sales on the Dave & Adam's and Blowout Cards websites. I stayed away from the Topps online sale. I only added a handful of cards to my collection on COMC to bump me over the free shipping threshold. I took my kids to the local LEGO resale store, and they saved a little money while spending their allowance on some figures they'd been saving for. I only grabbed a couple of minifigs for myself. I've also gathered a few LEGO sets for myself as I purchased the LEGO sets my kids have on their Christmas lists. It's a good thing we all like the same stuff.

Thanksgiving this year fell on my birthday, which happens every few years. It was a pretty decent birthday, although birthdays don't matter all that much to me anymore. Our Thanksgiving meal was low-key, but it was good. My wife and kids gave me a LEGO set from the recent Thor: Ragnarok movie. I took a nap and scanned a bunch of cards and artwork to build up my stock of blog post drafts. My wife is gone on a girls' weekend now, so it's just me and the kids and the dogs for a couple of days. So far it is going okay.

Sometimes I can be patient. According to this post from 2015, it took me about two years to pick up my first copy of this card. I probably overpaid for it, but this photo variation of R.A. Dickey's card from 2013 Topps Opening Day just hasn't shown up all that often. If I am remembering right, that auction from a couple of years ago sat at $19.99 for a very long time before the seller dropped the price and I picked it up. When today's copy popped up on eBay for just a couple of dollars, I had to bid on it out of principle. I wound up winning it for a fraction of what I spent on the original card. I guess the shine has kind of come off of R.A. Dickey's cards in the last few years. I still like getting his cardboard, though.

Whale Hunting: 2013 Topps Opening Day R.A. Dickey Photo Variation

This is a card I've wanted ever since it was released in 2013. In the Opening Day set that year Topps featured players who changed teams in photo variations from the press conferences where they were introduced as members of the new organization. R.A. Dickey got a photo variation for his switch from the Mets to the Blue Jays. These were seeded 1:617 packs, so they were a pretty tough pull from a product that people probably didn't break a whole lot of.

This copy of the Dickey variation has been up on eBay for most of the last couple of years, always on my Watch List but priced well outside my comfort zone. Recently the seller put a discount on the card. It was still priced a fair bit higher than I wanted to pay for it but for a long time this has been the only copy readily available on the market, so I bought it. I'm happy that I finally pulled this whale (not sure whether to classify it as a white whale or a grey whale) into my collection, even with the price tag. Spending an extra couple of dollars now is probably better than watching that auction for another two years before giving in and buying the card.

Also, I just realized this is Post # 700 for me on this blog. Woohoo!

Rainbow in the Dark 25: An Addition to the Josh Reddick Super Rainbow

I recently added a new card to my Josh Reddick 2013 Super Rainbow, which is made up of cards from Topps Series 1, Chrome, Opening Day, and Topps Mini. I have just about everything except for the 1 / 1 cards, so new additions are few and far between. In this case, I was able to nab the Magenta Printing Plate from Topps Chrome. I now have half of the Chrome Printing Plates, as well as the Superfractor. I have not been able to locate 1 / 1's from the other 2013 products yet. I imagine that is because the Chrome production run gets opened at a higher percentage than the other products, as the 'value' potential for that product is a bit higher with the different Refractor variants pulling in decent money on the secondary market.

I decided this would be a good opportunity to show off the Super Rainbow in it's entirety, as I now have 38 variations of this card. I have four cards from Topps Mini, three from Opening Day, fifteen from Series 1, and sixteen from Topps Chrome. By my count there are 11 cards out there that I am missing, made up of 10 printing plates and the Platinum parallel from Topps Mini.

Topps Opening Day 2013

I have a hard time keeping track of where I read what, but I saw on another blog that from now until August 3rd, Target is having a sale on a couple of Topps products. 2013 Topps Series 1 is $0.99 per pack, Topps 2013 Stickers are around $0.75 a pack, and 2013 Topps Opening Day is $0.49 a pack. I went to the Target nearest my home to check it out. There weren't any signs proclaiming a sale, but when I took the packs to the Price Check scanner they rang up at the sale price.

So I bought a few Series 1 packs and a bunch of Opening Day packs. The next day I went back and got more Opening Day packs. Then my wife went and bought the rest of the Opening Day packs at that store. By this point I had a complete base set and a good start on all of the insert sets, as well as a 1:463 pack Opening Day Autograph (Justin Turner, Mets Infielder).

I really like the Blue Parallels. Something about the color just works for me, and they are just a little bit sparkly, which I also like. I am entertaining the idea of trying to complete a set of them. Along that thought line I looked up prices for singles of the parallels, as there don't appear to be many lots of multiples out there on eBay. At that rate, I said to myself, I could probably save money on the parallel set by checking out the other two Target stores within driving distance of home. So off I went. Neither store had as many packs as the first, but I bought them all, probably about 50 packs total between the two stores, plus the 70-80 from the first store. The cashier at one of the stores asked me if I was a collector. I wonder if many non-collectors buy thirty packs of trading cards at a time?

I also pulled some Press Pass Racing cards out of the discount bins, as well as a couple of packs of Topps Heritage and a lone pack of 2012 Topps Archives, which contained a SP card I needed. In addition, I grabbed some Gypsy Queen off the shelves, as well as a blaster of Goodwin Champions.

Nothing of any import came from any of the other packs I grabbed, although I can say that I don't really like Goodwin Champions in spite of the fact that it is a product that contains cards of such folk as Abraham Lincoln, Bram Stoker, and Spud Webb. Something about it just leaves me cold. Maybe it's the artwork and the lack of logos. I am holding on to my Abraham Lincoln card, though, and the Bram Stoker is going to someone who I think will appreciate it. I also pulled a card of jockey Gary Stevens, who is from the next town over and gets talked about fairly frequently on the local sports talk radio station.

Gypsy Queen is a card set that I quite like. I guess you could argue that it is similar in design to Goodwin Champions, although I think Allen & Ginter might be an even closer match to Goodwin than Gypsy Queen is. I think the difference for me is partly in the presence of logos and mostly in the artwork being actual photos with paint effects applied rather than Goodwin's less-finished look. I will not be pursuing a base set of this product, but I really like the No Hitters and Dealing Aces inserts, which are some of the more attainable cards, and I will be trying to get all of those. I did pull two of the blue-framed insert #'d out of 499, Larry Doby and Tommy Hanson. They are sharp-looking cards, but I don't have any use for them.

I am going to participate in this year's Gint-A-Cuffs V, which is a contest in which bloggers purchase a box of Allen and Ginter from Topps and add up the cards they pull based on a number of criteria, generally by rarity of pull, but also including wacky stuff like extra points for favorite teams or players and negative points for pulling Yankees. You have to keep track of your points on a pack-by-pack basis and post photos of any cards from a pack that alter your points. As the official dealer sponsor of Gint-A-Cuffs V, Dave and Adam's Card World provided a case worth of boxes to participants at a special discount and the main sponsor, Topps, apparently has promised three boxes of Allen & Ginter as the prize for scoring the most points. I am not really sure what to expect, but I hope the experience is more like Gypsy Queen than Goodwin Champions. I think it will be, as the base set and many of the inserts are focused on baseball, while the wacky fun is all in the inserts. I really want to pull an Arachnology redemption, but they are 1/1 incredibly tough pulls.

So, I bought all of the 2013 Topps Opening Day in Southwest Idaho Target stores. I know for sure that I have one complete base set, and I estimate that there is at least 1 and maybe two more base sets in the stack of cards on my desk. I have 17/25 Ballpark Fun inserts, 17/24 Mascots, 20/25 Opening Day Stars 3D, 18/25 Play Hard, and 17/25 Superstar Celebrations. I was hoping to be a little closer on all of those, but I am still pretty close. I also pulled an Ike Davis Opening Day Autograph, so that is my second autograph and also a Met. He has not been having a great year in Fantasy Baseball, and my teams have suffered a bit because of it. Of course, several of my teams also featured B.J. Upton and Giancarlo Stanton, so that should tell you all you need to know about my 2013 Fantasy Baseball season. I am struggling to get out of last place in most of my leagues.

I wound up with 28 Blue Parallels, which is a decent number but leaves me with a lot of work to do if I want to complete the set anytime this century. I really do like them, though, so I will probably see it through to the end. The only card I really really wanted that I didn't pull was the R.A. Dickey variation card. The variation cards are even tougher pulls than the autographs, so there wasn't much chance of pulling one, let alone a specific one. R.A. Dickey is for sure on my list of players to collect. His career has been pretty hit or miss, as can be expected for a knuckleballer, but I like his story and his book was pretty good. I was surprised at how many Blue Jays I recognized from my fantasy teams. Sometimes I get so focused in on stats that I don't notice who a guy is playing for, but I've got a boatload of Blue Jays on my teams. For Gint-A-Cuffs V each participant has to pick a favorite player and team, and I might go with R.A. Dickey and the Blue Jays. Other guys who I want to start player collections for are Homer Bailey, Hisashi Iwakuma, Max Scherzer, Felix Hernandez, and maybe a couple of batters to be named later. But for the moment, R.A. Dickey for the new-school and Nolan Ryan for the old-school. I may grab up Paul Molitor cards, too, as he is one of the guys who sent me back an autographed card in the mail when I was a kid. I will have player collections from other sports, too, but I will discuss that some other time.