The Card So Nice I Bought It Twice

Today's card has a story that dates back to November of last year. To recap, in November 2016 I purchased this 2014 Topps Supreme autograph of Jon Singleton on eBay. It is the Red parallel, numbered # 03 / 10. It took me about a month to get to scanning the card and processing it for a blog post. I was surprised to see that my scan was for an Orange parallel, numbered # 02 / 15. So I went back and looked at the card, searched my collection a bit, and eventually determined that the seller had sent the wrong card and I hadn't noticed when I opened the package and added it to the stack of cards to scan. I needed the Orange parallel anyway, so I didn't make a stink about it and kept the card.

A while later, I was browsing cards on COMC and I saw something familiar in the Jon Singleton listings. It was the Orange parallel, numbered # 03 / 10! The seller's COMC name matched the eBay handle from the original purchase. I sent the seller an offer for the amount I had won the original auction for, which he rejected. I then sent a message explaining what had happened and asked if he would be willing to cut me a deal. He relented and accepted my offer. Hooray! The card arrived with my next COMC shipment, and I finally have the card so nice I bought it twice nestled safely in my Jon Singleton player collection.

My wife's computer has been driving her crazy lately, as it was kind of a cheap stopgap machine to get her by for a while after her old laptop gave up the ghost. She ordered a new laptop early this week, which ought to be a nice upgrade for her. I was pretty jealous, as my laptop is three years old now, and the new models we looked at were shiny and fast. The problem was that my laptop was still in pretty good shape, so I couldn't justify the cost of a new machine. I settled for an upgrade from 8 to 16 GB of RAM, which seems to make a difference in my computer speed when I have a million internet browser tabs open at the same time. I also used my Ebates account to order her computer, because Ebates was offering 10% cash back on the Dell website. I have to wait until November to get the cash back payment, but at that time I'll have about $100 sent to my Paypal account that I can spend on cards or sketches.

Check Out My Cards 9: A Goodwin Shopping Spree

For a long time, the COMC marketplace wasn't really on my card-buying radar. I knew it existed, and I browsed and bought from it on occasion, but it always seemed like I had to sort through a ton of overpriced garbage to get to anything of interest to me.

But then I bought an awesome autographed booklet card featuring two famous drag racing sisters, and I started looking around for some more drag racing cards to add to my collection. I found myself on COMC, browsing the Goodwin Champions listings.

There were relics and autos of all kinds on there, and many of them could be had for a dollar or two apiece. I could save them in my inventory for as long as I wanted to take advantage of combined shipping at a later date. Later on, I went into the MMA listings and sorted the autographed cards from lowest price to highest, and I found a ton of stuff that fit into my fighter collections, and with combined shipping it was all priced well below eBay. Maybe it wasn't a life-changing moment, but it was a collection-altering experience.

My main objective was to see if drag racer Erica Enders had any cardboard out there. I figured that if she did, it would be in Allen & Ginter or Goodwin Champions. I found that she had autographs and relics in 2016 Upper Deck Goodwin Champions. I picked up a base version of each type for my collection.

While I was at it, I couldn't help noticing some of the other cards on offer. I watched David Boudia and the rest of the divers in the 2016 Olympics, so that was enough for me to grab this nice on-card signature. He won a Silver and a Bronze in 2016, and took home a Gold and a Bronze in 2012.

I don't know a lot about Formula D drift racing, but Monster Energy and race cars are something I can always support. Also, I think I got this one for less than a dollar.

I have a decent-sized collection of Japanese bowling cards, and I thought I would add an American bowler to that collection. She's probably got the most legible signature of this bunch, and it's pretty cool how she rolls the 'f' in Stefanie down into the 'J' in Johnson.

The last cards I picked up in this batch from Goodwin were a relic and autograph of hammer thrower Amanda Bingson. That's a niche sport if there ever was one, and the price was right for me to pick these up.

Bingson just missed qualifying for the 2016 Olympic team after making the 2012 Olympics and not getting through the early rounds there. She should be in contention for a spot in the 2020 games.

That was a pretty fun romp through COMC's inventory, and it sparked several shopping trips over the course of a few months. It seems like you can get a lot of bang for your buck if you do a little searching. Most of the time I'd rather throw ten or twenty dollars in store credit onto my COMC account than go to retail and buy a hanger box or blaster. You can have a pretty fun shopping spree without a lot of cash, I don't know if COMC changed, or if I just wasn't searching properly before, but I like this new purchasing option.

Check Out My Cards 8: Jon Singleton Bowman Parallels

This is the last post about my recent COMC order, which I used to build up a couple of UFC player collections and add a number of Jon Singleton cards to my collection of his cards. I've already shown off a couple of common 2015 Topps parallels and a nice relic-auto hit from Panini, but I also grabbed a handful of Singleton parallels from 2015 Bowman. First up is this Silver Ice parallel. The Cardboard Connection page for the set says that Silver Ice parallels were only one per box in 2015, which is much more rare than they've been in the past. At least that is my recollection. And my recollection would be wrong, because the entries for 2014 and 2013 Bowman both show the same seeding for Silver Ice cards. 

This is the Silver parallel, which is the most common of the serially-numbered cards. This copy is # 014 / 499. The Silver parallels feature printed-on serial numbers rather than the foil-stamped numbers that the less common parallels carry. I wonder if that was a cost-saving measure, and what the difference is between the production processes for each method?

This Purple parallel features the foil-stamped serial number # 030 / 250. There's not much else to say about it. It's interesting how the border color influences the way the rest of the picture looks. The blue parts of Singleton's uniform look a lot more purple to me in this photo than they do in the other cards in this post.

And this is the card that set me off down the 2015 Bowman road in the first place. It was a reasonably-priced Orange parallel with a nice low print run, being copy # 08 / 25. There wasn't much in the base Topps rainbow for me on COMC, so I went with these Bowman parallels instead. I was pretty happy to fill a few more spots in my Jon Singleton collection, especially this rare Orange parallel.

Check Out My Cards 7: Some Easy Topps Parallels

I mentioned before that I have inadvertently collected much of Jon Singleton's 2015 Topps rainbow, grabbing up many of the rarer parallels as the year went on. This latest COMC order was a good opportunity for me to pick up some of the more common parallels in the rainbow, something I had neglected to do thus far as I was not consciously chasing every variation of the card. This first one is the Rainbow Foil variation, which I believe is usually packed out at around the same rate as the Gold parallel but is not serially-numbered.

And this is the Gold parallel. This copy is numbered # 1626 / 2015. There wasn't a lot of other stuff available for Singleton from 2015 Topps, so these two cards were all I came away with from this purchase. I don't know what Singleton's status will be for the 2016 season. He had a pretty good 2015 in the minor leagues, but the numbers didn't carry over to his stints on the big-league roster. Most of the press out there seems to focus on how the Astros can avoid playing him by acquiring a third baseman and moving Luis Valbuena to first base. For now, his cards are relatively affordable and I'll keep picking them up when I can.

Check Out My Cards 6: UFC Player Collections

Recently I showed off a nice Jon Singleton card I picked up from COMC, but the real reason I was on COMC in the first place was to build up a couple of UFC collections. This Neil Magny autograph from 2015 Topps UFC Champions was the main target, but I picked up a few other things as well. I chose to collect Magny partly because he's a National Guardsman like myself and also because I liked the way he carried himself in the couple of videos I saw. He doesn't have a lot of cards out there, but I was able to track down a few with his picture on them. This is the standard base sticker autograph from the Champions set.

This die-cut card comes from one of the Champions insert sets, Fighting's Future. There is an autographed version of this card that I believe is limited to 50 copies. I may try to track one down at some point, depending on the price.

I grabbed two Magny cards from the 2015 Topps UFC Knockout set as well. This first one is the base card, which is a good place to start.

This is the Silver parallel, which is the most common parallel in the set. It is numbered # 108 / 199. There are a few other parallels out there. I may chase them down someday. We'll see. He also has a few hits in this set, an autograph card with a few parallel versions and a triple autograph card that he shares with Cat Zingano and Brandon Thatch. I'm guessing that triple auto is out of my price range, but I could see myself chasing down parallels from the base set and at least one version of his solo autograph card.

This card probably should have been posted up with the rest of the cards from the Champions set, but I didn't think about that when I loaded the scans into the post and it's too much trouble to move the pictures now. This is the Black parallel, numbered # 159 / 188. I think I've already got his base card and the unnumbered Silver parallel of this card, but there are still a few others (Blue # / 88, Gold # / 25, Red # / 8, and Platinum # 1 / 1) out there.

The other player collection I got started in this COMC order was one for Randa Markos. While she doesn't have the greatest fighting record, I chose to collect her cards mostly because of her Iraqi heritage. Although the years I spent in Iraq weren't under the most peaceful terms, I do feel a bit of a connection to the country. Her backstory was a good enough hook to get me to watch her fights. This is her base card from the 2015 Topps UFC Knockout set. So har she just has base and parallel cards from the 2015 Knockout and Champions sets, so there's a pretty limited array of stuff to collect. I picked up one or two of her Champions cards in group breaks, so all I got for her in this order was cards from Knockout.

This is the Silver parallel of the card, numbered # 164 / 199. That does it for the UFC portion of this COMC order. The prices were pretty good, and the $3 flat rate shipping was a big plus when compared with eBay's typical $2-3 per card shipping charges. I've still got a few baseball cards to exhibit from this order, but not today.

Check Out My Cards 5: 2015 Panini Immaculate Collection Jon Singleton

I recently went on COMC to check out some UFC cards for a couple of player collections (PCs) I want to work on building. While I was on the site I looked at some of my baseball PCs to see what could be found. This card probably qualifies as the Find of the Night for that particular order. It's a 2015 Panini Immaculate Collection auto-relic card of Jon Singleton.

When it arrived in the mail I got to thinking that the card looked awfully familiar, and maybe I'd had another, "Oops!' moment. It turns out the card I already had was a Prime Parallel that is numbered # 02 / 10. This latest addition is slightly less rare, being the non-Prime version and numbered # 17 / 25 copies. It does at least feature two different colors for the fabric swatches and an autograph that manages to stay on the sticker.

Check Out My Cards 4: I Got it at Sportlots 4: What eBay Hath Wrought 41: Making My Own Box of 2013 Topps Archives

I wanted to make some progress on my 2013 Topps Archives set, but I am so close to being finished with it that buying packs was a sure way to get a bunch of duplicates. So I decided that instead of buying a box of cards, I would take the cost of a box and see what I could get from the set with that money.

My first step was to get the last few short-printed base cards that I needed. These things are a pain in the butt, and now I don't have to worry about collecting them anymore. I think these might have come from Sportlots, but I don't remember anymore.

I also grabbed a couple of these colored acetate stained-glass Gallery of Heroes inserts. Yogi Berra and Willie Mays were pretty affordable at the time, so I added them to my cart. I sure like this insert set.

Three of the 1972 Basketball design insert set got knocked off of my Want List. I got Yu Darvish, Tom Seaver, and Willie McCovey. Kind of like the Mini Tall-Boy inserts, these are very minimalist in design and I think they're great. I think most of these and the Gallery of Heroes cards above were found on COMC.

Stadium Club Triumvirate was the most costly set from this purchase, mostly because of Machado and Trout. I got these guys on eBay because they were a little cheaper there than on COMC or Sportlots.

Rounding out my custom box of cards are Cole Hamels, Adam Jones, and Alex Roid-riguez. When I put them all together, the team name spelled out behind them is Priolers, which is probably what I will name my next child.

With this approach I was able to whittle 14 cards off of my want list, which is far better than I would have done buying a Hobby Box. Most of these inserts fall one or two per box, if that, so chances are good that a box of cards would only yield one or two of my needs, although there is also the chance that it could contain a nice big-money type card. I am pretty happy with this approach, though. I only need 18 more cards until I declare this set completed.

Check Out My Cards 3: Set Fillers and Player Collections

I got a few things from COMC as I put together an order to fill out my set of 2013 Press Pass Total Memorabilia. First up I decided to grab the last Opening Days Stars 3D card I needed from 2013 Topps Opening Day, Derek Jeter. I also grabbed the three cheapest Blue parallels they had in stock from my need list. I am now 79.09% done with the Blue set, with 174 / 220 cards in my binder. The last 46 cards feature a lot of big names, though, so the first 80% of the set is probably going to be easier than the last 20%. Opening Day isn't the kind of product that stays fresh for a long time, either, so there aren't as many big lots of this stuff up on eBay at $0.50/card as there were even a few months ago. There probably aren't a lot of case busters breaking Opening Day so they can sell those big hits out of it.

While I was there I did a quick search for R.A. Dickey to see what I didn't have already that could be purchased for a dollar or less. There's some decent stuff here, like a Museum Collection parallel numbered # 196 / 424, a Bowman Platinum Gold parallel, a Refractor and an Xfractor from Topps Finest, a Factory Set parallel from 2011 Topps, and a Dealing Aces insert that I may have a few copies of already from Gypsy Queen.

I also did the same thing for Josh Reddick. In the lower right corner you can see the other Dickey card I got, a Black Mini parallel from Allen & Ginter's. For Reddick I got a Gypsy Queen base card that I believe is a short print, a base card from Panini Triple Play, and a Day-Glo parallel from Archives.

Finally, I grabbed a few of the cards I needed from 2013 Press Pass Total Memorabilia. I got five base cards and two Memory Lane inserts.