Raz' Ravings 3: Dave and Adam's Card World Customer Service

 

A few weeks ago I visited the Dave and Adam's Card World site and pre-ordered a box of Cryptozoic's DC Comics: The Women of Legend trading cards, along with a couple of other boxes I fancied. I guess I could have waited to order the DC cards when they came out, but I think boxes of Topps Baseball Series 1 and 2 and maybe some Press Pass Racing cards were all on the Daily Deals portion of the site, so I figured I'd 'save' some money by ordering them all together at once. One thing that really irks me is when we talk about saving money on something we don't actually need. No one ever saved any money by buying stuff. But back to the story. I believe the DC cards were scheduled to release on September 30th, but a few days ago Cryptozoic announced their official release and they transitioned from pre-order status to available status on the Dacardworld site. I watched my order somewhat compulsively to see when its status would update to 'shipped,' but it didn't.

 

So I sent an e-mail inquiring as to the status of the cards in question and asking if there was a projected date for my order to ship. A few hours later I got an e-mail back from their customer service apologizing for overlooking my order and promising that they would ship it out that day. They also credited my customer account so that my next order will have a discount attached to it. By the end of the day I had tracking information sent to my e-mail address.

 

I don't think I expressed any anger in my message and I didn't request any form of recompense for the delay, but Dave and Adam's went out of their way to address my concern and make sure I was happy as a customer. I was not even sure if there was a delay in shipping, or if they had received all of the product yet or were holding to the September 30th pre-order date. My cards are on their way, and I wanted to plug a company that has exhibited good customer service and a rapid turnaround in responding to my concerns.

What eBay Hath Wrought 14: Quarterbacks of Renown

It's been maybe a month or more since I got these cards, but I added a bunch of cards of various Denver quarterbacks to my collection by way of eBay. Unfortunately, one of them only shows up in the uniform of his previous team. I don't have any Peyton Manning cards with him in his Denver uniform yet.

I showed the actual card a while ago, but first up are a couple of reprints of John Elway's 1984 Rookie card. One is from Topps Archives, and the other is from Topps Chrome.

Up next are a few more cards featuring Elway, including one also showing Tim Tebow, a guy who I'd like to see succeed in the NFL, but I think he is unwilling to accept that he isn't going to make it as a quarterback. He and the Broncos had a great run a couple of years ago, although it was mostly thanks to the defense, but they were exposed by New England in the playoffs. I will still take a Tebow card when I can get it, but I don't expect we will see him much in the NFL unless someone can convince him to forget being a quarterback and try some other position.

I like those old-school uniforms more than the newer ones, but I've pretty much accepted that we won't be seeing them again except in the occasional throwback game. After the Elway and Tebow cards I've got a few of the latest Denver quarterback, Peyton Manning, who tied the NFL record for touchdowns in a game in Week 1 this season against the Ravens and then put the beatdown on his little brother's team in Week 2.

I didn't get any cards of him in his Broncos gear, so I had to settle for a bunch of cards featuring him in the blue and white of Indianapolis. Fortunately, most of the cards feature him in his helmet, so the glare of his massive forehead doesn't blind everyone who looks upon his binder pages.

In all seriousness, though, Peyton Manning seems like the kind of guy you'd want as the leader of your team. He's a class act in public life, he seems able to improve whatever team he's on, and he's always giving out discounts and free Papa John's pizzas, even more than Papa John wants to give away. Oh, and look at that sweet serial-numbered Fleer card! There were only 4131 of those made, so you know it's worth some serious cash.

My main complaint about most of these cards is that the backgrounds all feature something other than a picture of the actual action on the playing field. Don't get me wrong, I like wild foil and background explosions on cards, but it would be nice to see some context or game action. Maybe since these are inserts they are the exception and the base cards have more game action on them.

Breaking it Down 2: Tribecards Allen & Ginter's Box Break Recap

I participated in a group break over at Tribecards, in which David opened up his box of 2013 Allen & Ginter's  for Gint-A-Cuffs V. The spots I bought were the Red Sox, Reds, and Blue Jays, as well as the insert sets Palaces & Strongholds and One Little Corner. My randomized teams were the Giants, Yankees, and Astros. I don't have any pictures because they got sorted into my collection and I have no idea which ones were needs and which ones were duplicates. The hits in the box managed to evade my teams, so there wasn't anything too significant in my stack of cards.

The big hits from the box were: Ryan Howard Red-Back mini hand-numbered #10/25, a Joe Mauer full-size relic, a Tim Hudson mini-framed relic (with a hair sticking out of the cloth), and my personal favorite card from the box, a Jurickson Profar mini-framed autograph.

I still owe e-mails to a bunch of people, but I am perpetually behind on a great many things in life and haven't got around to it yet. Sorry.

Pack of the Day 22: 2012 Allen & Ginter Blaster Box

Back before 2013 Allen & Ginter's came out, I found a blaster box of 2012 A & G in the clearance section of Target's card aisle. Since I was having such a hard time waiting for the new set to come out, I bought it. 

Here are some of the highlights from the minis in the blaster. I kind of like the style of the black border parallels in this set, probably more than the 2013 set's plain black borders. The inserts I really like from this set are the Man's Best Friend cards. I love dogs. The Husky is not a favorite of mine, but there are other cards in the set. I may try to pick up that insert series off of eBay or COMC. I am not going to pursue any of the other cards in the set, as I am having enough trouble trying to put together my 2013 sets. There is no point in going back in time and trying to catch up on all of the years of collecting that I missed.

I kind of like the World's Tallest Buildings set here. Maybe enough to seek them out someday, but maybe not. The Historical Turning Points card doesn't do much for me.

The What's in a Name design is pretty busy, but I kind of like the picture of a mini on a full-size card look. At least I pulled some decent players. This is another set I probably won't try to put together.

I don't remember why I chose these particular base cards for the scan, but I can make something up. Jim Thome is one of those players that I just like, probably because in the past he has been a decent pickup for at least part of the Fantasy Baseball season. Aybar and Mesoraco I have no clue about, but there they are. I just liked that picture of Richard Petty, and his #43 color scheme is one of the more memorable in racing, even being copied by The King in the movie Cars.

Pack of the Day 21: 2013 Bowman Baseball Retail Box Pack 8

I am only up to posting Pack 8 for this box, but over the long holiday weekend I scanned all of the packs in the box so I could see how close I am to a complete set. It turned out I am a lot further away than I anticipated. I am still missing 54 44/220 of the veterans, 34 27/110 of the prospects, and 37 33/110 of the Chrome prospects. Technically the Chrome prospects are a parallel, I guess, but I am counting them as base cards. I'd like to put together the Top 100 Prospects insert set as well, but I'm already working on too many 2013 sets as it is. They are seeded just a little too far apart for me to seriously consider it. The Gold parallel set for Archives is bad enough for now. My progress on the Blue Opening Day parallels has pretty much ground to a halt recently, too.

In the time since I started writing this post, I found a stack of cards that I'd forgotten about and knocked a few more off of my need list. I seem to be at the point where buying more packs will not be cost-effective anymore. I can get all of the remaining cards on my list from COMC.com for right around $57.37, or slightly more than a retail box would cost me. It's around $0.55 per card going that route. Sure, I'd be missing out on potential hits, but I would also be avoiding the risk of coming up short of the set on the box and still needing to buy cards to close it out. I guess I could post the list to my blog at some point and try to trade for some of the needed cards.

There isn't a lot going on in this pack, although it kind of breaks the pattern by not having an insert card but containing the full 10-card load-out. I guess the Shelby Miller RC is the highlight of the pack.

I don't have much to say about the Prospects and Chrome Prospects in this pack. I believe that most of the cards in this pack filled open spots in my set binder, so that is a bonus.



What eBay Hath Wrought 13: Matching Numbers

Over the weekend another card from the 2013 Topps Archives Gold parallel set showed up in the mail. This time it was Desmond Jennings, and as luck would have it, the serial number on the front matches the card's set number on the back. I think this is my fifth such card in the binder. It would be neat to collect a full set of cards with similar matching numbers, but with this set it would be impossible as card #200 doesn't have a corresponding serial-numbered copy. Even getting #'s 1-199 would be so close to impossible as to form one of those mathematical equations where the line approaches zero but never actually gets there. Google tells me it's an asymptote. I'm no trigonometrist, that's for sure.

I haven't been posting for the last few days, as my scheduled posts all ran out and the last few days have been somewhat hectic. I had a rather busy drill weekend with the Army National Guard, going up and down hills with my backpack and setting up Observation Posts to watch our other platoon's Observation Posts. After all that exercise I was wiped out, so on Monday I didn't do much of anything at all. Because I didn't do anything on Monday and I was out of the house all weekend, I fell behind on my homework, and because I was behind on my homework I had to try to catch up. So I didn't do much in the way of posting.

In fact, it took me so long between posts that more Gold Archives cards showed up in the mail. I am getting closer, but there are still more open spots in the binder than there are filled spots. And the 'white whales' of the set are still out there somewhere. On eBay right now there is a Bryce Harper going for $30.28 shipped, a Mike Trout packaged with some base cards and low-tier inserts for $56.99 shipped, and two Derek Jeters. There is a graded Jeter priced at $39.00 and an ungraded one that the seller wants $60.00 for. No thanks! It looks like Jeter's card can be found for under $20.00, and in the $12-15 range with some patience. The last few Harper auctions have gone for just a hair over $20.00, and Trout's card is still a pretty hot item, going for $35-40 with regularity. There were a few auctions for his card in June that went in the $20-25 range, but those days seem to be over for now. I will have to be patient. It's a lot of fun assembling this set and trying to score good deals on the cards I need, but some of these things are ridiculous. I'll have to hope I can pull Puig's card straight out of an Archives pack next year. Or I could try not to collect the set. The 2012 foils seem to go for a lot less than the 2013 foils, although they are seeded at pretty similar ratios (2012 is 1:12 packs and 2013 is 1:13 packs). I wonder if the print runs are similar? The lack of a serial number really depresses the 2012 prices. I hope the 2014 set doesn't have some ridiculous low numbered Gold parallel.



In between working on my schoolwork I collated the stacks and stacks of 2013 Topps Series 1 and 2 base cards that I had all over the place. The Series 1 hobby box that is going to arrive with my Cryptozoic DC Comics: The Women of Legend box will only need to fill 21/330 spots in my binder, as those stacks of retail packs add up. The Series 2 box that will arrive in the same shipment will have to do a little more heavy lifting, as it will need to fill 208/330 spots in the set. I am still divided on whether to pursue the Topps Update set as part of my set. On the one hand it has some key cards like the Puig RC, but on the other hand that will be the fourth set with the same card design. I may decide to just skip the pack-busting and buy a set from one of the online case breakers who only care about the big hits. It may be a good idea to do that with all of the base Topps sets, as I get more thrills per hour busting packs of other products than I do the base cards.

Pack of the Day 20: 2013 Press Pass FanFare Racing Retail

I bought a second pack of 2013 Press Pass Fanfare on eBay, as I still am not sure I want to go all-in and buy a whole box of the stuff. This first card, a Kyle Busch Fan Following insert, is a double of one of the cards in my last pack.

Next we have a Matt Kenseth base card. Look at that smile. The base set will be awfully difficult to put together when you get 1 or 2 of them per pack (MSRP around $20, street price $12-15) and 100 cards in the set. I haven't priced out base cards online, but they seem pretty hard to come by with all of the memorabilia, die-cut parallels, and autographs out there in their various levels. Also, I think it might be dangerous to collect a full base set, as that's a lot of foil to put in one binder. It might permanently affect your satellite signal.

The 2nd insert at least fits into one of my driver collections, being a Showtime card featuring the #14 driven by Tony Stewart, who has a broken leg and is missing the rest of this season. I think Mark Martin is stepping in to finish out the season in that car.

Next up is a red parallel of Elliott Sadler, which I believe is a retail-exclusive set. Whee! It's die-cut, so you know it's worth more.

And now, the guaranteed hit from the pack. A Regan Smith Magnificent Materials, which may feature the most boring firesuit patch ever. The only thing that saves it is the bit of black thread hanging out of it. He's a career middle-of-the-pack driver who currently competing in the lower circuit, the Nationwide series. He actually is 4th in the standings on the season there, but ultimately is just a GUY. For the price of these two packs of cards I could have had 1-2 lower-tier relics of two of my favorite drivers and a full set of Showtime inserts, a takeoff on the reverse box concept talked about recently by the Pirates Treasure Room blog, where you take the price of a box of cards (or in this case, two packs) and see what you can get from the set on the secondary market for the same price.