Last cards of 2023

When I met up with Kevin before the show last weekend, he brought me a bunch of cards that he pulled from his sorting duties plus he picked up a collection. It gave me a milestone tonight, well, technically, last week. We'll go through the cards first.

I didn't know what these were but upon looking them up on TCDB, they are the 2005 Champions from Danbury Mint, they each came in plastic cases that I had to use scissors to free them from. I would have preferred to get some of the top names (4 of them are PC's) but they are still pretty cool.

A few oddball stuff from the earlier days of my collecting. The first 2 are from Coca-Cola, then Toys 'r' us. The bottom row is Denny's followed by a Fleer sticker back.

A couple of scans of newer cards as well. Rookies and stars, even an old coach. I didn't realize how many of those Chrome anniversary cards they put out for each team as I keep getting more and more of them. I have 235 of Tim Anderson, 154 of Lucas Giolito and 278 of Jose Abreu.

He also gave me a team card which I don't get too often anymore. I really need to pick up more of these Heritage team cards. I always forget about them until I see one.

Some more old school Strawberry's. A Fleer mini set and another Denny's Grand Slam of him. These 2 give me 159 of Darryl.

I also received a later Dwight Gooden. This gives me 164 cards of Doc K.

2 more of our now former closer. As I said, I keep getting these Chrome Platinum Anniversary cards. These 2 give me 39 cards of Liam. I hope he lands back on his feet.

Another Chrome Anniversary, this time of Eloy. This is my 212th card of Jimenez.

I'm not sure how I didn't have that Jim Abbott, I've probably skimmed right past hundereds of them doing my sorting and thought I already had it. It is my 288th card of him. You also see I did get 1 of my PC players from those card from Danbury Mint which I was happy to see. This is my 387th card of Buehrle.

I thought I had this one as well but it's apparently the silver parallel. I can't imagine how many parallels I went past before I used TCDB. This is my 127th card of our current coach.

2 more former Wolverines picked up. I have a bunch of Charles Woodson in the maize and blue because Panini pumps out a few a year. This is my 59th card of Woodson. I picked up another of Taco as well, this parallel is my 27th of him.

Another of PK, nice. I've picked up a few of him in the last month or so which is great. Another Chrome Platinum as well. This is my 763rd card of Konerko.

I told you at the beginning that I hit a milestone on my last pickups of last year. These 41 cards put me over 10,000 cards added to my collection in 2023. 10,016 to be exact. As I've said in previous posts, I've done that by spending less than half of what I did in 2022. I spent just over $1100 in 2023 as compared to just over $2100 to get just under 2400 cards in 2022. I would say it was definitely a byproduct of all the free cards I get from sorting.

As I've also said above, these were the last cards that I received in 2023, I logged them in (which is the day I consider them received) on New Years Eve day.

Commons I like

I should probably throw up my last post before we go do a show tomorrow, you know, just in case I come home with some more cards. Fred did give me some yesterday but I haven't even looked to see if I have any of them. 

I've been tracking my spending on cards since January of 2018 and last month was the first month that I didn't spend any money on cards. It got me looking at each year. In 2018, I averaged $33.20 a month, with the most I spent in a month was $62.14. Last year I averaged $177.54 with the most in a month being $471.54. With that last month of $0, it brings my average down to $98.44 for this year. Even though I've spent just under a thousand so far this year, I've added almost 9000 cards to my collections. Last year with over $2100 spent, I only added a hair over 3300 cards. In short, I'm spending less but coming home with a lot more. That's because of all the free cards I'm getting from my LCS and other sorting duties I've done.

Speaking of free cards, yeah, I got more. These all came from Kevin's sorting. We have a few people who give us commons just to get rid of. We sort them, take out what we want and sell the rest to a guy we have that buys them. Depending on the deal we have, we'll either give the person who gives them to us a set amount or sometime we do half of what we earn. They get rid of commons and we both make money (and add cards to our collections). That's where these came from.

As per the usual on these posts, we'll start with the White Sox collection. All of the above were new to me. The top row are the nicest with the Sale insert, the Crochet mini rookie and the Mendick color.

Next up is Tier 3.

He gave me this Strawberry card. As you can see above (and below), I got a bunch of these 1990 Donruss Best of from him.

A mixture of old and new for Gooden. I love that first card, I had a couple of those sets growing up.

Tier 2.

2 more of Jimenez. The royal blue from 2021 (also has Robert on it) and a 206 Mini. I just cracked the 200 count with Eloy with my last post.

Also a pair of Hendriks with this rainbow parallel and an Archives.  I really like the Archives, my favorite uniform and an 80's set. I just read where we declined his option today. Hopefully he still signs with us but I wouldn't blame him if he got out of dodge with the way we played.

A 206 mini of Mr. Anderson as well.

I even boosted some of my Fab 5 PC's which are a part of my Tier 3 Michigan PC.

We'll start off with an 8 count of our current coach, these cards give me 125 cards of Juwan.

I also got 1 each of Webber and Rose. Yes, that's Arod on the Webber card and no, it's not a White Sox card.

Last but not least, he grabbed this card of Uche for me. It's my lucky number 13 cards of him. Always great to see the Maize and Blue.

Last Weekend with Sluggo

I spent yesterday logging and scanning cards that I've received over the week so I can get those posts going again. Especially since I spent some time yesterday and all of today sorting boxes for the LCS and now have another small stack that I have to enter and scan tomorrow for another post. So much for not picking up more cards because our show got cancelled.

On to today's post, last weekend, Kevin and I did 2 shows, one on Saturday and one on Sunday. Saturday he gave me a box of cards that he pulled for me and then on Sunday at the show, he bought some stuff and I picked through that. So that'll be todays post. Cards from Sluggo.

3 more Robert's and 2 Anderson's. 4 of the 5 cards up there are inserts and parallels. The only one that isn't is the winter Anderson. When I started collecting Robert, I had trouble picking his cards up because they were expensive so I'm extremely happy that his collection is nearing a milestone, I'll let you know when I hit it, or you can look on TCDB.

This collection (and the following) have been moving right along. Mainly because they are 80's and 90's players so I've been picking them up like crazy because there are a bunch out there. Kevin picked out these 10 cards of Doc and those almost put that PC at a milestone as well.

I divided these 3 scans by teams since Strawberry bounced around a little bit. 7 cards from the Mets, 6 with the Dodgers, 1 Yankee and 1 Giant.

This Liam Hendriks rookie got it's own scan because it's that great of a card. No, not really. I realized after I scanned all my other player collections that I forgot it. His cards have been harder to come by than I realized. I think he just doesn't get put in a lot of the smaller sets.

He also gave me a ton of White Sox cards, as you can see. I threw all the early stuff in one scan and the newer stuff in the 2nd.

These 8 cards of Frank are also part of the Sox collection as I don't PC him but I keep adding to his 1000+ cards.

He also gave me this pocket schedule with Frank on the front. This is the back and the front of it.

That's everything that he gave me when he picked me up for the Kalamazoo show on Saturday. On Sunday, he bought a box of Football cards from someone looking to unload it and I flipped through it to see if there was anything that I needed.

The 7 football cards in that scan all came from that box. The Wagner card was supposed to be in the following scan. All former Wolverines but only 1 in a Wolverine uniform. The Niko and Haskins are both rookies with the Haskins being an Astral parallel and the Lewan a blue press proof.

Kevin talked to the dealer next to us at the end of the show. He had some prices as marked cards and he got him down to half off if we bought bulk. I went through them and pulled a few things for myself as well.

These 5 (including the Wagner in the previous scan) was $16 so we got them at half off, for $8 but in the end, Kevin said I could just have them. I grabbed the Wagner because it's the blue parallel. I love the Joe Crede auto, I already have a few but he's my favorite 3rd baseman of all time. He was money in 2005. Plus I rarely get to add to his PC. As a matter of fact, this is the 1st Crede I've added this year. I picked up the Reyes because it was a Gold. I've mentioned a bunch of times how much I love the cracked ice parallel so the Tom Brady was a no-brainer, that is a sweet card. It goes into the Michigan collection but it's my 28th card of him in a Michigan uniform. Last but not least, he had a few Vintage in there, most of it was late 70's that I passed on (I would have grabbed them all if I had known I wasn't going to pay for them) but I wasn't going to pass up this 1964 Topps World Series card. 

Lots of great cards up there. I have one more post of pick-ups from last weekend. I got them at the Kalamazoo show but not from the Kalmazoo show. If that's confusing, you'll just have to stay tuned.

New PC Number 3

I guess it's fitting that this post was already scheduled for today. He's a new PC guy. I love his presence and his fire on the mound. He wants to win and wants to dominate.

I grabbed these 6 from the Sluggo while sorting his cards. Obviously they are all with the A's because I had already taken all the Sox ones awhile ago. 

I'm sure you heard about his diagnosis, which sucks, I lost my father to cancer so seeing someone battling it always hits my heartstrings but that's not the reason I was starting a collection of him. I actually pulled these cards over a month ago.

These 6 cards, plus the 6 I already had in the White Sox collection give me 12 cards. A decent start to his PC.