Panini Sox

Well, we were supposed to work tomorrow, but our boss forgot to tell us yesterday so all he could do today was take volunteers. I gave that a big "Hell No!" I did tell him if he really needed me I'd come in but he said they'd be good. Whew!

Today we get a team post. I'm excited about this year's team and just want baseball to start. I'm also excited that I got into Nachos Grande's Breakers Club so I won't have to fight prospectors for the White Sox cards. The wife didn't appreciate the drop of $100 in one shot on cards but I told her that Chris promised me an auto of Luis Robert so if Chris doesn't want to wreck my marriage, than he better come through. No pressure though! In all seriousness, I'm excited for the breaks to start and appreciate Chris for what he does. There are still plenty of team available so check out the link.

These are all 2018 Panini brand.

I picked up these 3 parallels of the Donruss Optic of Thyago Vieira. I actually picked up 4 but I already had one of them. I really don't know anything about him other than he has quite a few cards. I've got 10 now and 5 are from this set and 5 autographs

I also picked up 2 from the their Chronicles set which oddly enough, are the only 2 Sox cards so that completes that team set. I have 135 cards of the reigning AL MVP Abreu and 28 of the no longer with the Sox Delmonico. I think he's still a free agent and I know at one time, it wasn't ruled out that he would resign with us.

PC and a rare team collection as well

Only one card today but it's a great one to me. It's a Tier 2 collection but thanks to Panini, it gets to go in a team collection as well.

Love when I can get Larkin cards in Wolverine uniforms. In case you were wondering, I liked Larkin before I knew he was a Wolverine, I collected him as a kid which was before I was even a Wolverine fan. 

Panini has produced a few of these now, this is my 4th of his but 1 of those is an actual Wolverines team set (also by Panini). This card gives me 248 cards of Larkin which is a lot to me, he is my 4th largest player collection. Nowhere near a couple of other bloggers on here but I might get there, in a decade or so.

PK in 2004

I'm going to throw out a quick post. The last 2 days we have traveled back and forth to Michigan City. Yesterday to meet a dog, today to pick it up so most of my last 2 evenings have been spent in a car. Since you can't talk about a dog without a photo, here you go.

Today's cards are a player you're going to see a lot of in the next month or so. All these cards are from 2004.

The only Bowman I picked up. I do like the look of these Heritage though. Maybe it's because I don't have very many from 1955.

As you can tell, I needed more Donruss than Bowman. I was surprised to get both the base and the Turn of the Century for under $.50. I don't remember seeing very many of the Team Heroes set back in 2004.

Just a couple of Fleer. I managed to get the Gold edition of the Ultra but not the base for under $.50.

I got this MLB Showdown. This is only my 2nd card from that team set. The design on the Konerko side didn't look familiar but the back did. Not sure why.

2 different of the Total and the Bazooka. The Cracker Jack is the mini sticker. I didn't even know they had those.

Last, because it's alphabetical, Upper Deck. The SP, SPx and the Vintage. I always thought the Upper Deck Vintage sets were odd because some of the sets used Topps designs.

19 more cards to the now first place Konerko collection. I'm not going to tell you how many until all the PK posts are posted so if you want to know bad enough, you'll have to go to TCDB and look.

This post ended up being longer than I had anticipated and I'm sleepy so I will catch you all on the flip side.

Seaver Sunday

I'm watching the undefeated Michigan Women spank on Northwestern in what was supposed to be a good game but they have dominated. This is the first game I've been able to watch as in it's the first one broadcasted that I could see. After this game, I'll go over and watch the Men's team hopefully stay undefeated against Northwestern as well. I figured while I'm watching, I can kick out another post.

The random came up with one of the 2 Tier 1 collections you'll see this month. They both have a ton of cards so I was able to pick up quite a few so you'll see multiple posts from each of them.

You see a couple of Archives in there with the rookie and last card of Tom Terrific. Along with an insert and a couple of sets that feature retired players.

You know I love those Sox cards up there as they are some of my favorite past jerseys. They also go to the Sox collection. A couple of more Archives in there again. I like the reprint of the last card as you don't see that one often.

As you can tell, Seaver is pretty featured in the early 2000 sets, even though he retired over a decade earlier.

Like, featured a lot. You can also tell they favor his Mets days with all those cards above. All of the cards in this post come from 2001-2002. I have purchased his cards up to 2012 but this is the earliest you'll see until I get my next shipment from Sportlots. I do have some older cards coming soon when the random decides to let me show them.

Bye Bye 2020

I don't really do resolutions or goals but what I do do (I said doodoo) is keep stats so with my first post of the year, that's what you're going to get.

This year certainly wasn't a great year by any means. You all know that and card wise, as far as packs and prices, it definitely wasn't a great year. For my collections, however, it was a pretty good year. It started off when I dropped Ebay like a bad habit. Their customer service sucked and they pissed me off by not fixing the issue with their site which wouldn't allow me to pay for certain auctions. It ended up being a blessing because it got me to find other alternatives. I had seen Sportlots and Baseballcardstore around but never used them because I was spending my budget on Ebay anyways.

Since I started using those places, my collections have blossomed. I spent $121.70 more this past year than in 2019 so that has some to do with it as well. Some of that money was box breaks which I wasn't doing before. Plus, some packages from fellow bloggers and my cousin.

Look at these differences. The proof is in the numbers.

Tier 1 Collections (2019 - 30 cards, 2020 - 363 cards)

Tier 2 Collections (2019 - 282 cards, 2020 - 476 cards)

Tier 3 Collections (2019 - 84 cards, 2020 - 156 cards)

Michigan Collection (2019 - 44 cards, 2020 - 135 cards)

Vintage Collection (2019 - 119 cards, 2020 - 1186 cards)

White Sox Collection (2019 - 636 cards, 2020 - 938 cards)

Tier 1 Collections I could hardly find on Ebay in my price range but look at that difference. In November, I started concentrating on my Tier 1's and I still haven't gotten through them all on Sportlots. So next year, the differences on Tier 2 and Tier 3 should adjust higher by quite a bit as well.

Notice the difference on the Vintage collection as well. That's because with the help of the baseballcardstore, I did something else that I haven't done since coming back to collecting, finished sets. That's plural. I finished the 1987 Topps, 1985 Fleer & Topps and the 1981 Topps sets. I just started at which sets I was closest too

The real numbers are I added 3,254 cards to my collection and spent $522.82 which equals out to $.16 a card. Which we all know is right where I like to land, under a quarter a card is great in my eyes.

With all the new cards coming in, it also meant more blog posts.

I had my 2nd highest amount of posts. In 2012, I was trying to do 3 a day for awhile which is why that's so high. What was I thinking? This year was only the 2nd time I even hit 200 posts. The lowest I had in a month was 12 and I did that twice. I realize what I blog isn't terribly exciting and I know how some of you feel about "look what I got" blogs but it's what I got.

So while 2020 was a crappy year, it was mostly good when it came to cards and I'm looking forward to 2021.