August 2018 Ebay Wins

July was full of big acquisitions.  Possibly too many.  Overcompensating is a word that comes to mind.  August wasn’t quite as big in terms of cards, but it still managed to be pretty dang nice as you’ll see. September, on the other hand, will be much lighter, but we’ll talk about that in a couple weeks.  I don’t want to waste much time, because we have more than 9 to get through once again.

Beam team is looking to similar to last year’s

Starting off a little slow.  You all know by now I don’t bother with the more standard inserts as a single card transaction. Not worth the shipping price.

Got the KB in a CW break, but not the Rizz

Same rule applies here with the Special Forces, but I’m leading to something.

I wish they didn’t parallel the inserts like this

The previous two and this red foil parallel all came from the same lot, but they also brought another friend.

I did not compromise my budget

The….orange?…parallel was the real search driver but not a cost driver as I didn’t pay any sort of premium for the whole lot.

I will eat my own head!

More not so noticeable color differences in inserts on display here.  A green chrome parallel rears it’s dual head into my collection.

Protect ya neck

What a surprise. Another year goes by and another new parallel is added to the mix.  Greens have existed for a few years, but this year they add the green wave. So that’s…fun.

More OF in this picture than 2B, but accurate

Back to basics, in a way, with the vintage stock parallel.  The old logo is lost in the ivy, but the ball sure wasn’t

The series 2 version

In July I accidentally won the Rizzo. This month, I purposefully, but surprisingly won the Contreras.  The market is still unpredictable for him.

Also the S2 one – bat piece if you can’t tell

I like the look of these relics.  No forced theme like in years past. Just a solid design made for the relics specifically.

The P will eventually stand for Phillies

Getting away from the /99 and going into the /50 through another B&W parallel.  I wish I had more of these. I also wish these existed instead of the negative images in flagship.

NL RBI leader still, I think

It’s tougher to get Baez cards for obvious reasons.  I guess the disdain for multi-tiered sets like Gold Label transcend popularity of the players at times.

Always strange when the team name doesn’t match the MLB org in the pipeline, but does match a different one

The autograph train continues with a surprising addition.  It’s also one that I couldn’t definitively find on my want lists (generally formed through Beckett).  I looked at TCDB and that didn’t give me a concrete answer either, so I added a couple lines to my want list.  It’s possible that some of those “Best” cards don’t actually exist though.  This one does, and it’s mine now.

Keep it!

Rip cards are more common these days.  Two per case of Ginter.  That’s making them more affordable.  I decided that I had the ability to get these out of the way now rather than hope to find them years later, like I did with the other Maddux rip cards.  More are sold unripped at the time of release, and that’s great for me!

Also keeping!

I don’t know why some players are numbered lower, but luckily that didn’t affect Frank’s price a whole lot.  This marks my second Big Hurt rip card, which is crazy to think.  I didn’t have any last year, and now I’m piling them up.

Business in the front, auto on the back

The last one for the month is this Gwynn auto that I didn’t want to bother taking out of the screwdown holder it shipped in.  This is an unusual card in that the auto is actually on the back.  The front looks like any other Playoff Portraits card from the base set.  This side you’re seeing has the numbering and the shiny sticker embedded.  I don’t know why they did it that way, but I think that’s partly why it went unsold for a couple weeks, with the price dropping each time.  Lucky me! I’m always happy to add another Gwynn autograph to the collection.  It probably won’t happen next month, but you’ll just have to wait and see.