1984 Topps Lot

 I recently purchased two large lots of cards from the same seller on eBay.  This lot of 780 copies of the 1984 Topps Wallach and a similarly large lot of 1983 Topps Wallach cards that I will post later this week (I need to stretch out my limited opportunities for new content).  My general rule of thumb for large lots is to not pay more than 10 cents a card shipped.  The seller of these two lots agreed to combine shipping and the result was I ended up picking these up at just over 4 cents per card.  I think it worked out well for the seller and myself.  He picked close to $40 and cleared out some shelf space and I picked up close to 1,600 new Wallach cards.

I'm not sure what sellers are holding out for.  The demand for a lot of 300 copies of 1988 Donruss Tim Wallach cards just isn't there.  At the risk of sounding arrogant, they're selling to audience of one.  If I'm willing to pay you $3.00 on top of shipping cost, that should be a no brainer.  Unless some people just like endless piles of worthless cards sitting in the their closets, of players they don't collect and sets they aren't building.  To each their own I guess.  Given the nature of this blog/collection, I'm well aware that I'm one of the last people who should be throwing stones from inside this glass house of mine.

The last decade or so, it's become increasingly rare for me to obtain more copies of a card than I previously already had.  On the rare occasion it has happened, it's usually some odd-ball release like the  Provigo food product set, or an O-Pee-Chee sticker that I only had 2 or 3 copies of.  I don't recall the last time I picked up more new copies of a main stream release than I already had.  But that's the case here, as the 780 new copies nearly doubled the 444 I had in my collection.  The huge addition makes this the second most abundant card in my collection behind only the 1982 Topps Wallach by a margin of just 16 cards.  It's conceivable that by the end of the year, 1984 Topps could end the 82's decade plus reign at the top of the list.

As far as the cards, I have to credit Topps for their quality control.  Nearly 800 copies and there were only three that stood out as I sorted through them.  Below on the left is what I consider a "nice" clean copy.  Moving left to right is one with ink levels that left it looking faded, then a slant cut, and finally on the far right a copy that was miscut on the top/bottom enough to show the top of the card below it (which would be Paul Molitor).   They're a little curved, but in my experience that eventually goes away once I get them sorted.  The slant cut card is odd enough that I'll move it into my pile of manufacturing errors.  The others, while unique, will be sorted with the others and stashed away like the ark at the end of the first Indiana Jones film.

I reached out to the seller to inquire why he (or she) had so many copies '84 Topps and '83 Fleer (and to see if they had any other lots they wanted to part with) but never heard back.  Someone spent a lot of time sorting these though and did a pretty good job too.  However, the five cards below did get mixed into the lot.  I can see how that would be a common slip up with the pink vertical "Expos" looking similar while breaking down nearly 800 completes sets worth of cards.  Hopefully this person cashed in on their Mattingly's and Strawberry's back during the feeding frenzy on them around 1989 or so.

Updated Total

1984 Topps: 1,224