Sunday Edition

Vintage Pickups

The last few weeks I've been pretty consistent in bidding on cards from a seller on eBay whose low grade auctions end on Fridays (and occasionally I'll take a crack at cards that end earlier in the week and are in better shape).  This past Friday (cards not shown here as they haven't shipped yet) I had bids on over a 1,000 listings.  I won 16 of them.  I've developed a strategy that involves carpet bombing with very low bids and picking up whatever falls through the cracks.  

The cluster of 1954 Topps above are a few that fell through the cracks.  I'm currently two cards away from finishing the 1953 set, but that effort has come to a standstill due to my unwillingness to pay a grand plus for the Willie Mays (at some point I'll go ahead and indulge on a low grade copy at the right price, but that point isn't anytime soon), and my unwillingness to pay $50+ for a Harvey Haddix.  I am completely befuddled as to why Haddix demands the premiums he does compared to every other similarly printed high series card, but for some reason he does.  My point is, I don't really know what I'm doing next.  I'm about to finish off a run of Topps sets from 1970-1992 and am not really interested in filling in the gap from 1993-2007, or going back from 1970.  So for now, I'm amassing as many 1954, '55, and '56 as cheaply as I can.

1955 Topps tend to fall through the cracks with more regularity than 1954 Topps when I bid, and I bid a lower price point on these than I do the 54's.  This set seems to be the forgotten one among the '52-56 oversized Topps run.  I've come to kind of like it as I've amassed more and more of them, and they look nice in the binder pages.  I've also picked up a healthy stack of 1956 the last few months, but somehow seemed to have omitted taking their pictures yesterday before sleeving them.  While I'm not building that set, I'm starting to actually complete some 8 card pages in the binder, which is an early symptom of deciding to build a set.

In addition to taking a carpet bombing approach of low bidding on 1954-56 cards, I also do something similar with stars and subset cards from later sets.  My price point is case by case, but I rarely go above what I was paying for beers at Dodger Stadium last weekend.  That Koufax is now the oldest Koufax in my collection, and one of my favorite cards I've added this year, if not favorite.

1961 is a set I could see myself trying to complete one day.  Not today, or tomorrow, but I really like it.  I've discovered a handful of Hall of Famers from the 50/60's that tend to sell for what I deem to be low prices (at least lower than I think they should).  Luis Aparicio, Robin Roberts, and Nellie Fox often go for the price of more or less commons, and Don Drysdale and Whitey Ford typically demand far less than I feel that they should.  As such, I'm slowly building a nice little collection of those guys.  Ashburn and Killebrew on the other hand tend to demand more than I feel like they should, especially any Ashburn as a Phillie.

A quartet of 1966 Topps that didn't break the bank.  Ford and Drysdale again coming in at modest numbers.

As kid who started collecting cards in the early/mid 1980's Pete Rose will always be a cardboard heavy weight in my head.  His run on Ty Cobb's record is forever seared in my mind, along with his 1963 rookie card's status as the ultimate baseball card to own.  That '65 is his first card not as a quad/rookie or with a rookie trophy.  It's his first "regular" Topps card, not that anyone considers that to be a thing besides me.

Thanks for reading.