Blog Bat Around Shopping Spree, How I Spent My First Seven Minutes and 20,618 K!

To get up to speed, please read this post first… If you are reading this, I am at work, at the new job. I thought ahead and scheduled this so dust wasn’t growing on the blog while I am out. I can’t wait for the next “Blog Bat Around” topic because this was a ton of fun! Thanks again to Sports Cards Uncensored for hosting this! For each card the auction is linked, click and see what I "bought". Okay, let’s go shopping!
Starting now!
My first purchase was my biggest. I went straight for my personal “white whale”. A card I have coveted since I saw a picture of it in a hobby book as a child. A card I have never actually seen in person before. The greatest card in the history of the hobby! It is card #8 from the 1948 Leaf set of Satchel Paige.

Since this card is so far out of my price range I have no idea how much it should be, but I thought it would be appropriate for it to be the most expensive card from my shopping spree. I dropped $11,500.00 on this, but did get it shipped for free. In my dreams this card would have been a PSA 8 or 9, but today I will settle for a PSA 7. This is the earliest card of Satch that I know to exist, which I suppose would make it his rookie card, which is even more funny (and sad really) because he was 41 and a 20-year vet when this card was printed. I stuck with 1948 Leaf for the next card, too. This is another card that I have always coveted, but have never seen in person. I spent $3,700.00 on this PSA 8 Jackie Robinson from ’48 Leaf. Considering what I spent on the Paige, this seemed like a major bargain for the “rookie” card of the 1947 Rookie of the Year.
I was able to nab those two cards very quickly and at this point I was still on my game plan. I was going in order of the cards I had most coveted throughout my lifetime. The natural third on that list is a 1955 Roberto Clemente. This card was more complicated to search for as there are many more ’54 Topps cards out there as opposed to ’48 Leaf. More options take more time. I found the perfect card pretty quick though.
Here it is a PSA 8 Clemente rookie. A beautiful card, but I wasn’t prepared to spend $5,950. for a card from the 50s. It’s funny how serious I got about spending imaginary money. I wasted a minute looking for this and didn’t make the buy. Before my time is up I WILL get myself a Clemente rookie, but for about half that price, I hope. I will go back to this one later... With less than 13 minutes left I had just 2 cards in my cart and had spent $15,200. I wasted a little time without a purchase, but stayed on course and moved on to a 1954 Hank Aaron. My game plan was to find the highest grade I could for less than $4,000. I quickly settled on this PSA 7 for $2,400. I was a little bummed to not find a PSA 8, but I was happy with the cost. What I wasn’t happy with was that this seller charged shipping. I thought it was an unwritten rule that cards over 500 bucks shipped for free. Not only did this seller charge for shipping, he/she charged 20 bucks! What? Had this been reality that would have been a deal breaker. For the sake of this exercise the time wasted wasn’t worth $20.00 so I left it in my imaginary shopping cart. I wanted to make sure that I got some 1887 Ginter Champions as part of the deal. These 2 purchases went quick. I knew exactly which 2 cards I wanted and roughly what they should cost. I seriously do plan on someday buying these and finishing this set, probably in about 50 years, but someday. Anyway, I called up this ’87 Ginter card of Mike “King” Kelly, a PSA 4 for $1199 and then this PSA 1.5 of Cap Anson for $1,799. I wanted to stick between 3 and 5 on the grade for my Ginter set, but this 1.5 of Cap had most of its damage to the back and I have seen plenty of higher grade Anson’s priced much higher. One of my favorite “free time” searches is keyword “1887 Ginter”. I don’t know if they ever sell, but PSA 7’s are generally priced from 7,000 to 20,000 of Anson. I wanted the card, but I didn’t want it to be my main purchase, so I was stoked with a 1.5 for under 2K. At this point I swung at 6 cards, missed one and “purchased” 5 cards. I also burned up 7 minutes and only spent $20,618.00 (including 20 bucks for shipping which I wasn’t happy about). I have 8 minutes left to go and a long list of cards I am hunting for. Stay tuned for the remainder of my shopping spree, the sweat is dripping, but the collection is looking GREAT. I have $29,382.00 left to spend, do you think I can do it? How well do you guys know me? I smell a challenge and a contest... Comment here with the answer to 2 questions. One, will I spend it all and two, pick at least one card I will buy. Year and player would be fine. Whomever gets the most cards right wins a choice of some "hits" I still have. A choice of 5 different relics or you can choose one of my dupes from '65 Topps. I will have the rest of my cart posted soon, so get on it! Go Rays! Troll out.

Procrastination Station-My Blog Bat Around Shopping Spree

Okay, rewind back to April 12th. It was almost 2 weeks ago when I read this post on Sports Card Uncensored proposing a topic for a Blog Bat Around. my recap brief. The easiest thing to do is to click on this link to the BBA topic and read it yourself… The basic premise is that you are given $50,000.00 to spend however you like on eBay. Pretty awesome, huh? The only catch is that you only have 15 minutes to do so. The idea of a 50 grand card shopping spree is absolutely awesome, but imagine the stress involved knowing that you only have 900 seconds to spend it. I first read this topic two weeks ago and the rusty gears in my head have been turning ever since. I have read a whole bunch of shopping sprees on the other blogs and felt the excitement of the idea with each post. My time has been limited when it comes to posting; it has been even more limited when it comIf you read this blog, I am sure you read SCU too and are well aware of the topic, so I will keep es to eBay. Knowing I have 28 cents in my PayPal account gives me less motivation to spend any time over there. In fact it makes it VERY dangerous. There have been too many late nights where I have clicked on a BIN button knowing that I can’t possibly afford the item, but the deal seems too good to pass up. For that reason I may have promised someone that I would stay far away from eBay. I have kept my distance from that evil auction site, but with each post I read about this subject, I think more and more about my own shopping spree. SCU gave their readers one week to participate in the Bat Around. More than enough time for most, but not nearly long enough for a procrastinating Troll. In fact I am surprised that I was able to do it after only two weeks. I know I am too late officially for the Bat Around, but I really wanted to try it anyway. I had a 15 minute break planned from 9:45 till 10:00 PM last night and I decided that would be my time to go on a shopping spree. I told my wife I couldn’t talk far in advance. I filled my coffee up beforehand, I shut off my phone and made sure my computer had enough time left on its charge. I had a notebook, pen and a calculator ready. I also set an alarm to go off after 15 minutes AND I set the stop watch on my phone. The 15 minute time constraint is one of the most important things in this exercise and I wanted to make sure that I adhered to it. I bumped around on eBay a little earlier in the week. I didn’t “watch” any items or try to cheat-I went on to try and figure out specific search modes based on price. Normally I prefer to bid on actual auctions, set my max bid and hope it slips by. For this experiment I needed to be sure that I was only looking at Buy It Now cards and I wanted to set a minimum price so I wasn’t wasting time looking at 5 dollar cards. During my lunch break earlier in the night I made an outline.
On my notebook I had my intentions clearly mapped out. I wanted A LOT of things. More things than 50 grand could buy, but I figured it would be good to have an idea of what I wanted. I knew there were a few different sets that I wanted to hit hard, a few personal favorite sets of mine. I was going to be looking for 1948 Leaf, 1887 Allen and Ginter Champions, 1951 Bowman, 2009 Allen and Ginter Woods, silks, rip cards and 1/1, 1953 Topps, 1912 T202, 1909 T206 and 2007 Sweet Spot Immortal Signatures. I was also planning on picking up complete sets of Topps from 1958, ’59, ’60, ’63 and ’65. I wanted to find cool 1 of 1 cards of Carl Crawford, Evan Longoria, Brian Roberts and Jason Bartlett. I also really wanted to get certified autographs of Roberto Clemente, Jackie Robinson, Larry Doby, Cool Papa Bell, Willie Wells, Piper Davis, Sandy Koufax, Ted Williams and Satchel Paige. I wanted to get vintage, high grade cards of all of those guys too, plus Stan Musial, Joe DiMaggio, Ernie Banks, Bob Feller, Warren Spahn, Hank Aaron, Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays. I had a lot of things I wanted to get. I think I was taking this thing too seriously, but I don’t know when I will get the chance to “spend” $50,000. on cards again, so this was pretty serious. I wasn’t sure what the best method was to “purchase” cards for this, but I decided when I found an item I wanted I would WATCH it, copy and paste the URL and write down a quick description of the item and price in the notebook. That seemed fair to me, so that is what I did. When 9:45 rolled around I was waiting, the computer was on, I was already logged into eBay and as soon as my alarm went off I took a swig of coffee, a deep breath and I started searching. I will say that I considered the idea of just buying something really big like this awesome Babe Ruth baseball for $48,000.00, but I wanted to get in on the chase, fight against the clock and get the most bang for my imaginary buck.
I will post my purchases as soon as I get home from work later tonight… Like I said I know I missed the deadline, but I didn’t want to miss the fun. Stay tuned…I will show you one more card that I DIDN'T buy with my 50K. It's a great looking card, but 6 grand for an auto is too much even when playing make believe... I still had to show this because it really is a cut signature done right and I love the quote. It says "I want to be remembered as a ballplayer who gave all he had to give." There will NEVER be another Roberto Clemente!
The 50 grand went quick, like in 15 minutes... I had never broke a sweat shopping on eBay before. It was intense. I will be at work until 11 PM Eastern, but I have a post scheduled to go up at 3:11 PM (My wedding anniversary is March 11th), check it out cuz there is a little contest and challenge and you can win cards! On a different note, I finally sorted through all of my new 2010 Heritage cards and made a list. I don't plan on buying any of this, but I wouldn't mind at least killing off the base set. Thanks for looking... Go Rays! Troll out.

Cut Signature DISASTERS, Potential PC Edition...

I am broke right now so I won’t be chasing cards for my new PC until this month’s mortgage is paid, but I still wish I knew who I was chasing. I got a package this morning with some Larry Doby cards that I will show off soon. I also have a great Mad Dog bat card that came in the mail last week that I need to show off. I was searching all 3 players on the auction sites and seeing what I am in for. Bill Mazeroski has a TON of cards. He is in many autograph series and these cards ain’t cheap! That frightens me. Knowing what a great signer Maz is it is hard to try and chase down 100 different autographed cards that average 40 bucks a pop. Now while I was looking I had this post from Sports Cards Uncensored on my mind. It was titled “How Not To Do a Cut Auto Volume 1,000,000” and showed the WORST cut auto card I had ever seen. Seriously, check this post and see the AWFUL looking piece of cardboard that sold for over $1,000.00 bucks. Well if that was Vol. 1,000,000, here is Vol. 1,000,001; a Larry Doby cut sig that you could own for $249.00. This one really sucks because the frame of the card is really nice and classy, but the extra words kill it for me. Check out Vol. 1,000,002; a decapitated Doby cut auto that probably used to look good before it was mutilated. You can buy it now for $125.00. Bill Mazeroski checks in with the same premise. How not to do a cut auto Vol. 1,000,003. Another card that probably used to look good. It can be yours for $59.99. I hate to give this auction site free advertising, but if any of my readers are dumb enough to buy these cut autograph disasters, well… They’re not! This ain’t eBay love, these are eBay atrocities… It sucks that you can take a nice in-person auto which might sell for 5 bucks, take a scissor to it and slap a serial number on it and the value goes up 10 times... I was glad that I didn't find any atrocicuts of Bill Madlock, but I am sure they exist. Oh, there is less than an hour to get in on the Steve Garvey bat relic contest. Enter HERE. More to come. Go Rays! Who am I collecting? Troll out.