I’ve been trying to take a different approach to my hobby lately. In years past I’d spend days on end ripping and collecting whatever was in front of me. But over the last six to eight months I’ve turned much of my collecting attention to my player collections.
The beginning of the new card year usually brings all those crazy ripping feelings back. The desire to constantly buy and rip everything in sight. I ripped a fairly minimal amount of Topps Flagship and managed to build the base set, and over the last week I’ve opened a few blasters of Topps Heritage and have managed through a few trades to pretty much wrap up the base set of that , sans about 70 SPs for which I have ZERO desire to pay top dollar — wake me when they get to about $1 each as I am in no rush to complete the sets.
And with my son entering the hobby I’ve turned a bit to a little basketball — as you may have seen in recent video breaks I posted on YouTube and wrote briefly about here. I will do my best to not venture into the higher-end market.
But when it comes to baseball, I don’t see a whole lot that will grab my interest until Stadium Club hits in a few months. And this is a good thing for me and my bank account.
That’s not to say I won’t sample other products between then and now, but it means I likely won’t be buying hobby boxes or blasters of every product. I won’t be building the Donruss set, but I’ll be chasing the Kershaw parallels on the secondary market, where I can get exactly what I want and hopefully for less than I would spend if I were buying packs.
Speaking of the secondary market, my first wave of Kershaw Topps Heritage cards started to arrive this week from various purchases on eBay. Arriving this week were the French version, the mini version serial numbered /100, the black border NLCS Kershaw card (limited to 50 copies) and the almighty Heritage Chrome Black Refractor /70, which has always been one of my favorite parallels each season.
And lastly, speaking of parallels, I lost out on an auction today that really made me shake my head. Earlier today an auction ended for the “Silver Metal” version of the 2018 Topps Heritage Kershaw card and it went for way more than I expected. To be fair, it was the first of its kind on eBay so folks chasing the master set of Heritage were likely in on this one. But I decided I was out of the hunt with about three minutes left in the auction after my max bid was eclipsed. Why? Because I was not thrilled with the price of the card in relation to the quality.
Late last week I managed to pull the Chris Sale version of the “Metal” card and I’ll be honest — the card is disgusting. It’s not metal. Hell, it’s not even Chrome. It’s foilboard technology for most of the card with the player being covered only in gloss. It’s a let down considering they fall 1 in every 800-plus packs and they feel like a bastardized version of the retail exclusive “chrome” foilboard from recent releases. And because I have the Sale, I knew I didn’t feel comfortable paying more for the “Metal” than I did for the aforementioned Black Refractor. Others may not feel the same way when it comes to player collections, but sometimes I consider quality of the product in addition to rarity when figuring out what I am comfortable paying.
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This entry was posted on March 6, 2019 at 2:44 pm and is filed under Collecting Kershaw, Commentary with tags baseball, baseball cards, Clayton Kershaw, Topps, Topps Heritage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Flagship, Heritage are done — time to ease off the gas pedal
I’ve been trying to take a different approach to my hobby lately. In years past I’d spend days on end ripping and collecting whatever was in front of me. But over the last six to eight months I’ve turned much of my collecting attention to my player collections.
The beginning of the new card year usually brings all those crazy ripping feelings back. The desire to constantly buy and rip everything in sight. I ripped a fairly minimal amount of Topps Flagship and managed to build the base set, and over the last week I’ve opened a few blasters of Topps Heritage and have managed through a few trades to pretty much wrap up the base set of that , sans about 70 SPs for which I have ZERO desire to pay top dollar — wake me when they get to about $1 each as I am in no rush to complete the sets.
And with my son entering the hobby I’ve turned a bit to a little basketball — as you may have seen in recent video breaks I posted on YouTube and wrote briefly about here. I will do my best to not venture into the higher-end market.
But when it comes to baseball, I don’t see a whole lot that will grab my interest until Stadium Club hits in a few months. And this is a good thing for me and my bank account.
That’s not to say I won’t sample other products between then and now, but it means I likely won’t be buying hobby boxes or blasters of every product. I won’t be building the Donruss set, but I’ll be chasing the Kershaw parallels on the secondary market, where I can get exactly what I want and hopefully for less than I would spend if I were buying packs.
Speaking of the secondary market, my first wave of Kershaw Topps Heritage cards started to arrive this week from various purchases on eBay. Arriving this week were the French version, the mini version serial numbered /100, the black border NLCS Kershaw card (limited to 50 copies) and the almighty Heritage Chrome Black Refractor /70, which has always been one of my favorite parallels each season.
And lastly, speaking of parallels, I lost out on an auction today that really made me shake my head. Earlier today an auction ended for the “Silver Metal” version of the 2018 Topps Heritage Kershaw card and it went for way more than I expected. To be fair, it was the first of its kind on eBay so folks chasing the master set of Heritage were likely in on this one. But I decided I was out of the hunt with about three minutes left in the auction after my max bid was eclipsed. Why? Because I was not thrilled with the price of the card in relation to the quality.
Late last week I managed to pull the Chris Sale version of the “Metal” card and I’ll be honest — the card is disgusting. It’s not metal. Hell, it’s not even Chrome. It’s foilboard technology for most of the card with the player being covered only in gloss. It’s a let down considering they fall 1 in every 800-plus packs and they feel like a bastardized version of the retail exclusive “chrome” foilboard from recent releases. And because I have the Sale, I knew I didn’t feel comfortable paying more for the “Metal” than I did for the aforementioned Black Refractor. Others may not feel the same way when it comes to player collections, but sometimes I consider quality of the product in addition to rarity when figuring out what I am comfortable paying.
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This entry was posted on March 6, 2019 at 2:44 pm and is filed under Collecting Kershaw, Commentary with tags baseball, baseball cards, Clayton Kershaw, Topps, Topps Heritage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.