This is how I flip cards

There are people that flip cards for profit, I flip them for personal collection cards. That's why I'm not always worried about making the most money on sales or on how much of a cut eBay or PayPal take. Let them have theirs if I can use my profits to procure a few cards that I really want.

Last year I bought a pack of 2018-19 SP Game Used and pulled absolutely zero Lightning cards. Not a big surprise since there were only something like five cards in it. One of the cards I did pick up was a Mats Zuccarello Game Net card from the Winter Classic.

A really nice card. I enjoyed owning it for a little while, but as neither a Rangers fan or a Zuccarello fan I decided to put it up on eBay and see what worth it had on the open market. The answer:  $13.50. Should it have gone for a little more? Possibly, but hey that's the fun of auctions. Someone got a good deal (hopefully I'll get one next year when the Global Series net cords are released).

With the funds safely in my PayPal account I headed over to Check Out My Cards to spend it on some Lightning cards. I figured I'd pick up a couple of rookie cards and maybe an autograph or two. Instead, I found that the pricing on Lightning cards is still a little below where it should be. The glories of a small market hockey team. Instead of three or four cards, I picked up eight. All of them from Upper Deck SP Game Used.

First up (and this was actually an eBay purchase, but it was less than $2.00). Joseph is struggling a bit this season (just had a stint in the AHL) but he still has time to figure it out. So why not pick up a serial numbered rookie card? Technically this is the "rainbow" parallel, but is more readily available than the "base"card which is serial numbered to only 7 (his jersey number).

Added some All Star Skills  Fabrics. All four players who represented the Lightning in Tampa were available for mere pocket change. Seriously, no Kucherov relic card should be available for under $3.00.

Starting the Anthony Cirelli Rookie Rainbow collection. Really hope he doesn't end up in Seattle in the next expansion. Of all the players on the Lightning, he is the one that is probably overshadowed the most by the bigger names. Cirelli is really, really good.

The most perplexing purchase - a 2016-17  Brayden Point Rookie Sweaters #d to 499. It set me back a whopping $1.19. Yes, it's a bland white swatch, but still it's a rookie card of maybe the second best player on the team. That's a travesty.

Grand total spent - $11.41. Not bad in exchange for a card I really didn't want.

Orioles Victory Card Number 41: A Trip to the Virtual Card Store

Baltimore Orioles Victory Number 41: 8-1 over the Kansas City Royals

1955 Bowman Matt Batts

Hey how about a little winning streak? The Orioles pitching staff did it again, limiting the Royals to one run while the Baltimore bats banged out out three home runs and 12 hits. Speaking of bats how about a new oldest card in the collection?

A couple of months ago I turned a little eBay money into a COMC shopping spree. Shortly before leaving Pittsburgh my good buddy Link gave me one of the all time iconic cards in history - the 1971 Topps Thurman Munson. I don't even have to put an image here for you to picture the card do I? You already see the play at the plate, the dust, Munson making the tag with his mask off and hat on backwards, the big honking All-Star Rookie trophy in the corner and the iconic black border.

With that card in hand I made a somewhat languid decision to focus on picking up some more of the cards that everyone should have. Well, mostly cards that everyone should have. More like the cards that I think I should have in my collection. Instead of burning money on boxes, I decided to focus my eBay profits on certain cards. I even curated a Top Ten list of cards that I really want for my collection that I may post at some point.

So first up, a card every O's fan should have - a Matt Batts 1955 Bowman, right?  Ok, not so much. That came from the fact that I was looking for some cheap vintage cards and I happened to be reading The Summer of '49 by David Halberstam, a fantastic look at the pennant chase between Boston and New York in 1949. Batts was an ancillary character in the book as a  back-up catcher for the Red Sox that season.

When I was scrolling through COMC and his card popped up it seemed like an opportune time to pick it up. Now, you old timers might think, "I don't remember Batts playing for the Orioles" and you would be right. He never suited up for the Birds in their first season in Baltimore. Following the 1954 season Batts was part of a trade between the White Sox and the Orioles. However, just before the 1955 season started he was purchased from the Orioles by the Cleveland Indians. By that time Bowman had already had the cards printed and ready to go so he is forever to be captured as  Baltimore Oriole in the set.

However, that wasn't the iconic card that I had set my sights on that night while I was scrolling through. Neither is the next card featured, which is now my second oldest overall card in my collection.

1948 Fleer Billy Conn

I wanted an older boxing card and feeling slightly nostalgic for the recently departed Steel City I picked up a card of the the Pittsburgh Kid. A light-heavyweight champion from the 1930s, Conn will best be remembered for his two fights against Joe Louis. In June of 1941, Conn was by most accounts leading on the scorecards entering the 13th round when Louis managed to salvage the fight by knocking Conn out.

In the rematch, postponed five years by a little thing called World War II, Louis knocked him out again, this time in the eighth round. He finished his career with a 63-11-1 record in the ring and one draw outside of the ring as he foiled a robbery attempt - at the age of 72 years old.

The card I wanted to buy was a rookie card, but another rookie card intrigued me when I was still in the boxing section.

1991 Kayo Arturo Gatti

The Blood and Guts Warrior himself. Look at how young he looks in that photo (wow, is that an old person thing to say). This is Gatti six years before his Fight of the Year in 1997 with Gabriel Ruelas that put him on the boxing map, ten years before his big money fight with Oscar De La Hoya, and eleven years before the beginning of his way with Micky Ward that electrified boxing fans for a decade. This is Gatti before the swollen eyes, the broken hands and the blood, so much blood, a young fighter ready to make a name for himself.

Gatti's boxing style was straight forward. He never found a punch that he couldn't stop with either his hands or his face and he was always willing to dish out just as many blows as he took, even when he was outclassed in the ring. He always wore his fights on his face. In the 1990s and early 2000s there may not have been a more fun fighter to watch. Whenever he popped up on HBO, you knew it was worth while to hang around and watch the fight.

He retired from boxing in 2007. Two years later he was found dead in an apartment in Brazil under somewhat cloudy circumstances. Originally his wife was accused of murder, but the final cause of death was listed as suicide. To this day his cause of death is still intensely debated. 

Back to baseball. Having secured an old boxing card, an old baseball card and a rookie boxing card it's time to zero in on the card I wanted.  First a detour.  

1989 Topps Traded Ken Griffey, Jr.

A rookie card with Griffey Jr holding a bat on his left shoulder? It's the iconic pose for my generation's iconic superstar. Sadly, by the lack of a smile you know it's not the Upper Deck rookie.  Topps missed the boat with their flagship set, as Griffey didn't make the cut. They didn't waste anytime making sure he was in their late season add-on set, Topps Traded.  As you can see it's a bit off-center which just made it more affordable in my book.

While those are all great cards for my collection, they weren't the one I was looking for. It was, in fact, the other Griffy rookie that I had set out to buy. After 30 years of hemming and hawing about getting one, I finally pulled the trigger. 

1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr.

The card that launched an empire and survived the mass production era that was the late-1980s and 1990s. It introduced Upper Deck to the card collecting crowd and signaled the launch of the modern era of collecting. It isn't the most expensive rookie card of the era, Albert Puljos, Mike Trout and Derek Jeter dwarf him in comparison, but can you, the casual collector, picture any of those cards off the top of your head?

I don't have a high-grade copy, and I won't send it in. In fact, it doesn't even get a binder. It'll be slipped into a toploader and placed with Felix Jose and the rest of my 1989 Upper Deck cards, but that won't mean it's forgotten. 

Steven Stamkos and the rookie card

There is a certain generation of sports fans that are rapidly approaching (or are firmly in the grip of) middle age. One of the shared characteristics of this demographic is that they were raised with the belief that sports cards could be an investment instead of something you flip against the wall, put in your bike spokes or wrap in rubber bands and stuff in a shoe box (oh the horror)...


Read the rest here....

Cross One Off The Ol' Card Bucket List

One of the perks of working in the hospitality business is that I get to wear a nametag at work.  On that piece of plastic, right beneath my full name is something that I’m “connected to”.  In my case, it’s “Baltimore Baseball”.  The goal is to generate a discussion with the guest while we’re checking them in. And it works, although I spend most of the time explaining that I don’t actually know anyone in the organization, I’m just a fan. 

As a fan who collects and blogs about cards you would think that it’s a no-brainer that I had one of the most iconic cards in Orioles history in my collection:

"Bob Bonner. Beloit. Accounts. Can I get you some coffee?"

Yet, until about a week ago I never owned the Topps Ripken rookie.  I’m not really sure why not. Sure, when I was younger and he was still playing it was a little out of my price range.  Then again, any card that was more than $5.00 was pretty much out of my price range.  However, you would think, now that I’m a grown-ass man with a real job I could plunk down the equivalent of two tickets to the movies to own THE CARD. Heck I’ve spent more at Starbucks then what I paid for the card.

I just never quite got around to it for some reason.  OK, so maybe it was because I’m easily distracted by other things.  Collecting a copy of every Floyd Rayford card isn’t something that happens overnight, you know.  Then (suddenly!) I found myself perusing eBay the other night with some money in my PayPal account.  I was actually looking for something totally unrelated to cards, probably a new lens for my camera that I can’t afford, but when on eBay it’s never too long before I start searching for cards.

A search for Lecavalier cards turned into a search for Murray cards which turned into a search for Machado rookie cards which then ultimately left me clicking on the “Buy it Now” button for the card you see above. 

Did I pay too much for it?  Maybe (but I got free shipping!) Yet, the price I paid was still way less then what it went for back in the late 80s and early 90s. That made me a little sad.  So I was happy/sad (hapsad?).  

Happy that I filled in a missing hole in my collection, but sad that the rookie card of a hall of fame shortstop could be had for less than half of what kids today pay for some player that hasn’t done half of what Ripken did in his career.

I was also feeling a bit nostalgic (as I tend to do after a couple of PBRs) about collecting. The 1982 set represents to me a different era of collecting. There really was no such thing as an “insert”. The only special cards were the all star cards or “In Action” cards.  Yet both of those were part of the base set.  There were really only a couple of ways to collect back then.  Either you were trying to build the set or you were trying to stockpile as many cards of your favorite player or team as possible. 

Not to get all old fogey on you, but it was definitely a simpler time for collecting.  There were three brands (Topps, Donruss and Fleer), and each basically had a base set and maybe an update or traded series.  The packs were considerably cheaper and seemingly more readily available for purchase. There were no endless parallels, meaningless 1-of-1s or overpriced, short printed gimmicks.  Rookie cards were easy to figure out. If it was the first time the manufacturer made that players card, chances are it was a rookie card.

Perhaps the simplicity was part of the reason there were more casual collectors back then. It was an easy hobby to figure out. You plunked down your twenty-five cents and opened the pack. No redemptions or figuring the difference between SP, SPx or SP Authentic required.

While collecting was simpler it was also much more limited.  If you were a player collector you had, at most, six or seven cards of your guy that you could find for the entire year.  Heck there are some sets these days that have different cards of the same player in just one set! There were no hand-signed cards or memorabilia cars.  While there might be a bit of overkill in those areas these days, it’s still pretty cool to own a piece of the action.

Back in the old days trading was done face to face.  You actually had to have friends or know people that collected cards.  Then you had to hope they had different interests than you did.  Trust me, in the mid-80s there weren’t many kids in Baltimore that were collecting Red Sox cards.  So we all tended to overvalue our 

Lenn Sakata or Joe Nolan cards while not giving a damn about Dave Winfield or Robin Yount.

Now, with the internet, there are seemingly endless trading partners.  Most of whom have a different focus than I do.  Although, when I think about it, there seems to be an inordinate amount of Orioles collectors in our blogospehere.  Even still I have no problem unloading my Red Sox or Braves cards now.

So much like the facts of life, you had the good and you had the bad.  It’s nice to remember those times, but I think I’m happier being a collector these days.  I’m also happier because I crossed another card off of my personal top 10. 

Top Five Lightning Rookie Cards to Own

As the internet’s resident Tampa Bay Lightning card collecting blogger I must say this post is long overdue.  As the Lightning bandwagon grows (it’s actually more of a mini-van at this point) folks out there are going to want to know what cards they need for their collection. Well I’m here to drop the cardboard knowledge on you!

Coming up five names for this list was fairly easy.  That’s what happens when you follow a team that has been in existence less than 20 years.  I didn’t have to go back 40 years and figure which long-dead greats should make the list.  Nor did I have to debate which Hall of Famer should I leave off.  For the record on two members of the Hall of Fame have donned the black, silver and blue – Dino Ciccarelli (111 games) and Denis Savard (105 games). Spoiler alert – neither made the list.

I debated a couple of names from the pre-Cup teams, names like Selivanov, Puppa and Zamuner. In the end, I thought I’d stick with players whose rookie cards showed them in Lightning uniforms (with one exception). If I’d extended the list to 10, at least one of those names would have definitely made the list (but so would Nikita Alexeev – hey my list, my rules!).

One benefit of being a Lightning collector - low prices.  There isn't much demand for the cards below so they're pretty easy to pick up (with one glaring exception). 

With no further adieu – I present the Top Five Rookie Cards Lightning Fans Should Own

5. Brett Connolly 2011-12 Upper Deck - $4.25-$6.99

The new kid on the block has had an up and down rookie year.  His cards have slid back down a bit after starting off hot (around $10) when the Upper Deck series was first release.  His performance at the World Juniors provided another bump, but lately the prices have been coming back down (getting benched does that). 

Connolly could very well be the first of the new crop of Lightning stars to emerge in the NHL.  If things work out as management hopes, names like Carter Ashton, Dustin Tokarski, Cory Conacher and Tyler Johnson could be gracing this list pretty soon.

4. Brad Richards 1997-98 Upper Deck - $1.25- $5.00

Yes he’s a Ranger now (a dastardly Ranger who scores overtime goals against his former team), but he still has a loyal following in the Tampa Bay area.  Moving to the bright lights of the big city hasn’t affected his cards that much so they’re still relatively easy to obtain. 

Upper Deck was able to sneak a bunch of young players into their main set before they were drafted by creating a subset called “Program of Excellence” and showing them in dramatic staring-off-in-the-distance poses or in their Team Canada gear.  A very young Vincent Lecavalier is featured in this set as well.  Is that card on the list?  Only The Shadow knows.

3. Martin St Louis 1998-1999 Upper Deck Rookie - $.99 - $2.99

There are so many weird things about this card - the Calgary uniform, the number 46, the fact he isn’t scoring a goal. Marty’s entry into the NHL wasn’t exactly accompanied by fanfare. As a non-drafted, college player who toiled in the AHL for three seasons he didn’t get all of the bells and whistles that card companies lavish on top prospects.  So his Upper Deck rookie was just a common card released in the era of over produced sets.  Since there are a lot of these cards out there the prices remain low.

When he eventually retires I’m sure there will be some talk about the Hall of Fame for St. Louis.  He should have over 350 goals and close to 1000 points. I hope it’s enough for him to be enshrined, but you never know with these things.  If he is inducted it will be interesting to see if his cards get a bump in value.

2. Vincent Lecavalier 1997-98 Upper Deck Black Diamond - $1.29-$4.99

It’s almost criminal that Enzo’s cards go for so low on eBay.  There are some parallel versions (Triple Diamond) that trade for around $20 or so, but those don’t pop up that often and we don’t consider parallels as true rookie cards here at the Hopeful Chase headquarters (except for the number one card on the list).

I think the relative affordability of Lecavalier’s cards is reflective of being a star in a non-hockey market. To the hockey world outside of “Hockey Paradise” his declining numbers and escalating salary have hit him with the dreaded overrated label and that affects his collectability.  That being said, if had been traded to Montreal the value of his cards would have escalated no matter what his performance would have been.

I’m not even going to offer you a cheaper alternative.  If you can’t spare $1.50 – get off of eBay right now. 

1 .Steven Stamkos 2008-09 Upper Deck The Cup Patch Auto - $1700-1800

This is going to be the first card I go out and purchase once I hit the Powerball.  For those not familiar with “The Cup”, it’s pretty much a product geared toward the 1%.  Four card “boxes” can sell for more than $400 online and even the base cards normally hit the secondary market for more money than I care to spend.

Stamkos’ card is the card to have out of the 2008-09 set. It started off high and never wavered.  As he continues his march to being the most elite goal scorer in the NHL I don’t see it tapering off any time soon.

There are less expensive rookie cards out there to bring into your collection.  His 2008-09 Upper Deck Young Guns goes for about $50 on eBay these days.  As I’ve mentioned before, the Young Guns rookies are pretty good cornerstones for player collections.  If that’s still a little too rich for your blood his 2008-09 Upper Deck MVP card can generally be had for less than $5.  

The First Cards of December!

If I had any type of blogging motivation at all I would probably start a 12 Cards of Christmas gimmick on this website that culminated with me revealing the 2010 Hopeless Chase Card of the Year. However, those that know me (hi Mom and Dad!), know that out of all of my wonderful traits motivation is not one of them. So instead you get just a quick post about a card I got in the mail.

Could this card signal the birth of a new player collection? With the departure of Carl Crawford imminent, perhaps I should focus my attention on a player who can't break some little kid's heart by jumping town.

On a side note, is it even remotely possible that some kid in the TBA wrote a letter to Santa Claus in which all he wants for Christmas is for CC to sign a 7 year deal with the Rays? Do kids even write to Santa anymore? Because I'm sure a 5 year old Justin G. would have done that, if he could write, that is. What age do kids start writing? I don't know these things, good thing I'm not a parent I guess.

Where was I? Oh yeah, a card in the mail. Here it is:




It's a 1978 Topps Eddie Murray Rookie Card.

I wouldn't call it my White Whale, more like a White Tuna, maybe. I've bid on Murray rookies about 10 times this year and lost out on every occasion as furious bidding in the final moments drove it out of my price range. Just for fun I put a bid on one last week and actually managed to grab it for a reasonable price.

As I grow older as a collector and a fan I tend to remember only the good parts of my childhood as a fan. 0-21? Don't remember the 21 losses, but I do remember the Chicago White Sox fans cheering for the O's win in the 22nd game. Eddie Murray traded for a bundle of spare parts? Nope, Memorial Stadium rocking with "ED-DIE, ED-DIE" chants.

So I picked up the card and have toyed with the idea of starting a Murray collection to replace CC. We'll see what happens with that as the days roll on. In the meantime, I'll look at classic O's cards and remember the childhood days.

Speaking of childhood, if there are any young readers out there reading. Let me fill you in on one of the great things about being an adult. As I typed this up, guess what I had for dinner. A bowl of Fruity Pebbles. Not a small bowl either, a heaping bowl of sugary goodness.

The best part (other than the sugar rush jitters) no one is here to look disapprovingly at me. It's glorious! So when an if you're wondering if it's awesome to be an adult - sometimes it is.