Super Collecting + Crowd Sourcing = Crowd Collecting? I Need *YOUR* Help!

[mouschi]

Today, I mourn the loss of 3 great PC cards. No, I didn't spill milk on them, nor did I accidentally drop them in the toilet, admiring them while peeing.

After a week of going back and forth with a fellow Canseco super collector (Razor), I gave up 3 cards and cash in return for 6 cards. I will likely show them when they come in, but a fun little picture back & forth ensued that I thought I would share in the mean time.

In true James Bond fashion, he sent me pics to update how my package was sent out at around midnight last night.

Here is the package on the super cool motorcycle


Nice light up gauges


So blurry, he must be going, like, 200 mph!


Arrived at destination under the cover of night


One last look before "the pig is in the barn"


Mission accomplished


I figured I'd show off how his package made it on its way as well, just so I could match him.

After chowing down on the finest of vintage plateware from the "tickle me elmo" line, I packed and weighed the package.


Well, I had a lot to drink this morning...


Motorcyle? Nah. Minivan is how we do it here!


Rollin' slow style in the sub-div.


Must....resist....temptation....(I didn't get any at all!)


Picture of 50 year old woman's hand scanning the package (whom Razor thought was my hand.)


Looking forward to the incoming package, but sad I had to let go of some beauties! It was all for the "greater good" though, I guess

[mouschi]

I've got a bit of a lag just from being busy over the past several days, so here is what I have for today to show:



The leaf is a /10, the Stadium club is a redemption /50 - this one is actually a bit tough to find with Jose's signature inside the specific box. I've seen him sign this /50 many times outside of the box!

The one in the middle is ... not him. LOL - at least, I don't think so. I think it might be a pic of his twin brother Ozzie. It was one of the 10 remaining cards of him that I need that was serial numbered over 100. The others that are left I suspect have a high # that are still left unopened in packs, and possibly (GASP!) stuck together.

[mouschi]

Remember the post office picture post I made? That deal didn't come without stress. After that fun back and forth on pictures, we waited. And we waited. And we waited.

$21 on insurance for 2 day priority ... and it just said "Acceptance" for the first whole day on the tracking number. Then on the entire second day. It was said that sometimes USPS is in a hurry so they don't scan everything. So much for the $21 to ship, but I wasn't worried about that. I was worried about the cards!

I went out to greet the mail lady to see if she had something to sign, and she looked like at me like I had 2 heads. In a cruel twist of fate, I did get a piece of junk mail from the sender's city.

The next day ... "acceptance". Still nothing.

Thursday, the mail lady finally asked "what are you looking for?" So I told her, and she said "Oh, it will probably get here tomorrow." It made me feel MUCH better, though, I'm not sure why. I mean, how could she possibly know what the package was?

Friday came, and I heard her knock on the door (YAY!) I had my son put our dogs in the backyard, but "the big one" decided to get loose and meet the mail lady at the door. "GET YO DOG!!!" She said. I felt awful - she probably must have thought that she was about to be eaten!

Anyway, the package was finally here!!!



It can NOT be understated how .... secure .... this box was. I mean, the man must have spend $42 on tape alone!

After about 7 and a half hours of un-taping it, my burning forearms had just enough strength to open the box.

And then I found another taped box.

The sender actually put my name and number on the box inside the box saying "if lost, contact Tanner" - brilliant!

So, 42 minutes and $17 worth of tape later (I'm kidding Razor - not complaining about it at all - I appreciate you making it all secure for me!) my prizes were here!

A Donruss autograph numbered to /15.



Beautiful on card Ultimate Signature Supremacy which I had never seen before



Red Ink Tier One released in Asia /5 (the first one!)



and its red ink asian brother /5 (the first one as well!)



This card type is incredibly tough. Not just this card in specific, but this card type. The 2004 Prime Cuts II set has 20 Canseco cards. All but one are numbered to 1 or to 5. The only "base" card (no auto or gu) numbered to 50 went for $40 if I recall correctly. I don't ever see these pop up. This one is numbered to /5.



Last but certainly not least, is the whole reason the trade happened to begin with. 2014 Framed Museum silver ink /5. While these signatures are notorious for not looking crisp, I'm happy to report the signature in person looks much better in person!



This card, for me, marks the reason why it is *literally* impossible to collect ALL Canseco cards even if you aren't going for all 1/1's. Never mind the fact that some obscure cards out there are impossible to find; if they are numbered to 5 and of Canseco, the odds are they may be locked up in other collections. This Museum for instance - I already know where the other 4 are, so if I didn't do a trade for it, it simply would not have been available for possibly years or even decades.

This card completes a non 1 of 1 framed museum rainbow for me as well! They are some of my favorite looking - if not my favorite looking cards ever! Here are all the Museums together.

[mouschi]

Work-wise, this past week has really eaten my lunch. I've had all sorts of fires to put out, and am running on very little sleep since Wednesday morning. For a while, it seemed like one solved issue ushered in 5 more emergency issues. Not fun!

Fortunately, I have some very good programmers and they are tying things up for me. It has been a long time since I've been neck deep in code, but this week I've been fully immersed in php and mysql. Fortunately, I do see the light at the end of the tunnel! I just hope it is not a train coming.

While I have been up to my eyeballs in alligators, I have been chomping at the bit to find my happy place - baseball cards! I have made some pretty great additions to my PC. 12 are mentioned in this posting, which is unheard of - it is getting ridiculously difficult to add any type of quantity of stuff that I don't already have anymore.

Over the past several months, there are a handful of overpriced Canseco cards that I needed for my collection. From time to time, I'll message them and ask what the lowest is they will go, and it generally is still significantly higher than what I feel like they should be at.

Every time these dang cards go through the monthly rotation of being a "new listing" on ebay, I always think "OH! There is another one!" Then I looked at the price ... "oh. same card :/"

A while ago I received something in the mail saying that for the next 2 days, I will have the spending power of ebay 5x bucks! I didn't think much of it until I started doing some math. Ultimately, it ended up being a 10% discount, which, while the cards I were interested in would still be too high, I wondered if I could make one last push on them by asking the sellers if they would mind bending a little more since I have the ebay 5x bucks.

To my surprise, I was able to land ALL of them. Well, almost all of them. I am still working on the last one ... the one that I care about most. I'm not sure if it will materialize or not, but here are the goods:

Though they were initially overpriced, I was able to get every single one of them for 30%-70% off of the listid price!

Vanguard Holo-Purple Serial #'ed to 10. I thought this was a no-go, as the buyer was firm. I asked him MONTHS ago to lower the price and he rejected me. Thankfully, he was willing to deal when I had my 5x bucks and now I have a nice Vanguard rainbow!



This one is still incoming. This was a card I had initially huffed at a bit, because it was numbered to 25 ...surely I'd find one later. Well, that isn't exactly how things go when you are looking at low serial numbered cards that are 15+ years old. Looking forward to having this in hand instead of having to stare at it on ebay! The thing that makes this card ridiculously tough is not just that it is hand numbered to 25. Not that it is a quad bat card that is from 2000 ... but that there are FOUR of the most sought after players in recent baseball history. So that means that if you want one, you are going to have to battle the hard core Bonds, Thomas and Griffey collectors out there ... not to mention the crazy Canseco collectors, too!





The next two cards are GORGEOUS in person - the are numbered to 54 and 67. They are called E-X "Future" and E-X "Now". Once again, they were cards I had been looking at for a very long time on ebay. These cards look similar in the picture, but one is silver and one is gold. These are cards that once again, you scratch your head and say "Where are the other 50-60 copies?" I don't know, and as of now, I don't care because I have mine!





This is the 2000 Showcase Legacy numbered to 20. It is almost like an inverted sepia refractor, where the surroundings of the card does not refract, but Canseco does. A picture taken of this card cannot show the beauty of it - I have it on display on my desk, and depending upon where you position you sit, his whole body looks like it is glowing different colors. It looks kind of "plain" in pictures, but definitely has that "oooOOOOooohhhh preeeettty" factor going for it in hand. This card type should be up there with the crusades, but they are not very "picture friendly" unfortunately.


Speaking of Crusades ... this one takes the cake for prettiest in the bunch. In hand or in pictures, it is gorgeous. It was overlooked by me because I've always wanted the red so badly. I've gotta say though, this purple is DEFINITELY no slouch. I have it displayed right now. I have yet to introduce him to my green ... but hopefully big brother red will be coming along soon.



Here is the "new" one. 2014 - in my quest to put together a bunch of rainbows (minus the 1/1's) I have a good run of 2014 Five Star Golden Graphs and Silver Signatures. I found both copies #/5 at about the same time on ebay, which was pretty crazy. They were both priced his, but the golden graphs guy was willing to go down significantly. The silver sig? Not so much. When asked what his lowest price was, he responded with "You are looking at it." I circled back months later to ask to deal, and he said yes! Here it is ...



That does it for the "big" purchases. In the meantime though, I've made a handful of other pickups...

Famous Fabrics Notorious - hilarious!





2000 Pacific gold portraits #/199 - this is one of the small handful of Pacific cards that I have had a VERY difficult time getting my hands on. Heck, the card is #/199 ... so what was the deal? Supposedly there are 198 others out there, but I find that REALLY hard to believe.



I didn't even know this existed, but it is numbered to ./50. I love finding cards I've never seen before. This parallel is pretty slick.





A cool little stamp that is foil! It is like a japanese stamp or something. I have the regular version already. Again, I didn't know this existed. The seller had it up for $5, to which I offered $3. Then I snapped out of it and bought it for $5.



Last but not least, I'm going to end on a $3 card. A card that has alluded me for a long time, and I didn't even know what to look for up until recently. On my checklist, I had "1995 Pacific prism vertical". I was wondering if I was looking for a horizontal card as well...I just didn't know what to look for. Then I found a picture where the card pattern background rectangles were running vertically and not horizontally like the one I had. I thought this was pretty cool and was relieved to know what to look for.

I searched high and low, and simply couldn't find it. Collectors, dealers, ebay, comc, etc. No one had it! I went onto the beckett marketplace and emailed about 5 dealers. One of them said he had it! For $3 shipped, he sent it to me. It came in today! If you look at the back of both versions, one has 4 lines of text and the other has 3 lines of text.



I have also picked up a few more, but I'll save that for my next post!

As always ... If you have any Canseco I might need - let me know!

[Sierra79]

Nice pickups...the Komi stamp is an unofficial issue from one of the Russian Republics.

[mouschi]

Originally Posted by Sierra79

Nice pickups...the Komi stamp is an unofficial issue from one of the Russian Republics.

Very interesting - good to know, thanks!

[mouschi]

I got these in last week, but my woes at work still continue. It is like 1 step forward, 3 steps backward! But that is not why I am writing this evening.

I found someone online who had a Canseco collection they had been slowly selling off a bit at a time. I asked if he had anymore, and he gave me a link to his bucket, stating that they weren't for sale. Wellllll...I was able to convince him to sell some!

Here they are:

The good, the great and the ugly.



I'll start off with the middle card. It is a Leaf cut called "Pride of the Pinstripes. It is numbered to 9, so I figured I'd pick it up. I had it on my want list anyway

On the right is a gorgeous Gypsy Queen mini numbered to 10. I'm sure at some point, I'll pick up a cheapo framed GQ auto/relic and slide this puppy in.

Finally, the one on the left. A Donruss Recollection numbered to 12....or is it 13? I don't recall, but either way - I was very happy to get my hands on this one as well.

Oh, one more thing ... remember how I showed off my 2000 Fleer Showcase Legacy #/20 card last time, saying how beautiful it was in hand, but not so much in pictures?



As I was leaving the office, I had turned off the lights, and was about to shut down the door, when I saw how beautifully the card glowed when the evening light hit it perfectly. I figured I would snap a quick pic of it. Here it is!



How cool is that? The purple crusade is the card just to the right of it ... not shimmer at all in that light. Crazy, huh?

Speaking of Crusade, I had mentioned that I may be coming close on getting a RED.



I know a guy who has one. I made an offer, and he countered. I countered his counter. Then he countered my counter of his counter. I said no. Then, for the next 2 hours, he incrementally came down in price, and I broke. I agreed then asked for his paypal address.

Crickets.

He said he would get back with me, but then again, so did Natalie from high school. :/

I wrote a week later saying I would go ahead and up the price to the exact amount he countered with initially. That was 4 days ago. I still hold a little hope that he will agree, but we will see what happens. That would make an absolutely awesome ending to my flip quest this year. I've gotten my hopes up, but sadly, it may just never materialize.

[mouschi]

2014 marked the first year in ages since Canseco graced the cover of Topps baseball cards, but 2015 is really the first year that I'm able to enjoy and anticipate new product come out with him in it.

With each release this year, it has been a blast. The latest offerings have come from Topps Tek. After having learned my lesson with Leaf, and how sharply the Canseco pricing dropped after a few months, I decided to be a *little* more patient with Tek.

That held up for all of a week.

I was excited to see all the new variations of Canseco out there. Unfortunately, everybody and their brother wanted to be paid in gold coins for them. Base autos were being offered at $100, and serial numbered copies sometimes reaching $200. I don't think anyone bought at these levels, but after about a week, the prices finally came down.

I have been able to hunt down the majority of them, and while I have a few still incoming (including one BIG one) I am still in need of a few - namely the red /5 orbit non-auto, the 7a pattern (blades) and, interestingly enough ... the most common version. Oh, and don't forget any 1/1's out there I may be able to get.

Here is what I have so far:



As always, if you have any rare Canseco cards, please let me know!

[mouschi]

I met a reseller last week who had some good stuff - after pouring over his checklist for a long time, I was able to find a few cards that I needed! Always fun to find multiple cards I need in one place ... that rarely happens anymore.

First was a 1995 Panini sticker w/a different back variation that I didn't know existed. Here are the differences: (I already had the one on the right)



Next up is an embossed San Francisco Labor Day '97 Pacific card. These aren't checklisted, but I pick them up whenever I find them as they are quite rare. This is my first Labor Day & San Fran embossed card.



A pacific paramount parallel that I didn't have (I always get excited getting these as they can be so tough to find!)



And another Pacific parallel - the "extreme limited" versions numbered to 45. Love it! There are 2 others that I have that are similar to this, but have different wording on it.



This next one is a 2000 E-X magnet hand numbered to 99. In my limited time searching online, I haven't found anything out about it at all. Where did it come from? The world may never know! Whether it came like this or not, I think it is a very cool/unique card.



Last but not least ... the big daddy. 2000 E-X Essential Credentials NOW /49



That is all for now! As always, if you have any cool Cansecos, let me know!