Lessons learned

 A few days before leaving for vacation, John from Johnny’s Trading Spot contacted me and let me know that he just acquired a huge junk wax lot and I could have it since he knew I was collecting a number of Topps sets, including junk era ones. All I had to do was drive to Ocala and pick them up. My first off day during the week we got back, I was able to head up there, and I was blown away with the sheer amount of cards. 5-6 monster boxes, 3 other boxes packed full of cards, and about 15 albums full of cards. 

We’ve been back for a month, and Ive been sorting cards for about an hour a day after work on weekdays and most of the days during off days, and Ive separated the AL from NL cards, separated all the NL teams, separated the D-Backs, Braves, Cubs, Reds, Rockies, Marlins, and Astros into years, and took out duplicates and added to my ‘ready to put into binders box’ with the D-Backs, Braves, Cubs, Reds, Rockies, and Astros. I expect it to take another month or 2 to have all the new cards added to my ready for binder box, and then it’s back to inputting Topps cards to TCDB for the last 9 or so AL teams. 

Kyler has had fun helping me sort cards into teams, but he enjoys looking at the backs and finding funny player names, finding birthdays close to his, and finding cities where players were born that he has been to a lot more than actually sorting the cards into teams. 

John mentioned that these cards would be a lesson to me to always look for a better deal and not to jump on the first thing I could find. As many of you know, I’ve purchased a few junk wax sets on eBay and Goodwill Finds. The eBay ones were mostly good deals, I think, but the 1991 and 1993  Topps sets I got on Goodwill finds was probably a bad deal. While they had a low price, the shipping cost me. With the price that John paid for the lot, I would’ve got a lot more. 

Among the cards in the lot were a partial 1981 Topps set, a number of 1982 and 1983 Topps cards, a partial 1993 Topps set, a complete 1994 Topps set, a partial 1988 Topps set, and that was just the Topps stuff. Among partial non-Topps sets, were 1994 Stadium Club, 1993 Fleer, 1991 Score Traded, 1994 Flair, 1994 Select, 1995 Studio, 1995 Summit, 1994 Leaf, 1994 Donruss, 1995 Collectors Choice, 1995 Upper Deck, 1995 Upper Deck Special Edition, and I’m sure I’m missing 1 or 2 others. That was just stuff in binders. The stuff in boxes was also everything you could think of. I found a 1969 Topps Ron Santo and stuff as current as 2022 Bowman. A few rookies, a handful of serial numbered cards, and a good amount of parallels were included. 

Let me just stop right here and show you how whomever originally got these cards out of packs sorted them in his binders. It was very thought provoking for me, and if I didn’t already double bag my cards, this might be the way to go for me. 

Here is a standard page from one of the binders. Your standard 1995 Collectors Choice page, not double bagged, so you would expect to see the backs on the reverse side, but on some you don’t. Why could this be?

Well, whomever got these cards out of packs stored them in numerical order, and if he pulled a parallel of a card, he put them on the reverse side of the card. A really cool idea on how to store parallels, especially if you are going for a parallel set. This guy actually did me a favor by not double bagging, as I’ll have a number of pages (and binders) to store cards in when I get everything sorted out in the coming months. 

There were so many cool cards, too many to show, but just know I have a bunch of new Tigers, at least 1 or 2 new cards for just about everyone in my Favorite Player Collection, and only in a year or 2 when I get all of my cards uploaded to COMC will I be able to finally close the book on this massive haul, and I suspect I will have many junk wax sets (not just Topps) completed or missing just a handful of cards. I would venture to say that my favorite card from the group was this 2009 Topps Pirates team set card of PNC Park. It came just days after seeing a game at the beautiful stadium, and you can bet I’m going to put the date and Karen, Kyler, and the Dickenson’s names on the card. 

These are just a taste of some of the parallels and noteable cards. I had never pulled the Smoltz MVP error after at least 3 boxes worth of ‘90 Donruss packs opened. Now I have at least 3. I found some ‘98 Score Platinum Team cards, and a low #d 2003 Donruss Classics card. Not at all what I expected from a junk wax lot. 

While on the subject of ‘giveaways’ from Johnny’s Trading Spot, I figured this would be a good chance to show the 2 envelopes I got for winning 2 days of his giveaways. 

Some shiny Tigers and a spattering of Bowman Rays. I wish the Rays would call up Mead and install him somewhere in the lineup. Maybe have him DH and put Ramirez, Lowe, or whoever would normally DH in RF and trade Margot away for pitching. God knows with the Rays obsession with spin rate that we will lose at least 1 more starter this year. Here’s hoping Shane Baz can come back before October. 

Well, with all of those sets I acquired, I easily ended up with close to a few duplicate sets. Ones I wouldn’t have had to pay money for if I had been patient. That wasn’t the only lesson I learned. 

While I was at John’s hanging out after picking up the cards, I’m not gonna lie, I got he urge to dig through some of his trade card boxes like I had the last time I came over. Not just being content with the huge lot of cards he generously purchased and gave to me for free, I asked him if he would mind if I dug through any of his trade boxes if he had any accessible. He told me it probably wouldn’t be possible, but kindly let me dig through some Rays he has in the trade box for winners of the blog contest. I want to apologize to you, John, for being greedy and taking advantage of your generosity. I should’ve been happy with what you gave me and not pushed the issue. You taught me a lesson to be patient with card prices, especially junk era, and I hope I can learn another lesson and not be so greedy with cards and be happy with what I have, especially if I get them for nothing. 

I expect as soon as I can update the rest of my AL teams Topps cards, that I will make lists of what I am missing just so I can know if I am close to finishing any sets. Maybe a Just Commons order will be in my future in a year or so. Then I will start with every binder I have and upload my non-Topps cards into TCDB. It will be fun to look at the stats when I am done to see which player I have the most cards of and things like that. It will be cool to do some trades as well. Be sure I’m pulling cards as I see them to trade to some of you bloggers. Not sure when I’ll send stuff out, but I do have some stacks going. 

Thanks John, for the great hoard of cards that you so graciously bestowed on me. Your generosity is greatly appreciated. 

Thanks for taking the time to read my latest post. 

-Jeremy