Building Sets: slowly but surely

 One card at time certainly takes time. Then again....sometimes I buy cards in bulk and that gets it done a bit faster eventually getting down to the last few cards and then I will focus on the set killers. The third trip I made to Grand Slam didn't involve to many cards, more of picking through the quarter boxes. The Braves I've already shown you, and tonight are the set builds plus a few others. Now with that said the 4th trip I made this week was definitely a bulk purchase (21K) cards. I might get to post them sometime in the middle of August, and I'll only be doing 2 posts of the "odder" NOT older....odder stuff. I should have 5 posts of the Braves STUFF" I got on trip 3. 

Meanwhile here are tonight's highlights.

Knocked the 2025 Donruss set down to just a few.

Technically, these aren't a set build. However seeing that I grabbed so many of them (above and below) from one of the Topps Japan sets I figured they'd fit into this post.

The same can be said about these Topps On Demand cards Including the Ichiro cards.

The rest are pretty much just PC guys and cool cards that I wasn't leaving in the quarter box.

And my friends that wraps up the third trip (minus the 5 posts of Braves stuff- no cards) to my new local card shop. I made those 3 trips Monday, Friday, and Saturday of the same week (3weeks ago). I made my 4th trip this past Friday and bought those bulk boxes. BTW, they are sorted, well at least the initial sort, with some sorted down the brand, year, and numerical order. That would be Topps Heritage and A&G which you may know that I don't have lists on my website for those set builds. I still have about a thousand Topps Heritage to check against my internal needs list and then I may add the needs to my Topps set build page.

 I also sorted out all of the Topps Flagship/Update cards and boxed them separately and put out in the garage. I have sorted all of the different Bowman (ie: draft, draft chrome, prospects, chrome prospects etc.) as well, however they are not sorted by year or put in numerical order yet. The rest of the 21K have been reduced down to 5K cards for other set builds I am working on (rather plan too) that are also not on my website and the rest are in the no set build boxes out in my garage. 

I'll spend this week and next finishing the Bowman sort. After I figure out what I need and input the ones I have into TCDB I'll add those to my Bowman set build page. 

In other news....I am thinking of visiting Ormond Saturday to take back the plastics from my "Last Visit". It'll be on Topps Trading card day (another non-listed set build), so maybe I can get enough of those free packs while I'm there to complete the set minus the usual stadium give-away cards/sets. I might as well throw this out there, if you have any of those Stadium Give-away team sets feel free to send them my way, lol.

Adios!

The last seven days has taken some BIG names....Now Ryne Sandberg too

 Just heard the news, Ryne Sandberg has passed away. The last 7 days has taken a toll on people we all know of. Ozzy Osborne, Hulk Hogan, Connie Francis, Chuck Mangione, and Malcolm Jamal Warner also passed recently. 

May they all Rest In Peace.

Grand Slam: Braves cards: Needs from visit 2 and 3. Also TWO updates.

 Updating the info I provided Saturday. I pulled less than a couple of hundred cards from visit 4. I will spread them out over 2 posts based by theme. With that said (I say that a lot) I did grab a few hundred non-sports cards that I may or may not post separately.

Now let's finish up visit 2 (showing the Braves cards bought on visits 2 & 3. There will be one (1) post of set build stuff that I have to show off here in a post of it's own. With that said, I did buy a whole lot of Braves "stuff" on visit 3, just other than cards and there will be MANY posts highlighting that "stuff".

Hall of Fame on card auto in BLUE ink, pun intended. Oh....did you notice the ONE OF ONE Tom Glavine? I did.. Visit 3 cost me on the money side a few Benji's. I may have gotten burned on the Laughlin cards, but I definitely made up for it on the rest of what I pulled out of that wooden bin. Not to mention a whole of greatness found in the previously posted quarter bins too.

I did pull a handful of dupes of Acuna and Albies, but I have sent those to the PC boxes for now. :)

It has been over a month since I bought these hard to believe that I needed that Strider, huh. All of these help me to inch (back up 2 inches) toward that TCDB goal. 

I might as well give you a current update. Over the month of June I added a whole bunch of Atlanta Braves, got me under 500 cards away. Well, go figure the "other guy" seen his numbers jump up accordingly not once, but twice already in July.

Here are yesterday's stats:

Me: 32, 341 ( I do have maybe 50 cards to input right now). I also have a hundred or two sitting in various inventories online, not carts...inventory as I already bought them and I won't enter them until they are in my hands).

HIM: 32, 890. 

I think I am going to go on a MASSIVE parallel (cheap ones) ATL run. I'd like to get myself a couple thousand ahead of this guy and keep it that way. I mean for the last dozen years he kept me at 1,100 behind him. It's my turn darn it.

SHADOW SHOTS

 Howdy! I decided not to go to Tampa today, and for good reason. You see.... I went back to Grand Slam yesterday. My intention was swing by the shop for 20 minutes and then to grab a bite to eat (drive-thru). Yeah, the shop owner had bought a dealer out, and he had 200 of those monster boxes. Needless to say, I wasn't out of there in 20 minutes. I looked through the 6 boxes they had out in the shop. Filled a 3 row box up 2 hours later. meanwhile the manager Shawn (Sean) made me an offer on a quantity of the boxes in the back. I did my thing negotiated a bit and got the price per lower. Most of the boxes were 4 row and then 5 row. There were some 3 rows too, but I steered away from those for obvious reasons. I now have roughly 21,000 baseball cards and about 1,200 FB and BKB to do some sorting. If you do the math based on those numbers you come up with 2 cents. I have done the preliminary sort whereas 3K were wasted on Topps Flagship that I certainly don't need. Another 3K were wasted on brands that I have no intentions of building those sets. Now if you calculate the 15K for a cost per card and now we are at a smidge over 3 cents each. No, I won't be scanning a whole lot from this purchase. I will probably make up a 2 or 3 short posts highlighting cards certainly worth less than a nickel. 

Now....let us see what is in the shadows.

I see a gun. A pistol. Bang bang!

I see Scooby Doo walking out from behind a fence or something. You could also say a horse.

 

I see a golden retriever jumping over something.

Have a great weekend.

PC guys from the 2nd trip to Grand Slam Collectibles

 I did a lot of digging in that wooden bin. However, I did get a handful from the quarter boxes too. I've mixed them.

I would say 99% of the cards above came from the quarter boxes or the dollar box.

The cards below did not.

For the most part albeit PC guys, they go to the set builds first and if not needed there then to the PC.

Monday, I will finish the 2nd trip and combine it with the cards from the 3rd and was actually the last trip to this shop. That is until this weekend. I am going to Tampa Saturday and might just hit this shop up again on Sunday, maybe Monday. We'll see.

Have a great night!

Wacky Wednesday

 HUMP DAY ONCE AGAIN. 

Footballs, pitchers running and kneeling on the base paths mixed with a little horse play, a computer, tee shirts, and odd glasses.

Have a great night folks!

The 2nd Grand Slam visit begins NOW!

 The second trip (there were 3 in 5 days) was on a Friday. I had decided before I got there to go through all of the baseball cards in the wooden bin. I did that, and it cost me a few dollars. I was most excited about a near set of loose singles for the 1980 Laughlin set. I was thinking the $1.00 price on the majority of them was good and few others at 2, 3, and a couple were $5.00. Turns out that I had it wrong, lost my shirt on the batch. The condition was not great, and turns out you could get nearly any of them for less than a buck NM. Oh well. Here is what I got from the set.

This set is slightly taller than a standard baseball card, more like a "tall boy" if you will.

The Babe was one of the 3 key cards in the set.

That is what I got. 26 of the 40 cards. I did already own 3 all of which were in much better condition than these. I was so excited about this set until I got home and did some research. UGH!  Good thing I got a slew of other cards too. I'll do one more post from the 2nd trip exclusive and are PC guys (7 scans), and then one combined post with the remaining cards and the only cards I bought on the third trip. I picked up a lot of Braves "stuff" on that 3rd trip and will take 5 posts to cover that material.

Have a great night!

GRAND SLAM: 1st visit wrap up

 Hey folks, I hope that everyone had a great weekend. It is storming right now so I am going to be quick.

A couple of month back I had posted some cards from this set I picked up at the Webster card show. They were ugly.....very ugly.   These are so much better, they too are from the 2024 2025 Historic Autograph set (whichever one it is).

Extremely pleased to add those Bowman's for a nickel a piece.

And more than extremely happy to add these for a nickel!

See ya gotta go.

Shadow Shots!

 Hopefully, everyone has enjoyed this Saturday....at least thus far.

I really don't know what to make of this shadow. You can't see Champ's shadow. It is obviously the portable net shadow. Maybe a candidate for removal. What do you think?

This one is similar to one last week. I see a guy fishing or maybe a soldier.

Someone taking a gold swing.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend.

How about an after the ASG Grand Slam post.

 Congrats to my National Leaguer's for the win (even if it was decided by the "swing off". I'm not really sure just how I feel about not playing extra innings. Let me explain.

I understand the primary reason is not to put additional wear and tear on the players if it really isn't necessary. However, with the both teams you basically have 18 players in an extra inning, the swing off still involved 10 players (technically 9 this year because Alonso wasn't needed), so I am in limbo on this one. Either way, I am happy and will take a win (you know I can't get one with my Braves these days, lol). I consider myself an optimist for the most part.... most of the time, so who knows maybe the Braves will go on a 40 game win streak. 

Here are tonight's half of the quarter box cards from Grand Slam Collectibles 

(1st visit).

I added a handful of cards for the pretty ladies binder (plus the kid skate boarder/surfer)

I didn't know these Kellogg's cards existed until I found them, and because I do have an Olympic binder....... FANTASTIC FIND! 

BTW: did you know that Kellogg's just sold the company? (it was a trivia question last night, but the question made it an easy answer). We did not win last night.

There was a stack of the grouped together in the box, all but Zimmerman (#d/29) are PC guys, so how could I go wrong.

The Albies rookie isn't counting as a Braves, or even a set build need for that matter. I just wasn't going to leave it in the box (I actually grabbed 2 of them). I wasn't leaving the auto either even though it  is a guy I collect. Remember when the dust settled I only paid a nickel for it.

Low and behold the same can be said for these 6 relic cards (I know the bottom are dupes).  The Scherzer is a PC guy, and the Hurston Waldrep Braves card was certainly a needed Braves card, and it's a parallel too. 

I'll finish the dig on Monday, see y'all in the shadows.