2014 COMC purchase: Vladdy's your daddy (plus a shipping update)

Quick shipping update:

All but five packages are in the mail.  The ones that haven't gone out include:
-Sports Cards From the Dollar Store, because I'm awaiting a handful of cards from COMC
-Chavez Ravining; Great Sports Name Hall of Fame; Plaschke, Thy Sweater is Argyle; Raz Card Blog, because I'm awaiting shipping materials that will make it more affordable to ship four of the largest lots in the group.

Sorry to everyone for the wait!  Rest assured that when that stuff arrives I'll get your cards to you quickly.  After seeing what a couple pounds of cards cost to ship, I looked into alternatives, one of which is shipping boxes within flat rate Priority bubble envelopes, which should save me a ton.

As for the 20 others not on that list, many of you should be receiving packages very soon if you haven't already, including the three others in Canada.  Enjoy!

COMV (check out my Vlads):

I recently teased a pickup from COMC I was pretty excited about, and today I'm finally showing it off:

Vladimir Guerrero 1995 Bowman RC

With just a bit of credit left (and $3 set aside for shipping), I had just enough to have a reasonable offer accepted for one of the more significant RCs of the mid-90s.  I'd wanted one of Vlad's rookies for quite a while, but prices have remained stubbornly high for a guy who's no longer playing and isn't a mortal lock for the Hall.  Still, he put up great numbers, was a star despite spending a lot of his career in Montreal, and was simply fun to watch.  Nobody could hit pitches that bounced in front of the plate like Guererro did.

Over 16 seasons between the Expos (eight seasons), Angels (six), Rangers, and Orioles (one each), Vlad produced some pretty nice counting stats:  a .318/.379/.553 slash with 449 HR, almost 2600 hits and 1500 RBI, and 181 steals.  He was a nine-time All-Star and named a Silver Slugger at his position eight times.  Almost exclusively a RF (which drew comparisons to a legend at the position in Roberto Clemente), he was known for a cannon arm.  And he was recognized as a top-five player in MVP voting in 2005 and 2007 (third) as well as 2004, when he was selected as the AL winner over Gary Sheffield and Manny Ramirez thanks to a .337 BA/.989 OPS, 39 HR, 126 RBI, and 15 steals.

An undrafted free agent out of the Dominican Republic, Vlad has some lofty baseball-reference Similarity Scores:  his top comparison is Jeff Bagwell--a guy who may see the Hall himself--along with Larry Walker, future HOFer Albert Pujols, and current HOFers Jim Rice, Willie Stargell, Billy Williams, and Duke Snider.  Vladdy's HOF Scores put him in relatively good shape, though it's hard to know what voters will do these days, especially as recent power numbers have become more suspect.  Still, there's no argument he was a significantly good player for a large majority of his career--hell, his career low batting averages (discounting his nine games in 1996) were .295 in 2009 and .290 in 2011, his final year!

All of that is just a long way of saying that Guerrero was a legitimate recent star that was lots of fun to watch and collect, and I'm thrilled to have one of his two key RCs, with the more expensive Bowman's Best (hooray pre-Chrome days!) being the other.  I'll treasure it with the rest of my favorites in my Baseball Rookies PC.