2020 eBay purchases: Captain Comeback and the wait for plates

Things have improved a bit on the mail front over the last few days, and not just in the case of California rep Katie Porter grilling clueless and corrupt Trump toady and USPS Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. This morning I was glad to see that not only were two of my quite recent eBay purchases out for delivery, so was the one from three weeks ago, which was coming from Saginaw, MI, a city 90 miles away from me. That makes me wonder if the Detroit-area facilities are among some of the ones around the country publicly flouting DeJoy's attempts to derail the service, instead turning sorting machines back on and actually getting mail to folks.

So this afternoon seems like a great time to celebrate the two new additions for me that arrived today as well as one I snagged earlier last month.

Item #1 is that card from early July, a '97 Topps auto of former QB and current HC Jim Harbaugh. It's definitely a card of its time, with a design that doesn't set aside a specific area for the signature, and that's great. The frame around the photo is a nice touch too, and my only request would have been to zoom out a bit so the ball didn't get cut off.

I have to say that the back made me laugh a bit, referring to Harbaugh as "Captain Comeback." That's mainly because a comeback is a stat I'm not entirely enthused about, especially since in football there's a good chance poor QB play earlier in the game necessitated the comeback in the first place. (Can you tell I have to hear about Matthew Stafford for weeks at a time every year?)

Anyway, this is a fun card and it was great to add my third auto of Jim for about $5.50, a good chunk of which was shipping. While the Big Ten season looks like it'll (wisely) be at least delayed, if not cancelled, I'm looking forward to seeing what the team looks like again whenever he's back.

Up next is the first of two plates. I just won the auction for this one--a 2007 Bowman Sterling yellow of former Michigan LB Prescott Burgess--last Wednesday--so that has me feeling a bit better about shipping times again. Once again, shipping accounted for most of the price, which was around $6.50.

Burgess was a five-star LB recruit out of Ohio, and while I don't know that he lived up to that billing, he had a pretty good career in Ann Arbor. Baltimore took him in the 6th round in '07 and he'd see playing time in some 40 NFL games.

The plate you see above was used to make his 2007 Bowman Sterling RC,

and thanks to the very helpful frame on the front it's quite obvious that it's the yellow version. I'll admit that I wouldn't have figured that out myself without help. It's just my third hit of Burgess, who obviously doesn't have many--and it was fun to find something this nice of him out of the blue.

And last up today is a card that I bought so long ago it feels like I got it around the same time as the Harbaugh above, though it was actually a month later. I won this 2011 Topps Inception Magenta Plate of Braylon Edwards on 8/1, and the seller shipped it a couple days later. Please enjoy the following tracking information:

Damn you, DeJoy! Anyway, it made it to me and that's all that's important. I spent roughly the same $6.50 on it as the Burgess above, including similar shipping costs.

Again, I like the framing on the card, which gives it a nice look while also making its color obvious. It's my third plate of Braylon, and I'd say it pairs up nicely with this one:

the yellow version!

Combined with the Burgess, it gets me fairly close to 150 plates/1-of-1s. It's also my 90th hit of the former star WR, and along with the two above, helped me hit the 2,300 Michigan sports hit mark. "M" is for Michigan and milestone, baby!

I hope this continues a positive trend for mail delivery, but even if it doesn't, it makes for a nice treat on a hot Summer Monday.