2021 eBay purchase: can't spell "LaMarre" without "rare"

I realize I've hyped up this eBay buy a bit over the last few posts, but before I get to it I should probably explain that it's one I'm excited about for myself, not one that most of you will probably care about. Either way, if you're here checking it out, thanks!

OF Ryan LaMarre, currently on the IL for the Yankees, was born in nearby Jackson, Michigan (about 45 minutes from Ann Arbor) and spent 2008-2010 with the Wolverines baseball team before being taken by the Reds in the second round of the 2010 draft. While he hasn't exactly lived up to that fairly lofty draft status, I'm happy to see him back in the bigs for his sixth Major League season (not to mention sixth team!).

As usual I was hunting for rare stuff of my PC guys on eBay and came across a seller with two very interesting LaMarre items starting at $0.99 each. The night they were ending I looked through that seller's listings and found two more tough-to-find cards that I needed with the same starting prices, and this person was offering combined shipping. I was thrilled to win all four for a final price (including tax/shipping) of $22.50, and now this evening you get to see the fruits of my labor in order of scarcity:

First up is the most common and cheapest card. Nobody felt like going over my opening bid of $0.99 for this 2010 Bowman Draft Chrome Gold Refractor (#34/50) so I happily tacked it onto the other pickups. Gold Refractors often look quite nice--this one sure does!--and the price was right, so why not? Ryan has 11 cards in that product's base/Chrome rainbow (that aren't 1/1s) and I'm now down to needing the toughest: base Red (/5) and Chrome Red (/5) and Orange (/25) Refractors. (I really dislike the use of "paper" to differentiate between Chrome and the "regular" cards, so you won't see me doing that here.) I'm sure it'll be a mighty fine rainbow when I'm done with it.

The next most rare card is from a product I'm plenty familiar with: 2010 Donruss Elite Extra Edition. Considering this Signature Status Gold auto is numbered 5/5 (eBay 1/1!), you should have fairly high expectations for what's coming next. But first let's admire what we have here. I've really appreciated the look of this set and its various parallels--those die-cuts are cool!--since I ran a group break for it at some point close to when it was released, and even managed to pull a different UM autograph (of Michigan P Matt Miller), then worked on tracking down all of the variations. In LaMarre's case, thanks to my $8.50 bid (the highest of the bunch, but no surprise there since sometimes /5 cards feel tougher to find than 1/1s), I nabbed the last autograph of his from the set and just need to find his Status Emerald (/25) parallel for the rainbow--including owning the 1/1 Black auto!

By the way, I like how Panini noted that Ryan (#62 overall) was the highest drafted UM player since Lance's son David Parrish in 2000. A couple pitchers, Tommy Henry and Karl Kauffmann, came close to topping him in 2019 at 74 and 77, and then last year another pitcher, Jeff Criswell, was taken by Oakland at #58 overall in round two, so he currently holds the crown. For those interested, Barry Larkin was #4 overall in 1985, then Jim Abbott was picked 8th three years later, making them the two highest overall Michigan draftees that signed with the team that selected them.

How do you top a card numbered to five copies? You literally can't do better than a 1/1, or in this case, two! This pair came up in my search of printing plates under $10 and got me looking at the seller's items in the first place. We're going back to the 2010 Bowman Draft/Chrome well with the magenta and yellow plates of the base card. Side note: you can tell them apart from the Chrome plates because the image isn't reversed. I already had a 1/1 auto (the one I just mentioned from 2010 Donruss EEE) plus a plate (2016 A&G) of LaMarre, so these two doubled the number of that rarest of rare items in my collection, plus combined with the autograph above they put him at 15 hits in the baseball collection, just the eighth player to achieve that number.

I already indicated that the Elite autograph above was the most expensive at $8.50, but would you believe these plates could be had for $2.98 and $3.01? With prices like that it was easy enough to throw down a bit of extra coin for a tough autograph you don't see listed every day!

This high quality haul bumps my LaMarre PC up to 40 cards of 104 listed on TCDB (yep, I'm #1 by a mile), but out of the rest in my wantlist only around 25 aren't 1/1s, Minors cards, or other issues that get the lowest amount of my attention. I certainly hope that number grows a bit this year, especially if he's able to return from injury and have a bit of success (even if it would be for the hated Yanks).

Putting together this post really makes me appreciate how happy I am having switched from being a box breaker and set collector with no focus to a player collector that still has a ton of options of players to chase. That's provided me with the resources to bolster some of my favorite collections--especially the Michigan ones--with super high-end finds like these. If you get anything out of this post other than "Wow, those look nice!", I hope it's that evolving as a collector is your best chance of continuing to enjoy the hobby instead of getting burned out and resentful of what the manufacturers and flippers have turned it into today. Find a player/team/theme/mini PC to collect and have fun!

With nothing else expected to be headed my way that I'm aware of, it'll probably be back to the Sportlots stacks next time for more baseball fun.