2024 Facebook Marketplace purchase: Shoeboxin'

Tonight I get to wrap up the month of April 2024 in terms of my collecting with what was my third purchase via Facebook Marketplace.

A guy in Brighton, which is about a half hour-ish north of me, posted a shoebox of baseball stuff for sale, asking $100:

He estimated that there were around 500 cards in there, all fairly recent, including inserts, SPs, and some other stuff. Also, everything was sleeved.

This other image from the listing gives you a pretty good idea of the content, with a lot of it being what today's collectors tend to refer to as "color," especially parallels like Refractors.

We managed to settle on a $75 price and everything proceeded smoothly. As usual I had a blast flipping through everything and setting aside a few things for myself while mainly enjoying coming up with even more stuff to send my favorite trade partners (with most of the getting listed on TCDb).

A number of you have long since received your loot from this box but I think I may still have some to send out.

Anyway, here's what I held onto for myself:

I guess today's a rare day where I don't need or want to make fun of Baez since his three-run homer led Detroit to a win over Cleveland. Even if I eventually dump his base stuff in my trade boxes when he's inevitably jettisoned from the roster, I'm happy to keep fun parallels like Refractors. Cochrane is a favorite old-old school guy of mine whether he's shown with Philly or Detroit, and bordered parallels are elite. Kinsler makes two colorful appearances here (one below), both in Rangers uniforms, but that's fine because he was another short-term Detroit favorite of mine. Scherzer, seen here on a couple cool inserts from his brief tenure with the Mets, was also in the news today having eclipsed his former teammate Justin Verlander in career strikeouts to rank 10th all-time. Garcia, Rondon, and Travis never really did anything for Detroit, though I remain angry about the team dumping Travis to the Blue Jays even though injuries shortened his career, because the Tigers sure do love getting nothing for their talented young infielders.

Reyes, like a more recent Tiger in Akil Baddoo, is an example of a minor rule 5 success as he parlayed his December, 2017 selection from Arizona into parts of five seasons with Detroit. The gold foil is quite nice on the top card and the bottom is your standard quality Refractor. And then the oldest items in the box were a few 1990 Topps Stickers with PC guys Gwynn and Ripken starring on three fronts and one back. The flip side of Mr. Padre's sticker is fellow HOF OF Andre Dawson. Cal serves as the Superstar back for Devon White and Jeffrey Leonard while his foil and regular stickers include Mitch Williams and Gary Gaetti on the backs.

Overall I'm quite happy with how this purchase went: I got it for less than the purchase price, added a few fun cards, and picked up a bunch of fun recent-ish trade bait. It was basically the equivalent of a solid day of dime- and quarter-boxing at a show, and at $0.15 per card, that's essentially what it was, though with a bit of driving in place of the time spent digging.

Now that I'm caught up through April I should be back soon to start recapping five May trades (and more from the month) that brought me some very timely exciting items. Until then, I hope all of you are like me, basking in the time of year when baseball doesn't have to share the spotlight with the other major sports (though the Olympics may be good watching).