As I near the end of my 2024 pickups so I can move on to this year's stuff, here's a quick look at my last three Facebook Marketplace purchases from last year. It's been long enough that I think a few of the items got mixed in with each other, but those details aren't as important as just showing off the goods.
So in mid-August I made two stops in one day, which was pretty cool. Trip #1 was to a garage sale that was thankfully largely inside a garage on a day when it decided to be pretty rainy! I saw an intriguing bunch of sports stuff for sale and made my way over. Here's most of what I picked up for an even $40:
I'm not sure if this matted 12x16 piece was a stadium giveaway or from something else but I thought it looked extremely cool. The top photo includes lots of team greats, all of whom are among my favorites in the history of the franchise, plus it notes the Tigers' four World Series titles to-date. The bottom is made to look like an envelope with a cancelled Tigers stamp, and it celebrates Miggy's 2012/13 consecutive MVP wins. I'll get this framed and put up at some point.
This stained glass piece doesn't specifically say it's Tigers-related but that's the feeling it gives me anyway. It was just $0.50 and I ended up sending it to Paul.
Y'all know I trade with at least
one Blue Jays fan so I spent $3 on this baggie full of Toronto postcards. I still have a ton left with larger quantities of Juan Guzman and Pat Hentgen, slightly fewer of Ed Sprague and Devon White, and a smaller stack of Al Leiters. If anyone would like one or more of these please let me know and I'll see what I can do
Here's the first of a few boxes of cards. There was easily more than $2 worth of '24 Heritage in this box and I've already put some of them to use in trades. I kept a couple for myself and
still have over 100 of them available to help anyone who can use them (but no SPs).
This was a fun box to flip through since I love Sportflics! I don't think there were any I needed in the box, but for $3 I got some cards from the first four years of that product to include in trade packages.
This $2 box of '94 Stadium Club ended up being a bit of a bust since the vast majority were in bad condition (foil issues), which is a shame since there was a good number of the Golden Rainbow parallels to be found. I may separate the few good ones out but otherwise don't mind taking the loss of $2.
Once again I'd argue that I got more than $7 worth here. There were plenty of dupes but since these were new enough at the time I threw them up on TCDb where they remain available, and I'm sure I've used some in deals already. If you can use some non-SP base help,
I have almost 400 total cards up for grabs.
And last but not least, the lone single I grabbed was this cool 2022 Absolute dual jersey of Mize and Skubal numbered /99. I think the cost was a bit more than $10 but I didn't hate the overpay, even for a relic, because I'm enjoying getting nicer stuff of Skubal, plus the swatches aren't your usual plain white napkins.
With that sale in my rear-view mirror I once again headed in the direction of Brighton to buy a four-row box of cards from
the same guy that sold me this shoebox back in April. I talked him down to $60 for the box and happily flipped through it once I got home.
It's entirely possible that there were some keepers in here for me that mixed in with the images for the last purchase below, but either way, once again I easily got my money's worth in entertainment and trade bait. These were pretty much all baseball and football--my bread & butter--and were mainly from the past few years, filling in some holes in my trade bait.
I don't have anything specific to show off at this point but anything I didn't keep for myself or send out in a trade package likely ended up on
my TCDb tradelist.
Finally, early in September I noted a guy selling some cards that lives not too far from my mom's place, and for the initial asking price he was offering a bunch of prospect autographs (generally busts from the 90s-2010s), so we made a plan to meet up at his house to look things over.
He ended up being very fair to work with and in the end I bought home this stuff for $120:
Quite a few of these cards were either autographs (as mentioned) or bulk RCs, though like I said, many were scrubs at this point. But for the cost of one or two of my show trips I got a lot of value!
Here's how things shook out in terms of baseball. The first row and a half are prospects, especially 2000s Bowman/Chrome and Topps Traded, plus Bowman Sterling and others. The rest of row 2 plus row 3 are generally other base, some in decently sized groups. Row 4 I believe is all inserts, with a big, big portion being Bowman Gold parallels, but there were some other fun ones as well. And everything in the last row is an autograph or jersey, with more of the former than the latter.
A chunk of these went out in trade packages and I think I traded a few on TCDb as well, but I still have a good amount on that site's tradelist. I'd say the most "significant" card I pulled was this one:
It's been a while since Castillo could be considered a prospect, but an autograph #d /5 isn't something you pull out of a bulk box every day!
Here's a look at the football stuff (with a stray hockey card or two):
These are broken down in rows as following: base RCs, 90s base (mostly Stadium Club and Zenith from 1997, I think), inserts (lots of parallels!), and hits. The group of autos was smaller but still quite useful to me.
And here are the singles I ended up keeping for myself, again with the caveat that I might have mixed in pickups from purchase number 2 above:
Lots of shininess and big names! I especially love the 90s stuff like the Press Proof of Fielder and the Griffeys.
More shiny, numbered, and big PC guys. The Refractor theme was strong in this box and I loved it.
A few more baseball including Two Many Verlanders and a HOF battery of horizontals.
1997 Zenith treated me very well in terms of needed Wolverines but I was surprised by how many nice Brady cards were available too.
Both '97 Zenith and Stadium Club look fantastic, and that A-Train insert (#d /1000 on the back) was the cherry on top.
Obviously Facebook can be very hit or miss when it comes to card deals (or anything else, really), but that makes me appreciate these successes even more. I'll be back at it this year seeing what I can score on the site in between shows, eBay purchases, and blogger & TCDb trades.
But before I get to the new year's collecting, I need to recap my 2024 COMC Black Friday pickups. Stay tuned for those!
