...aaaaaaand it's gone

So, also for 2015 Christmas is behind us...with all the dinners and lunches full of relatives and more food than we could eat..or at least this is how the last three days have been for me!

But Christmas also brought me a lot of cards, given to me from my girlfriend, who carefully cherrypicked them off COMC. In fact there are only 2015 Tier One Relics in the lot, and to be precise there are 35 different cards, that allow me to be only 18 cards away from completing the whole set!
It's an amazing present, and I admit that it would have taken me several months to put it together with my usual policy and using ebay... the lot in fact includes big names such as Tom Glavine, Randy Johnson, Bo Jackson, Chipper Jones and many more. (you can see the current coverage of the set here ).

Taking advantage of the time lag that separates me from the fellow US collectors, I tried to snag some more nice stuff off ebay. In fact, while they were still sitting around the table or opening their presents, I was already searching the bay to look for nice cards no one else could possibly bid on...
And I was able to pick up some very cool pieces of cardboard, some of them autographed, other carrying pieces of jersey or patches, and even a couple cards that are simply parallels or short prints.

Before the start of the Holidays I received a couple cards that I won as a lot, and since they went through the whole COMC processing routine, I can show them hereunder...

They both come from 2015 Topps High Tek, and are the only cards I have so far from the set, but are so nice that I might consider chasing some more of them in the coming weeks..
The cards are both autographs, and to my surprise, none is numbered. Here come Sonny Gray and Edgar Martinez!

Happy Holidays and keep colleting!!!

The 2015 in review

Since the end of the year is approaching, it's time for me to align all the figures and prepare the 2015 collecting balance.

This year has been pretty rich in terms of ebay purchases (the majority of them have been posted), but most importantly it's been a year rich of trades.
While in 2014 my only trading partner was Jeroen aka the dutch card guy , I reached out to some new fellow collectors, and not only the europe-based ones!
In fact, I'm now a proud trading partner of Kevin,aka the card papoy , with whom I already exchange a couple of nice packages.

I've also crossed the ocean, reaching collectors such as Tony at offhiatusbaseball , John at johnnnystradingspot, and Charlie from lifetimetoppsproject who posted this nice post describing the trade.

There's also Matt from the Uk, whom I was able to contact thanks to previous trades performed by Jeroen, and that's probably going to start his own blog...

As i said in one of my older posts, I'm not a social person at all, but since I found so many new friends and cards suppliers alternative to ebay, I'm happy to say that starting this blog was a very cool idea! I really enjoy reading your blogs, and writing the mine as well.

I'm thinking about posting a special parade of the most cheap cards I was able to snag off ebay in 2015, in order to prove that I'm not bragging when I say that I picked up this auto or that patch for a buck or two..

Thanks to eveyone of you, trading partners and readers (past, present and future) of this humble blog!

Since I usually end every post with at least a pic from a recent pickup, here's the latest...

It's a 1999 Upper Deck Retro autograph of Steve Garvey, not numbered, and seems to have some creasings on it (or maybe it's just the picture)..but hey, a card like this for a dollar it's a no brainer for me!

Best regards, happy Holidays to all of you and keep collecting!
CIAO!

Updating my stats

I'm not talking about my ERA or my SLG percentage, but I'm referring to how my card looting went this year...
Since my summer holidays haven't been spent in NYC (as per the last 6 years), I wasn't able to pay my annual visit to the White Plains card show, meaning a big reastraint to the cards inflow for the 2015 season.

So what I did was pretty simple, as soon as I was 100% sure I wasn't going there, I spotted 5 nice cards lots on ebay, and considering my birthday was close to the summer holidays, I was more than "forced" to pick them up. Here below is the list of the lots, with some stats relating to them, and then I'll post my collection updated stats...

I'm not going to mention the names of the sellers, but the first lot came from the United Kingdom, while the others are from US based sellers. Almost every lot included also a couple relics or unknown players' autos (which is fine for me). When talking about doubles I mean "cards that I already have", and not duplicates contained in the same lot.

Lot 1: total cards mentioned in the description: 2000
          cards efffectively included in the lot: 2031
          cards that turned out to be doubles: 701
          cards that were successfully added to the collection: 1330
          needed cards on total cards ratio: 65.5%

Lot 2: total cards mentioned in the description: 2500
          cards efffectively included in the lot: 2651
          cards that turned out to be doubles: 1248
          cards that were successfully added to the collection: 1403
          needed cards on total cards ratio: 52.9%

Lot 3: total cards mentioned in the description: 3000
          cards efffectively included in the lot: 3188
          cards that turned out to be doubles: 2301
          cards that were successfully added to the collection: 887
          needed cards on total cards ratio: 27.8%

Lot 4: total cards mentioned in the description: 2500
          cards efffectively included in the lot: 3033
          cards that turned out to be doubles: 1588
          cards that were successfully added to the collection: 1445
          needed cards on total cards ratio: 47.6%

Lot 5: total cards mentioned in the description: 3000
          cards efffectively included in the lot: 2980
          cards that turned out to be doubles: 1623
          cards that were successfully added to the collection: 1357
          needed cards on total cards ratio: 45.5%

The first lot was the richest in terms of good cards/double cards ratio, while the third lot was the most disappointing, since it came with the highest number of cards in it, and turned out to carry the most doubles...

So, in total I was able to put together 6422 new cards, which by far exceeds the number of cards I usually picked up at the cardshow, so maybe staying close to home for the holidays wasn't that bad.
This huge amount of cards is the reason why it took me so long to complete my wantlists.

Also, such a gigantic mass of cards helped my collection to grow to a total of 70.486 single cards! It's huge in my opinion, and also very diversified in terms of brands,sets and years...but at the same time there's still a lot of work to do, since there's very few sets I was able to complete so far...

Last but not least, these lots gave me many more (7461 to be precise) new cards to include in future trades, a couple of which are already on their way, with Kevin aka The Card Papoy, and Matthew, who is still deciding wheter to start his own blog or not...

Thank you very much for taking the time to go through this long and statistically rich post...

As a reward, here's the latest card I picked up (together with another that will remain secret) from an Instagram user, it's from 2014 Panini Immaculate Collection immaculate ink gold, and numbered to 49, plus is from Paul Konerko! Here it is!

Keep collecting!