Let me Wander through my want lists with Franco cash

 

Last month I pulled this card after purchasing the first cards I had seen for sale in a full aisle display since the early days of the pandemic.

It's stunning when you think of it, that out of all the chrome refractor parallels numbered to 673 -- hundreds of possibilities -- I would pick the Wander Franco card.

It's just as stunning the price it went for after I put it up for sale. It sold for $258.07. That blows my mind. It also boggles my mind that there were 87 watchers and 463 page views. None of this makes sense. I would never pay that kind of money for a card unless I had invested a lot of time into that player (or that set) over a number of years -- not somebody who just burst onto the scene in the last year or two.

But that's our hobby now and thank goodness in at least one way -- I got to spend almost $200 on cards I actually want!

You're gonna see them.

All told, I ended up with 65 cards for a single card. I won't show all of them, just the stuff that's going to stay in my collection forever. For example, these:

I'm doing quite well with the 1981 Coke set. I'm in the middle of a trade for several more so I'm going to go ahead and call this set (actually a collection of team sets) one of the highlights of my card acquisition year, already.

The Tidrow, Lansford and Randy Jones are especially notable as they vary in appearance from the cards in the main '81 Topps set.

More heavenly nostalgia. I just wrote about these. And it spurred me on to land the rest of the Fleer Sports Illustrated covers that showed the magazines that came to my house for that year from the spring of '76 to the spring of '77. I thought I was getting the remaining three that I needed from that time period but I picked the wrong Reggie card, I'll have to fix that.

I could see myself chasing the rest of the cover cards but I doubt it will happen. Too many other projects. I think this post shows that.

Dodgers. Yes, there were Dodgers. No real rhyme or reason with these team picks, just want list fillers. The Prestige and Fleer Platinum cards on the right side are a product of me updating 2003 Dodgers wants recently. (I would've preferred Bauer be the last of the '86 Dodgers that I acquire but the price was super-cheap -- I wonder why -- so another box checked).

Speaking of 2003 Dodgers needs, some cards from the greatest Topps chrome series of all-time as far as looks -- 2003 Topps Chrome and Chrome Update.

More 2003 needs. I hardly ever think of 2003 Bowman Heritage but these three complete the team set for me.

 

Staying with Heritage, the Topps variety. It's tough landing the Dodgers short-prints I need from 2006 prior but the inserts also dwell on my mind and it's about time I got a couple of them from the 2006 Heritage set. Who remembers Chad Cordero? That's how long I've needed this.

Moving a couple years closer, here are two needs from 2005 Topps Pristine Legends. That Zim card is a little underwhelming. A hat would've worked.

 

My No. 1 TCDB-ranked Ron Cey collection received a boost from Wander Franco, too, with these two cards. Both are parallels because that's mostly what I need of Cey for what's out there. The Pristine "diecut" card is just deckle-edged and flat-out weird. The other card is a purple parallel from Prestige that year. Sure, why not.

 

The only other Dodgers I acquires were these two team-set completers from 1991 Line Drive. For the longest time I knew Line Drive only as a minor league set and, like many things, it took a long time for the major league set to register with me even though I had some of the cards in my collection. What the heck did I think the Drysdale went to? There's a tendency for me to think of cards as some sort of one-off if I don't know the set.

 

Anyway, I'm rambling and the set is complete.

 

One other Line Drive need and this was the only Nebulous 9 card that I picked up here. This card was the most difficult to extract with scotch tape on both ends of penny sleeve, inserted inside another penny sleeve and sealed with more scotch tape. I has solved your mind-bending puzzle, seller!

 

I did find one 1975 Topps buyback I needed to add to my sportlots order. This is the 454th card from the set that I have in buyback form. So I'm officially at 69% of the set complete! Sweet!

Not the only '75 card I repurchased either. I've long thought I should upgrade a few of my '75 minis and Wander finally allowed that to become a possibility as I started with the Milt May card.

 

The Wander card also allowed me to scroll through ebay looking for random lots, something that I've pretty much avoided over the years. Doing it this time made me realize why I don't do it -- people live in a fantasy world 24 hours a day -- but there were a couple of interest.

I'm not a Tom Seaver collector but seeing three Donruss Seavers that I needed made me grab this modest lot. Then I realized that two of the cards were O-Pee-Chee and, wow, I stumbled into that one.

 

 The seller also threw in a handful of extras (McDonald's game-contest Miami Dolphins?), including this 1984 Donruss Action All-Stars Mike Schmidt. This is a proper throw-in!

I absolutely forced myself to plow through the reams of ebay vintage-lot nonsense in an attempt to break my vintage drought. Didn't get a lot done there but at least these cards were interesting enough and I didn't LOL at the price.

 

I suppose the Franco cash allowed for the opportunity to make a major dent in my 1970 Topps want list, and I did look around at the prices of Ryans (forget that!), Benches and Jacksons. But in the end my love of quantity took over and these lone two came from sportlots.

 

However, I have been enjoying hopping in on a the card sale threads at Doc's Card Sales on Twitter lately and I jumped in on a vintage round this time -- Wander Franco money, you know -- and erased the Carlton need from 1970.

I also erased the Yaz needs from both 1969 and 1970, too!

And that's just about everything that came my way from the Wander Franco chrome card sale. It was like going to a card show, on someone else's dime.

I suppose regular ebay sellers do that all the time. I don't have the time, nor the patience, to sell regularly, but sometimes you just know -- the hobby is bizarre, this has to be done.

Because the next time I pull a chrome card out of a Heritage pack, I guarantee it will be a Marlin bench player.