Giving Sportlots a spin

I've been a steady customer of COMC for more than eight years, from back when it was known as "Check Out My Cards".

I like COMC, and their layout and purchase process makes sense to me. I like being able to see what the cards look like and I like being able to make offers, and I've figured out some of the site's quirks enough that I'm very comfortable with it.

Once I find a place to shop that I like, I stay with it. I do shop online for cards other places, mostly ebay, but not a lot. I've never been somebody who has to go to 15 places to find the best deal and that goes for cards, too.

But the other day I expanded my options a little bit.

As you know I'm trying to find as many 1975 Topps buyback cards as I can. COMC is my source for most of those. But I've gotten to the point where I'm starting to run out of buybacks to buy. There are still several that I need on the COMC site, but the prices are most unreasonable and I refuse to pay that much for a stamped version of a card I was pulling in 1975.

So while still considering my options on COMC, I decided to finally give Sportlots a try.

I've known about Sportlots as long as I've known about COMC. I've looked around at the site a little bit but never bought anything. The site is fairly primitive in comparison to COMC or ebay and you can't see images of the cards. And one of Sportlots apparent strong points -- shopping around to find the best shipping deal -- means zero to me.

But collectors I know have been happy customers of theirs and I did see some '75 buybacks that I needed so I decided to place an experimental order.

I actually wrote a check -- yeah, people still do that -- and sent it to them. It just seemed to fit with the old-school site.

Then I set my "expected arrival" clock to four weeks from now. I'm not sure why I expected it to take so long. Maybe it was the paper check and my experience way back when with waiting 4-6 weeks for something to come through the mail that I ordered from a magazine (I'm still waiting for something I ordered out of Baseball Digest in 1979).

But the orders arrived today, a little more than a week after I sent my order and payment. I was a bit confused by the different return addresses, none of the names rang a bell. But then I remember, "oh, I bet this is Sportlots!"

One envelope featured the Tony Solaita buyback at the top of the post.

This buyback arrived in another envelope.

And the next three were from the same seller:

The World Series card is just the second '75 postseason card I have in buyback form. But, even better, the MVP card is the first one of that subset that I own as a buyback. I haven't seen very many of the MVP cards as buybacks. Maybe one or two others.

So, that alone made Sportlots worth it.

I noticed that like COMC, some of the '75 buyback prices on Sportlots are more than I want to pay, but I may have to adjust my tolerance if I'm going to make an attempt to "complete" this venture.

At any rate, I'm glad to have another purchasing outlet for buybacks.

My guess is I probably will only use Sportlots for something like this -- things I can't find on COMC. But I have to say my first Sportlots purchase was solid.

And the buyback total is now up to 336. That's 51 percent of the set.