Last month when I received a very kind delivery of free cards from the baseballcardstore.ca, I resolved to get on the site quickly and pay for some cards to show my appreciation.
I sort of succeeded ... until Steven from the baseballcardstore jumped in and thought he could help me with my effort by finding more stuff for me, even better than I could, that would fit perfectly into my collection.
Let me tell you how that happened.
I started on the site like I always did, by searching for various sets. That's hit-and-miss for me because most of the sets available on there aren't what I'm looking for, as you can imagine as a vintage guy. I also look for Dodgers I need, which is even more difficult, because I have a lot of Dodgers.
So the set search began, and without coming up with any 1985 Donruss baseball, I decided -- heck, might as well pursue some cards from the set I've been avoiding all my life.
Yeah, this thing -- the thing I've been making fun of for the life of this blog.
It's true, I think the design of 1986 Donruss is headache-inducing but it's very time-appropriate. It also contains a lot of players from my formative baseball-rooting years, and I'm starting to run out of sets to chase that have those guys. The '86 Donruss set is major uncharted territory for adding my childhood favorites.
So ...
... I boosted my 1986 Donruss totals from "the most-neglected major set from the '80s" status to the "semi-neglected major set from the '80s" tier, on the same level of sets like '89 Upper Deck and '87 Donruss.
Almost all of the cards I chose are players who were significant in the 1970s or early 1980s. Some of them had hit hard times by the mid-1980s because they were nearing the end, and they're wearing unusual uniforms like Cesar Cedeno's Cardinals days. Adding these guys makes me happy because I'm boosting my collection totals for players I really appreciate.
So I mentioned '85 Donruss was a no-go but I tried another '80s Donruss set that I'm very interested in finishing and found four needs from that.
I've said that I plan to just buy the entire 1982 Donruss set and be done with it, but other priorities get in the way -- as well as not having the cash -- so I see no harm in adding four cheapies.
From there, the set chase veered weirdly into an area I didn't expect at all.
A whole bunch of 1985 Topps football.
I should not be trying to chase another football set at all. It's going to fall way down on the priority list behind baseball and the '79 football set. But I've always admired the '85 football set even though I know some collectors don't like it.
It's such an odd set. First, there are the cool black borders, and all of these are very nice (another reason I shouldn't chase this is I would now feel obligated to find other cards in the set that are in at least this kind of shape). Secondly, the strange sideways writing, although the loud, fat font is always awesome.
Thirdly, Topps received the right to show NFL logos a few years earlier but a lot of this set is acting like it still can't show them. So many guys on the sidelines with their helmets off.
All right, so as you can see, I was all over the place here, and this is another example:
I added a few more of the 1983 Renata Galasso Seattle Pilots cards. It's always the right time to add Pilots cards.
As for Dodgers, well I found a couple that I needed:
I was super-happy about both of these. Alex Cora Dodgers cards aren't that difficult to find since he became a manager, but it always feels good to snag one.
So this is where I was ready to pay up. The baseballcardstore has altered their payment format now where all cards are free, you just have to pay shipping per every 40 cards you order. There's also a cap on the total cards per order, which I get, this isn't a business with hundreds of workers.
I was struggling to add my shipping, probably because my brain shuts down when I come across new online instructions, and put out a query. They not only answered my question immediately but in conversation Steven said he could search out some Dodgers for me and add them to what I had. Cool!
So I waited a few days for them to be added and then ordered them and, wow, so much greatness, almost all of it new to my collection.
You get a good idea of the variety in the opening scan. Inserts, parallels, late '90s cards. People have been weirdly shady on that Betts Wanted Big League card and then someone goes and finds it for me.
So much stuff crossing off wants. The '89 OPC Steve Sax has avoided me because it's listed as a Yankees card. The 2023 Aces pair finally arrives in the nest. The Bellinger cards were all over the place in this order.
Having a personal shopper for Dodgers cards is great fun, especially when they find things you didn't even know existed.
Is that a 1963 Topps leaders card? Yes. Is that a Flair insert from 1995? Yes. Is that a metallic parallel Gonsolin? Yes. Amazing.
A few more. That Donruss Preferred Eric Young is the "Seating" parallel. I don't know why the '90s gave parallels goofy names. It's unfair to collectors 25 years later who are looking for something accurately descriptive like, say, "diecut."
Oh, and the thing that kicked off this Dodger shopping-palooza was Steven mentioning that he found a bunch of Millennium parallels from 1999 Fleer Tradition.
Yeah, I know the parallel is just a lousy stamp on the front but I had never owned a single one of these before and now I have them all except Jeff Shaw and a couple of Beltres.
Finally, one card that doesn't fit in with the Dodgers but may have been the most significant-to-me card that Steven found.
Another '78 Hostess from the Baseball Card Store.
All told these cards cost me about 13 cents per, and I cannot argue with the Just My Style nature of them.
I don't know if I'll ever be an expert in shopping on the site, but I'll keep going back because I have never in my life encountered this kind of service.
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