Human see, human do

 

I received my first COMC order of the year Monday. I requested shipment on July 12 and it was originally slated to arrive in late August. Instead it showed up in 17 days. That's record time.

During a period when ebay service is all over the map (yet I am hounded by PROVIDE FEEDBACK emails the second I receive an order), it's nice to see someone picking up the slack, especially with all the past complaints about COMC delays.

 

This COMC order is a reflection of my tour through various web sites, card blogs, social media, whatever. Whenever I saw a card that I liked, into the COMC cart it went. That means sometimes when I pulled a card out of the shipment I was like "what'd I order this for?" The only explanation is "human see, human do." I wanted the card at that time.

 

So here's a look at me jumping off a bridge just because everyone else did it.

 

Much of these knee-jerk orders involved Dodger cards. I couldn't tell you where or when I saw these ones originally but I know I wanted them. That Prizm Kershaw card is likely the oldest resident of the cart, it may even go back to 2023.

 

A couple more difficult-to-find Dodgers from recent times. The Sutton is a short-print. The Saito is an insert from 2007 Upper Deck Spectrum called "Rookie Retrospectrum," not to be confused with another insert called "Season Retrospectrum." Weird set.

A couple of 2024 Injured Pitchers from the yellow parallel set. My interest in the yellow parallels has since been surpassed by the aqua parallels. I've really tried to put a lid on chasing those because I like them a lot and it's just the kind of thing that prevents me from landing longer-lasting stuff.

 

How about this? Late '90s Dodgers? I can't say this has been the most appealing era for me, but at some point in the last 6 months I wanted to do some damage here. I can probably explain the Nomo by discovering gold parallels to that Donruss Elite set and seeking the best sample. But then I discovered I didn't have the regular base Elite Nomo and this makes me sad.

More late '90s gold discoveries. 1998 Studio had gold parallels? So I added two of the cheapest ones I could find.

This I know was the result of seeing a post on the cards as I see them blog. Jim had picked up some 2022 Pristine Dodgers. When reading it I knew I had some of these myself, so why not get all of them? Team set now complete.

Topps Archives inserts aren't easy to remember. They show up when the set is released and are immediately difficult to find for a decent price, then disappear from my brain. This one is from 2021 and a Dodger fan of my age should have it.

 

More Dodgers, mostly from an era I can explain more than the late '90s. The tiny Ron Cey is a 1981 All-Star Game program insert. It's wild that collectors cut these so carefully. There are a bunch of Dodgers from this "set" but I can't see myself getting any others.

The Classic Belcher is super welcome as the last Dodger I need from this particular one. The Bob Welch is from one of those pesky Sportflics sets (i.e. not 1986 or 1987). This shot produced the Welch portrait picture.

This one got Welch throwing. Now you know why I don't chase these more.

 

I didn't see this card anywhere else except my own binder. I've owned the 1959 Don Drysdale for a long time and have been quite happy with the copy I had. It sits with all the other 1959 Dodgers in that binder -- as the worst-conditioned one.

There it is. It was time to upgrade. Sometimes I get sick of "settling" when chasing star players for my vintage team sets. Why does the star always have to be in the worst condition? Now it's not -- at least for '59 Drysdale.

And, yeah, I'll keep the Drysdale with a bite out of it.

 

That does it for the Dodgers in the order but I added some other cards. This was the only Hostess card added. I don't know why it's here, other than it is one of many 1975 Hostess I need and also to make sure that at least someone could spell Cuellar's name right in 1975. I could have picked up more, but that's for another selling site and another post you'll see later.

 

I mentioned on the Dave Trembley post that I should start adding his minor league cards. He spent most of his career in the minors so my collection should reflect that. Here is the first one.

 

 

Adding some 1977 O-Pee-Chee didn't have anything to do with seeing this anywhere else. It's been an ongoing objective for awhile. I'm still targeting mostly cards that differ from the 1977 Topps set. All of these check that box.

The Dave Roberts card shows how OPC could absolutely dunk on Topps at times. The '77 Topps card of Roberts shows a head shot of Topps with an airbrushed Blue Jays hat, as he was a pick in the expansion draft in November 1976. But three months later, the Blue Jays traded Roberts back to the Padres, allowing OPC to have an actual updated card while the Topps one was already out of date.

The Porter and Kendall cards are also vastly different from the Topps counterparts in both team and photo. No updating points for Kendall though on the back of his card.

The French was added in all the right spots, but no update for the first line of the blurb, Fred can't be the only original Padre on the club if he's been traded to Cleveland!

A few more. All variations from 1977 Topps, which means they are MIND-BLOWING to someone who collected Topps in '77 as a 12-year-old.

Since I was in an OPC frame of mind on COMC I also added the 1987 Greg Brock that's at the top of the post -- one of those stealth Dodger cards -- and a handful of others that caught my eye.

 

All wonderful and glorious. That Oscar Gamble has been a want for a long time.

Amazingly to me I have half of the 1977 OPC set now, so there's no choice to just keep going.

There's a good chance that set will be part of my next COMC order, but I think I'll focus a little more on specific other set chases rather than random Dodgers.

Still, I'm making progress on those other set pursuits, too. You'll see that in the next few days.