Chaos and Kanji is the blog where I write about my adventures through Japan!

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Thursday, June 16, 2011

Not bad for $30 Part 3: The live ones cook better.

I have a tough time finding oddballs and inserts I don't already have. Finding goodies I need for my sampler collection generally entails house spent at discount boxes or spending big bucks on hits and rarities. 

For those of you who are new to this blog and don't know, I am attempting to put together a type set, with one card from every set issued. There are over 30,000 baseball and multi-sport sets that are in my list. I have over 5500 unique samples right now. I still haven't found a good name for this collection. I originally called it the Super Collection, which is pretty lame in my mind, and I've been referring to it lately as the Sampler Collection. I was thinking of calling it the Set Set. What do you think?

 Unlicensed sets and minor league/collegiate/draft issues like EEE, Just, and TriStar don't end up in my collection often. These two cards are from 2010, a year from which I have no EEE (until now). Iglesias is the only 2011 card I picked up to show to you today.

There are a few Barry Bonds in today's post because one dealer had a bunch of them in his 50-cent box. The All-Sports card actually had a double with it in the top-loader, so it only cost me 25 cents. The Wise is my first card from the A&G Highlights set, so this one goes in the Sampler. I want to put the set together though, because that is one beautiful piece of art. Griffey has one ugly insert going on there.

More oddball fun, with a Classic phone card from the 1990s, an Auburn University issue from the 1990s, and a Baseball Heroes insert that I already had in the set collection (but I didn't have one in the Sampler collection).

 Juan Gonzalez's head barely escaped the horrible design on that In Depth insert on the left.

 My most-complete sampler progress by year comes through the mid-90s, so it's always a treat to find a numbered insert like the Title Waves card that I need. That Ryne Sandberg was the most expensive card in my bag at the end of the day, at a cost of $5. Every other card you see this week from the show was $1 or less. The Abbott card is from a Team USA set I already have, but I didn't have an example for the Sampler collection, so I snatched this one up for a nickel.

Owning the card of the program is almost as good as owning the program itself? I think this is my first double from this set, so it went to the samples; the same is true for the Gwynn DK Heritage card.

Last, for a buck, I picked up this Pujols N43 box loader from some A&G set or another. My only problem with the A&G box loaders is they all feature minis on the front, instead of being an entirely unique design. You can keep the text stuff from the bottom, and the image used in the card, just don't make it look like a card on a card.

With the additions above, my Sampler Collection is over 18% complete! It takes approximately 312 cards to increase by 1%, without taking into account any new releases from this point. My goal is to reach at least 25%, which means I need 2200 more unique cards.

Tomorrow will be the last post from this series, and Saturday I'm off to another show for some pickups! At this point, my contest should be closed, and hopefully tonight I'll have the winners announced if I haven't already (I'm writing this post early in the week in anticipation of the arrival of family members).

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