Most Pleasant Surprise of 2011
 

Now that we are entering the second half of 2011, take a moment to look back at your collecting experiences from January to June.

What was the most unexpected item you were able to secure?

It certainly need not be the rarest or the most expensive. Just an item that you found in an auction, show, flee market or Ebay that you have been looking for for a long time. You always hoped, but never really expected, to find said item this year.

Clearly, the Baseball Card Gods were on your side.

The item we obtained was a sample of the Winthrop Moving Pictures card.
Please see link below, and good luck at the National and during the remaining months of 2011.

Link: http://www.oldjudge.com/auction/post-cards/285/

Bruce

Bruce, when I saw that card I thought you were going to buy it. I've seen adds of yours, looking for one of those, that are 15+ yrs old. Nice pickup

I have almost a complete set of the Pinkerton postcards (W530). Filling in the holes is taking quite some time.

I was able to purchase a Connie Mack off Ebay recently. The seller thought it was a T5 and wanted big bucks, but I let him know the postcard was worth substantially less. After it didn't sell for quite some time I was able to purchase it for a much more reasonable sum.

What a cool card! You need to post a video of you fanning the pages. Pleeeeease!

Bruce this is a really great thread! I too remember seeing you mention many times that you were looking for an example from the Winthrop PC set. Congrats! :)

Nice card.

My big pickup of the year was the balance of the T49 set. Not baseball, but two of the cards were uncataloged. And I never expected to find them all.
Plus a shiny card that's 1 in 18,000 packs.

Steve B

I was thrilled at the opportunity to pick this one up a few months ago.
JimB

http://img834.imageshack.us/img834/3...elchsgc201.jpg

P.S. Good thread Bruce.

Nice idea for a thread...

I never thought at the start of 2011 that I'd pick up an uncut sheet of 1933 Goudey Sport Kings. Now it's one of my favorite pieces that I wouldn't want to part with! (Sorry for the flashes; can't get a good pic without a flash off of the glass on the frame.)

Wow. That's an amazing piece.

Jim,

Wow.

Outstanding!

A Couple Overland Candy Wrappers.....
 

I have been searching for a 1936 Overland Candy Wrapper of Lefty Grove for about 15 years. This year, I found TWO!

http://www.bandkgreen.net/lefty_grov...ndy_colors.jpg

Money's been tight so far this year, so I've been doing a lot of bottom feeding...For some reason I decided I just had to have a '49 Gil Hodges.. I wasn't expecting to find a 1949 Bowman Hodges in my price range this year, so I settled for a 1949 Eureka Stamp of Hodges...Pretty cheap, needless to say, I was happy with it...And then, about a week later I threw out a really lowball offer on a decent '49 Bowman Hodges just for the hell of it, and it got accepted. I about sh!t. ..Now although, I hadn't originally planned on adding the Eureka Hodges to my collection, I'm glad that I settled. Because now that I have both, I find that the two compliment each other very well in my collection, and I couldn't be happier..

In a very close second would have to be finding the full July 3 1869 issue of Harper's Weekly with the Red Stockings Woodcut for under $20 including shipping.. Of course it was somewhat generically listed amongst a bunch of other issues. Gotta love those finds.

my biggest surprise was getting this Mordecai Brown blank back m116. Ive been needing both Browns for my Cubs team set for 4 years now. I couldnt believe my luck snagging this beauty and then a week later I secured non blank back PSA1. Now just need the pastel back Brown and my 4 year journey is finished :)

Attachment 41885

Attachment 41886

Online Shopping
 

I guess my biggest surprise was my lastest pick up.. the t206 frank chance ghost image.. I really wanted a Ghost image of a player on the back... and theres only around 10 examples...

seeing one for sale was a surprise..and a HOFer nonetheless.... but where I found it was even more of a surprise.. listed on a local baseball card store's website.. not advertised as a ghost back in the title so it would have been impossible to search for it and find it.. I just stumbled upon it.. baseball gods were smiling on me I guess:cool:

Trimmed T4 Obak Cabinet
 

I would rank my purchase of a trimmed John Tiedemann Obak Cabinet from a boardmember at the top of my list.


Patrick

A long time to find this card :
 

It took me nearly 10 years to find this card of Hub Perdue from the T211 Red Sun set. The only other one I have seen was in the REA auction earlier this year being sold in the whole set. I only had this one card to go in my T211 Nashville Type set and was sitting on 16 of 17 cards for the last few years until the Legendary auction and an oddball lot came up with the Hub as well as nice T215-1 Red Cross, and a superb Kotton example in SGC 40. I bought the whole lot raw just for the Hub, but trully came away with much more from that 20 card lot... Anyway, I am tickled to bring Hub home to Nashville!

Some from this year:

Wanted one of these for quite a while but had no luck finding it. I stumbled across it on Ebay one day and BINed immediately:

http://photos.imageevent.com/exhibit...osen%20001.jpg

My favorite nonsports card:

http://photos.imageevent.com/exhibit...ers%20Marx.jpg

My favorite boxing card pick-up. A previously unknown brand of Cuban boxing card:

http://photos.imageevent.com/exhibit...empsey%202.jpg

My favorite memorabilia pick-ups:

Carnera-Willard oversized paste-up for a publication:

http://photos.imageevent.com/exhibit...nera%20Art.JPG

Chesterfield Joe Louis ad:

http://photos.imageevent.com/exhibit...%20Premium.jpg

1910 Dana Studio oversized photo of Jim Jeffries

http://photos.imageevent.com/exhibit...20Jeffries.JPG

Great card Jim! How many N167s are you up to, if you don't mind the question?

Brian:

Very nice Combs RC & Vance as well.

Great Welch card, Jim. Presents way better than a 20.

After nearrly 10 years of thying to complete my HOF colletion I was two cards short comming into 2011. Eddie Plank and Honus Wagner. I figured it would probably take the whole year to find what I was looking for as I had only seen 1 or 2 Planks since I started and not many more Wagners in my price range.
In late January not just one or two, but three Planks came up for auction within days on ebay and I was able to win one of them for less than expected.
Then I decided to go for the Wagner to colmpete the collection so I sold everything I had been holding on to in order to get it. (mostly other sports lots of commons). Not only was I able to get a Wagner to complete the HOF set I had enough money left over to pick up a 1948 Leaf Musial! All this was before the end of March.
A great start to the year. We shall see what the rest of the year holds.
Drew

At the risk of sounding sappy, but I am by all means sincere, I have picked up a lot of things for my collection this year, but the best thing has been that, because of the sad circumstances of a friend's death, I have done a few show. I had not set up at years. I have made some wonderful new friendships with Ted Z, Dave at Baggers, the guys at Huggins and Scott, Lelands, and the Deans, just to name a couple and reconnected with buddies like Rand Bailey and Chandy Greenholt that I had not really had a chance to talk to for years.

It has been a great experience and I expect to wind down most of the marketable stuff in the collection in the next 60 days. My friend's family now has a nice start on a college fund for their daughter. I should also mention the items I have sold on Net 54 have often brought generous offers because of the circumstances, and I thank all who have assisted me.

Does this mean I am going to get back into setting up at shows? H*ll no! :)

After not doing much over the past few years I was able to add these RC's to my MLB HOF Player RC collection in the 1st half of 2011. There are quite a few that I had been trying to find for years. Many of these cards were acquired via trades or purchases from N54 members!

Two Dietsche postcards: (1) 1907 Tigers Ty Cobb Fielding position, PSA 5; and (2) 1907 Cubs Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown, PSA EX+ (2nd highest PSA has graded). Pretty tough cards, as PSA has graded only 5 of each at this writing, with no change in those numbers in quite some time.

The Cobb alone made it a good year!

Larry

Surprised how much I love these cards and the generosity of the board members!

Bought my first t206 (and first baseball card) in May, a very clean O'Leary double name and it had a 649 OP back. Then I wanted them all. In under 2 months thanks to several great board members and learning about snipping I have great examples of 30 with 4 more to go.

Second was picking up a very nice lot of PB backs including O'Hara STL for next to nothing.

My most pleasant card surprise this year was in April. I caught a t205 Shean sgc40 with a broad leaf back on an ebay bin for $40. Couldn't believe it until it showed up in the mailbox. I just got lucky and caught it within minutes of being listed. Small potatoes I know, but a big spud for me!

well, cardwise I've sold more cards than managed to buy...most buys were modest upgrades in my upside-down D card collection....I'll win that race to the bottom yet Leon.

but last winter I was able to ski some absolutly astonishing backcountry routes and mountains here in the high peaks of the Adirondacks, as we had the best conditions in years here from the beginning of february..it was day after day after day and were some of the best days of my life!

well, i bought some beater lowgrade cards I like too, a Purtell E90-3 and from my buddy Steve a nice D359 Bender that was too low, I felt bad.

I feel so blessed at the fortunes we all have and share and the great connections this hobby affords us.

buy now, worry later.

Awesome! Would love to do that but these days I am more of a Cross Country Skier.

Managed to FINALLY pick up the fearsome foursome last 4 cards I needed to complete my 1911 Zeenut set- Fullerton, Pfyl, Heitmuller (both large and small poses) and Ryan SF. I had to join with another collector to buy a complete set to get them but was lucky to be able to sell all duplicates after upgrading some so it worked out well. :)

well, ya know, I was kinda going for a positiove balance thread ..from earlier

Bruce Dorskind getting

http://the-best-web-hosting-service....anned-site.bmp




oh and this "beater"

http://i649.photobucket.com/albums/u...DahlenE300.jpg

Dan
Nice lot of cards, especially that E107, love the Flick
:D

Thanks Joe, that's about the only grade of E107 HOF'ers I can afford!:(