The Mudville 9 E98 Orphan Project

[Casey2296]

Orphan- A card the general collecting public doesn’t want.

While reading the “VG is good enough” thread recently I was inspired to challenge myself to a little project.

I met another member on that thread, Andy “CobbSpikedMe” Huntoon, who became my Co-Conspirator on the project. The general feel of that thread was that “Hey, I don’t have a lot of money to buy the fancy stuff but these VG cards are awesome” And they were awesome, actually they were better than the fancy stuff because those cards had a story, they had history, they had Soul, their owners were proud to show them off and tell their stories.

So, I designed a challenge to see if it was feasible to collect a pre-war set on a budget.

I chose the E98 anonymous “set of 30” because of the glaring difference between Black Swamp Find cards and Original Circulation 98’s not only in condition but the types of collectors who collect them.

Here are the parameters I set:

Challenge: Build a one-color original circulation E98 set on a budget. I chose green.

Condition: No BSF cards allowed. Nothing above a 3 grade. Creases, edgewear, Grandpas spittle stains, some paper loss, all allowed. Tried to avoid any trimmed cards.

Budget: I allowed myself $250 average per card price. I had no idea if that was a realistic number.

Time: 6 weeks. I wanted this project to have a short timeline but it’s clear a collector on a budget could do this over a period of months or years.

Results:

18/30 cards including 13 Hall of Famers with an average per card price of $238.67

Observations:

1. My most important observation is how genuinely nice people are in this hobby, everybody I met was super supportive of the Project. I heard on more than one occasion “Hey, I think I know a guy that can help you”. It wasn’t about the money, it was about networking with other collectors and seeing what could come of the relationships, which in my humble opinion is way more valuable than the ability to “buy” the market. When I recently started collecting again and built my list of 300 I knew no one in the hobby, so meeting and networking with members here was a real treat for me during the project. You’re all still a bunch of scofflaws and ne’er-do-wells but pretty great folks as a whole.

2. I bought and traded cards from 7 different sources, buying my 1st E98 (Lajoie) on October 10th about a week +/- before the VG thread and my last one (Mack) on November 12th, (thanks Leon).

3. If you notice the handwritten “L” on the top border of the Lajoie and the “L” on the top border of the PSA McGraw (last attachment) it looks to me to be written by the same hand, so at one point these two cards were possibly together before, kinda neat.

4. The Matty looks beat up but the image is all there, there’s also a pretty clean wet sheet transfer if you look closely.

5. My hands down favorite card is Lionel’s Lajoie which I’m honored to have along with two Frank Nagy cards in this collection, I also had so much fun during the Project I think I’ll make a run at a complete set.

6. You may not be able to complete a whole set on a budget since there is always big boys you have to pay up for but it's clear to me you can still have a ton of fun on a budget in this hobby. After all, this hobby should be fun.

I’d like to thank member and Co-conspirator Andy Huntoon, member Mac Wubben, member Frank D'Angiolillo without whose help this project wouldn’t have happened. Also, a shout out to Al Crisafulli for a fun e-mail/phone exchange about the project. Thanks guys.

Enough chit chat, Here’s the cards…