With a Li'l Bit o' Luck

Back in June or early July, I wasted more than too much time browsing the card listings on Yahoo Japan Auctions. I occasionally come across a seller with a bunch of cards I'm interested in at good prices, and this was one of those times. Most cards below ran only 10 yen (about 10 cents - actually, 8 cents with the current exchange rate) each, with the relics going for only 50 or 100 yen!

 The seller had no photos, I believe, and sometimes vague descriptions. But at a dime each I took my chance. I was hoping this was one of those Upper Deck Baseball Heroes cards, but it just turned out to be a single from Collector's Choice. That said, I really like this card and forgot this subset actually existed. I like how the stats on the back show his whole career, and hide the fact that Ruth finished with the miserable Braves - sure he was with Boston in his last year, but he could have gone back to the Sox for one last hurrah, right? Okay, we know better, but still...

 Awesome! I love art cards.

 I think the seller was either a player collector or came across a bunch of player lots and was breaking them up. I ended up witha  bunch of Burrell.

 I got a great deal on this Ripken insert. Most of the cards went into my type collection.

 When Burrell and the Phillies came to Atlanta, the outfield fans would heckle poor Pat all game long. And then he ended up on the Giants and I had to like him.

 Donruss dumped a whole bunch of pointless inserts on pack openers in the mid-00's. They frequently had potential but came up short on execution.

 A pair of Rolen relics!

 Cheap relics are a type collector's best friend.

 Remember when companies bought anything and everything to put on relic cards? At one time I had a "master" list of everything that I knew had been used as relics in an attempt to eventually have a type collection of those. I may try that again sometime in the future.

 A young Burrell.

 Pacific tried. I'll give them that. There were some pretty cool inserts tossed into some of their packs. This isn't one of them.

 Pacific was one of the first to do rainbows, and there were some really low-numbered parallels in their product. Confusing and pointless.

 But then they also made these cool "playing cards" as well... with parallels.

 At the same time, Upper Deck tried to go "futuristic metal modern shiny explosion busy design" on us and just made crap.

 Topps had several "misses" with sets in the '90s, but in retrospect they are pretty cool. Topps Stars still doesn't appeal to me, but Tek, Embossed, and Laser are great.

When I buy on eBay, I usually have to tack on $3 for shipping, and the lowest auctions usually start at 99 cents. One card, $4. But a YJA auction starts as low as a penny, shipping is usually about 80-100 yen with very little increase per card (I've received whole 90-card sets shipped for as low as $2), and for sellers who accept Japan Post payments, I pay no money transfer fees.

And stuff like this often goes unsold if I don't buy it. More for me!

(Inspiration for today's post title.)