Unsurprisingly, what started as a simple trip to my LCS for supplies evolved into a Baseball card purchase of dollar range and dime cards. Today, I'll be recapping the latter part of my purchase.
Every month or so, I try to visit the Baseball card dime boxes at my LCS in order to add to my player collections without having to wait until the Sunday Baseball card show. That way, I can visit the store whenever I have time and return home with a sizeable stack of dime cards for my various PCs.
Albeit, it's virtually impossible to beat the dime bins at the Sunday Baseball card show, especially from the vendor that I do a ton of business with. However, the dime boxes at my LCS are nothing to sneeze at.
It seems every time I visit the store, the bins are freshly-stocked with new products, serial numbered cards, set needs, and more. Thankfully, Saturday's visit was no exception as I built up a stack of cards for my player collections, including a card that I've been chasing for roughly a year now.
Per usual, certain products had a plethora of veteran base available, all from products released in the 2010s.
For example; 2012 Topps Heritage.
Dime bins, in general, aren't known for having a ton of prospect or rookie cards available, and the ones available are usually scooped up by other collectors before I look through the rows. Therefore, over 95% of my dime box hauls is veteran base, and I'm totally pleased with that.
The 1963 Topps design is a beautiful yet underrated product, one that I was glad to see recreated so wonderfully back in 2012. The Yankees combo card, although similar to one featuring Rivera and Girardi, is cool, but the Anthony Rizzo is definitely my favorite of the group.
I'm not sure if this theme is common across the entire base set, but I commend Topps for featuring different types of photos on the same card. All 3 regular base cards above include 2 photos, and they both differ from one another, rather than having the same shot appear twice on 1 card.
I know that I'll never find a big-name rookie from Topps Finest in the dime bins or even a marginal rookie player, come to think of it. With that being said, given how expensive the Topps Finest hobby boxes are, I'm very content with tracking down a few veteran base cards for my player collections for 10 cents each.
After failing to live up to expectations in 2018, I'm intrigued to see how Giancarlo Stanton will perform in his 2nd year in the Bronx. Certainly, he must be used to playing in a high-pressure city by now, something that should boost his performance in 2019.
Since I've been talking about veteran base cards for the majority of this post, it's necessary to point out how the availability of these cards helps boost my player collection totals. The surplus of different parallels, inserts, and variations, although excessive, allows for me to have over 90 cards of Buster Posey.
Even though totals aren't everything when it comes to sports card collecting, simply seeing player collection totals rise gives me the motivation to return to the dime bins over and over again. Then, I continue the cycle of adding to my PCs, the main focal point of my entire collection.
Last time I looked through the dime bins at my LCS, I came home with a few of these holo blue parallels from 2018 Panini Donruss. On Saturday, fate repeated itself as I landed 2 more of these blue-bordered cards, one of Jose Altuve and the other of George Springer.
Speaking of Panini Donruss, the 2019 set was released roughly a week ago. While they still don't have logos, parallels, variations, and inserts are what attract collectors to this inexpensive product.
After landing a low-numbered card in last year's set, so I figured I could test my luck once again with a rack pack or possibly a blaster of 2019 Panini Donruss.
During the last trip, players like Nolan Ryan and Ken Griffey Jr were very prominent, for I brought back 6 cards or more of both of those players. This time around, that player was the ever-collectible Mickey Mantle. Including the 4 cards above, I purchased 5 total cards of the 3-time AL MVP.
Speaking of 2018 Panini Donruss, the card in the top left corner is a variation from that exact set. Instead of showing Mantle wearing a batting helmet, this black and white photo features the 16-time All-Star in a fielding cap.
Although they're quite interesting, the over-abundance of variations in Panini Donruss drags down the value of the cards. This year, I'm hoping that Panini cut down on these variation cards.
There's nothing all that special about Madison Bumgarner's 2015 Topps Heritage base card. In fact, I'm 90% sure that I already own this card, and I knew that before I decided to add it to my dime card stack.
However, I purchased it to make a point to myself about a much-rarer card that I found near this base card. It's another card from 2015 Topps Heritage, also featuring Bumgarner.
This next card is incredibly similar to the first one, but an action-image replaces a traditional Topps Heritage headshot. Even though I was pretty certain of it at the card shop, I was able to verify that this is an action-image variation once I got home.
Besides the fact that this card is going for around $10 on COMC, it's an incredible steal to find a Heritage variation in a dime box. However, this is not the first time that this has happened, for I have found 2 Buster Posey variations in these very dime bins before Saturday.
Now, the title of this post alluded that I tracked down a highly sought-after card during this trip to my LCS. I first learned about this card while cataloging my Manny Ramirez player collection online, and I stumbled upon this particular card on COMC.
However, the card itself doesn't feature Manny with an expected team.
That's right, this is a 42-year old Manny Ramirez as a member of the Iowa Cubs minor league team from 2014 Topps Heritage High Number. Dating back to his attempted comeback with the Cubs, this card has been on my radar for roughly a year now, and I was genuinely shocked to find this card in the dime bins after seeking after it for so long.
Ultimately, I found 4 other copies of this same exact card while continuing my search through the dime boxes. Now, call me crazy, but I ended up buying all the other copies.
I realized after how buying 5 copies of 1 card is pretty extreme, so I'm offering 3 of them for any collector who wants one. I'll keep 2 for my Manny Ramirez player collection, but the rest are fair game.
After all, it's not every day that you see such a highly sought-after card that you've been chasing for months in a box for just a dime. Whether I end up trading some of the copies or not, I couldn't resist the power of this oddball card.
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