A Highly Sought-After Card, Among Other Things

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.

The New Player Collection Tiers

In an effort to have a complete list of all the players I collect in one document and know all the totals at once, I spent my day off today completing said list in what I call my player collection tiers.

The complete list, which can be found here, is complete with all 245 players I collect and the total number of cards next to them. Those numbers range from as low as 8 total cards all the way up to 447, one wide range if I've ever seen one.

As a way to make it easier to have these 245 names in one place, I developed 4 separate tiers, 1 tier for each player collection to fall into. In this post, I'll be explaining what each tier requires for a total number of cards as well as a brief description of some of the players in each tier and how many made the cut.

Tier #1 consists of just 4 players out of 245 and is the highest tier, for now, on the list. This is what I'll be calling the Platinum Tier, featuring my 4 player collections with 200 cards or more. 

First up, we have the largest out of all my player collections. At 447 cards, the total I mentioned before to be the highest, Nolan Ryan has a comfortable 200+ card margin between him and the next subject on this list. As soon as I find 3 more cards of his to bring the total to 450, the next task will be the once unfathomable feat of having a 500-card player collection.

Maddux recently joined the 200-card club, or I suppose I should say Platinum Tier, as recent as a month or two ago, but he's already catapulted past a heavy-hitter to become my 2nd largest player selection at a grand total of 238 cards and counting. Consisting of mainly Braves cards from the mid to late 1990's, Maddux's player collection is one that typically brings home 5-10 cards from a show.

With 234 cards, Manny Ramirez is anything but far away from the 2nd largest player collection spot that he held for a while, or at least as long as I've been counting PC totals. However, the lack of Ramirez cards in the dime bins and the abundance of Greg Maddux cards likely means the gap between these 2 is only going to increase over the years.

Finally, the newest member of the Platinum Tier just snuck in here after last weekend's card show which delivered 10 new cards for the collection. Ken Griffey Jr., whose player collection currently rests at 205 cards, has been extremely prominent in the dime boxes dating back well over a year. Given that it wasn't too long ago that he was just over 100 cards, it's clear that the last year or so has been good for the Griffey Jr. PC.

Don't worry, I'm not going to go that in-depth for each and every tier. I simply wanted to elaborate on the very first one, since it includes all my largest player collection and consists of just 4 players. Next up, the 2nd tier aka the Gold Tier.

Even if you don't count members of the Platinum Tier as Gold Tier members despite meeting the requirement of 100 cards or more, you still have a tier that consists of 32 members, 36 if the top 4 players from the Platinum Tier are added. From as long ago as Babe Ruth to as recent as Craig Kimbrel and Joey Votto, the Gold Tier is the level that I strive for each PC to reach. 

Within this particular tier, you have a few players closing in on Platinum Tier status. For example, David Ortiz who is just 9 cards away from becoming the 5th player to reach the 200-card mark in my collection.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have 2 members of the Gold Tier who have just recently made it in as they currently both sit at 100 cards exactly. After last weekend's show, Jeff Bagwell and Frank Robinson both obtained the necessary cards to reach the 100-card total, no more and no less. After them, you have a gradual increase all the way up to the top of the Gold Tier.

With 66 players included in it, Gold and Platinum Tiers notwithstanding, the Silver Tier is a mark reached by player collections on their way to higher status. By this point, a player collection has reached the 50-card mark, proving that this player collection is not stagnant but rather one that will continue to grow throughout the near and distant future.

Located directly below the Gold Tier, the player collection Silver Tier encompasses player collections starting at 50 cards and through 99 total cards. As for the players whose collections have yet to reach 50 total cards, their player collections are part of the 4th, final, and tier with most total members; the Bronze Tier.

Made up of all remaining players who have yet to be included in a tier, the Bronze Tier includes a whopping 143 total players, conceivably ranging from 0 cards all the way to 49. However, the lowest number of cards in any one of my PCs is 8, a total belonging to 2 players (Curt Flood and J.R. Richard).

While some players may be stuck in the Bronze Tier forever due to how infrequently I see their cards at the show, other members are young, current players who I expect to make it to the Silver Tier and beyond in the future. In fact, there are 33 total players who currently sit 10 or fewer cards away from the Silver Tier status, including 2 (Stan Musial and Madison Bumgarner) who are just 1 card away, sitting at 49 as I type this post.

When I was making this list today, I created it not with the intentions to become number-obsessed and only care about player collection totals but rather, as a way to have a complete list of all my player collections and their respective totals organized in one place. 

To have this new information on tiers and know who's close to a certain total, that's simply a bonus.