RLC Custom Card Project: Robbie Beckett

The Player: Not a household name by any means, but older collectors might remember the Padres first round pick in 1991 from 1991 Score or from a couple Bowman Cards. He would make his MLB debut in 1996 for the Rockies, pitching in five games, then would pitch in two more in 1997 making up his entire Majoe League career. 7 career games, 7 career innings and an ERA of 11.57.

The Card: Probably my favorite parallel, from probably my favorite modern set. I already had a 2011 Gypsy Queen template, so this one was pretty easy. I am trying to to repeat design to much in this project, but I really liked how this turned out so here it is.

The Project: Rockies Legacy Collection custom project to make digital cards of Rockies players who never had one issued.

Free Neely (or What I did with my ebay bucks)

Well, almost free, using my $1.21 ebay bucks, this came to 4 cents. Nice insert from his playing days with a Flair Showcase / Bowman Mojo kind of tractor tire refractor thing going on. A couple things to love about this card other than the shiny, is the serial number to 10000, nothing screams mid 90's like that, and the back has Mikael Renberg, who although I strongly disliked the Flyers, was a player I always kind of liked, and scored a lot of goalies for me on the Bruins in some NHL video that I forgot the year of.

The Most Expensive Checklist I Will Ever Own (aka the Joy of a completed team set)

I don't even know when I started this project. In my mind I can track it back to at least 5 moves ago, so that is right around 2001. I have been chipping away, adding cards, and after I picked up my personal white whale in Eddie Brown, the end was near. When everything fell together for this card it was too hard to pass up.

It was listed for a ridiculous $299.99 from big-time PSA seller 4 Sharp Corners, then reduced down to $90.99, still a little high, but everyones favorite online auction site had a 20% off everything discount, good for a savings of  $18.20. Figure that in with $6.00 shipping to Canada, made an expensive card, but something that fit in the budget.

The next step is to get the complete team set all in PSA slabs, but that is a long way off, but should get closer fairly soon.

Summertime Hockey Trade

A new project is underway after liberating my childhood Bruins binder from its banishment in a closet for close to 20 years. Collect every Cam Neely from his playing days. Here is the first step with a TCDB trade giving me a few I didn't have, some American versions of Score and a French Pinnacle. This puts me up to 180 different Neely cards.

RLC Custom Card Project: Sun-Woo Kim

The Player: Sun-Woo Kim had a very weird Rockies career, selected off waivers in 2005, pitched in 12 games with the Rockies with a 5-1 record and a 4.22 ERA, including throwing a complete game shutout in Coors Field, something as of today has only happened 14 times. He returned in 2006 giving up 15 earned runs in 7 innings and was shipped to the Reds.

The card: 1999 Fleer Tradition gets some mentions around, but I still feel it is pretty underrated with a big and diverse checklist, including and update set. The set really has some gems as far as photo selection as well. This custom is a fairly close representation, foil is always hard for me to get right, and the font has been changed to be a little readable, but overall, I am pretty happy with the result.

The Project: Rockies Legacy Collection custom project to make digital cards of Rockies players who never had one issued.

Trading Old for New

In return for some not so great condition wise vintage I had laying around, I checked off some more recent stuff, including most of the Series 2 base I was looking for. The two new Rockies in Bryan Shaw and Wade Davis, along with Jonathan Lucroy (who is ridiculously with the Rockies in this set) and fellow catcher Tony Wolters. I would rather have catcher gear photo photos, but I do like shots with the Coors scorebox in the background.

Sportlots Box Canadian Review Part 3 (Plus the actual Cards!)

The cards are here, no extra weird customs fees so the last post on total cost still stands. I really wish I would have done a video post of the opening, but I was too eager to get into the package. It came in a regular bubble envelope, and inside was what you see below.

Nine packages from the original sellers, some in posted PWEs and some in plain PWEs with no postage, probably from a bigger order sent into Sportlots. Everything was packed well with no damage, so this seems to work, and probably allows for cheaper processing as is it now stored by card (like the COMC model), but by package. That pretty much wraps that up, on to the good stuff.

Weird TCDB Trade

I mentioned in my Sportlots posts that my last two trade packages from the States never showed up. Well, after over a month, one of them actually arrived, and looking at the postage date, it wasn't the post office, it was the trader either forgot to mail it out, or waited until he got his package to mail mine out. Either way I am happy it finally arrived as it checks a lot of boxes off the want list.

COMC Everything Else.

Buried in my scan folder was the rest of my recent COMC order, starting with a 1950 Bowman Dick Fowler, the first Canadian to pitch a no-hitter and pretty much forgotten until James Paxton threw his.

Sportlots Box Canadian Review Part 2

On to step two. (Part 1 here) All the cards I ordered arrived at the "Box" and are on their way to me. 10 cards from 9 different orders came to $11.25 shipping. One card alone was $9.75 so there is unsurprisingly better price per card on bigger orders.

My issue was that the total is weight based and the minimum weight was 1 ounce, meaning my 9 order calculated weight was 9oz when the actual weight was still under 1. (It took 14 base cards from 2018 Topps to make an ounce on my scale.) A quick message of explanation dropped the total to $11.25 once they released how small my orders were. I checked after the first package was processed and the total for one card was $9.75. Again, the bigger the order, to bigger the savings. (Reminder all these totals are to Canada).

A huge plus was that the cards were processed almost immediately, whereas the COMC mailbox program takes around 2 weeks after the card arrives. This took about a week to ship and process. One package took longer, but I think that ironically might have been a Canadian seller. Also from the time I paid for shipping to getting a tracking number was about an hour, probably less, nice.

Also there is no cost for processing while COMC is a minimum $3.60 ($3.00 per package / $0.60 per card followed by an added cost in the shipping phase, I think it's another $0.25). The difference here is Sportlots doesn't scan the cards, and COMC adds them to a marketplace where you can either put them up for sale or have shipped to you. While these services are similar, it is really not fair to compare them (although I just did).

So here are the new totals. (Clicking on the chart should enlarge it). The $11.25 shipping has been split somewhat evenly coming among the 10 cards and added to the initial shipping giving me a total savings of $19.53, or $1.95 per card even with two cards being cheaper to ship direct to me.

I have to say I am pretty happy with the results so far, and unless there are any weird customs fees, $2.00 a card savings ($1.68 total shipping per card) are worth the extra week or two. I will definitely be using this in the future, and will probably let my box inventory grow the nest time. This time I just didn't want to let this little experiment drag on. I really like what Sportlots is doing here, two thumbs up so far.