As I said, the bid board at the card shop feet away from my college has been awesome. In my previous 4 semesters at the school I had classes on Friday. With the bid board ending on the weekend, this ensured that I always ended up with good stuff. This semester, my last at the school, I have classes on Mondays and Wednesdays so that gives people plenty of time to outbid me. So despite having to go to school on a Friday the other week, the positive side was the card shop. I finally ended up with a great haul this semester.
6 cards, 5 of which are autographs for 7 bucks. Not bad and when you factor in the fact that these players are decent, then it comes out to a great haul for a low end collector like myself.
The Autos:
NFL: Tony Boselli, John Brown, Bruce Irvin, Dontari Poe
MLB: Ryan Merritt
The non auto:
Ricky Romero Topps Chrome #’ed to 99.
I only paid a quarter for Romero card. While not the most special, it was worth the flier to me. I feel numbered cards a tad undervalued and as a low end collector, I have to play moneyball. Speaking of moneyball, the autographs I got were positions that are extremely undervalued in the card market. I clean up on offensive lineman and have a ton of great defensive players cards as well. A comparable defensive player at a position like running back or wide receiver would be quadruple the price. I did pretty good on the autographs as I got 2 starters on quality teams, a Hall of Fame candidate and personal favorite in Tony Boselli, a decent receiver, and a lottery ticket.
As for the headline gripe about sticker autographs, the Bruce Irvin autograph shows how players are so automated with their autographs as a portion of another one of his autographs is on this card. You can see it in the circled part of the picture.
I have to be honest, it doesn’t bug me like it might bug some purists.