A First Leaf

Before the normal post, a quick confession - I hate selling cards, and I suck at it. I am not into cards for the money, it is for the enjoyment of having and collecting, but from the Santa Lot of cards, I still have some basketball which has gone INSANE this year.

When I first got the Santa Lot, there happened to be a rookie card for Steph Curry Topps rookie card which I sold back then and basically covered the $70 cost for the 15,000 or so cards. Yeah, I looked at the prices now, and it's gone way up, but that's fine, just nothing that I collect or overly cared about, and I expect what's happening now will calm down in the next couple years - I just can't see it sustaining.

To that end, I also have from the Santa Lot a complete base set of the 2007-08 Topps set (the highlight being the Kevin Durant rookie card). I also have another copy of the rookie card, and one of the '57 variations.

I could probably get more if I go through the ebays of the world - but the fees and process bother me, so I stick to local "free" ads which means Kijiji here in Canada. Again, I could probably get more than I will because I don't haggle much, and accept reasonable offers, but am amazed that these should cover the cost of the Santa Lot another time and a half.

The Santa Lot cards weren't bought for the purpose of "making money" - heck, they were the reason I started the blog, as a way to document the fun process of going through the cards - so that made it worth the money. I didn't expect to come ahead on selling any of the cards, I figured they were great trade fodder - which is true as they have helped be add well over 5,000 cards to my collection that I did want.

Is there a moral to the story? Not really - it's more so that the blog is also about my time in the hobby, and selling the few things has been where a bit of my time has gone this past week - should have the transactions done this week (another part of the process I hate). 

I don't normally pose questions out to you the readers who grace me with your time to begin with, but - do you do much selling in the hobby? If so, do you enjoy the process at all or is it more a means to an end - selling to get $$$ to put back in the hobby?

Anyway....

Highlight for today's pack of 2001-02 Upper Deck Victory is the Leaf card. Bryan McCabe played the full season in 2000-01 for Toronto, his first season with the team. This is a dupe for me as I did have one, but need the second for the set collection goal.

There was one other dupe - though no solace in it being a Leaf.

The rest of the new base keepers..

Including the first rookie card which is done in a subset with two rookied per card.

Jason played in the NHL from 2000-01 through 2011-12 with Detroit, Chicago, Columbus, Atlanta, Dallas, and Pittsburgh. He has 227 points in 455 games, won a Stanley Cup with Detroit in 2001-02 and had one hat trick in his career, in 2005 as a Red Wing, against Columbus.

Maxim wasn't as successful in the NHL playing in parts of 4 seasons before going to Russia for a few more seasons ahead of calling it a career.

Overall, pretty solid players for a rookie card.

4 Packs, 40 Cards, 137 Points.