Goodwill Gets, Part Two: The Sets

I made another trip to my local “jackpot” Goodwill today, just to see what I could find. I did indeed find some “new” cards on the shelves… but nothing that was worthwhile to me. There was an ’89 Fleer baseball factory set, a ’90 Score, some mixed lots of 1987/86 Fleer… stuff that might be fun for someone else, but not for this old bird.

But my previous Goodwill trips have been so BOSS that I still haven’t shared everything. This post will cover the complete and complet-ish sets I found.

First up, let’s take a look at the shelves from a few weeks ago.

Each of these boxes were priced between $5 and $7. Those Bowman boxes caught my eye hard, but flipping through them, I found that these had already been picked through… maybe in-store, maybe before they even got there, who knows? The big card here, of course, is the 1993 Jeter, which was missing from BOTH boxes of ’93 Bowman. Anyway, I left these behind.

Lots of Ultra, Lots of TSC, both included decent stacks of inserts, but nothing that I was overly drawn to.

I was bragging on here not that long ago about getting most of the 1993 Topps set with a couple of vending boxes. And not that getting a near-set for $13 is anything to sneeze on, but here I could have picked up a factory set – COMPLETE – for $6. I left it for someone else to grab. The other boxes in this pic are filled with 1988 Topps…

Except for this one, which yielded a COMPLETE set of 1997 Topps. This one, I grabbed right up. Just $4!

And it even came with the inserts…

But look at how this was packaged. That’s weird… maybe this was to protect the cards? I dunno. What it did do was smash them so tightly together that there was a lot of “bricking” going on, and many of the cards have the “snowflake effect” from old gloss sticking and being pulled apart. Hey, look at that, I invented two new card terms!

I also grabbed that set of 1993 Leaf. It contained all three series and a bunch of inserts. No bricking here, but look how the curl of the card varies by series…

Even in the Frank Thomas insert set that spanned two series. Odd. Does anyone know what causes that?

The Heading for the Hall set is missing just one card.

And I got a handful of Fasttrack and All Star cards.

And a full set of Gold Rookies, including a soon-to-be Hall of Famer.

Also, this nice one-off card honoring Dave Winfield’s 3000^th hit.

I gotta say, I LOVE this set. It was a big step-up for the Leaf brand after it spent a few years trying to find its footing as a premium set. I don’t have an image of the backside, but they incorporate pictures from the city in which each team plays. It’s a classy design with staying power.

I also found this fella…

… which I believe is a full 1992 Upper Deck set. It even came with a few extras…

Once I get a little closer on my Topps builds, I might try a complete run of Upper Deck baseball sets.

Gosh… I wonder if these cards are worth anything?

Let me check the latest price book I’ve got…

Ah! Yes, Collector’s Sportslook… January 1995? Hm… well, the market hasn’t changed all that much since then, eh?

Whoa! I hope not! Man, a $55 set for just $6.

And what’s this?? That stack of Gold Rookies “books” at $100!! Gadzooks. I’d better get a screw-down case for that Jeff Hammonds.

So why am I flashing back to 1995? Well, because of this…

The 1991 Fleer Ultra Update set. This one cost me $5 and was easily the dud of the haul. First off, all the cards are damaged.

Yikes. And second, this isn’t really all that desirable of a set. You can get one on eBay for about what I paid for it, and in better condition to boot. But for some reason it stuck in my head as a rare item. Why? Well, let’s go back to 1995…

Yeah! What the hell? Why was this such a hot-shit set at one time? It’s nice to add a couple HOFer RCs, but this came off as rare as ’92 Bowman back in the day. Oh well. I’ll take that lump. And if anyone is interested in the Juan Gonzalez, I can do $10 for it.

I also had it in my head that this 1993 Topps Traded set was rare. But, per Sportslook, it never was. Nonetheless, I still needed it for my Topps binders and, at $2, I figured it was worth it, even it did look like it had been run over by a school bus and had cards missing. But just two bucks! I guess it was probably missing the stars and in lousy shape, but I got it anyway.

Well, I was wrong again. A Helton RC, a Pizza 2^nd year, Bonds first Giants card, and a Paul Molitor that absolutely breaks my heart. It was about a ten cards short of complete… all commons. Go figure.

So that’s Goodwill tale number two… I have one more a-waiting and will hopefully get it up soon.