More wins from eBay

Something I have tried to focus on with my eBay purchases is getting Brewers team sets that I don't have or at least have widespread needs enough to live with any duplicates.  So, here are some representative cards from those purchases.  Frankly, I'm being lazy and using a few scans that appeared with the auctions.

1.  2004 Topps Total Team Set.  From the "dark years" when I was away from the collecting world comes the Topps Total sets.  I bought an unopened box of Total with a bunch of credit cards points I could use on Amazon, but that was the 2002 set.  So, I bought this one for $5 shipped.  Probably could have paid less I suppose:

2.  1993 Fleer Flair, 1998 Bowman, 1984 Donruss, and 2006 Topps:

Yeah, being lazy and grabbing the images from the auctions means that I didn't have one for the 1984 Donruss.  Back in high school, I was going to try to save up to go on a trip to the Soviet Union with my high school debate coach while it was still the Soviet Union.  As part of that, I sold my 1984 Donruss complete set for something like $250 in 1988 or 1989.  I never did get to the Soviet Union (nor have I been to Russia, nor will I go as long as the nut job Putin is still in charge), but I did use that money for something useful like a Nintendo system or something.

Anyway, these sets cost a total of $14.50 shipped.  With the paucity of card shows around, I take the deals as best I can find them.

3.  1994 Topps with some Gold thrown in:

So, this was a strange buy in some ways.  For $3.75 shipped, I got a Frankenset -- some Gold, some regular, and no rhyme nor reason as to which would be gold and which were not.  I'm left with some holes there, definitely, but the holes are smaller and more easily filled now.  I guess you could call this auction spackle.

4.  1992 Carlson Travel/WITI-TV 6/United Airlines 1982 Commemorative set:

I'll use Mike Edwards's older, much more terrible twin brother to show off this oddball set.  It was a stadium giveaway, I think.  It featured pretty much anyone on the post-season roster as far as I can tell.  It was pricy -- $20 for the set or thereabouts -- but it is a gorgeous set even with the duplicate logos on the front.

5.  1977 Burger Chef Team set:

For $4.99 shipped, I got these 9 discs from a guy who must have a line on the entire stash of what was left after Burger Chef liquidated or something -- he has tons of these team sets listed, and he even has another one of these up for sale.

And they feature some of the weirdest backs, like the back of Von Joshua's disc:

I think I may need to change the name of this blog to that.  "Welcome to Crankenburger Baseball!"

6.  2004 Fleer Tradition:

Bought it for $5.  Overpaid, probably, but it came with short prints...

...and Lyle Overbay with a Brewer logo but Arizona jersey.

7.  1988 Starting Lineup Talking Baseball Brewers Team

I had this Talking Baseball game as a teen.  The cards are nearly square and are about 2-3/4" by 2-3/4". The team sets are drawn portraits, while there is an All-Star version with MSA photos.  It's not easy to find this set, at least in my looking for it, so I paid $14 for the Brewers.

8.  1988 Topps Tiffany

For the low cost of $4.18, I got the entire Brewers Tiffany set from 1988.  Mr. Kiefer, please model.

And now we see where the Parker Brothers people got their subjects for drawing their Talking Baseball cards.

9.  1991 Miller Lite, 1992 & 1994 Milwaukee Police Cards:

I thought it would be the height of hypocrisy if the Miller Lite cards were also the Police cards for that year. They are not.  These three sets came together for $7.99.

10. 1985 Gardner's Bakery Brewers

I'll close tonight on an oddball set.  As a kid, our local grocery store did not carry Gardner's Bread, Hot dog buns, or hamburger buns.  My mom would sometimes treat me to a trip to the nearby city where their grocery stores actually carried Gardner's.  I hate to admit it, but we were pack searchers.  We looked at all the loaves of bread and packages of buns for cards I wanted.  Chasing this set in that fashion was horribly frustrating and terribly expensive.

But they are beautiful, even to my 2014 eyes:

For the 1983-1985 sets, Topps supplied the photos and card backs, so that's why you get the weird electric blue Topps 1985 card back.

After chasing these cards like a crazy man as a kid, now I can go on eBay and find someone from Arizona selling FIVE  of these sets advertised as "From Vending Box" with "no gum or wax stains."  It hurt a little bit inside to know that this guy didn't really get it.  We didn't care about wax stains then.  We cared whether the cards smelled too much like rye bread.

Anyway, I ponied up the $10 and bought two of his five sets so I could break one up for my individual player collections.

And, this post does not even cover all the team sets I got.  The good thing -- again -- is that these team sets have put a serious dent into my want lists for Brewers cards.  The bad thing is that I still have to catalog everything!

Tomorrow:  the High-End stuff comes out.

Have a great weekend, and find some Brewers at the flea market/card show for me!