You won't Believe What I Bought on eBay -- #4 will Shock You!

Clickbait is everywhere on the internet. It's on the bottom or in the margin on nearly every website -- everywhere from the tabloids where you'd expect to see them to reputable news websites. A number of websites -- like this one -- have even popped up to allow you to generate your own Clickbait Headlines. 

So, the next time you see my blog have the headline of "The Anakin Skywalker of Baseball Cards" or "Baseball Cards: If my tips don't make you money, I'll shave my head," you'll know that my blog got taken over by a clickbait site.

I have done a bit of shopping on eBay recently, though, and I did want to show off those purchases.

1.  1987 Sportflics Team Preview

What a nightmare this card is. I say that for a couple of reasons. The card was sold only to dealers in 1987 as part of a set. That doesn't mean that there are limited quantities necessarily, but in practice they are reasonably difficult to find. 

More importantly, as a player collector and thanks to the Sportflics "Magic Motion," this card contains photos of six different player collections. So, to have a "complete" collection, I feel as if I need seven of these -- one for each of the Rob Deer, Teddy Higuera, Paul Molitor, Dan Plesac, B.J. Surhoff, and Robin Yount player collections as well as one for the team set. 

If this were a 1987 Topps card, it wouldn't be so bad. But, it's Sportflics. Nobody bought these things. It's like Alice Cooper wearing the red protective cup on the outside of his leather pants in this video -- totally unnecessary and totally ridiculous.

So, this one goes into my Yount collection, which has inched up to 912 different cards/items. The next one I find goes in Molitor's collection.

2.  Jonathan Lucroy 2016 Topps Archives Blue Parallel and Base Card

I bought these two from box breaker extraordinaire Brent Williams. Usually, all of Brent's Brewers end up going to another Brewers collector -- a guy out of Texas who is a big Ryan Braun fan -- so either Brent got two of these or that other guy just didn't want Lucroy. I'd be upset with that whole set up if the Texas guy wasn't such a good dude. 

Anyway, I told Brent via Twitter that I'd pay what he was asking for the Lucroy if he'd throw in a base card, figuring Brent would have a few extra. He agreed to it and threw in the base card. 

I am on record saying that I really like this design for the Archives set this year. Topps seems to have put a little bit more work into it by selecting photos that wouldn't look out of place in the 1979 set. 

That song is over 20 years old.  Just saying.

To be honest, though, Lucroy's card would be a little out of place in the 1979 Topps Set. Only seven of the twenty-five Brewers cards in the Topps set that year (not counting the team card or the prospects card) featured the Brewers in their home whites. Most of the others appear to have been taken in Yankee Stadium or spring training. 

Still, I give Topps credit here for doing well with the 1979 portion of Archives.

3.  A 9-card lot of 1975 Brewers Topps Minis



I started looking recently for little lots like this one to fill in gaps in my collection. Sales like that Red Foley sticker collection spurred my thoughts toward trying to find sellers selling several cards like these as a lot rather than individually. All of these are in at least good/very good condition, and there are a few sharp corners as well. 

1975. What a great year in baseball cards.

Plus, I got to add to my player collection of both Jim Slaton (now at 52 cards/items) and Gorman Thomas (now at 61 cards/items) since I already had that Charlie Moore.

4.  1979 Open Pantry/Lake to Lake Milwaukee Set



I'm not quite sure how I missed this set before. In the early part of 1979, the local Open Pantry convenience stores -- which, in Milwaukee, have always been on the south side of town (other than a former location in Oshkosh) -- had a promotion with Lake to Lake Dairies to raise money for the MACC Fund (MACC stands for "Milwaukee Athletes against Childhood Cancer"). The back of the Cecil Cooper card below has the whole deal.

Probably the most interesting to me only thing about this set is the breakdown of Packers, Bucks, and Brewers in the set. There are only two Packers -- Rich McGeorge and Steve Wagner -- the set while there are five members of the Milwaukee Bucks. McGeorge is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame for his career at NAIA Elon, and he went through difficult times battling alcohol abuse. 

Wagner was included, I think, because he was a local boy who attended the University of Wisconsin. He was always a fringe/special teams type player, and he complained a couple of years after leaving Green Bay about how Bart Starr as a coach was a terrible man-manager.

These days, there might be one or two of the Bucks in the set and probably only two Brewers too. The Packers would certainly dominate the numbers. The late 1970s, though, were the dark days. Quarterback Lynn Dickey was hurt regularly, James Lofton had gotten upset and flipped off his own fans, and the team was terrible. In 1979, for instance, the team finished 5-11. It took another 14 years -- 1993 -- for the Packers to begin their run of success that has continued for most of the past 23 seasons.

To end this post, I'll give you a little trivia -- the Packers were the first NFL team with their own fight song. This song was first played at a game in 1931.

Thanks for reading -- more eBay wins and more trade posts are on the way!