2013 eBay purchase #s 2 and 3: plates and patches

A couple Sundays ago I showed off the spoils of my first purchase of 2013.  Today I'm back with two more buys I made recently over on the Bay:

Mike Hart 2008 SP Rookie Lettermen 'T' patch auto (#56/62)

Just as my first eBay pickups included a Hart letter patch/auto, so does this one.  For the hell of it, especially since the prices have been surprisingly reasonable, I've been hunting down his nameplate from this set, and I now have "A-R-T" which is pretty sweet:

Please believe that if I had any sort of "F" patch it would be in this image

This actually brings up an interesting dilemma:  there's an auction for an "H" ending tomorrow evening, but it's a slightly different version that not only has different numbering (out of 16 instead of 62), but also a different color scheme.  I have these three out of the four and they're all of the same variation, so should I hold out for an "H" that's the same?  That's the way I'm leaning, but we'll see how things go tomorrow night.

Anyway, I'm excited to pick up yet another one of these Lettermen auto patches as they look fantastic, plus, of course, Hart is one of my favorite players.  That's hit #41 of the former Michigan #20, by the way!

J.J. Putz 2012 Topps Mini Printing Plate Magenta (1/1)

If you thought I was excited about the Hart, just imagine how thrilled I was when this showed up in my regular search for Putz stuff.  Not only is it a great addition to my small 1-1/plate collection, and not only does it represent my 28th different Putz IHAS card, it also happens to be the third out of his four 2012 Topps Mini printing plates!  Way back last September I had picked up the first two in separate auctions for about $10 each.  As crazy as that was, I was indeed in possession of the Black and Yellow plates when this one became available.  I made it a priority to nab it for just a bit more than the other two, and a week later I now have it in my grubby little hands.

This is particularly exciting for me because I've never been this close to completing a 1/1 set before--the best I've done is a couple pairs of Rich Hill plates.  I realize how difficult it can be to pull something like this off, so I'm not going to go all Captain Ahab and make it my life's work to complete this set, but if I see it and the price is reasonable, that's awesome.  If not, I can be happy having as many as three 1/1s of one of the players in my PC, and that's great too.

I actually have one more eBay pickup I purchased before these, but the seller was extremely lazy about shipping and it looks like I'll have to wait a bit long.  When that shows up I'll make sure to get a post up for it as well.  For now, I'd say the $17.50 or so I spent for this pair was well worth it.