2016 eBay purchase: a drought I thought would never end!

Welcome to those of you who came over here from TMV this afternoon.  If you read that post you saw some sweet PC additions to my Lou Whitaker collection as part of a 13-card purchase from eBayer BurbankSportsCards.  In that post I mentioned that the impetus of that buy was some help to my favorite PC--that of Rich Hill.  It actually all started with one specific card, and I'll show it off in just a minute.

It's a card I've been chasing for quite a while, and while it wasn't as long as the Cubs' World Series drought, sometimes it felt like it.  Have you ever seen literally one copy of a card you need on eBay, but it's owned by a seller that never, ever, ever changes their ridiculously inflated asking price?  And by "ever" I'm talking years.  Sure, they even make it a Buy It Now auction, though you can't fathom why since they never accept any offers.

That's the situation I found myself in last Friday when I finally found a second copy of that card from the aforementioned seller, and that led to even more good fortune to the tune of 13 total cards.  Six of those are featured in the Whitaker post on TMV, and the other seven, comprising four players, are right here:

Rich Hill 2008 Upper Deck Documentary Gold (#1855)

Rich Hill 2008 Upper Deck Heroes Light Blue (#21/49)

Rich Hill 2009 O-Pee-Chee Black

The UD Documentary and O-Pee-Chee parallels are all well and good--I certainly needed them.  The Documentary set has been a bit of a thorn in my side since there's so freaking many cards and each has one of those Gold parallels.  And the OPC is a card I could have had for a while at this price if I was so inclined, but at least it's another mark off the checklist.

But the big winner here is the Heroes card.  I've long been working on Hill's run--28 cards--from this very cool product, and I even have most of his hits out of it.  But the Light Blue parallel, numbered to an ostensibly reasonable 49, had eluded my grasp until now because an eBay seller has wanted $10 plus shipping.  For years.  Forget that.  Luckily Burbank came along and wanted just $2 for it.  SOLD.  With this pickup I need just three from the set:  the Purple parallel (#d /25), plus the Jersey/Autograph Emerald and Purple Autograph (each /5).  Hopefully they won't take as long for me to get as this one.

By the way, a bit more celebration is in order for the NLCS game 3 winner today:  these additions put me at exactly 250 of his non-1/1 issues!  That gives me 267 overall, and I can claim ownership of about 2/3 of his cards to-date, which at present I number at 369.  I'm happy to see that that number keeps growing as Hill's returned to relevance.

Joining Rich were cards of three other players:

Steve Howe 1993 Upper Deck Gold Hologram

These pesky cards, likely familiar to at least some of you, came as part of one complete set per 15-set case of this product.  Lame parallels are bad enough but it's even worse when the only difference is a minute detail on the back of the card.  Anyway, this was the last of Howe's run I needed through 1993, and I'm short just three of his 81 cards:  '94 Stadium Club Team First Day Issue, and '96 Leaf Signature Silver and Gold autos.  Not bad!

Scott Kamieniecki 1997 Ultra Gold Medallion

Here's another card I could have had for a while but left until this purchase since I never found a better price.  It's been a while since I added a new Kamieniecki to his PC, and I'm happy to land another card from one of my favorite products, 1997 Ultra.  The Gold and Platinum Medallion cards each feature the same photo which happens to be different than the one used for the base card, though I think the latter actually has the cooler photo.  As far as this set goes, though, you can't go wrong!  As with Howe, I just need three of Scott's 90 cards to complete his collection:  '94 Collector's Choice Gold Signature, and '98 Pacific Online Web Cards and Winners.

Brian Simmons 1999 Fleer Tradition Millennium and Warning Track

Last up is former White Sox OF Brian Simmons, a guy you don't see very often around here since he only has 35 cards for me to chase.  With this pair I'm close to 2/3 of that run with 23.  Both are parallels from Fleer's pretty solid 1999 Tradition product.  Their flagship set looked pretty good in 1998 and '99, though I still prefer the very cool card stock they used in 1996-97 and 2000.  Here they made good use of a stamp for a significant event or achievement, in this case Brian's MLB debut.  The Millennium version is unnumbered but limited to 5000 copies as part of a special boxed set that features a stamp for the year 2000.  Warning Track parallels were one-per-pack, and these more common versions changed the foil color to red, including the set name's stamp in the lower-right corner.  That just leaves me to chase the extremely rare Starting Nine card, numbered to--you guessed it--nine copies!

I'd be hard-pressed to be more productive in one purchase than this these days, so I'm very happy with the results.

Next up will be a trade package from a very familiar blogger.