Buying Barry.

For the first several months of the pandemic, I didn't really mind being "stuck" at home.  In fact, for the first couple of months it was kind of great since I was still teaching (remotely rather than in person) but I was saving about 100 miles of driving each day to and from work (52 miles each way if you want me to be precise).  

Once the semester ended and my teaching duties were wrapped up for the 2019/20 academic year, I was able to continue to stay at home with my toddler and do lots of projects around the house (including putting in a rather large vegetable garden which has done very well for me this year).  

In fact, I'd say it's only within the past couple of weeks that I'm finally starting to wish I could go out a tiny bit more.  Now, don't get me wrong - I'm someone who firmly believes my college should be only offering online courses this fall (they aren't but that's a discussion for another day).  

But, like anyone else who can't go out when they want to, I did find myself looking at buying some cards on eBay more often than usual.  One particular day, for reasons that I still can't pinpoint exactly, I was feeling like buying something new for my collection and ended up stumbling across a seller who had a bunch of different Barry Larkin cards that I needed...just the ticket to cure those "stuck-at-home" blues, right?!

My original eBay search was actually for a single card - this 2007 SP Legendary Cuts card.

Why this particular relic?  Well, it was easy:  The year 2007 is one of the years for which I didn't own a single Barry Larkin card!

That might sound strange, but I can explain.  For whatever reason, the card companies didn't include Barry in much of the 2007 products.  In fact, according to my checklist Barry Larkin only has seven cards from 2007.

• LM-BL SP Legendary Cuts Legendary Material Barry Larkin 125 Reds
• LM-BL SP Legendary Cuts Legendary Material Dual Barry Larkin 99 Reds
• LM-BL SP Legendary Cuts Legendary Material Triple Barry Larkin 25 Reds
• LM-BL SP Legendary Cuts Legendary Materials Barry Larkin 199 Reds
• MM-BL SP Legendary Cuts Masterful Material Barry Larkin Reds
• ES-LPD Ultimate Collection Ultimate Ensemble Triple Swatches Barry Larkin / Tony Perez / Adam Dunn 50 Reds
• ES-LRS Ultimate Collection Ultimate Ensemble Triple Swatches Barry Larkin / Cal Ripken, Jr. / Ozzie Smith 50 Reds / Orioles / Cardinals

Based on the above checklist, you can see that I definitely went after the lowest hanging fruit from 2007.  I doubt I'll ever have the Larkin/Perez/Dunn triple swatch and I'm even more certain I'll never own the Larkin/Ripken/Ozzie triple swatch!  Thus, trying to land the single relic #/199 seemed like the easiest (and most cost effective) way to finally land a Larkin card from 2007.

That's a long story to justify a single card purchase but the problem is that I didn't stop there.  I made the mistake of seeing what else the seller had for Larkin cards and ended up buying an additional 14 new cards for my collection.

I'll eventually show all of the new purchases in future Barry Larkin Collection posts but for now here's a quick teaser of a few of the new additions.

How many sets can you name?  I'm most excited about those Nova cards...more on those in a future post!

The morale of the story?  Quarantine easily results in overspending on eBay...or put another way, quarantine helps my Barry Larkin Collection continue to grow!