Buy a Blaster or Buy Needed Cards on eBay? The Choice is Clear.

Finding any sort of current baseball card products to buy has still proven to be quite tricky for me, but no worries as I have plenty of older sets that I'm still trying to collect.  Rather than start collecting yet another set, I've more or less decided that for 2022 I'll take the cash I would have spent on new cards and instead apply that money to some of the various holes in my older set builds (and Larkin collection).

Today's mail day is a perfect example of spending that cash!  For what amounted to spending a bit more than a blaster, I was able to nab two needed cards for set builds plus a trio of new-to-me Barry Larkin cards.

I'll start with the set build cards - starting with this Don Mattingly from the 2009 Upper Deck Goudey set.

As you can see, I'm still missing stuff from sets as old as 2009...so yeah, it's probably wise for me to ignore most of the 2022 set options!  That being said, the Mattingly was the penultimate card that I need for my '09 Goudey set - and the last one I'm missing?  Well, that one has been bought and paid for over on COMC...I just need to bite the bullet and ask COMC to ship my stuff (and probably wait 6 months or more).

Next up, going even further back in time to the year 1999 we have one of the Pacific Team Checklist inserts.

I'm a big fan of this checklist design (kudos to Pacific) and this is a set that I've been plugging away at quite a bit over the past year or two.  I've still got a ways to go though:

1999 Pacific Wants:

Base:  260, 296, 425
Team Checklist inserts:  2, 5, 8, 10, 11, 12, 16, 26, 28, 29

Since the eBay seller had two set needs I wanted, I also decided to see if he had any Barry Larkin cards that were worth buying and as luck would have it, he had three that caught my eye!

First up, a 2017 Topps refractor insert numbered out of 250.  

I still haven't gotten around to updating my Barry Larkin Collection for any year after 2014 but I do know that this particular card was one that I didn't own yet (serially numbered Larkins are always tough to come by).  It's not my favorite photo of Larkin that I've ever seen on a card but at least the refractor treatment makes it super shiny!

Next, I was able to grab this super sweet Hot Glove insert from 1995 Flair:

This card has it all - shiny and embossed!  I promise the card looks better in hand than it does in the above scan.

Finally, from 1996, I was able to get a die-cut card from the SP Special FX set.

I never collected any of the various SP sets back in the 90s so I've gotten quite a history lesson in baseball cards as I've tried to track down the various Larkin cards from the brand.  All I can say is that I find the SP brand overall to be be rather confusing - but also many of the designs are quite nice so I do my best to keep things straight!  

That does it for this particular eBay purchase...and honestly, for the money that I could have spent on a blaster full of cards I (probably) would end up not wanting or keeping, I think I did quite well here!