30 Day Baseball Card Challenge

Monday, March 23, 2015

Flea Market Flipping = Discounted Koufax Auto

Back in February, I purchased two boxes worth of 2015 Topps jumbo baseball at the Branham Flea Market for $25.  I was able to build a complete base set and add thirty-nine cards to my insert & parallels binders.

In the process of sorting and sifting through the cards, I discovered some of the ar•che•types inserts were missing the silver foil on the front.  After scouring eBay, I noticed that there were only a few listings and some of them were commanding a decent dime.


Now usually, I'm the type of collector who holds onto these kinds of oddballs.  But after discussing it with a few friends, I decided to pull the Tony Gwynn, Jackie Robinson, and Rickey Henderson error cards... and list the rest for $100 or best offer.


I received a total of three offers and ended up accepting $75 for my seven card lot.  After paying $7.80 in eBay fees and $2.59 to ship the cards, I ended up walking away with $64.61.

So what did I purchase?  Check it out...


I've recently decided to build the 1998 Donruss Signatures "Significant Signatures" set and this is one of the Koufax autographs I needed.  A guy on eBay has a bunch with a BIN price of $125 (free shipping).  The autograph is bleeding a little and isn't exactly mint.  However I can't complain too much since I only paid $60.39 for it.

This card goes great with my refractor version:


Notice that his non-refractor version has him pictured during his Brooklyn days... and the refractor version pictures him in his Los Angeles uniform.

I'm still looking for the non-autographed version of the Koufax for my set, along with the serial numbered copy of the autographed refractor version.

Plus I need a handful of other cards from this set:


If anyone has any of these available for trade or sale, please let me know.  I didn't really create any collecting goals this year, but I think I'm going to try to finish this set by the end of the year.  That's assuming these cards are available on eBay for reasonable prices... so I guess we'll have to sit back and see.

Happy Monday and sayonara!

13 comments:

Mark said...

Nice flip! I've been working on the base 1998 Signatures set, and it's hands down become my favorite autographed set. I'm hoping to tackle the Significant Signatures set one of these days, but not for quite some time. Good luck!

Nick said...

I would really like to meet the type of people who spend that kind of money on things like foil-less Archetypes inserts. Tremendous flip by you, and I think it's safe to say you got the better end of that deal a hundred times out of a hundred!

Commishbob said...

That's the Koufax sig I bought as well. I'd wanted a Koufax sig card for years. I sorted and sifted through a TON of auctions before I got one for a reasonable price. You did very well.

BobWalkthePlank said...

That is a great price. Congrats on an awesome addition.

arpsmith said...

What a flip! I still need a Koufax for my HOF auto collection, maybe I need to see what I can track down. Congrats!

Matt said...

A very worthy flip!

gcrl said...

nicely done! i enjoy seeing things like this. i recently flipped some 2015 stuff for a certain 1953 topps card…look for a post around april 15th!

Corky said...

That work out well for you, nice flip.

night owl said...

Geez I hope that foil-less card buyer doesn't read card blogs. I almost feel sorry for him.

Greg Zakwin said...

well done!

The Lost Collector said...

You did well...now I have to go look and see if I have any foil-less!

The Signature Series is a great set. I got a Rizzuto on Listia a while back, and I love it.

GCA said...

I've got some 2010 foil-less singles I never submitted to Topps for replacement. Now I might be glad I missed it if they're flippable for nice coin like that!

Fuji said...

Mark - Very cool. I really like all of those Donruss/Leaf Signature sets from the 90's. Way too many autographs for me to track down, but the 98 set sounds like an awesome project. Best of luck.

arpsmith - The good news is he's been signing a lot these past few years... so his autograph prices should drop a little as the market becomes a little more saturated. The bad news is he'll probably always be expensive like Jeter and Griffey.

gcrl - if it's the card I'm thinking you're talking about... I'm going to be VERY, VERY jealous. Congratulations.

night owl - It's crazy what people will pay for weird cards. Take me for example... I actually paid $5 for the Maddux w/o foil. Figured it'd go well with my Rickey, Tony, and Jackie.

lost collector - wow... you were able to snag a Rizzuto on Listia? Nice job.

GCA - Good luck!