Something's In The Air

Isolation can mess with your mind and make you do things you might not normally do... like watching Tiger King on Netflix, baking cookies in the middle of the week, or waking up after 7am.  I'm not sure which one surprises me more, but all of these things are out of character for me.

Another thing that I did was clean out my garage and dig through all of my flea market boxes.  I'm not talking about boxes I purchased at the flea market.  I went through the stuff I tried to sell as a vendor.  Based on some Colin Kaepernick cards I found in the boxes, it's been six or seven years since I last set up at the flea market.

I spent about six hours sifting through boxes and ended up filling one super shoe box and a 3,500ct. box with cards with any monetary or sentimental value.  There's way too much stuff to fit into one post and honestly most of the items feature Bay Area teams, since that's who I catered to when I sold.

The actual inspiration for the garage organization project had nothing to do with A's, Giants, Warriors, 49ers, Raiders, or Sharks cards.  Nope.  I was looking to see if I had any cool Michael Jordan cards.  The day before, I watched a YouTube video that discussed how the upcoming Chicago Bulls documentary has totally driven up his card values.

And even though I'm not into flipping cards, I was definitely curious to see what I had stashed away in those boxes.  There ended up being hundreds.  Most of them are multiples of early 90's overproduced cardboard with some late 90's Upper Deck thrown in.

I've gotta say, Jordan does have some fantastic looking base cards, which I might show off in the future.  Today, I picked five cards that were sitting in my dollar bin that I discovered this week are selling for some pretty good money.

1991 Upper Deck #SP1

But before we get to those, here is the obligatory baseball card for the majority of my readers who seem to primarily collect baseball cards like myself.  Back in 1991 this was a pretty popular card in our hobby and for the first time in decades... these are fetching double digits on eBay.

Surprise!  Here's one more baseball card of Jordan:

1994 Fleer ProCards Minor League #633

Two weeks ago, I would have guessed that this Birmingham Barons card was the most valuable Jordan card featured in this post.  Actually, it's the most affordable.  You should be able to still pick this card up for under five bucks.

Okay... let's get to some dollar bin cards that aren't selling for a dollar anymore...

#1:  1995-96 Finest #229

Completed sales on this card (and every other Jordan card out there) are all over the place.  But the majority seem to sell in the $40 to $50 range.  Don't even bother asking me why collectors are paying this much, because I haven't got a clue.


#2:  1996-97 Topps #139

Okay.  So this card is only selling for $20 to $30 on eBay.  However if you're sitting on the Chrome version of this card, it's going for close to $400 right now.  Is that insane or what?


#3:  1996-97 Fleer Metal #11

Fleer Metal Jordans from the 90's are super hot right now... especially his 1997-98 Metal Universe card that's selling for hundreds of dollars.  Unfortunately for me, I couldn't find a single copy of that card in my collection.  I did find this card which is selling right now in the $30 to $45 range.


#4:  1997-98 Topps Chrome #123

This is another card that seems to be all over the place.  Some sell for $30... while others go for $75.

#5:  1998-99 Metal Universe #1

One more dollar box card that's been closing in the $30 to $50 range the past few days.

Who knows how long the hype will last... but for the time being... they're fun to track.  I kinda feel like my father, who enjoys tracking and monitoring his stocks.  The only difference is I don't have it in me to sell any of these.  Not because I think they'll go up in value.  I'm 99% sure they'll settle back down in due time.  I don't sell because my days of collecting as an investment are in the past.

What about you?

Do you sell cards?  Do you ever track card sales?

By the way, I actually collect Jordan.  In fact, this week I rescanned all of my high-end cards.  But this post is way too long already, so I'll save them for a future post.

That's it for today.  Happy Saturday and sayonara!

Extra Innings

Anyone else a fan of Star Wars: The Clone Wars?  I've been a fan since the beginning and Ahsoka Tano is one of my favorite characters.  I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't watched yesterday's episode, but it was really good.  Like really, really good.  

It's a shame that there are only three episodes left... but on the bright side... things are really heating up.