Let's make a deal (on COMC)

I've grown a bit more comfortable with haggling over the years.

I try not to take it to extremes - seeing people trying to negotiate over dime and quarter cards at shows drives me insane - but I like to think there's nothing wrong with trying to get a dealer to shave a few bucks off a card I otherwise might not touch. I give huge points to card sellers here, because I can't imagine the number of negotiations they have to deal with in a single day.

This is one of the many reasons why I continue to use COMC for my card-addict activities - you can make offers, and from my experience, they're accepted more often than not. Couple that with their (relatively) recent Black Friday sale that arrived on my doorstep a few weeks ago, and you have potential a sea of good deals.

Which is heaven for me, since I am, admittedly, a collector forever in search of a deal. 

I didn't have to make offers on any of the three gargantuan minor league cards I've showed already - Black Friday sellers marked them down to a price that was already in my wheelhouse.

I've had my sights set on nabbing a minor league Willie McGee for a long time - a rare document of his zero-year tenure in the Yankees system - and the prices were so good that I grabbed a second one for good measure!

Ainge and McGee were the unquestioned minor league kings of this order, but I managed to grab a few other familiar names and Obscure Dime Box Favorites on the cheap as well (pre-beard Brian Wilson!).

I'm still amazed at how cheap I can find Japanese cards on COMC - a new Ichiro manages to sneak into every order nowadays, and they're not as pricey as you might think (this one was about $5).

I also still have a soft spot for the Japanese busts of my childhood like Kazuhisa Ishii, because they can't all be Ichiros and Ohtanis.

I've managed to negotiate my way into scoring quite a few variations and generally fun oddballs on COMC, which is great because I always salivate over stuff like this.

Stadium Club variations are downright impossible to touch, but given that people don't go wild over Billy Hamilton cards these days (he'll always have a spot in my binders!), I was able to nab that one.

Gotta show the big player- and mini-collection hits - I don't make a habit of chasing parallels on COMC, but who among us can resist a shiny Hoyt for 80 cents?

A few fun fan favorites here - been chasing that Madlock for a while because it's one of the extreme few cards you'll see that documents his brief Rangers tenure.

I'm still not exactly sure what that Gates Brown is, and while it's not a particularly great baseball card, anything of Gates Brown I don't already have automatically goes in my cart.

Mini madness!

(I thought I was bad with a pair of scissors until I saw that Milk Duds Cepeda.)

A nice batch for the horizontal files here - I paid more for that Big Klu than I wanted, but a card like that is love at first sight & I couldn't bear the pain of not owning it.

Modern oddballs are cool, but they can't light a candle to the TCMA and Shakey's Pizza days of yore.

Today in the too-frequent episode of Nick Doesn't Know Everything About Baseball Cards - I thought I had all the cards I needed from that '80s Cramer oddball set, only to find that not only was I missing Roger Maris...I was missing Roger Maris on the A's!!

Oddballs from my youth will always have a special place in my heart.

I've documented my love for SI for Kids cards many times (I used to steal them from the magazines in my school library), and I always want Starting Lineup cards even though I've never cared a hoot for the actual figurines.

With my chase for all the '76 SSPCs I need more or less complete, my focus has turned to a few of the tougher SSPC offerings like these various '75s.

The Brooks & Reggie have been thorns in my side for a while, always out there at just a hair over what I want to pay - but thankfully a particularly generous Black Friday price slash took care of that!

Vintage is by far where most of my haggling takes place - which is how a few otherwise unattainable biggies came my way in this COMC order.

It's taken me far too long to discover these '59 Topps "Baseball Thrills" can be had for largely affordable prices - Mr. Kaline is already one of the last few I needed (I'll get the Mantle one day!).

A couple top-notch Dodgers here - I've been going through a minor obsession with those Bell Brand cards ever since procuring my first one at The National last year.

The Podres is a just plain excellent card (dig the Schaefer ad!) from the scary '57 Topps scarce series - the $10 I paid for this one was a steal in my book.

Elroy Face is a guy I collect who makes me happy since his cards go for almost nothing, but he admittedly can't light a candle to his fellow '64 Bob Gibson, a "Keep Dreaming" suspect I finally netted with this order.

Normally, something like that would receive top billing, but not this time because, my friends...

...THE WHITE WHALE HAS BEEN SPEARED!

Aside from the Roberto Clemente rookie I'll have to sell a kidney to afford, this '64 Pete Rose has been #1 on my most wanted list for a while now. I've searched for it in earnest at the last few shows I've attended, and the cheapest one I'd seen through all that time was $150 (most were north of $300). 

I noticed a copy (in not-at-all bad condition) sitting in the COMC archives for 100 bucks, a solid price on its own given the glass-case price tags I'd come across again and again. But with a little back-and-forth, I was able to knock the final price down to a mere $70 - still a nice chunk of change for this dime box collector (and by far the most I've spent on a single card on COMC), but a definite steal when you consider the immensity of the purchase.

Again, I try not to make a habit out of haggling with every single purchase I make, but in moderation I've learned that it often doesn't hurt to ask - it might even help land that white whale you've been chasing for the better part of your adult life.