Mr. Gibson's (elfstones) blog

Seven Facts about me as a collector - Fact 1 . As a kid, I Started Collecting baseball cards in 1977. In 1982, I was making a habit of collecting cards. In 1989, I started purchasing cards in bulk. In the mid 90s I stopped for a while and picked it backup up in 2007. I'm not the usual collector. - Fact 2 . I buy locally, don't do much anymore with eBay.   Why?   I have two nice card shops where I live.   Plus there are many private sellers around.   Normally I see better prices, no shipping, I see the product. I just enjoy it more going in person to shows and shops.   So like most collectors today, I don't have "mail day" - Fact 3. I only have 15 K cards.  Most collectors who have been collecting as long as I have, well have many more.   In fact, I'm looking at getting rid of many of my excess cards so that I can stay in that range. - Fact 4. I don't use binders.   Why?   I don't trust them.  When I was a teenager, I used th

Another short post on my card room. I do have my new card cabinet in full use now. Still wish I had a better one, but for the money it is much better than many of the other options. 99% of everything on display is still Cubs based. I made this new video on YouTube for the blog to show what the room looks like as of today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=357zh_zMCYQ

I made a video today re-highlighting my Cubs and Cardinals autographed photos and baseball cards. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riUwZT_JLN8 Here is a photo I did not put into my video: Bill Buckner signing group Cubs photo.

I had to open all 36 packs of Topps 1988 Big Series 1 cards to obtain every card in the series. Have a ton of extra cards I don't need now. And even though I have not cataloged 100% of the cards of Series 1 (all 252 of them), I have started on Series 2. I have made another video blog here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpoDFepruTQ My cataloging effort of this set can be found here: here http://mrgibson.com/baseball4.php?year=1988&seri=Big&bran=Topps Despite all my complaining, if I get the full set for $5, I will be pleased. I will be up for trading my excess cards from this set for other holes in my collection.

Yes, I'm still opening and cataloging Topps 1988 Big cards. I have a long way to go. How is the set so far? Probably the worst distribution of cards that I have ever seen. For example, I opened an entire case of Series 1. Some players kept coming up, over, and over, and over. Some players did not show in the entire case. Of the whole case, I only opened one Ryne Sandberg. If I had not at least got that card, I was going to be horribly upset. The worst part is that after opening all these cards, not a single #2 Milt Thompson card. But I need 8 Cal Ripkens?

Made another bulk purchase for $5 again. Although I did not get as many cards for $5....(for example, more than 2400 cards), I did get 756 Topps 1988 "Big" unopened cards for $5. Still a good deal in my humble opinion. I also did something different, I made a video of me opening some of this cards.  Watch video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oH-2pu1l34 Once again, not a very good video, but I'm going to give this a shot with video blogs. Hopefully my video will get better. :) As for the 1988 Topps Big cards, I love them.  I never knew these cards existed in 1988.  I did know of the 1989 Topps Big cards though.  I purchased many packs of them because I loved them.  That said, I think I like the 88`s more than the 89`s.  So I'm glad I made this purchase. I have given dealing shout-outs before when I have like purchases, so I'm giving Busted Wax a shout-out for the good deal. <a style="color:#0000ff;" href="https://www.faceb