He Waves Goodbye to Symmetry

'15 Topps Jason Heyward #181 "Waving" Variation.

Acquiring this card caused me to have page order angst.  Until now I had avoided putting the "sparkle" variation into the binder.  But I figured with this card it was time.  I have a thing about base and parallel pages being identically arranged.  I don't consider the variations to be inserts so I've decided to keep them with the base team set.  That throws off the aforementioned symmetry that I keeps me sane. Also, should this card come before or after the "sparkle" variation?  (I still don't understand the hidden gem thing)  These are the things I think about at night.

At any rate I'm happy to have all three Heyward cards in my possession.  I still have a few more flagship variations to track down.  Then I can turn to more pressing matters, like figuring out all the Update variations.

I have an eBay rival!!

A while back, I wrote a post on the mysterious price swings of certain '13 Topps parallels.  Several theories were offered up to explain why the lower serial numbered cards were going for less than those numbered higher.  I admitted that the whole thing was making me anxious.  Then I did a little more research to really get to the root of the issue.  What did I find out??  I have a rival on ebay!  One with pockets much deeper than mine.  This person is obviously also trying to put together the Braves rainbow, no matter how high the cost.  Hence, the inflated "Buy it Now" prices on some of these cards was caused by the false demand created by my competitor.  Speaking of which, those cards have mostly gone unsold and have been re-listed at the regular .99 starting price.

So what did I do next?  I went back over all the parallel auctions to figure out which cards this person has already won.  In effect I have a pretty good idea of exactly what they're looking for on the bay.  They're a bit ahead of me, which is good.  Creeper much?  I'll own up to that.  I just want to complete this f%$*ing rainbow.

With this new information in hand I tweaked my strategy.  As soon as my new friend enters into an auction I peace out of it because I know I won't win.  (Slipping in at the last second doesn't work here, they always have a high max bid).  Also, since I know which cards they've already won, I now can safely bid on the same cards and assume that I won't exceed my previously stated maximums.  How has that panned out for me, you ask?  I've won 3 black cards in the last week for under 5 bucks each.

#116 15/62

#46 26/62
I'm especially proud of this one

#257 12/62


I also won the Freddie Freeman pink card, for a decent price.  My rival is fan of the Braves so I guess they can't be that bad.

I have a few trades packages to write about, so if you've sent something you should see it up here soon!

Pink Hudson

This came in the mail today:

#115 2/50

I'm still waiting for the pink to grow on me.  Probably won't happen.  It kinda clashes with Hudson's red jersey and the logo at the bottom.  Either way, I got it for a decent price on ebay.  It's a good thing there aren't any other pink cards up for auction because I need a break.  For those keeping score I now have two black and two pink bordered cards.  St. Patrick's Day is a beast here in Savannah, so I'm getting ready to bunker down for the weekend.

Please help me understand

There's something about my rainbow quest that is confusing me, so I'm turning to the blogosphere for help.

My strategy for completing the 2013 Topps rainbow is pretty simple.  Pursue the "rarest" cards first through ebay etc. and the more common parallels through busting packs and making trades.  For those keeping score that means I'm most actively hunting down the pink cards (something I never thought I would ever type) #ed/50, followed by the black #ed/62 etc.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do about the mysterious purple cards.  It seems as though no one is really doing anything with those, but I digress.

I don't plan on buying many new cards until Series 2 comes out, so I have some spare dollars to spend on ebay.  My mobile app dutifully informs me every time something of interest is posted.  I've mainly watched the activity from the outside just to get a feel for the market.  Based on auction history I came up with reasonable expectations for how much I'm willing to spend on these cards.  I don't want to spend more than 10 bucks on a single card.  So far I've won two pink and two black cards without going over the limit.  Actually I've stayed well below.  Up until now I've felt pretty good about my little strategy.  Then this happened, which probably led to this:

#222 85/99

Here's my problem.  I won the black version of this card for around $7.  The most recent pink auction?  Went for $20.49.  So why did this card that is supposedly less rare (and much uglier) than the other two, sell for 36 bucks?

But wait a minute there was also this, this and this:

#46 46/50

Now granted this card has a tiny imperfection, but come on it still went for $15.50.  The camo went for $25, and black for $31??  The prices are all screwed up!!  This mystifies me.

It also makes me anxious.  I'm usually not down for the serial number thing and I try not to be affected by it.  However, the last thing I'm looking for right now is an empty space on a page.  There is no way that I can drop $40 on a single card.  That is unless I run into the perfect storm of drunkenness and aggression whilst one of these being auctioned.  Please pray that doesn't happen.

So what's the deal here?  Is this just artificial price inflation?  Are other collectors jumping the gun to prevent that dreaded empty space?  Should I give up the quest while I'm ahead??  (That's not going to happen.)

In other news, I recently received an envelope from Nick at Dime Boxes:

#105 Target red
Still missing the base...

Chasing History CH-36

The one without all the foil and refractoriness.

Thanks for the trade Nick!  I added more stuff to my want list, check it out!!