First card up is 2007-08 Chronology Autograph #28 Dino Radja:
This is Dino's only autographed card (he has no relics), and so it was a must have for me as the son of a huge Celtics fan. Basketball was never my #1 sport, but I watched a lot of games growing up with my Dad and always thought that Dino Radja was the absolute greatest. He was actually pretty good over his four year NBA career, averaging 16.7 points, 8.4 rebounds, and 1.3 blocks per game. Injuries and a love for his home country caused Dino's NBA career to end prematurely, whereupon he returned to Europe to play in Greece and Croatia, winning several titles in the process.As for the card itself, I think it's really cool since the auto is on-card (which I didn't realize before having it in hand) and it doesn't follow the traditional first name/last name signature style. I figured I would have to pay $15-20 for this card based on various pricings, but then a week ago I noticed that the base version of this card had a $6.50 Beckett Marketplace listing that had "autograph" mentioned in its notes. I quickly emailed the owner, and it turned out they had a graded autograph under autographs and a non-graded autograph under the base card listing. I purchased the non-graded and that's what you see above!
As great a deal as that was, I did even better picking up this Robert Edwards jersey card, which happens to be the only Robert Edwards jersey card ever issued:
As many of you know, I am/was a huge Robert Edwards fan, so his only jersey card was a necessity. Problem is it's quite rare (I guess the set was as well back in the day), meaning that the only card of this kind online for a while was $32 on Beckett Marketplace from Burbank. Succccks.Luckily for me there's Google, and a random search for this card a few weeks ago brought up randallcardssite, owned by a guy on several card forums (I highly recommend checking out his site, especially the for trade/for sale stuff). Randall has a really sweet collection of high-end-ish "scrubs," from Tim Couch and Akili Smith, to GSNHOF favorites Brad Banks and Woody Dantzler. Randall also happened to have not just one, but two of the above Robert Edwards card, so I found him on Sports Card Forum and asked if I could buy one. 1/4 of the Burbank price later, the Edwards was mine. I still can't believe I bought it that cheaply since this card had been sitting on my want list for over a year and a half without any luck, but I'm sure glad I did!
And that's why this was such an awesome mail day. Two fabulous cards that I thought I'd never own without paying an arm and a leg, bought for about $15 combined. And both look as good in person as I imagined they would. Today was a good day.
I picked up that Dino Radja card myself a couple of months ago for $2.25 plus $4 shipping on eBay. The seller was from the Philippines which kept most bidders away. This card took around 4 months to arrive to me and I documented the whole thing on my blog. It's a great card though and Radja is another "what if" in Celtics history. If he had come to the NBA right after the Celtics had drafted him and was in better health (didn't smoke, it's not the 60s anymore) then he might have had a great career.
ReplyDeleteEverything Chronology is beautiful, but the packs were ridiculously expensive. I pick up singles here and there when I see them at a decent price I've got a couple of other Celtics autographs form the set.
Ooo good deal. I couldn't find it on your blog - I searched Dino's name haha. Did you mention anything specific so I can check it out? Sounds interesting.
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, definitely a what if. His career #'s were damn good that that's with the age and smoking...if only...
You know what, I can't find it either. I wonder if I wrote it as a draft and never posted it. I remember going to eBay to check the date I purchased it and keeping the envelope so that I'd have the postmarks and everything. I'll have to check once I'm home and see if I can figure it out. Maybe I just wrote it in my head and never committed it to keyboard.
ReplyDelete