COMC, Top Prospects, 90’s Parallel Sets, & 2022 Card Releases

After two months of being stuck in the eBay secondary card market rabbit hole, I finally began to drag myself out and found my way back to COMC, managing piece together a few mid-1990’s parallel sets, finding more cards of Mets top prospects, and jumping into the 2022 baseball card releases.

Located in Redmond, Washington, COMC is an online trading card exchange with over 28 million total cards and over 8 million unique cards. In the 1980’s, sports cards could be found nearly anywhere. Brick and mortar hobby shops sprang up throughout the country and cards were sold in nearly every gas station, convenience store, and grocery store. As the hobby began to contract in the 1990’s, brick and mortar shops went under and card companies began signing distribution deals with retailers like Target and Wal-Mart to sell their products. COMC filled the void for collectors by offering a service that has expanded the hobby for collectors. COMC accepts shipments of cards from collectors and adds them to their online marketplace. Collectors can manage their inventory by setting their own prices and offering discounts. When a card in your inventory sells, COMC handles the shipping and the money is deposited into your store account.

My preferred way of shopping on COMC consists of purchasing store credit. By doing this, my purchases are held in COMC’s warehouse at no cost and I can choose to have them shipped to me at any time. Any purchases can also be immediately flipped and posted to the marketplace. Purchasing is easy on COMC. You can search by team, player, year, product, and several other ways to find what you are looking. You also can zoom in on any card to inspect the condition of any card you want to buy.

After taking a short break from COMC, I somehow managed to purchase roughly 30 Mike Piazza cards before I realized it. I also added more than half a dozen Francisco Lindor insert cards, a few serial numbered cards from 2001 of Timo Perez, a few cards of the Big Boss himself, Tsuyoshi Shinjo, as well as a few dozen other cards.

Every collector that has ever bought cards on eBay has their own horror stories. You never really know what condition a card you purchase will be in, even when there are pictures. I’ve been lucky in that sense. The biggest issue I’ve come across is the packaging. Cards wrapped in plastic wrap held together by masking tape or wrapped in a Ziploc bag or half a roll of packaging tape being used to tape a plastic toploader with the card inside to a piece of cardboard that you want to take a blowtorch to it…I’ve seen it all.

This week, I received yet another wrapped in a Ziploc. This seller wasn’t kind enough to put tape over the top of the toploader, so when I opened the envelope, the card was halfway hanging out. Fortunately, this card was not damaged.

This card is the first of what will hopefully be many for Mets top prospect Jaylen Palmer. Included in the 2021 Bowman Inception set along other Mets prospects Francisco Alvarez, Brett Baty, and Ronny Mauricio, each card in the set has the thickness of roughly three cards. The set includes 100 cards of top prospects from around the league. Since none of the cards featured in the set are of members of the MLBPA, the set is classified as a release of minor league players so this card would not be considered Palmer’s rookie card, or a rookie card for any of the other Mets prospects featured in the set. Nonetheless, it’s a great card.

I began March by focusing my purchasing on eBay by trying to piece together some more sets. I started with a sizable purchase from Burbank Sports Cards that helped me to complete mid-1990’s team sets such as the 1995 Upper Deck parallel set Electric Diamond, 1995 Upper Deck Minors and its parallel set Future Stock, 1995 Upper Deck SP Championship, and the 1996 Fleer and Fleer Update parallel Tiffany set.

Fleer’s 1996 flagship release was a hit with collectors upon its release. Every major card release had moved to a high gloss finish by 1994, but Fleer’s flagship product in both 1996 and 1997 were released without the high gloss finish, purposely targeting autograph collectors. The Tiffany parallel set was manufactured for each card in the set with a high gloss finish with one Tiffany card per pack.

I was also able to find the complete Mets team set for the 1995 Topps Stadium Club parallel set, Virtual Reality, 1996 Flair, 2000 Skybox Dominion, and 2003 Upper Deck MVP on eBay.

The highlight of March for collectors was the release of the 2022 Topps Heritage product. I was able to find several reasonably priced listings for the Mets base team set. The base set includes all of the player cards in the first 400 cards of the set and excludes any image or nickname variations. The cards in the set numbered between 400 to 500 are short print cards and not included in the base set.

I was able to find reasonably priced listings for the Mets short print cards of J.D. Davis, Jose Peraza, and Trevor May. So far, I’m still waiting on delivery of the Peraza and May cards. I also jumped in on an auction for the Francisco Lindor image variation card and won it for a price that has since doubled its selling price in the subsequent weeks since the release.

 

 

 

 

 

I slowed down purchasing cards of Brett Baty in March by only adding five cards to my collection, including 2019 Bowman Draft Sky Blue parallel that is serial numbered as 281 out of 499. The 2019 Bowman Draft card of Baty is his first card.

 

 

Early Spring Training returns on Mets top prospect Francisco Alvarez have been promising. Mets manager Buck Showalter raved about Alvarez’ tape shot home run a few nights ago, saying that Alvarez can’t wear a PitchCom band because it won’t go past his forearm. I was able to acquire several more cards of Alvarez this month at reasonable prices. I expect the price of Alvarez cards to continue to rise. I’d suggest being up his cards as quickly as you can.

 

 

 

Infield prospect Ronny Mauricio has been observed doing work in the outfield so far this spring. It has long been expected that Mauricio will end in the outfield on account of his defense. I added more cards of Mauricio to my collection in March than any other Mets prospect.

 

After undergoing Tommy John surgery last spring, pitching prospect Matthew Allan went under the knife again over the winter to transpose his ulnar collateral nerve. This procedure is common for pitchers that have had Tommy John surgery and is not expected to negatively impact his timeline to return to the mound. I found several new listings for Allan in March and capitalized by adding a few more of his cards to my collection.

 

 

 

Other purchases included a pair of Mark Vientos cards, a serial numbered 2019 Bowman Chrome Purple Refractor of Carlos Cortes, my 200th card of longtime Met reliever John Franco, my 100th card of Mets icon Keith Hernandez, Al Leiter, and Gen K member Paul Wilson.

What cards have you been buying? Drop some pictures in the comments.