My Favorite Vintage Card & 1990s Insert: Yo Soy Fiesta, Roy.

Another Fuji special. His latest question involves one's favorite vintage card and favorite '90s insert. I prefer vintage to '90s anything, so that's where I shall begin. My favorite piece of vintage is an extremely easy question to answer: Roy Campanella's 1950 Bowman card, a piece of cardboard I thankfully own.

This bad boy is one of my favorite cards period, and is easily the crown jewel of my vintage collection in my mind, although I can acknowledge that Jackie Robinson's 1956 Topps card is one of many that probably ranks higher on most lists. For me though, nothing tops this beautiful specimen. The blue background, the Brooklyn B on Roy's cap, the smile on the face of the Hall of Famer; they all work together in a wonderful harmony to create a masterpiece. Follow the above link to see the journey I took to acquire the card; it's quite a doozy.

My favorite '90s insert takes us to 1993 Pacific and the Jugadores Calientes insert set. Card number 34 of the 36 Calientes made is of my favorite player from my childhood, Mike Piazza. I love everything about this card, from the prism-like background to Mike getting ready to clobber the ball to the Latin feel to the card. I snagged it from eBay for 99 cents plus shipping, and $3.48 later this awesome '90s insert was all mine! A great steal, considering it books for twenty-five bones.

Cheap HOF Vintage? Cheap HOF Vintage.

Can You Have Enough Al Rosen 1950 Bowman Rookie Cards?

Not when you can grab one off of eBay for $3.25 delivered (winning bid of a buck seventy-five [!]). If you care to read about the first Rosen RC I picked up, you can find it here. The second Rosen Rookie resides here.

I am strongly considering sending one of these off for a TTM attempt. Probably this one, because the worst conditioned one I have is the first I picked up (so it has a little extra sentimental value), and the second one I snagged is the best conditioned one, so I'd like to keep that as is.

So, does anyone have a stockpile of a certain rookie card, and if so, who?

Seller's scan is a it fuzzy, but you get the idea.

This has nothing to do with anything, but I've been watching it endlessly for days.

The Lonely Island, Timberlake, and colored overalls FTW.

Double The 1950 Bowman Al Rosen Rookie, Double The Fun

1950 Bowman. An iconic set. An expensive set to pick at most of the time. I've been fortunate to grab a pair of these, most notably a PSA'd Roy Campanella. When I can find these cheap, and find Dodgers or other players I like, I find it hard to pass one up. So when I came across a dirt cheap Al Rosen rookie card, I jumped at the chance to add it to my collection.

And then I bought a second copy.

The first one I purchased was $4.24 shipped. This second Rosen, in much better condition, ran me a total of $4.45 shipped, with a winning bid of two bucks.

The only difference between the two - setting aside the obvious differences in condition and wear and tear - is that the Rosen which would earn a higher grade has the Bowman logo on the back. The original Rosen Rookie I bought (pictured below) is sans Bowman logo, and after doing a bit of research, I believe that the cards without the logo are a bit scarcer. How much so, I have no idea.

I love eBay. Almost as much as I love Erin Hawksworth.

1950 Bowman Al Rosen Rookie Card

$4.24 shipped via eBay for this awesome card. My winning bid: $2.25.

Clearly, it's well-loved and bursting with character from its doubtless many previous owners. The back is actually in pretty damn good condition, all things considered. Even in this condition, I really didn't expect the card to be winnable at this cheap of a price.

I've decided to grab every Al Rosen card I can, particularly the ones of a vintage persuasion. I have another pair I bought on Thursday waiting to be posted.

This particular Rosen is missing the copyright symbol and info at the bottom, which initially worried me. But after a quick search of eBay turned up a few graded 1950 Bowmans without that same info and symbol, I decided it was well worth the paltry sum to bid on this great rookie card of my favorite non-Dodger old-school player, and happily grabbed the card.

1950 Bowman Roy Campanella: Acquired (Card Love)

It's mine, it's mine! Oh happy day, what a glorious occasion this is! Praise the card gods! Rejoice!

I've yearned after this card for a time now, and for those who have perused my Most Wanted List, you've seen that it was number one on that list. And while yes, the next two were in some ways "interchangeable" with the Campy card, my choice, if presented with the opportunity to acquire any of the three, would have been Roy, and without much, if any, hesitation. I love everything about the card and the 1950 Bowman set in general, and I love the card infinitely more than Roy's rookie card, found in Bowman's 1949 offering.

The card, as with most vintage cards, and most from valuable sets like 1950 Bowman and those that depict Hall of Famers, wasn't going to come cheap, and I knew that going in. I had a price in my head I was willing to spend up to, and I intended to stick to that, within a few dollars of course, depending on the situation.

I had a great chance to acquire the card some months ago, from where else but our good friend eBay. The card was up for auction, with no Buy-It-Now price, and I was dead-set on winning the auction. As the auction ended, I had placed a bid of around $20, and was thankful to see that it was the high bid. The card was graded, SGC 30, which is always nice, considering no one wants to get bamboozled on vintage cards. As the auction was winding down to just a few seconds left, I was praying that nobody swooped in at the last second to outbid me. And of course, someone did, besting my bid with about five seconds remaining, not enough time for me to throw down a last second winner.

I was crushed. The card was right there for the taking, practically in my grasp. And it went, graded and all, for roughly $25 shipped. I wasn't sure another bargain like that would ever stare me in the face again. For reference, a shop I like not too far away from me specializes in vintage, and has four of Campy's 1950 Bowman card - at varying levels of quality - for between $45 and $105, well above what I'd look to and be comfortable with spending at this point in my life.

I operate on a full-time student's budget, and while I've always been a good saver, I can't buy anything I'd like (oh, how I wish I could, as I'm sure we all do). I've made a few card-related purchases since jumping back into the hobby that I regret and pretty much regretted from the moment I laid down my money, but generally I feel like I do a good job at finding deals and not spending just to spend. This blog has made me more money than I anticipated making within my first year plus of blogging, but I've yet to see a penny of it, as I have not reached Blogger's threshold to get paid for AdSense and I haven't yet dipped into my PayPal funds via my association with Yardbarker. So most of the higher-end cards of newer players and vintage cards I seek tend to pass me by, outside of the occasional eBay splurge. Though there have been a few recently (hint hint, future posts filled with eBay goodness).

When I finally came across the card again - by chance really, searching for it on a whim and a prayer - I stumbled upon a number of them, including a couple of BINs on eBay. SGC graded in both instances, the cards clocked in at $35 (SGC 10) and $40 (SGC 40), respectively, with shipping in both cases being three bucks. Not quite where I'd like it to be, but close enough that I could make an exception if I so chose to do.

After many months of not even considering searching for the elusive Campanella, I was excited at the chance to finally snag my White Whale. Of the pair of non-BINs I was watching, one was set to end on January 1st, the other the next day. The card with the earlier end-date had an opening price of 99 cents, no reserve, and was ungraded. It looked amazing, probably in good enough condition to grade out to a PSA 6 at the worst, and while I was at first skeptical about it's authenticity, a quick search of the seller's other items revealed a large chunk of vintage up for auction. The seller easily made between $5000 and $10,000 that weekend, with cards routinely selling for hundreds and on at least one occasion a thousand plus big ones.

The second of the two Roys was graded, PSA 3, and had an opening price of nine dollars, with no reserve in place. I was pretty sure that neither would end up being within my price range, but held out hope as a few days passed and they held steady at bargain prices. As their auctions neared their end, both cards began to slowly climb in price, particularly the ungraded Roy, which jumped past the $30 mark and out of my hungry hands. I kept checking in just to see how much it would sell for, and by Saturday night, some lucky boy or girl had themselves a '50 Campy for upwards of $80.

As I went to bed on Saturday night, New Years Day, my hopes for my number one card sat at about $18. I decided not to check back in on Roy's price until 6:00 p.m. Sunday night, just over an hour before it was set to find a new owner. When I finally refreshed the page, I was pleasantly surprised; that beautiful piece of vintage Dodgerdom was at just over $24. I stepped away from my computer, and when I returned with just a handful of minutes remaining in the auction, the card had not been bid on any further. I waited until there was under sixty seconds left and placed my bid, hoping that it would be high enough and win me my pretty piece of cardboard: 27 George Washingtons.

Alas, the bid was not good enough, as somebody had a higher auto-bid. With time running out, I took one last shot at the card, putting down a bid of $30 and praying it would bring me great success. To my shock, the bid was high enough, and I jumped for joy as the final few seconds ticked away and I could say, finally, I was the proud owner of a 1950 Bowman Roy Campanella!

Thank you, bidders who decided $30 was too much for one of the greatest cards ever made, in my humble opinion. Thank you eBay, for simply existing. My first card from this classic set, and it's the one I craved more than any other. It's easily in my top five favorite cards, and the '50 Campy instantly becomes the centerpiece of my collection, along with my 1933 Goudey Jack Quinn, 1965 Topps NL ERA Leaders Koufax/Drysdale, and my trio of 1880s Allen & Ginter cards (yet to be posted....some fun posts to come). And my higher-end Matt Kemp and Clayton Kershaw cards surely find their way onto that centerpiece as well.

What can I say, it's a large centerpiece.

It's quite an amazing feeling to finally hold this card in my hand.

Thanks to Dan from The Other World for holding a contest all about card love. If it's not evident from the above, I really love the 1950 Bowman Roy Campanella card. So this is my entry into that aforementioned contest.