Let's raid my card chest where I store past COMC hauls for the first time in 2018 here to see how far we can get building a virtual "blaster" with $20 worth of credit...

Why on Earth would this '71 Jim Nelson be in the lead-off spot?  Well, because it's an O-Pee-Chee card, which means...

...glorious floating head!  This one cost me just 40 cents, and I'm basically grabbing just about any new card from this release for that price.  Especially a Pirate, given that they won the World Series that year.

Still plugging slowly away at the 3-D Lenticular inserts from the 2015 Upper Deck Dinosaurs set.  The Velociraptor here puts me at a half dozen, and it sure looks quite a bit different than the ones that were conceived for 1993's Jurassic Park film.

Here's one more, featuring a dinosaur I hadn't heard of, the Pinacosaurus.  Apparently these roamed in what is now modern day Mongolia and China.  This one was had for 99 cents, while I had to pony up $1.64 for the raptor.

While I don't collect football cards, I did pick up a pair of these 1969 Topps Boston Patriots cards last year because the price was right (67 cents for this one).  Art was a successful wide receiver with the team for a few years in the '60s.  I didn't know this when I picked up the card, but apparently his father played in some games with the Boston Red Sox in the mid-'30s.  How cool is that?

Love the amount of room dedicated to the cartoons in this release.

Here's one that I wouldn't necessarily buy nowadays, but went for a couple of years back now in a parallel frenzy.  Certainly an example of a "Future Star" that didn't quite pan out as Topps predicted.  These days, the 70 cents I spent on this one would be better used on a vintage card, but oh well.

This one, on the other hand, I'm quite pleased with.  I'll never turn down a nice, new card of the most dominant pitcher I've ever seen pitch for the Red Sox with my own two eyes.  This is a Gold Diffractor from Topps High Tek, numbered to /99.  At $1.10 I think I got more than a fair deal on this one, especially since I'm a sucker for acetate.

The Electric Ice parallels in the mid-'90s Upper Deck hockey sets take me right back to my collecting youth.  They came at one-per-pack in the 1995-96 set, but this one's an Electric Ice Gold, which fell at just one-per-box!  I'll occasionally scoop these up when I can find them at less than a buck, as was the case with Kris Draper here (75 cents).  Can't go wrong with a Paul Coffey cameo either.

At $2.65, this Xander Bogaerts is the most expensive card in today's post.  It might be the best deal as well though, as these Orange parallels in 2015 Bowman are limited to just 25 copies.  A nice relatively rare piece for my ever-growing Bogaerts collection for less than $3, can't beat that!

This one's actually been waiting to be pulled for posting since 2015 if you can believe that.  I was drawn to it because I'm a sucker for colored parallels and for serial-numbered cards, and this meets both criteria (the Blue Refractors were numbered to 99 in 2011 Topps Chrome).  Not a bad pick-up for 85 cents.

My love of buybacks is generally constrained to the flagship Topps sets as far as baseball goes, but this Allen & Ginter buyback of J.D. Drew was a neat addition to my Sox collection for just 40 cents.  I don't make a habit of seeking these out but at that price I couldn't resist.

Thanks to Upper Deck's ePack promotion, it's been possible to land Young Guns rookie cards for pretty much dirt cheap for a couple of years or more now.  I took advantage of this and grabbed one of the talented young forwards from Nashville's roster in Viktor Arvidsson.  Hailing from Sweden, Viktor possesses some good speed and a knack for putting the puck in the net.  He's already accumulated more than 50 career goals and more than 100 career points, and he's still only 24 years old.  Not a bad rookie card for $1.25 if you ask me.

I still remember Robin Van Persie from the days when he was scoring constantly while teamed up with Wayne Rooney for Manchester United.  This Blue parallel (#'d /299) from one of my favorite soccer sets, 2015 Select, was too good to pass up at just 59 cents.

This is the last Red Sox card in today's post.  Why would I buy a Topps Bunt card on COMC?  Because this is actually a Platinum parallel, serial-numbered to /99.  I thought I got a great deal on it when the seller accepted my low-ball offer of $1.15, especially since Mookie seems to be one of the hottest names in the hobby.  It'll be interesting to see what kind of numbers Betts puts up in 2018.

I have a few really great Mario Lemieux cards, but in truth he probably doesn't get the amount of love in my collection that he deserves.  This awesome, bright sticker insert from O-Pee-Chee helps rectify that in some small way for 74 cents.

I love the playing card inserts that Panini did for 2013 Golden Age.  This is just my second one to date, though I think I have a few more floating around in the chest waiting to be plucked for a future post if memory serves.  How much did Henry Ford here set me back?  Just 50 cents.

I've been meaning to get plugging away on the multi-product Gretzky Record Collection insert set from Upper Deck for a while now, and as card #1 on the checklist this is a great start.  With a fantastic photograph, this card is a solid addition to my collection of the greatest player ever to lace up skates, especially for just 89 cents.

The 1994 Action Packed Minor League set had a small Roberto Clemente subset towards the end of the checklist, honoring the fact that four decades had passed since his Major League debut.  Finally got around to grabbing one here for 75 cents; what a visually striking card.  I certainly miss Action Packed.  As cool as this one is, I've landed two incredible Clemente cards in the past month or two that absolutely dwarf it.  Look for those to debut on the blog in the near future!

65 cents spent, one card closer to my casual goal of attaining every Golden Seals hockey card.  That was really my sole motivation with this one.  Well, that and the fact that I really like the '72-73 Topps and O-Pee-Chee hockey sets I guess.

I'm really having a good time plugging away at the beast that is 1959 Topps baseball.  I know I won't finish it this year given the number of HOFers and tough high-series cards that I'm still missing, but it sure does feel great every time I slide a new card into the binder.  Feels especially good when it's a high-series card like Darrell Johnson here that I paid just 59 cents for.  Insane.  I picked this up during 2016's Black Friday sale, and I don't think I've seen a high-series card for this little coin since!

Here's another high-series card, from just a couple spots before Darrell Johnson on the checklist.  The infamous Wally Moon and his eyebrow.  This one's in a bit rougher shape, and I had to shell out $1.60 for it.  Still a good deal when it comes to that tough final series of the set honestly.  Just two '59s in tonight's grouping, but still feels like significant progress and it puts me at a nice, tidy 275 cards in my set now...

Here's the final card for tonight, from another set I'm working diligently on, 1971-72 Topps hockey.  The checklist is relatively small, so this set won't pose quite the challenge that '59 Topps baseball will, but it's still far from easy.  When I worked out a deal for this Alex Delvecchio for just $1.24 I was pumped.  A HOFer, in great condition and well-centered (which can be a challenge with these) for just a shade over a dollar was an easy call.

Well, that brings tonight's running total to $20.10, so I'll stop there for now.  With 21 total cards in the "blaster" I basically ended up paying just shy of a dollar per card here if you average it out.  I say this every time, in fact it's kind of the point of the exercise, but I'll take that over a random blaster from Target any day!

Thanks for stopping by as always!