Taking Just Commons for a spin

I decided to try Just Commons for the first time recently. It's almost a virtual dime box, with thousands of baseball cards -- particularly from the '80s and '90s -- available for as little as 10 cents each. That's quite a bit cheaper than the minimum 18-cent price on Sportlots, plus they offer free shipping on orders over $15. I scooped up every 2006 Allen & Ginter base card I could find for 20 cents or less, ending just shy of 100. But here's a look at the handful of other random cards I also added to the order.

This was the most expensive card I bought at $2.40 and it's already probably in my top 5 favorite baseball cards of all time. I never knew that Jose Canseco had signed with the Montreal Expos, which was easy to miss as he was cut at the end of Spring Training and retired shortly after that. So that makes this one of Canseco's Sunset cards. This particularly version is a refractor from 2002 Topps Chrome, which itself is a partial parallel set of 2002 Topps.

Lifting this from a great card to an amazing one: Full career stats on the back.

Here's the only other card in the order that cost more than 20 cents ($1.50): A rookie year insert of new Toronto Blue Jay Troy Tulowitzki done in the design of 1989 Upper Deck, one of the most important card sets of all time and won I vividly remember chasing as a kid.

Here's another card done in the 1989 Upper Deck style, although this one is from a set I'd never heard of called UD Authentics. Released in 2002, it seems like Upper Deck's answer to Topps Heritage, although I think this brand was only around for the one year.

Picked out one more from that UD Authentics set. These are fantastic reproductions, as they look and feel just like the original set. I think I may try collecting this set. I did a quick eBay search and it seems like boxes of this stuff aren't too expensive...

Probably the only set more significant to me than 1989 Upper Deck is 1987 Topps, the first cards of any kind that I remember being aware of. This Victor Martinez card is from an inset set in 2008 Topps about the history of Topps. I have to say, though, I really don't like this one. It's done on modern, glossy card stock rather than the cardboard that 1987 used and the back of the card isn't done in the retro style.

I've read that 1987 Topps was modeled after 1962 Topps, which was the first to use the wood-border look. So I decided to pick up the Russell Martin card from 2011 Topps Heritage, which used the 1962 design.

Another Russell Martin Topps Heritage card, although this one is from 2013. Don't know why, but I just really like this card.

I will buy any card I can find commemorating "Touch 'em all, Joe."

One more for the Blue Jays collection. This is a gold parallel from 1994 Score. I mentioned this before in regards to a Score hockey card, but there are a surprising number of really nice mid-'90s Score cards. And Score Gold Rush parallels will forever be a guilty collecting pleasure of mine.

Speaking of guilty collecting pleasures, here's one more Jose Canseco. This one's from 1995 Stadium Club and it's actually a card about Rangers' then-new stadium, the Ballpark in Arlington. Just a wonderful photo.

Lastly, one more sunset card -- of the one baseball player I liked more than Canseco as a kid. From 2005 Topps Update, I believe it's the only base card ever made depicting Olerud in his final season with the Bosox.

Like any great farewell card, this, too, shows Olerud's full career stat line. An almost Hall-worthy career.

I'll show some of the A&G lot off at some other point. But I was generally pleased with my Just Commons experience. The site was very easy to use and it shipped very quickly. The one minor quibble I had was with the packaging -- too many cards were stuffed into one team bag and four or five of the A&G cards ended up with small dings in the bottom. It was a relatively minor issue though. I'll definitely use the site again.