My Epic New York Adventure – Part 2

For me, I can’t stop by a card show without buying a box of something to break. I know that it barely pans out, but I love to do it and it’s too much fun. I actually didn’t go overboard and really enjoyed the two boxes that I purchased:

First up, this year’s Finest Baseball. Chrome and Finest both are bolstered by a really strong rookie auto crop. Since I had a lot of fun with Chrome, I decided to take a chance with Finest.

Everyone has seen the base cards over and over again, so I’m going to skip those. If you haven’t seen them or forget what they look like, just scroll down to the refractors for a refresher.

The Finest Foundation cards are refractors and the Finest Freshmen aren’t. I don’t really see the need for inserts in a set such as this one. At least make them limited and serial numbered so that you’re adding some value to the box.

I like the look for the Finest Foundation cards and could see myself searching out any Red Sox players that might be in the set. As for these two cards, they’re both up for trade.

Here’s the base card design again for those who may have forgotten it. These boxes have 10 packs and you end up getting an insert in each pack. It would have been nice to get a little more color in my parallels, but at least the regular parallels are serial numbered in Finest (/549). The Tulo is numbered to 299 and the Kimbrel is /199. All of these cards are up for trade as well and I’ll give preferential treatment to anyone who has any Red Sox refractors to offer in exchange.

There are two hits per box of Finest and that’s what is going to determine how good your box is. I had some good news and some bad news when it came to my hits:

• Bad News: Both of my hits were redemption cards. There’s nothing worse than opening a box and having nothing cool to show for it once you are finished.
• Good News: Both of the cards that I pulled redemption cards of are live so it shouldn’t be too long before I have them.
• Good News: I pulled what is easily one of the top cards out of the entire print run of Finest.
• 

 

 

 

 

 

Right there is a redemption card for the dual relic gold refractor autographed card of Eric Hosmer. For some reason, these gold cards are numbered to 69 and not 50, but it’s still a very low print run. That card is currently selling for more than what I paid for the box which is always nice. I’ve already redeemed the card and am eagerly awaiting its arrival in my mailbox. The only negative aspect of the card is that it’s a sticker auto, but other than that it’s a great looking card. The second redemption, for the Brett Wallace X-Fractor autographed card, is up for trade.

Anyone out there have any Finest singles? I’ve got half of the set from my box and plan on attempting to finish it. If you’ve got any singles, let me know. I plan on getting a list posted within the next few days.

One thing that I’ve been struggling with lately is collecting basketball cards. I love the sport, but I can’t stand Panini. They follow the same game plan with each and every set with a different design and name. It’s pretty frustrating because I want to buy some hoops cards, but I’m not a big fan of throwing my money away on more of Panini’s 4 jersey card boxes. So, I thought that I would try some football instead and decided on Supreme.

This stuff can be very hit or miss, but the hits are pretty amazing. The base cards themselves are beautiful, but it would be painful to spend this much for a box if you’re getting a crap hit and three base cards. Luckily, that wasn’t the case for me.

I ended up opening this box right at the dealer’s table because I knew that I wouldn’t be able to wait until I got home to see what I got. Behind the Tony Romo and Ahmad Bradshaw base cards, I saw a beautiful A.J. Green autographed relic rookie card numbered to 50. This card is selling for a decent price on eBay, but all of those have black jersey swatches full of holes. I think that this card is much better looking that any of the copies that I’ve seen on eBay. That’s a great looking orange swatch.

These packs end with a base parallel numbered to 99 or fewer. I had enough luck with the Green card so my final card was a Jamie Harper rookie numbered to 99.

I’m pretty happy with what I pulled, getting one of the better rookie autographs. There is some amazing stuff coming out of this product including Cam Newton and Tim Tebow autographs and legends such as Joe Montana, Jerry Rice and Joe Namath.

The only thing that I think Topps should have changed about this is that packs without autographs should have contained two jersey cards and no parallel. It sucks big time to plop down $80 - $90 for one of these boxes and only pull a jumbo jersey card or triple jersey card no matter how low the serial numbering.

So, I bought some great cards and pulled some great cards, but neither of these were the reasons why I went to the show in the first place. Stay tuned for the main event.

My Epic New York Adventure – Part 1

I’ve been talking about it enough, but the weekend finally arrived and I made the trip out to New York and the White Plains card show. I hopped on a bus at 1 am to make the trip into New York City. Sleeping most of the way is the best way to make this trip. It took a little longer than scheduled due to snow along the way, but that actually worked in my favor. Upon arrival, I set up camp inside of the McDonald’s on 42nd Street for breakfast and to wait for my friend to get to the city.

It ended up being a good thing that I got to the city nice and early because the roads were a mess. Driving was slow and most of the roads were reduced to just one lane. We still got there in plenty of time though and got to browse through a fairly empty show for a couple of hours until the weather improved. I started off by finding tables that I’d want to return to after checking everything out. I didn’t notice any singles that caught my interest. I’ll start off this recap with some of the individual cards that I picked up.

I won’t post pictures of all of the cards that I picked up for a quarter, but here’s a sampling. The Chief Team MVP is printed on holofoil that can only be seen along the top and on the top right, a Chaunsey Billups stand-up card in the shape of the NBA Championship trophy is a nice addition to the Celtics collection, Piazza Pacific Vanguard High Voltage from 2000, Juan Gonzalez 1996 Fleer Ultra Power Plus followed by the 1997 version and finally a regular sized card made up for 4 Cracker Jack minis including Kent Hrbek.

When I saw these, I couldn’t pass them up. Most were in great shape and for a quarter, I couldn’t pass them up. This is such an iconic set and while I may never have a Bird rookie of my own, it’s nice to have most of the other Celtics. I like how you get a picture of Parish in a Warriors jersey for their scoring leader card and in a Celtics jersey on his regular card.

The same dealer with the quarter cards also had some dollar boxes, so I sorted through those for a little while. Here are a few of the Piazza’s that I pulled out of the box. 99 UD Encore Homer Odyssey, 94 Leaf Gamers, 00 UD Ionix Pyrotechnics (on nice holofoil), 00 UD Ionix Awesome Powers (Yeah baby!), 98 SP Authentic Sheer Dominance gold and 95 UC3 In Motion. I may have already had the In Motion card, but for a buck I’ll grab another one.

This last batch came form a table that had a bunch of dollar boxes. They were well picked through by the time that I got there, but this table was packed every time that I passed by. 07-08 Echelon KG, 07-08 Triple Threads Big Baby RC /99, Delonte West 05-06 Ultimate Collection /50, Chris Slade second year refractor (this is from when refractors were about one per box), 08-09 Topps Sam Jones vintage orange refractor /199 and Jim Edmonds Sportscaster /50.

There was more, but this is the cream of the crop.

Buy Something Cool!

2001 eTopps Albert Pujols RC in-hand

5 Bids

$52.00

Time left: 5h 52m

This is one of Pujols cooler looking and rarer rookie cards. It’s time to get back some of the money that I’ve thrown away on eTopps.

08 Sweet Spot Ken Griffey Jr auto bat 243/243 last one

Buy It Now or Best Offer

$150.00

Time left: 6h 28m

I won’t be too disappointed if this card doesn’t sell. I was just testing the waters to see if I’d get a crazy offer due to the serial number. I’m perfectly fine keeping this card with offers of $45.

2003 eTopps Albert Pujols error in-hand 1/1?

1 Bid

$9.99

Time left: 5h 58m

I started this card off at $9.99 willing to hold onto it if it didn’t sell. I know it’s a production error, but if this is the only one like this it has to add some kind of value to the card.

2001 Bowman Albert Pujols RC #264

16 Bids

$45.00

Time left: 6h 3m

I picked this card up fairly cheaply back in 2001. It’s time has come to move on. My collecting interests and focus have changed since then.

2009 UD Ken Griffey Jr 2002 SP Variation #855o

2 Bids

$1.04

Time left: 6h 5m

I thought I had two of these SP cards, but one of them was the non-SP 2009 version. These normally sell for $20 - $30 so I’m hoping for some last minute action.

2001 Donruss The Rookies Albert Pujols #R97

8 Bids

$20.56

Time left: 6h 6m

I did very well with these sets. Bought a bunch of the redemption cards back in 2001 and ordered the sets. Sold a couple of the sets for $80 a few years ago and now it’s time to let go of the singles from the one set that I opened.

2000 Pacific Antonio Alfonseca numbered 1/199 first one

0 Bids

$0.99

Time left: 6h 9m

Are there really no Antonio Alfonseca fans out there? This will just go into the trade pile. It would have already been there if not for the “eBay 1/1” serial numbering.

2001 Donruss The Rookies Mark Teixeira RC

2 Bids

$1.08

Time left: 6h 12m

Purging the Yankees out of my collection.

05 UD SP Authentic Honors Albert Pujols jersey 129/130

0 Bids

$9.99

Time left: 6h 12m

This is another card that I started with a higher price and will be perfectly happy if it doesn’t sell. It’s a beautiful card with a fairly low print run. Upper Deck sent this to me when they couldn’t replace one of the base cards from the Timelines set that I sent to them years ago.

2002 Fleer Royal Rumble Stacy Keibler event worn shirt

8 Bids

$4.26

Time left: 6h 15m

I used to love the Fleer WWF wrestling sets. I somehow ended up with two copies of this card and decided to get rid of one. Keibler is as popular now, if not more, then when she was in the WWF.

2009 TNA Knockouts Traci Brooks parallel 1/10 first one

2 Bids

$1.35

Time left: 6h 18m

Traci Brooks recently appeared back on TNA so I figured it was a good time to list this card.

2009 TNA Impact Mick Foley parallel 12/20

0 Bids

$0.99

Time left: 6h 22m

Sometimes, selling on eBay can be no fun. I had someone from Australia contact me about this card, but I had to remove international shipping from my auctions. It costs way too much to send items internationally with delivery confirmation. If you don’t do that, you put yourself at 100% risk due to lost mail or dishonest buyers. I also didn’t want to risk low ratings from people having to pay the higher shipping fees.

2001 Donruss The Rookies Ichiro Rookie Diamond Kings

4 Bids

$3.59

Time left: 6h 22m

Here’s another card from my The Rookies set. I was hoping for Pujols of course, but the Ichiro wasn’t bad. Selling an Ichiro card without international shipping might bite me in the ass when all is said and done.

2009 TNA Impact Christopher Daniels parallel 6/20

0 Bids

$0.99

Time left: 6h 25m

The Fallen Angel seems to have fallen out of favor now that he left TNA for Ring of Honor. I miss him and all of the personas.

04-05 Fleer Ultra Chris Kaman Platinum Medallion 1/100

0 Bids

$0.99

Time left: 6h 30m

No Chris Kaman fans out there? What the heck am I going to do with his autographed card once the replacement arrives from Panini?

2008 UD Masterpieces Albert Pujols black 031/100

2 Bids

$2.25

Time left: 6h 44m

With the other Pujols cards that I’m selling, I thought someone might want to pick this up as well with combined shipping.

2010 Upper Deck R2 Jeter Posada Mariano Pettitte SP

2 Bids

$22.19

Time left: 6h 48m

I think this card is pretty rare. It’s one of the 2010 SP cards that were only available in Target loose retail packs and were pretty tough to pull. More Yankees purging.

2010 Upper Deck World of Sports Tiger Woods Jersey

4 Bids

$8.00

Time left: 6h 54m

Does anyone want a Tiger Woods jersey swatch that isn’t his trademark red? I guess I’ll find out.

07 Just Minors Jordan Zimmerman black edition auto 4/10

2 Bids

$10.50

Time left: 6h 57m

I busted a box of 2007 Just Minors a while back that I never posted on the blog. This was by far the best card in the box. With Zimmerman due to return this season, I figured that people would be looking for his card.

07 Just Minors Jordan Zimmerman auto Nationals

0 Bids

$0.99

Time left: 7h 5m

No one wants the regular version though. No big deal, it will go into the trade stack.

2009 UD 20th Anniversary Alfonso Soriano mag plate 1/1

2 Bids

$2.25

Time left: 7h 9m

I’m surprised that this one isn’t higher. Come on Yankees fans!

2010 Topps Unrivaled Bernard Berrian patch auto 067/149

4 Bids

$6.61

Time left: 7h 12m

This came out of the box of Unrivaled that I won from The Cardboard Connection. Having one autographed patch card per box seems to take some of the specialness away form these types of cards. Maybe it’s just me. A couple of years ago, there’d never be a patch card numbered to 149 and it would never sell for this low.

2001 Bowman Football Michael Vick RC Eagles Falcons

1 Bid

$0.99

Time left: 7h 15m

I completely forgot that I had this card or I would have sold it during the season when everyone was going nuts over Vick. Now that I know that I have it, it must leave the collection.

There you go. These cards will fund a little shopping spree at next weekend’s big card show and some eBay purchases as well. If something doesn’t sell and you want to work out a trade for it, let me know.

 

Technorati Tags: Albert Pujols,eBay,baseball cards,football cards,Topps,Upper Deck

Check Out My Package…

…of cards.

When I sent in the remainder of my Upper Deck Draft autos to CheckOutMyCards, I decided that it was also time to bring home all of the cards that I’ve had collecting there the past few months.

First up is a Ray Allen Chrome from 2009-10 Topps Basketball. This is a set that I’d love to chase, but it’s probably out of my means especially with Blake Griffin prices going crazy. The Chrome Griffin isn’t one of his most popular cards, but it is still up there in price and has reached triple digits.

With the second year of Panini’s pathetic attempts as basketball sets starting, I’m missing Topps basketball more and more. This last set really was a great one with the combination of the base set and the Chrome set.  There were some fun inserts and a great design. David Stern hasn’t done a heck of a lot right with the NBA in recent years (I’m looking at you age restriction), but I’m hoping that he realizes that the Panini exclusive is bad for the NBA.

Here’s some more green Chrome. Paul Pierce just issued a challenge to Ray Allen to come and try to take his 3-Point title away. Hopefully the NBA is smart enough to let this happen. I know that everyone’s going to watch NBA All-Star Saturday to see Blake Griffin run away with the dunk title, but a Paul Pierce/Ray Allen shootout possibility would add something to that contest which never has really been all that exciting.

I think it would be fun seeing Rondo in the skills competition. The things that Rondo does with the ball are phenomenal. His combination of speed, ball fakes, court vision and ability to throw crazy passes with either hand from any point in his dribble make him a threat at all times on the court.

Here’s one of the few things that Panini did right in 2009-10: stickers. The player and team logo stickers found in packs of their flagship set were great. What makes me curious is why there wasn’t an NBA sticker album and set released in the US this year? I would have been all over that and Panini would have actually seen some of my card money. Just another missed opportunity by Panini.

I picked up two cards form this insert set that I’m trying to put together. Don Nelson won five NBA Championships in Boston as a Sixth Man and then went on to become a very successful head coach. Jim Loscutoff won six straight titles with the C’s. I’ve been slow going in putting this set together mostly because the cards are always overpriced on eBay and don’t show up often anywhere else.

I’ll finish off the Celtics section of this post with some Upper Deck ridiculousness brought to you by their 20th anniversary. Technically, these are four different cards. The only difference on the card fronts are the photo captions. The backs have different numbers and blurbs. These are cards 2426, 2428, 2429 and 2430 which leads me to believe that there might still be another card that uses this picture.

I understand that this was a huge set, but this level of laziness makes Panini look like the most creative set designer in the history of sports cards. How difficult would it have been to throw in a picture of Garnett, Rondo or Jesus Shuttlesworth?

I picked up this Lisa Fernandez card knowing that I would most likely not get a replacement for her autographed card that I was sending back to Upper Deck for replacement. I want to check and see if there’s an address out there to send her stuff to be signed through the mail so I can at least end up with one of her autographs in my collection.

Football? Did you accidentally stumble into another blog mid-post? Opening that box of Unrivaled sparked my interest in football cards again… a little. It probably won’t extend too far past Patriots cards, but that’s more than I was doing prior to that point.

Tedy Bruschi is a player that you just had to love. Time and time again he came up with huge plays in big games and was a big part of the Patriots defense that brought three championships to Foxboro. He always seemed to have a huge smile on his face and always looked like he loved playing the game. Hearts broke everywhere when news of his stroke got out especially since Boston sports fans all remember the tragedy of losing Reggie Lewis. His rehab and return to professional football were inspiring and he continues to do good by talking to others who have suffered strokes. Great guy and I’ve been looking to add this rookie card to my collection for a while now.

Wally! Wally lives in the Green Monster and was introduced to the world in 1997. Kids love him and that’s what matters most. I think he’s one of the cooler mascots in baseball. He’s also in one of the funniest SportsCenter commercials of all time.

While waiting in line for Monster seats one year, Wally spotted and took offence at the Grover zipper pull on my backpack. He thought that I should have a Wally zipper pull instead. Once you get super powers and can teach me the difference between near and far we’ll talk Wally.

I wasn’t sure at the time if I already had this Clay Buchholz card or not, but I figure that if I already have it that I can send it off to Night Owl for his Buchholz collection.

I live right outside of and work in Boston, but there never seem to be any shops that participate in these giveaway promotions. Everything is way out in the suburbs. I just looked at the list of participating stores for Panini’s latest promotion in Massachusetts and had to chuckle. I don’t think of the shops were anywhere near me.

I loves me some purple refractors. When I found a cheap one on COMC that was also of a Red Sox player, I had to grab it. Doubront is kind of in limbo with all of the relievers that the Sox signed this offseason. Doubront will get a chance to compete for the final spot in the bullpen during Spring Training. If he doesn’t win that spot, it will be interesting to see what they do with him down in Pawtucket. Do you stretch him out as a starter when the Sox are pretty much all set at that position for years to come? Do the Sox shop him around? It’ll be interesting to see what happens both on and off of the field this season for the Sox.

Next up is a trio of Big Papis. There’s a 2008 Masterpieces with a black border, 2009 Upper Deck OPC Preview (that never came to be and was part of the beginning of the end for Upper Deck) and 2007 Masterpieces with a green border. The colors probably have official names, but I’m too lazy too look them up.

2011 is going to be a transition year for the Red Sox. No longer will this team be powered by Big Papi, it will now be powered by Adrian Gonzalez with Carl Crawford setting the table. It’ll be weird seeing Ortiz go in a year or so since he was such a huge part of the two World Series Championships.

This card here is a Mike Piazza Pacific Card-supial from 1997 Crown Collection. There’s nothing too special about the front of the card. It’s a nice design using an awful lot of gold foil. You may not be able to tell from the scan, but the Dodgers logo is etched into the foil over and over again.

I hadn’t ever heard of these cards until I read about them on a blog. I can’t remember which one it was at the moment. Once I read about the special feature of these cards, I knew that I had to track them down.

This is the back of the Card-supil. It might be tough to tell from the scan, but there’s a slit in the card right above Piazza’s name on the back of the card. Above that, the picture of Piazza on the back of the card is in black and white. Everything else is just like you’d expect the back of a trading card to look.

The reason that this card is called a Card-supial is that it’s got a pouch just like a kangaroo. There are mini cards to be found that go into these pouches to complete the card.

Did somebody say mini card? Here’s the mini card right here. It’s got a color version of the picture from the back of the larger card and the player’s name in foil (which gets hidden in the pouch).

Here’s a scan of the two cards together. Everything’s now in color and the nice foil name on the mini is hidden. Kind of a strange gimmick for a card, but Pacific did this for multiple years. The only downside is that putting the mini into the slot of the larger card wrecks the card a little, but it’s worth it. It’s not like these cards are going to be leaving my collection at all. This will go nicely right next to the Pinnacle Zenith jumbo cards that I have with regular cards still trapped inside of them. I’m such a sucker for these oddball cards.

More Pacific goodness. You’ve got all kinds of gold foil combined with an acetate window. This card sums up the 90s pretty nicely.

I really miss Pacific and Pinnacle and all of the interesting things that they’d bring to the hobby. Sure, a lot of them were clunkers, but they were fun. I think that’s one thing that there just isn’t enough of in the hobby these days. I love that many bloggers out there make their own fun. There are tons of ways to collect and I love seeing all of the different collections people have.

Last, but not least is another Masterpieces card, this time of Mike Piazza. This is a 2007 something green. Right now I think I’m leaning towards a case of 2007 Masterpieces for my next break. The box toppers are so cool and the autographed case hit is even cooler. You’ve got Lincecum rookies and potential parallels of that along with on-card autographs and a set that’s still popular to this date with decent resale on singles. It seems like the cases might be drying up though so that may not happen. I’m also considering Baseball Heroes and Philadelphia football.

There you go. That’s the kind of stuff I search out on COMC.

 

Technorati Tags: Mike Piazza,Paul Pierce,Clay Buchholz,David Ortiz,Ray Allen,Rajon Rondo,Tedy Bruschi,Check Out My Cards

Florida Collector Claims Panini Super Bowl 44 Bounty

COLLECTOR DAWN MCNEW OF LEHIGH ACRES, FLORIDA CLAIMS PANINI’S SUPER BOWL 44 MANNING-BREES BOUNTY

Peyton Manning “Super Collector” to Receive a Box of Every 2010 Panini NFL Trading Card Product

ARLINGTON, TX. – FEB. 3, 2010 – In celebration of Super Bowl 44 in Miami, Panini, a leading manufacturer of licensed collectibles, NFL and NBA trading cards, put out a bounty valued at more than $1,500, for the collector who pulls the NFL Limited 2009 Pro Bowl Combo Materials card featuring Super Bowl quarterbacks Peyton Manning and Drew Brees (sequentially numbered #44 of 100).  With a week left before the offer expired, collector Dawn McNew of Lehigh Acres, Fla., contacted the Panini offices to let them know the card all of America was searching for was part of her 1,000+ card Peyton Manning card collection.

“I am a huge, huge Peyton Manning fan and I only collect Peyton Manning cards, which is how I ended up with the card.  I simply collect as many Peyton Manning cards as possible,” admitted McNew.  “I saw the offer advertised on the Panini website and since I knew I had two versions of that card, I thought it would be worth checking my collection to see if I had #44.  It was surely a great feeling to see one of my cards with the sequential numbering #44/100.”

In all, the physical education teacher at Lehigh Senior High School, estimates her Manning card collection to exceed 1,000 different cards, including two of the Manning-Brees Pro Bowl Material cards.  An Indiana native, who moved to Florida seven years ago, she purchased the #44/100 Manning-Brees card for $11 on Nov. 12 on eBay where she does most of her collecting.  She also shops at NASCAR Sports & Collectibles in Bonita Springs, Fla. 

“When Dawn admitted that she was unsure if she wanted to part with the #44/100 version because it was part of her Manning collection, we knew she was a true collector and exemplified everything great about collecting,” admits Scott Prusha, Marketing Manager for Panini.  “As a result, we decided to amend the bounty and return card #44/100 to her along with the year supply of Panini NFL cards and an exclusive Manning-Brees #1 of 1.”

The Manning-Brees card, a part of the Pro Bowl Combo Materials insert set in Panini’s 2009 Limited NFL brand, was released in October.  It has a limited print run of just 100 sequentially numbered cards, and according to Beckett, is valued at $20.  The offer, made by Panini on January 27, remained open to collectors until the opening kick-off of Super Bowl 44, on Sunday, February 7 @ 6:28 pm ET. 

“From the hundreds of emails we received about this offer and the response on chat boards, blogs and websites, it is apparent that collectors had fun with this bounty,” said Prusha. “We’re so pleased that we will be able to reward a collector for their support of Panini NFL cards.”

My take: I love this promotion and think that card companies should do things like this a lot more often.  Release a product, wait 6 months or so after the release and then award a bounty for a specific card tied in to an event in that sport.  When you think about it, it’s not that different from Upper Deck’s Predictor cards or Topps’ Home Run Derby cards except this prize was unexpected.  Great job Panini!