Upper Deck Super Pricey Fizzle

Well Upper Deck Exquisite is live and all over Ebay.  I've watched a bunch of breaks on youtube.  Sorry no links just go find em if you want to watch them and I am Joe Collector has a link to a 5 case break.  I looked on Blowout cards and a single box of this stuff is going for over 500 bucks.  And you get one pack and a bonus pack. I pursued the listings on ebay all 32 pages of them.  I haven't seen anything all that great.  Especially worth 500 bucks.  I'm waiting to see what some of these auctions go for but I just can't see getting anywhere close to your money back on this.  Now maybe the best stuff is being kept by collectors but I'm just not that impressed at all.  There doesn't seem to be anything new here design wise.  Maybe this is UD's death throw or there attempt to make some money back from their court settlements.

And why is this labeled a 2009 product?  I thought 2009 ended almont 4 months ago,thats a third of year for Christ's sake.  I figure it's so you can say the Sanchez and Stafford cards are rookies and not sophmore cards.  Still pretty lame if you ask me. 

i need some sleep. 

Is Rob Cordry the new Will Ferrell?

Having lived in rural Alaska for the last 4 years the one thing I missed other than bowling was going to see new movies.  You get use to waiting for movies to come out on dvd or if your lucky to be out of town and able to go to a theater going to see a new movie. 

Anyways it's nice to be in a city with a movie theaters.  I went to go see Hot Tub Time Maching.  I almost peed myself a couple times.  Very funny.  And I have to say Rob Courdry stole the show.  Man that guy is funny.  I use to love him on the Daily Show.  If you haven't seen it I'll recommend it.  It gets slow in parts and has some raunchy moments but over all pretty good. 

2010 Topps Finest Mini Box Break

I was at my favorite card shop this afternoon.  I was just going to browse the boxes for some additions to my player collections and look through the baragin bin.  And what did I see on the shelf.  Why nice fresh boxes of Topps Finest.  I couldn't resist.

So here's what I got out of my mini box.

I got 24 base cards no dups.

5 refractors.

2 blue, Cole Hamels and John Lannan #d to 299 and 3 regular Josh Beckett, John Lester, and Rick Porcello.

One redmeption.

I already redeemed it.  I couldn't help myself.  This being #9 I know I won't find out who it is until August probably. 

And my Rookie Patch Card

Tyler Colvin of the Cubs #d to 217.  A nice sig and I love the look of this card.

Over all not too shabby but a little pricy.  And sorry about the crappy pictures my scanner is still all packed up and 700 miles away. 

New NFL overtime rules.

I'm sure it's been mentioned and I first saw this blurb on the Upper Deck blog and then went searching for coaberation.  Here is the ESPN article.  But now it looks like there are going to be changes to the overtime rules, well at least in the playoffs.  The short of it is if a game in the playoffs goes into overtime and the recieving team only gets a fieldgoal the other team gets a shot at the ball, but if the recieving team gets a touch down it's game over.  I couldn't find what happens if both teams get field goals.  And oddly enough the team that this rule maybe would have helped last year voted against it.  Here I was going to call it the Favre rule, but I guess not. 

Now why only in the playoffs?  Why only if the team gets a fieldgoal?  It's explained a little in the story and i'm not going to reiterate it here.  My beef is why not make overtime like it is in college football.  Sudden death always favors the coin flip winner.  Why not give both teams a chance to score.  Or make them play the whole overtime.  I know it's a tiring, dangerous, physical sport and the longer you're playing the more likely an injury is. 

Second why give the playoffs the special treatment.  That's like saying the regular season isn't worth anything. 

Fire away comments are always welcomed. 

Back In AnchorTown

Well I did it.  I'm here.  I even found a place to stay.  Everytime I go to find an apartment here after being away for awhile I'm amazed at how expensive it is in Anchorage.  Plus now I have a dog so I had to find a place that would let me have him there.  And it's small and will be smaller when the fiance and dog move up in May.  But its temporary.  

I digress so i'm sitting here at my desk at my new job waiting to get some calls returned and thought I'd see if this website was blocked.  Fools it's not.  Only everyother good site to waste my time on is.  At least I can still peruse the blogroll.   This sure isn't sounding like a card posting but wait it might turn in to one here shortly. 

My first realization is that I won't be around much this summer, by that I mean in my office or at home, I'll be out playing in the wilderness helping young salmon ect.  Which means I won't get to do alot of fishing or posting.  Bummer, but at least I'll have a job all winter to make me fat and sassy and keep my card collection in tow.

So I've been in town about a week and half.  I've visited my favorite old card shop twice and spent way too much money.  But I wanted to put together a Topps Baseball set so I bought a couple jumbo boxes.  I don't have my scanner or camera so no photos and I'm not going to list my hits here right now anyway.  Nothing spectactular.  I also picked up a few packs of Heritage and Champs.  Heritage is alright I've been debating maybe doing a set of that this year.  But the Champs was pretty sweet.  I'm not a huge hockey fan.  That's mainly because I have no team to root for really.  And to be honest the retro themed cards are getting a bit old.  But UD did a great job with this product.  I think that for set builders it's a loser seeing as you get so few base cards per pack.  I think it was you get 5 cards per pack and 2 of those are mini's.  I remember the sell sheet didn't even have examples of the base cards just the inserts.  But I got super lucky.  I had the store owner pick 4 packs for me and in those 4 packs I got a jersey, an on card auto, a gold parallel and historical figures mini.  Not too shabby.  Needly to say I won't be buying any more of that till he opens another box.  I'm torn, I love the look of the cards and the set is fairly small 200.  But to put a set together you would have to buy at least 3 boxes.  As for my Heritage packs I got one chrome and one tiffany back an that was it.  I can't even remember who they were,  seeing as i'm at work. 

See this posting turned into a nice little what I got.  Anywho It's nice to be back in the big city, but the traffic is driving my crazy. 

The Wee Hours

I'm sitting here in the wee yearly hours of today, thinking that St Patty's day is only a little over a week away and that I'll be up in Anchorage working at my new job.  I've been busy packing up all my stuff.  Amazing how much stuff you accumulate.  I still have a storage unit in Anchorage that I kept for the last 4 years full of my stuff. 

This post is going to ramble so hang on, and don't be too disappointed if at the end you find out there's no plot. 

I was packing up my cards.  I've got a lot here too.  Been a busy beaver, but the internet is a great thing with your almost a 1000 miles from the nearest card shop.  I was packing all my cards tight and taping lids shut, and making sure that everything is labeled.  I'm tring to decide what I want to take up with me know or leave when I come back to move my fiance up in a couple of months.  I hate packing but it's interesting to find what you dig up.  I've been finding stuff packed into the back of closets and drawers.  I wish I hadn't packed away my scanner already I would have posted some of the stuff. 

As I was looking at my growing pile of boxes I started to think about the trappings of stuff.  I've had friends who where/are very anti stuff.  It must be nice to not have to worry about things but alas I am a product of my environment and genetics.  My grandparents were hoarders.  I think it had to do with going through WWII but I remember cleaning out there house when after my mom's family moved them to a senior home and finding all sorts of wierd stuff.  Some of the cooler stuff was a bag of old coins, a box of old stamps, some old hockey cards, and really old magazines.  Some of the not so cool stuff was all the bread bags, bag ties, boxes, and other useless stuff they had crammed into their basement as well.  They were nice folk I miss them a lot, but this of course leads me to thinking about religion and such.  Now I believe to each their own.  I don't consider myself religious, perhaps spirtiual,  if you can disern from my handle I do like buddha, although I have a hard time swallowing all of any religion or philosophy.  And of course one of the main tenants of Buddism is that things and distractions bring suffering.  Hence this is why i'm a cynicalbuddhist.  I like the idea of karma and kismet.  I like the idea that evil is punished by the like and that good is rewarded.  Seems corny I know.   

But as I look at all the stuff I've accumlated in the last 4 years here in Haines I think maybe Buddha had something.  Well I'm off to bed.  This weekend is the poker championships at the local bar I play World Tavern Poker at.  I didn't play nearly as hard as I have in the past and i still ended up having the second best average in the bar.  It'll be my last poker games here and i'm looking forward to it.  I've won in the past and the prize is a trip to Vegas to play for a seat at the World Series of Poker.  It's a blast and I highly recommend if you like poker and beer and there's a bar in your area that has it go play.  You'll meet some great people. 

As promised I have no point and I'll leave you with this.

Beware.

Last post for a while.

Well I finally found out that I got the job I wanted up in Anchorage.  This is big seeing as I've been living in BFE Alaska for the last 4 years with short stints out of town.  Now I'll be in a city with multiple card shops not to mention Wally world's and a Target.  What does this mean?  Well it means I'll be silent for a while, even though I know I haven't posted in a while.  But it also means that when I finally get set up in Anchortown I should have more to post about and be current on releases.   I've been holding off buying any new baseball thinking that I would have been up there a while ago.  I want to put together a 2010 Topps Baseball set again this year.  I was looking at 2 jumbos or 3 hobbys for the task and I should get close to putting together 2 sets.  Plus all those nice hits.  So that'll be my first order of card business once I'm set up. 

So I want to thank my 12 followers and anybody who pops in to read what I've posted and all of you's who leave comments I love 'em. 

It's funny how much of a family  the card blog community is.  And once I'm established up there I think I might like to try a few trades too.  

So in summary, this feels like a state of the union address, I'll see you all on the other side.
cb