Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Silly statistics

It's funny what I find myself getting obsessed about. I don't think I'd been this obsessed about a card since the Strasmania of 2010.

 I posted about this card last week. You may remember it. If not you can look at my recent posts or just click here if you want to read what I wrote.  Anyway, the absurdity of this card just wouldn't let me let go of it. So I followed it on ebay. I really wanted to see what a gimmick card with 16 Lebron James autos on it went for and now I can tell you.

The final sell price for this card was $7,500.  There were 24 active bidders for a total of 71 bids.  And after looking at the bidding activity and seeing that the winning bid belonged to a guy with over 6100 feedback I'd say the sale is probably legit.

 The auction started at 99 cents.  After looking at what box prices of 2012-2013 UD Exquisite Basketball are going for the seller did alright.  Boxes are currently going for about $638. That gets you six cards. 5 autos and one base or rookie card.  Crazy.

Back in Black!!

It's almost that time of year again. Time to stuff yourself silly and spend time with family and friends and of course get ready for COMC's annual Black Friday deals.

Although probably not as exciting in years past since COMC has simplified its shipping by offering $3 flat rate shipping, but still Black Friday was always the day to hit COMC and pick up the cards you've been watching.  This year's no different. They are offering free shipping again, but you have to buy 20 items to ship.

They are having other promotions as well like store credit for spending so much and they're giving away online shopping sprees. They are also encouraging their sellers to run their own promotions.

I've got a list of stuff I want to try and find next Friday most of it pretty mundane, like getting the 3 1987 Donruss rookies I need to finish the set I bought at the warehouse sale last month, but I'll be on the lookout for other goodies as well.

You can read all about their promotions HERE.

Just seems really silly and such a waste

I don't know if you've seen this yet, but I remember Upper Deck putting out pictures  of this card on Twitter or Facebook or both, I can't remember, but it's been pulled and it's up one ebay. You can follow the auction here.

After looking at the card all I can do is shake my head.  Is sixteen Lebron autos better than one on a card?

This card would have been so much better with a nice auto and some huge relic pieces.  Plus Upper Deck doesn't have an NBA license so this is Lebron in Notre Dame gear.

I'm really interested to see how much this card goes for. As I write this the auction is at $3700.  

And I know that the card is more of a publicity stunt for Upper Deck, but just seems like such a waste of one of the premeire players autographs even if they are all sticker autos.

Thoughts?

Can I borrow a couple quarters?

I'm a big fan of the oddball and unique.  I saw a post on the Sports Collectors Daily's facebook page about this one.  It's a unique piece of original artwork from the original Wacky Packages from  1967.   Topps has it up on ebay via their Topps Vault account.  Might be a little wishful thinking on the asking price. On the upside it comes already framed and triple matted, but you still have to pay for shipping.

You can check the auction out HERE.

Ode to the Man Cave

There's big news here at Collector's Crack world headquarters.  That news is that the wife and I are expecting our first child.  Sometime around mid-March.  A boy and I'm pretty excited about it.  What does that mean here at World Headquarters?  Well about 3 years ago we bought our first house.  A small 2 bedroom in a nice quite part of Anchorage.  I was excited about that since I was able to steal, err, use the second bedroom as my art studio man cave.  Well now that we have a little one on the way that room will soon be his room.  So I thought I'd take a moment and honor my awesome man cave.

I posted this photo way back in December of 2010 right after we started moving in.  I had all intentions of posting more photos of the room after I got stuff sorted out, but that never happened.  You can read that post from long ago here.

I had stuffed a lot of things in that room.  And with a little elbow grease and some thrift store furniture it's been a really cozy place to blog, scan stuff, sell stuff, sort stuff, break boxes, put sets together, and occasionally draw.  If you want to see some of my art work head on over to the 13 Tenets of Cynicalbuddism.

The book case holds sets in progress, player collections, Brewers and Packers team sets and other misc. stuff. The desk is a cheap thrift store buy, but it holds my large format scanner, printer and a ton of other stuff.

I built the bookshelf myself, even earthquake proofed it. Down on the bottom it's mostly extras from various years. The middle holds my Brewers team sets and small monster boxes with a few player collections and other various stuff. I also have a section of sets I'm actively putting together.

Up top we have my main player collections of Robin Yount and Brett Favre. There are also other team set binders and way up top we have some more set building boxes. I'm slowly working on finishing all the Topps sets from 1981 to 1993, I have most of my needs list up on the side bar under Help me Complete a set.

 The closet has completed sets up top, other miscellaneous boxes of cards, and below are some of my comic collection

I'm slowly boxing stuff up and moving it out to the shed.

 Here's a look at the drawing table. I bought this from a classified ad over 15 years ago.  Best hundred bucks I ever spent. All the fittings on table are cast iron and it's very solid.  It's also great for sorting cards.  You might be able to see a small work in progress for a friend who commissioned a design for a tattoo.  I have lots of people do that, then never get the tattoo.  But I love having a reason to draw.  Not that I need one, but having a purpose is a great motivator for me.

Here we have my wall of awesome. That's my complete 1975 Hostess box with my favorite player Mr. Robin Yount's rookie card on it. There is also a complete 1977 Burger Chef box, and of course my since I'm a proud shareholder of the Green Bay Packers my stock certificate.

I took this picture the other night, just to show how crowded the table can get.

Here are the shelves above my drawing table. Art supplies below. There is also a stack of old Beckett 4 sport magazines. I decided one year to try a subscription. I got a good deal on it and I'll be honest I do enjoy the articles, but the price guide is really less than useless for me.  I think their art issue is still one of my favorites every year.  Middle shelf is more supplies, bubble mailers, and envelopes for TTM's. Up top we have my minifigure collection and a box big box of doodles.

 Here's the view out the back window.  You can see my chicken coop out there. We have 5 laying hens and we get about 2 dozen eggs a week in the summer.  That's a lot of eggs. I have a lot of happy friends. You can check out the exploits of the chickens and our garden on my garden blog, Nunaka Valley Farm.

What will become of the Crack? Who knows, but I'll be around.

cb out

I got primed!

I was at Bosco's for their monthly trade night and drawing. Every month the shop puts a pack of everything new that's come out in sports cards that month. If the person who has the drawn ticket isn't there the packs roll over to the next month.  Unfortunately I didn't win and someone else did. But since I won a couple years ago with 4 tickets I bought the night of I always try to buy a few packs before the big drawing. I ended  up picking up a few supplies I needed and two packs of 2013 Topps Prime.  I really like Prime it's always had a great looking design, very reminiscent of Upper Deck. I would love to put the set together, but packs are pricey at about 11 to 12 dollars a pack. And hobby cards are always on thick stock while the retail version of Prime is printed on a thinner stock.  

Anyway, my first pack only had a low numbered rookie in it. But I noticed that the second pack was a little thinker than the first and after opening it only had one card in it.

A pretty sweet Landry Jones book card.  This is the second book card I've pulled from Prime, HERE was my first one Prime's first year in 2010.

Landry had a pretty good college career at Oklahoma.  Time will tell if he ever gets to come out of the shadow of Big Ben, but it's still a pretty sweet card. 

Warehouse sale finds

Last weekend I ended up down at Bosco's for their big Warehouse sale. Bosco's is a local Comic/Card shop in here in Anchorage.  They also have a huge selection of Manga, role playing games, used video cames and dvd's and all sorts of nerdy collectibles.

 I was talking to the owner John during the sale and he pretty much said that he just wanted everything at the sale gone.  They were trying to reduce their warehouse space and it showed in how bargain basement the prices were.

They had a little of very thing there.  Graphic novels for a couple bucks, posters, comics, games, supplies, and of course sports cards.  I filled up a medium size box with goodies and here's what I got.

There were tons of the old Traded, Update, and other cool box sets from the 90's. At a buck a pop that was cheap enough for me.  Sure some of these sets are only worth $3 or so, but I didn't own them.

Couple 1989 Fleer Update sets.

1990 Topps Traded.  I picked up a few other Topps Traded sets at Bosco's last Warehouse sale years ago, but not a 1990 set.

The 1990 and 1991 Score Rookie and Traded sets. Possibly some of the most over produced card sets ever.

And while none of these cards are worth too much there are a few big name in the sets.

1991 Fleer update.

1989 and 1990 Upper Deck High Number series

1989 and 1990 Score Young Superstar box sets.  Yikes 8 bucks back in the day. Amazing what a few decades will do to the price.

There's a few guys I know in there.

And even though Hockey ain't my sport I did pick up a few Score box sets of those too.

When I look a checklist and I know at least 3 of the hockey players I think I'm doing good.

The best part about this set is that I think I only recognize 3 names on the checklist.

I also picked up a partial 1987 Donruss set. The three big cards weren't in the set and it was clearly marked as a broken set, but for $2 bucks I'll take it. Now I just have to hunt down the 3 cards I need to complete it.

Wow $80 for this set back in the day.

Most of the set was still in it's cellophane wrappers

I also picked up a few 1993 Series 2 vending boxes on the cheap. I'm slowly building all the sets I never bothered to put together. I was in my  second  year of college when this came out and I had better things to do and spend my money on at the time.

I also picked up a few of these. This is the 1987 Official USA team set, printed in 1990.  I mainly got it because it has Frank Thomas in it, but Jim Abbott is right there on top as well.

I also picked up a wax box of these odd balls.  I'm not a big soccer fan, but I'm an oddball lover and these were just too weird to pass up.

I had to look these up online to find out that they came out in 1990.

I was looking online and some of these can go for a few bucks, although that would be in England. I didn't open any up yet. In theory there should be a full set in the box with only 18 in the set and 24 per box, but 90's Topps collation is a bitch. Here's what one looks like that I found off the web. The whole box cast me $2.

I also found a couple there Classic sets for a buck a piece.

I was looking these up in my 2010 Standard Catalog and there is only one card worth anything in the set. Lets see if you can pick out which one it is from the checklist.

Found this complete 2002 NFL Showdown set. It was a dollar as well.

All the cards were still sealed up and there was even an 11 year old pack of batteries.

I grabbed a couple of these 1994 Skybox Harley-Davidson sets.

I also found some cool Pinnacle box sets.  You might remember these from back in the 90's. They look like condom boxes.

This set was by far the best with some big names in it. I ended up grabbing two each from these sets one for me and one to hang on to for future contest prizes.

This set is like so many future star sets. Most players don't pan out, but there are a few big names in here. Most notably Piazza, Ramirez, and Jones.

As a Packer fan it was hard to pass up a vintage team set for a quarter.  

But by far the best thing I found was this 1997 Pinnacle sales portfolio.  

With all the cards still intact.

The only reason I wanted this set was for that Frank Thomas Aura card, but I'll probably leave the set intact for now.

Of course the showcase of the inserts was the Spellbound, Artist Proof and Museum collection.  You'll notice that the corners have been cut off to signify that the cards were promos.

The info page was pretty cool too. If you want to know where the printing plate craze came from I think you can probably trace it back to here.  I wonder if anyone ever collected that bounty.  That would have been hard back in 1997, ebay and internet were around, but still pretty new.

And I payed a whole fifty cents for this. I wish I had more room for stuff it really was a great sale.   I'll be down at Bosco's this Wednesday for trade night, wish me luck I'm hoping I win the big drawing.