To Redeem or not to Redeem is it a Stupid Question??

So we all seem to have gotten our Topps redemptions last month and I'm sure we're all happy we did, finally.  I got lucky with Series 2 pulling a Gordon Beckham Auto Variant among others and not so lucky with series 1 where I pulled 3 of the same WBC redemptions.  But in Series 1 I also pulled a sketch card redemption and guess what I just looked on Topps redemption website and found that they listed my sketch card as shipped and certified mail no less, joy. I'll post it when I get it.  I wonder who it could be?  Only took 8 months.  Jeez.  At that rate half the subjects might be retired already.  

Which brings me to my question of the moment.  Is it better to redeem or sell it and let it be someone elses headache.  Now I have to say that at least Topps tell you it's going to be a long time.  I had a Donruss GridIron Gear redemption from last year I finally got in July.  Eric Ainke.   Who is he still even playing?  Not really. 

Truth be told I got lucky pulling a #2 redemption which turned out to be Beckham and also turned out to be a 1/10 auto variant,  but most of the time redemptions hit ebay long before Topps even announces who it will be for.  A little like Russian Roulette if your buying.  I don't know.  Redeeming the cards is easy enough online through all the companies websites.  But like so many other bloggers out there why even have them?
Seems like another added expense for the card companies that they probably don't need. 

I'm still torn.  Looking back at what some of the redemption cards went for on ebay and what your likely to get if you redeem and try to sell the card it almost seems better to sell the redemption card.  There are a few exceptions of course the Beckham Auto is going for over 100 bucks a pop right now.

I could see if Topps did more gimmicks like the auto variants or relic variants or even relic auto variants it would definatley be worth keeping the cards and redeeming yourself. 

Well enough venting.

And to leave you with this, Is Upper Deck looking for card designers because if this is the shit that they think we want they need to have there heads removed from there asses. 

Worst Inserts EVER!

Oh, how the mighty have fallen or How to get Barry on the cheap

I was browsing ebay the otherday.  Love'em or hate'em it's still the largest marketplace for used stuff on the web.  And I thought for some reason what I could get a 86 Topps Traded Barry Bonds rookie for.  Now I did my basic homework.  I looked up the guide price, about 20 bucks,  looked on the sportslizard, too much variation with graded cards to be useful. I was not looking for a graded card.  So I looked around ebay and found a seller that had not one but 2 Barry rookies up for auction.  Both starting at 89 cents.  And like all good ebayers I bid on both to take advantage of the combine shipping.  Right at the end I had one of the rookies bid up over my maximium bid but I still got the other card for a whole 89 cents plus shipping.  And 2 weeks later

BAM!

Add Barry to the collection.  I wonder if I knocked him down a few bucks in the guides.  The card is great not mint I can see one corner is a little less sharp than the rest but overall well worth the 89 cents and shipping. 

My 2 Cents

So I'm sitting on the can purusing the latest issue of TuffStuff Magazine.  Which I subscribe to 1) because it's not Beckett 2)because it's not Beckett 3) because a Subscription is cheap compared to cover prices and it's nice to have some industry news even if it's months old by the time it's published and some current pricing, which is a whole nother rant.  But I'm getting off topic.

There has been lots of talk of all the exclusivity of sport cards and sports card companies.  In the latest issue of Tuff Stuff there is a nice little article Titled: The Times the are A Changing: Sorting Out the New-Look Hobby Landscape.  The article is all about what the exclusive deals between card companies and pro sport organization mean for the companies, the collectors and even the hobby store owners.  There's even a nice little quote from the blogosphere own Ryan Cracknell from Trader's Crack.  Which in another side note had nothing to do with my naming of this blog, as I didn't even know the site existed when I started it.  I actually was going to call this blog Cardboard Crack, which is still open if anyone wants it, but up here in Alaska cardboard crack is slang for Pulltab or Rippies.  The only legalized gambling up here.

Rippies look like this 

Now i'm really off topic. 

So the whole point is and I hope you are all still with me here.  What does exclusivity mean. 

First I want to know what multi-year deal means exactly!! Is it 2 years 3, 4, 10 what how long till I get to put a Topps football set together again?  I haven't seen this fact posted anywhere, especially by the companies that claim it. 
Now some people rail that this is good, that less product out there will be good.  Who are these people?  Mainly the companies who complain that there is too much choice on the selves.  Tuff Stuff has been running a multi-part series where they interview the top execs from all three major card companies and the one thing I remember from reading all the interviews is they all bitched about shelf space.  Ryan points out that the lack of competion tends to be a bad thing and that with good compitition you are always trying to one up the other guy and that it spurs innovation.  And other claim that with companies only have one or two licenses they can concentrate on that sport and ultimately put out the best product. 
Now with that said I have some more questions.  How are these companies going to survive with only one license?  Well I figure they are going to have to put out lots of product.  Could this be another overproduction scenerio like in the 90's? 

Did the license agreement limit the number of sets a company can produce?  I don't know.  I'd love some feedback here from people that do.  If not I think that Topps, Upper Deck, and Panini might only ending up competiting with themselves on the shelves.  Is that going to be a good thing?  Probably not.  Lets face it. 
Card collectors come in lots of varities, from set builders, to player collectors, to collecting only one sport or multisport and some are even company specific.  So what does that mean for companies? 

Well it means that they might be lossing some collectors.  People that would be buying there football product might not be buying there baseball or hockey product.  It means player collectors are going to have fewer sets to get there favorite players from. 

However I do see some bright spots.  Focusing on only one sport will allow that company to product a wide array of priced sets, boxes and packs for all price range collectors.  It will allow the companies to put out sets for set builders and sets for player collectors. 

For someone who's both a set builder and player collector its a little bit of bittersweet. 
Ultimately only time will tell how this experiement works out.  And lets now forget that all these companies will probably be putting out sets they don't have licenses in.  All the license allow the company to do is use logos.  Might we see a bunch or airbrushed set like the old food issues from the 70's and 80's?  I'd love to hear what everybody thinks.  Especially with these agreement starting to take effect.

Until next time.

I stand corrected. Sorta...

I've been meaning to do an update from my last post about the 1976 Reggie Jackson Postcard, but ended up leaving town for a couple days to keep my and my girlfriends sanity in place.    Anyways I posted that Mr. Jackson did not have any regular issue cards that put him in a Orioles Jersey.  And this is still true I believe.  But I had a post from Fleerfan, who has a nice blog mostly about fleer stickers, that he actually did a posting of the exactly topic not to long ago you can find it here.  He actually has a bunch of photos he's found with Reggie in an Orioles uni, but not a lot.  And after looking at the photos I realized that in 1988 Score put out a 5 card tribute sub set in the set.  Cards 500 - 505.

  And card 501 is Reggie in an Orioles Jersey.

 He also had some examples of the Renata Galasso tribute set.  And while the card was in the regular issue of the 1988 Score set Reggie retired at the end of the 1987 season so. . . . he still never had a regular issue. 

And basically what I meant that he didn't have a regular issue Topps card at the time.  Now here comes the interesting part.  Fleerfan had a picture of the fabled 1977 Reggie Jackson Proof card.  After searching around the internet I found a message board at baseball fever, from early 2008 and they had a link to Trading Card Central  from a post in 2004 where the Topps Vault was selling on ebay the 1977 Reggie Jackson Proof card.  I couldn't find out how much it went for, I'd love to know if anyone out there knows.

Here's the image of the proof card from Trading Card Centrals post titled Famous Reggie Jackson Proof Card Uncovered.

And here's his actual regular issued card from 1977.
If you look close the airbrushing is painfully obvious.  Now Fleerfan also points out that Reggie does make an apperance on the team card of the Orioles.  So I guess I'm torn.  I guess you could call that a regular issue but it's not a player card.  Whatever.  I want to say thanks to Fleerfan for the info and the education and I had fun going back and doing more research on the subject. 
Until next time.
CB

The only Reggie Jackson I've ever seen in an Orioles Jersey.

Haven't been doing much the last couple of days except recovering from the holidays.  But I got this in the mail the other day.  I saw it on ebay and had to pick it up for my Reggie Jackson collection.  I was thinking of starting a player collectors blog for Mr. Jackson too but I haven't yet so I thought I'd share it here.  This is the only item I've seen Reggie in his Orioles jersey.  He only played for the Orioles less than a year. Traded to the Orioles from the A's in early 1976, the was granted free agency and signed with the Yankees.  Sadly there are no regular issue baseball cards of Reggie in a Baltimore uniform.  Of course he went to the World Series in 1977 with the Yankees too.

The auction call this a team issues postcard.  It's a nice card.  But I don't know about it being a postcard.  The back is blank.  So it could be a reproduction but at least I know the picture was taken in 1976.  I did a search for other Oriole postcards and found a Brooks Robinson Triute page that had a similar looking postcard so I'm fairly certain its authentic.  It measures 3 1/2 x 5 1/4 inches.

I got most of my facts from http://www.thebaseballpage.com/ and wikipedia.

Oh here's an interesting tid bit I didn't know, even being a Milwaukee Brewers fan.  The Baltimore Orioles can trace there heritage back to the original Milwaukee Brewers baseball club from 1901.  And now you know. 

Happy New Year everybody.

2009 Upper Deck Football Box Break

Yeah Yeah Yeah this has been out a while but who cares when you live close to a thousand miles from the nearest card shop you take what you can get.

OK here's the break down got a box of 2009 Upper Deck Football Hobby.  It advertises 3 jersey and 1 auto per box, two 3D cards and 320 cards total per box.   I bought the box for  52 bucks with shipping off of ebay and got it about 3 week later.  They sent it Parcel Post and for a buck more they could have sent it priority??!!

Some sellers just don't get it I guess.  I was well packaged though and shipped 2 days after I paid so not too bad on that end. 

The regular cards look like this if you haven't seen them.

There what you call full bleed.  That means that they don't have any borders.  Upper Deck does this alot with there cards.  I'm middle of the road some of the cards look great especially the action shots, while some of the posed shots look kinda hooky.

Each pack also boasts 4 rookies.  They look like this.

These are also the 4 SP rookies I got.  Nice pull on the Stafford.  Not too shabby, plus I got 64 more rookies.  Some of the packs had 5 rookies in them and I don't remember any having under 4.  So way to go Upper Deck on that one.

I got two 3D cards as advertised.

There were rookie Aaron Curry and a Tom Brady/Randy Moss.

I like these cards and I like the rarity.  Although why bill it as 3D?  When there not.  I guess you can't say hey were using decades old technology to bring SportsFlics back. 3D just sounds cooler. 

I also got the 3 jersey cards.

Anquan Boldin, Game Jersey, Andre Caldwell, Game Day Gear, and Rhett Bomar, UD Rookie Jersey. 

Nothing super specactuar although the Boldin's a nice card.  Nothing numbered. 

But my big hit came with the auto.

A LeSean McCoy Premier Jersey Auto numbered 1/10!!

Pretty sweet.  According to the latest issue of Tuff Stuff it's aroundd 65 bucks!! Hell this card alone was worth the box.  Damn just wish I was an Eagles fan.

All in all I got a great return for my investment. Not counting all the rookies.  The 4 SP, plus the jerseys, plus the auto come to over 100 bucks of stuff. Of course I would have to get close to high book to realize any of that and that's just unrealistic.  Especially with the season winding down.  But it does put a big dent in completing my set.  This is probably going to have to be my set to build next yeat now that Topps is out of it.  I guess I could just go low ball and put together a Score set. 

Until next time.

CB

Still Waiting for Santa

So my girlfriend is complaining about the clutter in my "man cave" which is really just a corner of the bedroom I'm taken over as mine.  And so I spent most of this afternoon cleaning up cards, organizing, sorting, and really having a great afternoon.  And along the way I found somemore great cards I thought I'd post. 

First I'm putting away some football cards and find this gem from 2005.  As as matter of fact all these cards were from 2005 and were pulls I got.  I was buying a lot of wax back then and not as  many boxes as now.  The thing is back then I was living in Anchorage and had access to card shops and so i'd stop in and buy a pack or too.  Now living out in the middle of nowhere it's just easier and cheaper to buy boxes online.  But I digress. 

Here we have a 2005 Donruss Elite Carnall "Cadilac" Williams rookie die-cut gold parallel numbered to just 24.  Never seen this card offered for sale online and the guides don't price it do to the scarcity but I check the Tuff Stuff price guide and his regular rookie is around 20 bucks so there you go.  Too bad he hasn't really done much to stand out in the NFL.

Next we have another awesome pull.  I almost fell over when I pulled this back in 2005 and then almost sold it for 200 bucks to a rabid Dolphins fan but unfortunatley the deal went bust and I have since held onto the card.

Why it's none other than a 2005 spx Ronnie Brown Auto/Jersey numbered to 250.  I really wish I had unloaded this back then no you can buy them for about 60 bucks on ebay probably less if your patient.  But still a cool card.  And my first Jersey/Auto card too.  I also pulled a another jersey auto from the same shop, a Ryan Moats.  I ended trading it to the shop owner for more packs of spx. He had a guy he knew that would buy it.  I think I got the better deal I know I got more than 20 bucks worth of packs for it so that's cool. 

Now on to baseball. 

I still had some cool stuff left over from the other day's digging too and here is another really cool card from a HOF I pulled back in 2005.

I really like the design of the artifact cards.  Nice large picture of the player, in this case, the great Rod Carew.  And look at the piece of jersey.  Small, yes, but a huge 2 color with stitching.  Numbered to 50.  Wow what a great card.  And from his days with the Twins.  A little closer to home.

Finally I end with this little gem.

Kinda a let down I know but it's such a great eye pleasing design.  I really like the old Timber and Threads stuff.  Plus I'm a Frank Thomas fan.  He's not a player I readily collect but I do seem to have a lot of his cards and rookies.  Which sadly are really cheap to pick up.  Oh the ups and downs of the "Big Hurt".  He was so fun to watch.  I like the nice big picture and old timey border.  Too bad this one's not numbered, but still a nice piece of bat in there.

Alright one more why not.  In honor of the 206 craze going around now it seems.  I haven't bought any of the new stuff.  Still want to.  The reviews have been good I'm just waiting till after Xmas I guess. 

But back in 2002 Topps put out a nice set of 206 and I bought a lot of it.  I must of busted like 4 boxes.  And got some great hits.  A Joe Mauer Rookie Auto and Barry Bonds jersey, and this.

It's a Frank Isbell buyback card.  Nothing like getting a hundred year old card to add to your collection. Who cares if the cards beat up and a player no ones ever heard of.  Almost makes me want to break it out of it's Topps shell to be all by itself.  It also as a Red Sweet Caporal back. 

Until next time. happy holidays

CB