Sorry, I had to post this one again in the #1 position so it would show up as the preview picture on the blogroll. I really want to collect this set now, but I might have to buy retail to do that so long as the base cards are the same. I guess I need to go buy a rack pack of Prime. The only thing that would have made this card better would be a on card auto, as the Big Kahuna pointed out last post. So while I gazed at my new favoritest card two things occurred to me.
First how to display this bad boy. It's been a few years since the first Book cards have come out I figured BCW or UltraPro would have come out with something by now. But a quick look at both websites shows nothing. I had read somewhere about a guy who makes custom screwdown holders for these but there expensive and I was truly hoping that my LCS might have something. I'll have to inquire this week.
The second thought was trying to image the chain of events that leads a major sports card company to own a player used football, wristband, glove and jersey. I realize that some stuff is provided to the players at events, like the Rookie Preview and such, but for game-used and game-worn, not the same thing by the way, who sells the stuff? The team? The player? Is there a person on each team that collects all the gear used by a player and packages is up and sends it to Topps, UD, or Panini? Does Topps have a big box with the players name on it and all the gear they have acquired in it and they just take something out when they want to produce a relic card? Who does the certifying?
Anyways I love the fact that there's more than jersey in this card. I think there isn't enough variation in the marketplace. One color pieces of jersey are a dime a dozen now a days. Literally. You can find jersey cards in the quarter card bin. I remember pulling a Favre ball card out of some Donruss product years ago and thinking how nice it is not to get a jersey card, although I'd have taken any relic of the Favre back then. I also remember pulling a Ricky Phoehl Super Bowl used endzone pylon years ago from Stadium Club, though I don't remember the year. That one I thought was really cool. It sat in my collection for years and then I decided to sell a bunch of stuff on ebay and figured I'd see if anyone wanted it. It was my highest selling card that round, though I can't remember the exact amount I know it was higher than 40 bucks so I was stoked. The point is what to card companies do next? It use to be the auto or relic was pretty rare in a set and if you got one you were damn lucky, now we expect it, and now we expect more than one and one of those hits better be an auto, so that now autographed cards, sticker or hard signed are almost a dime a dozen and card companies go out of there way to get "future stars"" to sign thousands of sticker autos to be included in a set. I probably could find most of this years Topps Peak Performance autos in the dollar bin.
One thing I would like to see is the return of rare inserts. Not parallels or relics but really nice inserts that have a print run of less than 100 or fewer cards. This is also why I like the Topps logoman program. If you haven't seen one here's what they look like.
This program is actually spread out through all of Topps sets. This Yount was in Triple Threads this year but I ended up pulling a Mauer from Finest and it was pretty sweet. And there all numbered to 50 and you can't get them in any other product. So you have a card numbered to 50 only available in high end product of current stars and HOFer's nice. I also like the Manufactured Hat Patch cards and Bats from this years Baseball products. Again super rare although Topps produced a ton of different cards all the Hat cards were numbered to 99 and so where the base bats, with the bats having a black /50 and super rare 1/1 pink parallels. Next year there are going to be manufactured glove cards and I suspect that there will be manufactured ball cards next year as well. Wow this post is getting out of control. OK enough.
On a side note and if you've read this far down congratulations, you can see by the counter over there that I'm nearing 10,000 views. Although when I installed that counter it was also linked to my Robin Yount and Rollie Fingers blogs so that's not all for the Crack, I'm sure there's 2 or 3 that are for the others. And I'm nearing my 200th post. I missed my 1 year anniversary of the blog that was in October. Anyway, for the milestone of 10,000 views, regardless of where they came from and/or my 200th post I'll be holding a little contest, or probably card giveaway. It should work out well with me being situated in my new home, hopefully.
cb out
