2012 Topps Football Something snazzy.

That's my dad's word. Snazzy. Kinda fits here.  I apologize for the lack of posting, but we had a huge storm roll through and knock out power to most of the city.  It was pretty crazy and we all survived, but not the roof of my shed which I get to reshingle next week.  Anywho enough about that.  I recently went to Bosco's trade night on Wednesday. They host a pretty nice trade night with pizza and soda. They have special deals and they giveaway a pack of everything that's come out in the last month. You 1 ticket for each $5 you spend and they draw only one ticket on trade night.  If you're there you win it all, if not it rolls over till the next month.  There was over $780 worth of packs to be given away and there still is. No one's won in a few months and no one won Wednesday either.  A bunch of us were trying to do the math and figured if all products come out on time next month the giveaway might be over a grand!  I ended up buying another box of jumbo football while I was there and I'll post those hits when I finally get around to scanning them.   But in the mean time. I picked up a blaster of football about a week ago to get one of those cool manupatch cards that come with it.  I didn't hit up a Target or Wallyworld so no exclusive parallels or inserts, but I did walk away with this..

Snazzy.  I have to say these cards look absolutely awesome!  I really would like to pick up the three Packers  cards in this set, but they are all going for way more than I want to pay for a manupatch.  I'm excited to see how Manning does in Denver this year. I ended up picking him up as a back up in one of my fantasy drafts really late and who knows he might become my starter if things work out.

The card is up on ebay right now if anyone's interested. Auction here.  And I have a few more things up.  Doing a little table cleaning.  I've been planning on listing a bunch of stuff, with ebay offering unlimited sports card listings and 500 free listings a month till December, but with another work trip looming over my head in a week or so I don't want to get too into the house cleaning.  I also plan on offering up a bunch of stuff for trade too.  That'll come probably next month when I know I'll be around for a while.

cb out.

Lego Mini Figures Series 8

Jeez seems that Series 7 just came out. I was picking up some stuff at the local Fred Meyers and just happen to pass through the lego aisle and saw they had two new boxes of Mini Figures.  Not being able to pass it up I had to pick a few packs up to add to the old collection.

Here we have the checklist.

Another interesting smattering of themes and genres.

1. Robot
2. Conquestador
3. Bavarian
4. Cowgirl
5. Football Player
6. Deep sea diver
7 Skier
8. Banker
9. Fairy
10. Santa Claus
11. Man Bat
12. DJ
13. Cheerleader
14. Hamlet or an actor I guess
15. Pirate..arggg
16. Alien

Here's the three I got.

The Man Bat!!

Santa freaking Claus!

The Alien was probably the most complicated mini figure I've ever put together.  Three pieces for the head and two for the cape. But it looks great.

2013 Topps, Topps better hope the Mayans were wrong!

I'm late. I know it. I saw JayBee's post over at his blog about the 2013 Topps Sell Sheets being live and  the first images came out over 2 weeks ago.  Of course I love when the sell sheets come out.  Our first look at next years design.  Over all the reviews I've read are ecstatic for the stuff.  You can see the sell sheets here at JB's Blog.

Well get ready for one not so ecstatic. This years theme is the Chase. 'Cuz you gotta have a theme I guess.

Let's take a look at the base.

I like the base design. Simple, unique to baseball.  There's no way they are going to carry over this design to it's flagship football, ah but that's another rant and post for later. Seems like a lot of wasted space on the bottom, but whatever. I'll assume the name, home plate, and the Topps logo will all be foiled.  It would be kinda neat if the swoops and baseball diamond were color foil, but that might be too much foil and I'm sorry I mentioned it because Topps loves to use foil.  It's so shiny.  No preview of the backs of the cards.  Probably nothing too exciting there but I'm a completist and I believe while the moneys in the front of the card the substance is on the back.  That's why I try to include scans of the backs of my cards. And I did a whole post a while back about the beauty of the backs of Topps cards through the years.

Of course there will be parallels.  Lots of parallels!  Back this year are the Gold, Black and Platinum parallels. Numbered to 2012, 62, and 1 respectfully.

And new for Baseball are the Pink, Emerald foil and Desert Camo foil parallels. Emerald are not numbered, Pinks are numbered to 50 and Desert Camo to 99.

It'll be interesting to see this in person.
There will also be silk parallel cards and printing plates and I'm sure variants and other goodies to look for.
And of course this year there will be more Manurelics to look for.
Here's where my review gets a little negative.  While I like the looks of the cards and even the concept.  It's been done, to death by Topps. But if there is one thing Topps likes to do is beat a dead horse.

Proven Mettle player coin cards.  There will be 3 levels of Mettle cards, at least on the sell sheets. Copper #d to 99, Wrought Iron #d to 50 and Steel #d to 10.

MVP Award winners with a mini replica MVP trophy embedded in the card.

And Cy Young Award winners with mini replica Cy Young awards embedded in them.  It wasn't stated if either one of these will be numbered or have different tiers like the Mettle cards.

There will be 6 insert sets in this offering and of course those 6 inserts will have relic, auto and auto relic parallels as well.

Since Topps is on a Mini kick again we get 72 mini's! I'll be honest I love mini's and I've been batting around the idea of putting together a 70's set and 72 is right at the top of my list to try. Mainly because out of all the 70's sets it's the most unique.  It just reminds me of 70's kids TV shows.

we also get 72 relics...

And of course autos.  All low numbered and on card which is a big plus.

Next up Cut to the Chase.

Seems these chrome die cuts are just too good to keep in Topps Chrome.  I like die cuts and I love the chrome cards, but it just seems to be that Topps is recycling again.

There will also be relics and auto relics.

Next we have Calling Cards. A set dedicated to showing off unique things players do when they're awesome I guess.  There will be relic and auto parallels of this cards as well, although none were shown on the sell sheet.  Autos number to 10, relics to 25 and auto relics numbered to 5

Next the Greats.  I love inserts featuring great historical players, but again Topps does this every year and it seem like they keep choosing the same players over and over.

The Greats autos will also be on card. And don't forget the auto relic here too!

Chasing History is next.  No scan of the base, but we do have the auto and relic.

And the last insert is the Chasing the Dream.

And we only get the auto example from the sell sheet. I wonder if these cards will be chromed out?  Probably not but they would look super sweet if they did.

And of course lets not forget the 1 of 1 super rare cards I will never see except on eBay auctions. Topps is calling these cards the Ultimate Chase.  Did Tristar already do that?

I do think these Ultimate Chase cards look amazing.

Over all it looks to be another decent set.  I won't be jumping over grandmothers to get to the card counter, but I'll be picking up at least one jumbo.  There's also the possibility that Topps might do another wrapper redemption and no word if they are finally giving up on there online redemption contest.

One insert I noticed was missing and I'm thrilled that it is, is some kind of duo match up card.  Topps has been kicking that around for what seems like forever and I won't miss it.  Of course Topps tends to throw stuff in at the last minute and unannounced, so there might be a few surprises in here.

At least Topps isn't touting this as a game changer.  Nope just 2013 Topps. Come and get it. Well come and get it in January. hmm this wasn't nearly as negative as I thought it would be.

TTM Success Sal Bando

Before I left for my month long trip down to Haines for work, I decided to send out one TTM request. I had seen over at Sports Card Forum that there had been quite a few successes for Sal Bando and I had him high on my list to get.  So I dug around in my Brewers leftover box and found a 1978 and 1980.

Sal played for both the A's and Brewers. He's a 4 time All-Star and 3 time World Series champ (1972, 1973, and 1974) who was on the team with two of my other favorite baseball players Reggie Jackson and Rollie Fingers. Sal ended his career with the Brew Crew playing with them from 1977 to 1981.

A great addition to my TTM Brewers project, thanks Sal.

TTM Stats
Date sent 7/30/12
Date Recieved: 8/5/12 or so.   Postmarked 8/3/12

Address used.
Sal Bando
6225 Shore Acres Rd.
Heartland, WI 53029

2012 Topps Football Jumbo Box Break and Review

box label

I'm back. At least for a while.  So the first thing I did when I got back to town was head on over to Bosco's and picked up a jumbo box of 2012 Topps Football.  I needed some trade night tickets for this coming trade night.  No ones won the past 3 or 4 months so there is almost 800 dollars worth of packs up for grabs.

So lets take a look at the set and what I got.

First I just want to say how happy I am Topps has decided to go back to unique designs for it's football product instead of just using the baseball template.  And I like this years design.  I choose to feature Pouncey here because he was my only double out of the whole box!  That's pretty damn good collation.  As a matter of fact I'm only short about 21 cards for my set, so one jumbo box got me 95 percent of the set.  Not too shabby.

Let's take a look at the inserts.  A few I really like and a few I could have done without. First the bad.

First up we have the Paramount Pairs.  I really don't know what Topps fascination with having these duo cards is.  For the last 4 or 5 years Topps has included some kind of match up in it's baseball and football sets.  A lot of times the connections and pairings are pretty suspect.  I get the guys on the same team, but most of the cards take these player back to college when they were on the same college team. meh.  I don't think it's a bad looking card and the relic and auto versions aren't terrible either, but it's just not a set for me.

Here's what the back looks like.

Next we have these Rookie Reprint cards.  I pulled 9 out of the box, 2 Griese's.  Another trend Topps doesn't seem to be able to get away from.  Hey Topps I'm tired of stupid reprint cards! Tell the designers to put the bong down and come up with an all new original inserts for the next set! I also love that the Joe Namath card is regular size not Tall Boy, yet there is a Tall Boy insert this year.

The backs are replica as well and Topps makes sure you know it's a reprint.

Now on to the stuff I like.
There are quite a few parallels to the base cards this season. Camo, Pink, Black, Gold and 1/1 Platinum.  The odds of the Camo and Pink are about 1:11, so you're not guaranteed any in a Jumbo.  I didn't snag any of those, but I did come away with 5 golds.

The best of the pack is the MJD one there. Now if he would just sign a contract.

I also like the new numbering on the backs of the parallels this year.  Oh and here's what a base back looks like. Sorry forgot to scan one of Pouncey. Just imagine there is no serial number there.  The past few years Topps stopped doing is foil stamp numbering and started using a terrible looking printed serial number that was obviously put on at very high speed.  Here while the number is still in black. It's solid, not smudge and very legible.  +1 Topps!

Next insert I like is the Prolific Playmakers.  I love the design and when I first saw this I thought to myself, damn this would have made a nice base design. I ended up pulling a bonus one of these coming out of the break with 11 and two AJ Green's.

The back.

Next up we have QB Immortals. Another great looking design and another insert that I thought would have made a good base design.  I wasn't really paying attention to how these were coming out of the packs but in a 10 pack box where usually you get one of each insert in a jumbo pack I walked away with 13 of these and oddly enough no doubles.  Nice.

The back.

My favorite insert of the set is of course the Tall Boy Mini's.
If you read my blog regularly you know I love mini's and oddballs, so of course this insert set is right up my alley and of course I'll be going after it. All 141 of them.  10 down 131 more to go.

I have no idea how I'm going to store or display these. They're bigger than the tobacco size mini's and smaller than the original Tall Boy's.  I doubt UltraPro is going to make a special pocket page for these especially since no card storage company has come out with a book card holder yet. I'll probably end up using 9 pockets, sorry getting off topic here.

Can you tell I'm a Packer fan?  I love the cartoon on Raji card commemorating what will probably be is most memorable career moment. I still remember that game and the look on his face when he got the ball in the end zone, priceless.

There are also redemption cards for a free pack of Topps Kickoff.

I ended up snagging 3 of these and yes I plan on redeeming all three next week.  Hell there might be auto cards in there!! I'll let you know what I get.
And of course Topps is doing another giveaway.

And again since I live in Alaska I can't do it. Oh well these are going for a good price on the Bay right now so up they go. It'll be interesting to see what comes out of this, but since Topps won't send me anything that I win I'm not even going to enter a code. I did manage to come out with 11 of these though.

Now onto the hits!
The whole reason for getting a Jumbo is the 3 hits.

First up we have the Rookie Patch card.  I got one of these last year of Torrey Smith. I have to say I know that this is only player worn at the rookie premiere, but damn that's a nice looking card and patch.  Jarius' cards aren't even being a 5 dollar bill right now, so hopefully he'll have a big rookie season.

Next up the auto's!

I'm pretty happy with my two autographs.  Both big names.

And there's nothing like opening a box of cards and one of the hits is a player you collect or on a team you collect.

I'm having a hard time keeping me from buying another jumbo of this.  I really like the product this year, but I know that if I buy another box I'll either have 400 extras laying around or have to put another set together. But the last two years I ended up pulling Rookie Premiere autographs so it's tempting.

Anyways, I'm going to keep the hits and the Tall Boys and probably the QB Immortals and the giveaway cards are up on ebay, but the rest is up for trade. I have my 21 card need list up as well, but I have a feeling I'm going to be buying another box of this come Wednesday at trade night or another box of Ginter.