Jon Lester Mojo

...and suddenly I've got an impressive Jon Lester collection, but that's getting ahead of myself. About a week and a half ago, I received an e-mail from Mojo letting me know that he really wanted my Kobe Bryant Rookie & Stars patch autograph that I had won in the Panini Adrenalyn photography contest. Always one to entertain an offer, I took a look at what he had to offer and what he had to offer was impressive. We exchanged a few e-mails and my end of the trade arrived in the mailbox on Friday. I'll start with some of the extras and work my way up to the meat and potatoes of the trade.

I didn't have any Jon Lester rookies prior to this, so these were welcome additions to my collection. Now I've got a great Jon Lester collection. What's that? These aren't all that impressive. Hmm, there must be something else in this package to prompt that first sentence up there.

Next up is a 2008 Donruss Threads Anthony Rizzo Diamond King. I haven't purchased any of the unlicensed baseball stuff that Donruss/Panini has done since losing their MLB license. So, it is safe to say that this is my first card from this set. This card is serial numbered 7/100.

Rizzo might have been king of the high school diamond, but at the time that this card was produced, he had yet to be crowned king of any minor or major league diamonds. The Donruss crystal Ball was working because he's currently ranked 3rd amongst Red Sox prospects after a season in AA Portland that saw him hit for power, but not much average. He was named the Sea Dogs MVP and the Red Sox Minor League Player of the Year. Jon Lester got all of the press because he was in the majors at the time he battled cancer, but Rizzo defeated cancer himself in 2008.

Here's the Dice-K card from last year's Topps World Baseball Classic redemption cards. The terrible diamond cut on these cards would be a harbinger for many mis-cut, mis-printed, damaged and missing cards to come from Topps in 2010. It's a refractor and it's of a Red Sox player, so I'll take it. Whether or not Matsuzaka is a member of the Red Sox roster when Opening Day rolls around is under a lot of debate. He could be traded to lower salary, but if he's still around he'll easily be the best 5th starter in the league. I'd like to see him stick around.

Next up is a gold Aaron Bates from Topps Unique that's serial numbered 15/25. Bates doesn't currently rank amongst the top Red Sox prospects, but that doesn't take anything away from the coolness of this card. I like the design of the Topps Unique base cards, but I probably won't ever own too many of them unless I go digging through a singles box for them. The packs and boxes cost way too much for me for what you could possibly pull as hits. It was great for those who are only looking at the serial numbers, but a lot of the big hits were ugly looking cards.

Josh Reddick is part of the new crop of youngsters knocking on the door in Boston. We got to see a lot of these youngsters last season due to all of the injuries that plagued the Sox. Two-thirds of the starting outfield spent the majority of the season on the disabled list. Reddick currently ranks 8th in Boston's farm system and is on the 40 man roster.

This green foil parallel from TRISTAR's 2008 Projections set is numbered 16/50. This is a nice looking set. I've purchased a box of the special packs containing only Red Sox Prospects and liked what I saw.

To be honest, I don't even know what set this Carlton Fisk card is from. I thought it might have been All-Time Fan Favorites, but that doesn't appear to be the case. What I do know about the card is that it has Pudge's complete career statistics on the back which is very cool. The card is numbered out of 99 on the back and has the cool old-school Topps logo on the front.

As a Sox fan, you can only ask "What if?" when it comes to Fisk. What if management back then hadn't played games with Fisk's contract negotiations and he remained with the BoSox rather than signing with the ChiSox. For starters, I'd probably have no idea who Rich Gedman was.

Oh, here's another Jon Lester card. Is this the one that lays the ground work for a kick-ass collection? This is a relic card that's numbered to 102 from 2009 Topps Ticket to Stardom. Here's a nice ticket stub from Fenway Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. The ticket has a photo of Ramon Hernandez bunting the A's to victory over the Sox. On a Jon Lester card? This will be interesting to have in the collection in a "Topps really produced shit like this?" kind of way.

Jacoby Ellsbury had a really tough 2010. He missed over 90% of the season, stayed away from the team while rehabbing his injury and ended up alienating fans as well as teammates. He's an amazing talent on the basepaths even if he doesn't get there via walk as often as a lead off hitter should. Here's hoping that he can put a disastrous 2010 behind him and rebound next season.

This card is from 2007 Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects and features a jersey swatch from an All-Star Futures game-worn jersey.

On the other hand, Clay Buchholz had a brilliant 2010. He finished with a 17-7 record and 2.33 ERA. If not for an injury that wiped out 3 to 4 starts, Buchholz might also be mentioned as an AL Cy Young Candidate. As it is, I don't see too much difference between his stats and the players that are getting all of the attention. The only thing that Buchholz didn't do was strike out a ton of batters.

Those of you who have been reading the blog for a while are probably sick of me mentioning that I was lucky enough to witness Buchholz no-hitter. Because of that, I've put together a little bit of a Buchholz collection. I've got an Allen & Ginter autograph, this relic card and now just need a Bowman Chrome rookie to complete the trifecta.

Here's another card from 2008 Donruss Threads. This is an autographed Lars Anderson limited to 474 copies. I'm not sold on using the Diamond King name with prospects, but Donruss was probably trying to cash in on the nostalgia of the brand.

Anderson is currently ranked 4th in Boston's farm system and once he's ready for the Majors it will give Boston the flexibility to move Kevin Youkilis back to the hot corner. It can't hurt to have two top prospects at first base and it'll be fun watching to see if Anderson or Rizzo ends up being the first baseman of the future in Boston.

When I started watching basketball, Bill Walton was a member of the Boston Celtics. So, even though I'd later find out that he only spent two years with the team at the end of his career, the fact that I first saw him with the Celtics on a team that would go on to win the 16th Championship makes me always associate him with the Celtics. So, when I saw this card I definitely wanted it in my collection.

Elite was yet another Donruss product that I never purchased any packs of. I got my fill of multi-sport sets in the 90s thanks to Classic. This is a cool card and one of only 100 copies in existence.

This Big Baby card is one that Mojo had let me know about a while ago, but until recently I didn't have anything to send off in order to acquire it. This is actually one of Baby's better looking autographs with the only flaw being that it slips off of the sticker a little at the bottom of the G. This card is the gold version and is numbered to 25 copies.

Davis has been huge so far for the Celtics this season. He is now the first person off of the bench which will be important in order to keep Shaq and Garnett rested for the playoffs. Davis has been playing the center position late in the 4th quarter of games due to Shaq's free throw problems and has been playing well. I wouldn't be surprised if his name came up at the end of the season in 6th Man Award conversations.

Here's the card that I've been teasing throughout this whole post. It's a Jon Lester 2007 Sweet Spot black bat barrel red ink autograph card numbered to 5. This is the type of card that you may not even see for sale let alone have the opportunity to own. So, that card alone lays the groundwork for a great Jon Lester collection that I think I shall now begin. I'll pick up one or two higher end rookies and then a nice looking relic and build from there.

Thanks to Mojo for the great trade. I didn't think I would end up trading the Kobe for a handful of cards, but then again most people don't have a collection full of cards such as these to draw upon.

Box Break - 2009-10 Panini Hall of Fame Basketball

I've been looking forward to busting a box of this product since I first heard about it.  Not only are there a bunch of great players in there due to the checklist only containing Hall of Fame members, but there are also a lot of players who have never previously had autographed cards in a product.  There are also beautiful looking nickname signature cards.  As a basketball fan, this is pretty irresistible now that it sells for about half of the MSRP.  If I had the cash, this is something that I'd definitely love to break a case of.

I lost my original box break, but here's a recap of what I got:

Panini Prize Winnings

I’m a little late in posting this, but I now have my Kobe Bryant autographed card that I won in a Panini Adrenalyn related contest.  Upon ripping open the envelope this is what I found:

The card reads, “Once again, thx for coming out and taking such a great picture.”  For reference, here’s that picture again:

Technically, the contest called for a picture of yourself with the bus, but I snapped these pictures as my wife was taking our daughter to the car as it was starting to rain.  This stop was before the contest was announced so I was hoping that the judges would be lenient.  While I wasn’t anywhere to be found in the picture, I thought that it did a great job of capturing the coolest stop on the Adrenalyn Tour, the Basketball Hall of Fame.  So, I submitted the picture, waited and ended up being selected the winner of the contest.


The really cool thing about this prize was how it was shipped.  They didn’t just take the card, throw it in an envelope and ship it off.  This card came in a special box worthy of their big name exclusive.

Upon opening the box, this is what I saw.  This is a 2009-10 Panini Rookies & Stars Kobe Bryant patch autograph.  If you’re not going to get an on-card autograph, this is by far the next best thing.  The athlete touched the jersey swatch and it looks a hell of a lot better than a sticker, especially the gaudy silver ones.

Here’s a look at the back of the card.  The serial number is 128/199.  While I can’t say that I’m a huge fan of Kobe, you can’t deny his place in basketball history and now that LeBron ran off to Miami with his tail between his legs, Kobe is certain to be the best player of this generation.  It’s kind of cool to have an autograph of a player of that caliber.  That being said, if anyone out there had the patch autograph cards from Timeless Treasures of someone like Bill Russell or Larry Bird I definitely think that a trade could be arranged.

Thanks again Panini for an awesome prize!

Technorati Tags: Panini,Kobe Bryant,Basketball Hall of Fame,autograph

I’m a winner!

I got shut out when Topps celebrated their new online presence with a month of giveaways.  My daughter won a box of Hannah Montana from Beckett and a box of Signature Stars from Upper Deck.  I came close to winning a beautiful Bob Cousy autographed card, but I want a little overboard on my confidence in the Celtics and picked them to sweep the Heat which led to a low guess on points scored for the series.

That’s all changed a little bit recently though.  The first victory came out of the blue and wasn’t from a contest.  I just happened to be browsing the Topps Facebook page and noticed that someone had made a comment asking if they could return off-center Stephen Strasburg cards to Topps for replacements.  Topps replied to let the poster know that they would be replacing these cards if they were sent in.  Being the smart ass that I am, I replied that they could just send their cards to Beckett and have them graded as 9.5s.  I don’t see the comment on the Topps page anymore, but one person who saw it before it was deleted really appreciated it.

Steve Mandy from Attack of the Baseball Cards in Union, New Jersey sent me a message on Facebook letting me know that he found my comment very funny and letting me know that he wanted to send me some packs that Strasburgs could possibly be pulled out of.  I sent off my address and a few days later had a package arrive containing one pack each of 2009 TRISTAR Prospects+, 2010 Bowman, 2008 Timeline and 2008 SP Authentic.  I wasn’t lucky enough to pull a Strasburg, but I did get a Red Sox Chrome prospect, a Bowman Throwback (absolutely love this set) and some other cool cards.  Attack looks like a very cool card shop and I can see why.  If Steve is willing to send off packs of cards to random people on Facebook, I can only imagine what he does for his customers in the store.  Thanks again Steve!

The next big piece of news arrived when I checked Facebook this morning.  You may recall that I went out to the Basketball Hall of Fame to see the Panini Adrenalyn tour bus when it was visiting.  On the way out, I snapped some pictures of the tour bus with the Hall of Fame.  It’s a good thing that I did because Panini ended up running a contest for the best picture of yourself with the bus.  I was notified today that I was the winner of the contest.  The prize?  Check it out below:

Wow, this is a very cool prize.  I’ve seen a few of these autographed patch cards in person and they’re very nice looking.  It would be cooler if it was a Celtics player, but I’m not going to complain too much.  I can’t wait to see this card when it arrives.  Kobe stuff should be even more desirable now that LeBron has given up on trying to build his own legacy and is now willing to try and be carried to some championships.

I now pass the luck on to someone else and hope to read some cool stories of other people winning some cool items.

Technorati Tags: Kobe Bryant,Panini Rookies & Stars,Attack of the Baseball Cards,Stephen Strasburg

Mail Day: Dee Brown

Every now and then, I’ll pick up a few Dee Brown cards for my collection.  I lost some interest when he left the Celtics and even more once he retired.  I wasn’t collecting much then anyway.  When I see something cool online, I’ll grab it to add to the collection.  Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

Most days, I’ll do the majority of my blog reading and eBay browsing on my breaks at work.  The only problem with that is I don’t have my collection handy to reference and that can lead to problems.  The Dee Brown refractor that I purchased was a card that I already had in my collection.  Another issue you can run into are poor eBay sellers.  I purchased a lot of 110 Dee Brown cards on eBay thinking there would be some new cards that I could add to my collection.  The auction pictured 9 different cards and stated that there were some duplicates.  There were only 27 different cards in the lot with as many as 18 copies of a single card.  This is funny when sent as a bip, but so funny when it is something that you’ve paid for.  To top that off, the cards were not packaged well at all and most arrived damaged.  It’s not worth pursuing on eBay because I’ll spend as much as I paid to ship the cards back to the seller.

The only good card out of this bunch is the 2006-07 Upper Deck Trilogy Generations Past Signatures card.  It’s a sticker, but it is a nice looking card.  I’d love for Panini to release some Dee Brown jersey cards.  Collectors have been snatching up the Reggie Lewis cards out there and I think that Slam Dunk Champion Brown should be next in line.

Technorati Tags: Dee Brown

2009-10 Panini Studio Basketball

I’ve fallen behind on Panini press releases due to some being sent out in PowerPoint format and then having no free time.  So, I’ve decided to focus on a release that I did purchase some packs of and that is currently my favorite Panini non-gaming product available.

Here’s a picture of the Big Al base card.  It’s not often that you see a basketball set where all of the cards have a landscape layout.  While I do like these cards, I do feel like there’s a lot of empty space on the cards that could be better utilized.  The biggest culprit?  That giant blank area to the right of the action photo.  You’d think that the picture would look best if it fell right in the blue stripe?  Unfortunately, that space is reserved for this:

Jersey swatches.  On its own, this is a nice looking jersey card, but the problem is that it wrecks the design of the base card.  The majority of the cards that you are going to pull out of a box of cards are the base cards so this is a problem.  It makes the base cards feel like an afterthought.

The bad design carries over to the autograph versions of the base cards.  The stickers go right over the action photo.  I really hope that in the future that Panini stops using the same designs over and over again for regular cards, relics cards and autograph cards.  It’s the one thing, and it’s a huge thing, keeping them from producing top notch sets.  They still feel like the second tier company doing things like this and serial numbering the heck out of everything to create extra “hits.”

I was just goofing around with the design and chopped off the empty space on the right.  Doesn’t that make the card look better?  There’s still an awful lot of empty space though.  Is it possible to reduce the empty space even more?



Now I’ve chopped things down even more.  This card no longer has the player’s name or the brand name, but that can be easily rectified in the next step.

One thing that you may notice is that this is getting closer and closer to a portrait layout.  You can have some landscape cards in a basketball set, but when you’ve got players who are this tall you’ve got to go portrait.
Look, the picture is now in the stripe created by the set brand name and the player name.  Doesn’t that look much better?  Yes, some of the action shots used in this set are wider than this, but they’re black and white.  Panini shouldn’t be using the best action shots they’ve put on cards to date in B&W backgrounds.  Use basic shots in the background and this design will work without a problem.

The final problem with the design was that it was no longer standard card sized.  I’ve fixed that in the final step.  You’d obviously want to crop the picture of Big Al a little differently so that he fits onto the card a little better, but I think you get a good idea here even without doing that.

Yes, this final design might need a couple of tweaks, but I feel it looks much better than what I started with.  You can keep the same design for the relic cards if you want, but don’t print the B&W picture on those cards.  I’m really not a fan of that though so it wouldn’t be happening in this set.  I think an awesome set would have this for the base card and the jersey cards the way they are now.  Use the same basic idea, but tweak what needs to be tweaked in order to deliver the best looking product possible.

You know why the best looking overall set that Panini has released this year is Adrenalyn?  No relics or autographs to be designed around.  It’s as simple as that.  The etched foil cards are especially sharp looking and I’d like to see Panini use some of that going forward instead of the rainbow foil that they use far too often.

The Team Studio cards are an interesting idea and Panini loves their two-sided cards.  Personally, I’ve never enjoyed collecting cards where the player that I like is on the back.  I’d rather have two players on the front than one on the front and one on the back.  This is just personal preference and maybe no one else cares.  On the reverse of this card you’ll find Bill Lame-beer.  Sorry, but there’s no way that he’ll ever be making an appearance in this blog.

The Masterstrokes cards are slick looking.  You’ve got the photo studio with the large player images on the base cards and you’ve got the art studio on these cards.  I would call these the best cards in the set, but there’s another insert set that does it even better.  That set brings the theme back to the photography side of the studio.

These Skylines cards are one of the best things that I’ve seen come out of any product this year.  There are team colors which I love and it’s something different.  Yes, Upper Deck did something similar in the past, but that was over a decade ago.  Yes, there’s a lot of empty space, but it showcases the image of the city.  In this case you get a nice view of the Boston waterfront.  The players really pop on these cards.

Outside of the card blogging community, I’m a collecting abnormality.  I don’t care how sick the hits are if the cards don’t look good.  I’ve passed up cards for my player collections if the design is terrible.  I don’t have to have anything.  I want to have a collection that makes me happy.

Panini has been doing a great job on delivering hits and I’ve seen some beautiful cards come out of their products.  The on-card autographs in Classics are amazing.  They just need to step up their game when it comes to their base cards.  The high end releases are starting to come out now and I’m sure that the majority of their designs are set for this year, but I’m hoping that the base card situation improves with next year’s releases.

Technorati Tags: Panini Studio,Panini Basketball

11 and 34

It’s funny how certain numbers can pop up again and again in your life.  I’m not talking anything as severe as Hurley’s 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42, but since sports are full of numbers it’s bound to happen.

I was born on the 11th of September and those two numbers correspond with my current favorite players on the Celtics: Glen “Big Baby” Davis and Rajon Rondo.

I’ve been collecting Big Baby since his rookie season.  I was still bumming over the departure of “Big Al” Jefferson and Davis seemed like a fun rookie to root for.  He’s exactly the type of player that I love.  He’s got a natural instinct to be around the ball, battles hard on the offensive boards and is always hustling.  The biggest hole in his game is his lack of any vertical leap to speak of, but hopefully as he slims down and continues to work that will improve a little.

I haven’t fully committed to collecting Rondo yet because I’m already collecting a lot of players and it’s never a good idea to dive into a collection when a player is red hot.  I do have a handful or Rondo rookies, autographs and relics though.  I complete forgot to nominate Rondo for the terrible autograph tournament.  Some of his early autos have his full name, but he quickly switched to just signing “RR.”

Rondo has improved dramatically by leaps and bounds every year in the league.  This was a guy who “Boston Sports Guy” Bill Simmons crapped all over when the Celtics acquired him, jumped on the bandwagon after the Summer League and then resumed pooping for most of his rookie season.  To be fair, Rondo couldn’t shoot coming into the league.  Once he learned how to use his superior speed to get to the basket almost at will, it caused defenders to respect his speed and opened up room for his jumper which started going in more frequently.

Where Rondo has really shined is in the playoffs.  People were afraid that he might be a liability when the Celtics won it all in 2007-08, but that wasn’t the case.  Rondo really shined last season in the playoffs, but the Celtics couldn’t overcome the loss of Kevin Garnett on the defensive end of the floor even with Big Baby stepping up offensively in Garnett’s place.  This year, Rondo has been phenomenal.  Forget the new “Big Three,” right now in Boston there’s just a “Big One.”  Rondo’s triple-double today against the Cavaliers will go down as one of the all-time great Celtics playoff performances and that’s saying a lot when you’re wearing the jersey of a team that has won 17 Championships and could have their own wing of the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Another player that I haven’t really chased as far as a collection goes is Clay Buchholz.  I hadn’t noticed until two starts ago that Buchholz is now wearing 11 on his jersey this season.  It’s the number that he wore all through his childhood and on school teams.

I already had a connection with Buchholz due to being at his no-hitter.  My Buchholz collection started with all of the cards that mentioned the no-hitter and then grew from there.  I now have a couple of autographs and relic cards.  I’ve been eyeing an autographed rookie, but the majority that I see are slabbed and I’m not too big on that.  The prices on those cards always seem to be through the roof.  I will make sure that I track down all of Buchholz’s cards once they start depicting him with his new jersey number. 

I turned 34 on my last birthday and I currently collect two players with that jersey number.  I’ve been collecting Paul Pierce ever since I returned to the hobby casually around 2001 or so.  At that time, Pierce was one of the best clutch players in the game and also one of the most underrated.  He played with some terrible teams and chose to stay in Boston when he had chances to leave.  That decision was rewarded when Danny Ainge added Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett to the mix along with a great supporting cast and Pierce led the Celtics to their 17th NBA Championship winning NBA Finals MVP in the process.  Pierce has been struggling this year in the playoffs due to age and nagging injuries, but once he retires his 34 will be raised to the rafters in the Garden and he’ll take his place in the Hall of Fame.

The other 34 is Red Sox Slugger David Ortiz.  One thing that I liked a lot about the 2004 World Series Championship team was that it was built with the addition of two of my fantasy baseball favorites: David Ortiz and Billy Mueller.  Both of these guys seemed to annually be on the verge of their breakout season only to lose large parts of the season to injury.  Both of these guys were great, low-risk/high-reward free agent signings by Theo Epstein that looked brilliant in retrospect.

It’s tough not to like Ortiz.  He’s got an infectious smile, seemed to be well-liked by his teammates and under the tutelage of hitting coach Papa Jack became one of the most fearsome hitters in all of baseball.  He cemented his place in Boston Sports History with his clutch hitting during the 2004 championship run.  He struggled at the beginning of last season before leading the league in home runs from the middle of June to the end of the season.  It looks like he’s struggling again at the start of this season, but a platoon with Mike Lowell at DH will hopefully rejuvenate him like the platoon at catcher has done to Jason Varitek.  If not, it just means that Ortiz cards might be cheaper for me to acquire for my collection.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to buy a lottery ticket.

 

Technorati Tags: Glen Davis,Big Baby,Boston Celtics,Paul Pierce,Clay Buchholz,Boston Red Sox,David Ortiz,Big Papi

Look at what some originality will do

I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t hop on the Panini bandwagon at first.  Topps had an excellent final release and Upper Deck’s last hoops set had some fun inserts.  The design of the first few Panini sets didn’t do it for me.  They love to design cards with space for jersey swatches in mind and that drives me crazy.  It’s better than swatches covering players, but all-new designs would be ideal.

I think one of the reasons that collectors get bored with the hobby is that you can only do so much with the same gimmicks every year.  Yes, pulling a Larry Bird jersey card is cool, but when there are Larry Bird jersey cards year after year it gets a little dull.  I pulled a Michael Jordan jersey card out of 2007-08 Fleer Ultra and threw it up on eBay immediately because there wasn’t anything special about the card.  It didn’t sell for what you would think a jersey card of the best player ever would go for since there are tons of Jordan jersey cards out there.  Eventually, the market gets saturated and the only people buying the 1,000th Jordan jersey card are the completists out there.

That’s why when something new to the hobby comes along, people go nuts over it.  Topps’ hat logo cards may not be game used, but they are well designed, look great and have low print runs.  That’s why they are selling for more than a lot of the plain jersey cards of the same players.  If Topps is doing the same thing for 10 years in a row, they will no longer sell for a premium, but this year they were something new.

Panini hit the jackpot with one of the subjects of their Blast from the Past jersey set.  Reggie Lewis was an athlete that Boston loved for more than his play on the court.  Lewis was constantly giving back to the community.  His loss was felt by the Celtics for years after his death, but as a person he’s still missed.  Lewis was on the verge of becoming a superstar in the league at the time of his passing.  Considered by many players to be the toughest defender at his position, he regularly shut down players like Jordan and Reggie.  No other player has ever blocked Michael Jordan 4 times in one game:

Lewis was also the only Celtic in the history of the franchise to finish a season with more than 100 rebounds, blocks, steals and assists during the 1991-92 campaign which was the best of his career.  This feat is something that LeBron James has yet to do although he came close in 08-09 when he fell short by seven blocks.  Kobe hasn’t even come close. Magic and Bird never did it.  Jordan only did it twice.  Scotty Pippen did it once.  Kevin Garnett did it eight times, Dr. J eight times, David Robinson seven times, Ben Wallace seven, Shawn Marion five times, Chris Webber four, Shawn Kemp three times, Josh Smith three, Karl Malone once and Rasheed Wallace once.  Dwyane Wade has done it and was the first player to have 2,000 points, 500 assists, 100 steals and 100 blocks in a season (along with just under 400 rebounds).  Hakeem Olajuwon just might be the career leader on this list accomplishing this feat 12 times.  I tried to find a definitive list of players who have achieved this feat, but my Google-Fu failed me.  Of course, this excludes any seasons before 1973 since steals and blocks weren’t tallied before then.  Bill Russell comes to mind right away as a Celtic that might join Lewis on this list if those stats were tracked back then.

Let me reel in my tangent before it gets out of control.  Panini Classics Basketball has both a jersey card and patch card of Reggie Lewis and these cards have turned out to be extremely popular.  These are the only jersey cards ever produced of Lewis since he played before jersey and autograph cards were staples in packs.  The only Lewis autograph card in existence is a cut auto with Dennis Johnson with a print run of one.  A Reggie patch card numbered to 30 just sold on eBay for $119.50.  When is the last time that you saw a basketball patch card like this one sell for that amount of money without the names Jordan, Kobe or LeBron on it?  Even the plain white jersey swatches are selling well with this one numbered to 199 closing at $20.50.  Imagine if you could see every single color jersey swatch that you pulled out of a box of cards for $20.  What a great world it would be.

I wish that there was more of this in new card releases.  Whether it’s the inclusion of Negro League autographs in Allen & Ginter or players who haven’t already had mountains of insert cards produced, it’s going to take more innovation and freshness in releases to keep collectors interested now that the number of products being released is down due to exclusives.

Technorati Tags: Reggie Lewis,Players with 100+ rebounds assists steals blocks,Panini Classics

Sponsored Box Break: 09-10 Panini Classics

I came home Monday night to find a nice surprise waiting for me.  Panini had sent over a box of Classics to break open and review on the site.  This came as a complete surprise and made my day.

Packs of Classic carry a suggested retail price of $6 and boxes are currently selling for $83 on Blowout Cards.  You get 18 packs per box and 5 cards per pack.

The design of the base card is simple.  The cards feature large, close up images of the player and look very nice.  I didn’t see a lot of variety in the types of pictures used while going through the cards that I pulled out of my box, but I only have 75 out of the 200 cards in the set.

This set is chock full of goodies for a Celtics fan such as myself.  Once you get past the fact that Rajon Rondo was left out of this set in favor of Kendrick Perkins and washed up Rasheed Wallace, you start to see some very cool cards available to pull.  One card in particular that I will be chasing is the Reggie Lewis Blast From the Past Jersey card.  As far as I know, this is the first jersey card ever produced of the late, great Reggie Lewis.  There’s a regular version numbered to 199 and a patch version numbered to 30.  The two patches listed on eBay so far have gone for $50 and $70 dollars.  It definitely looks like Panini filled a demand with this card.

The set consists of 200 cards.  Of those 200, the first 100 are regular base cards.  Cards 101-160 are Legends and those are numbered to 999.  Panini states that you get at least 3 Legends in a box and I beat the odds there and pulled 4 Legends out of my box.  I got Buck Williams, Oscar Robertson, Kareem and Willis Reed.

This is not a product for set collectors.  With 16 boxes in a case, you’re not going to get a complete set of Legends out of a case at 3 per box and that’s if you get perfect collation.

I will be looking for some singles of Celtic Legends such as Larry Bird, recent and long overdue Hall of Famer Dennis Johnson, Bill Russell, Kevin McHale and Bob Cousy.

Cards 161-200 are autographed rookies.  All of the big names are here including Blake Griffin, Tyreke Evans, Stephen Curry and Brandon Jennings.  Some of the cards are numbered to 999 while this Jeff Teague is numbered to 553.  A couple of the rookie autographs are numbered to only 99 copies making a complete set that much tougher to complete.

The best part about the rookie autograph cards in this set is that from what I’ve seen, they’re all on-card.  That has been a rarity in basketball for anything that costs less than $50 per card.  I think the only stickers to be found are on the jersey cards, but some of the superstars could possibly be sticker autographs, I’m not 100% sure.

There are some numbered parallels.  Every card in the set can be found in various numbered parallels.  This David Lee is a Dress Code Platinum numbered 5/25.  I also pulled an Andre Iguodala Gold which is numbered to 100.

These cards are usually more of a crap shoot than anything else pulled out of boxes.  If you pull a numbered card of a minor star it’s no big deal, but if you pull a low numbered card of a big star then it may be your lucky day.  Pulling a serial number that matches the player’s jersey number can be rewarding as well.  So, it’s nice to have that chance to get a little something out of the box besides the advertised hits.

These Dress Code cards are one of the few negative things about this set.  These cards only exist so that there can be jersey parallels.  The jersey cards look nice, but these cards don’t.  To top it off, the set checklist isn’t that impressive.  There are some players in this set that leave you scratching your head.

If these cards only existed as jersey cards then they’d be perfect.  I don’t see the need to have the base versions as well.  Since I’m a set collector by nature, I’d much rather have more base cards than an insert set where you get 3 of 25 cards.  My box contained Sam Perkins, Shawn Marion and Samuel Dalembert.

I’m not sure why it bothers me so much, but I really don’t like that these insert cards are designed with the jersey variations in mind.  It’s not quite as glaring on these Classic Combos cards and the player selection is much better, but those basketballs with the player’s jersey number on it are almost as big as the player pictures.

My box contained Kobe/Odom and LeBron/Shaq.  What I would have liked to pull would have been the Garnett/Pierce and Russell/Sharman cards.

Again, the jersey versions of these cards look good, but these “template” cards don’t look quite as good in my opinion.

These Classic Confrontation cards are two sided and feature players who have faced off frequently during their careers.  This card features Kevin Garnett who plays forward and Shaquille O’Neal who plays center.  There aren’t any stats on the card at all so you’re not really sure what confrontation they’re talking about.  Maybe it’s just weirdness on this card, let me check the other card that I got in my box.  That one features point guard Chris Paul and shooting guard Dwayne Wade.  Looking at the rest of the checklist, most of the rest of the checklist seems to make sense.  I just seem to have pulled two of the abnormalities.  There are some nice matchups such as Bird/Magic, Worthy/Parish and Kidd/Nash.

The final insert set is another one with a jersey window integrated into the design.  The jersey cards do look nice, but the regular cards look a little strange with the team logo floating in the middle of nowhere.  It results in the bottom part of the card looking crowded with the player smooshed over to the side to make room for the logo/jersey window.

My box contained three Classic Greats.  I was happy to pull Celtic Great John Havlicek, but also saw Lakers James Worthy and “Mr. NBA Logo” Jerry West come out of the box.  I think that I pulled all of these Lakers because the box destined for Boston ended up going to The Basketball Card Blog.  Now I have to hope for a Boston sweep and the Cousy card from that box will make its way to Boston.

So far, you’ve only seen one of the hits from this box.  Each box guarantees four hits, but you don’t know what kinds of hits that you’ll get with the exception that at least one hit will be an autograph.  I was very lucky with the contents of my box since it contained three autographs.  Since these are all on-card autographs that ends up being a great value.

This redemption card is for a Jodie Meeks autograph and is numbered to 249.  I love Panini’s card replacement process and wanted to see what their redemption process is like.  I really like that you can pick the time frame that you are willing to wait before you are offered a replacement.  I selected the 4 month time frame for this card to see what happens.

The final autograph in my box was of Jermaine Taylor and is numbered to 999.  I don’t think that I got a rookie autograph in my box of a player that averaged more than 5 points per game last season which is unfortunate.

Before I go on to the final hit from my box, check out the first post on this thread paying particular attention to the hits that were in the box.  That box contained two autographs that were also in my box as well as a patch card of a player named Gerald.  I had already stated that my box contained three autographs and you’ve seen all three of them so the final card in my box must be a patch card of a player named Gerald.

The big hit from my box was this Gerald Henderson prime patch card numbered to 25.  Unfortunately, this brings up another frustration for me.  Panini does a good job of designing the jersey cards on their insert sets, but make the mistake of also using those designs for jersey-less cards that don’t look as good.  Now you’ve got a nice looking base card with a jersey swatch slapped over the stomach of the player.

If this patch were placed inside of one of the insert cards it would have resulted in a beautiful card.  This is a beautiful patch in an alright looking card.  It just confuses me a little bit.  There’s a lot of good in this Panini release, but there’s a good amount of bad as well.

It may seem like I’m being harsh from reading the review of this set, but I think that is mostly due to the fact that this set contains a lot of one of my biggest pet peeves.  If Panini designed jersey cards and then only used those designs for the jersey cards, this set would improve by leaps and bounds.  They should also confine the jersey swatches to those cards designed to hold them.

The main selling point to this set is going to be the on-card autographs, but since you are only guaranteed one autograph per box, I don’t know if that’s going to be enough to push sales of this set.  I would have liked for these to be at least two guaranteed autographs.  I know that I would be disappointed if I purchase a box that contained one autograph and three relic cards.  My box contained three rookie autograph and that’s a box that I would have been very happy with if I had purchased it.  Yes, they aren’t great rookies at the moment, but sometimes you have to give them time.  People would have scoffed at Rodrigue Beaubois autographs at the beginning of the season, but by the end of the season he was one of the top rookies in the league.  So, someone such as Meeks who had a good college career and is on a team with some other good young players might hit his stride in his second or third season.  Due to the wide range of what you can get in a box, it’s tough to give this an overall value rating, but for my box specifically I would give it an A.  It’s tough to beat three on-card autographs and a low numbered rookie patch.

The collation was fine.  I didn’t get any duplicates.  Panini boxes have this weird trend of inserts coming in numbered order.  It’s very evident in the flagship set where you get a ton of inserts, but you notice it in this set as well.  I pulled Classic Confrontations 7 and 8, Classic Combos 1 and 2, Dress Code 8, 9 and 10 and Classic Greats 13, 14 and 15.  Combine that with the other box break that I liked to which was extremely similar to this one and it makes you wonder.  I have to think that it wouldn’t hurt for Panini to possibly look into changing how they load up their boxes.  Then again, I got all of my promised hits which is a lot more than I can say for the Topps and Upper Deck boxes that I’ve opened over the past couple of years.  I’d give the collation a B+ with just a few points off for the quirkiness of the collation across the whole run of the product.

The condition of the cards out of the packs were good with the exception of one of the autographed cards.  The Jermaine Taylor had a lot of white showing along the black edge on the bottom of the card.  If it were a better card, I would send it back especially since Panini’s card replacement process is so great, but for this card I think I’ll just hold on to this copy.  This box gets an A for condition.

Finally we come to design.  I’ve discussed the card designs thoroughly in the box review so I’ll just give the grade here.  I’ll go with the middle of the road C.  There’s a lot of promise, but after a great looking set such as Studio, this was a bit of a letdown.

Overall, I would give this box a B+.  I would place this product at the top of the heap as far as Panini’s releases go this year.  The best looking set is Studio, but this is the set that people are going to go after if they want the best rookie autographs of this year’s players.

Technorati Tags: Panini,box breaks,Panini Classics,basketball cards

Mail Day: Digging out

I forgot to include this card when I posted about my Jorge Garcia through the mail autograph success.  I also included a card to be signed which came out nicely as well.

Now that I’ve seen them, I’m wishing that I had one of the Rittenhouse cards signed and I may still try to get one signed, but I don’t want to be greedy.  Also, things are ramping up with the filming of the Lost finale supposedly and Mr. Garcia may be busy with other things after that and not have time to spend answering fan mail.

Here’s a Big Baby rookie green refractor.  If you’re going to get any Celtics refractors from this set, why wouldn’t you go with the green parallels?  They’re a perfect match for the Celtics uniforms and are numbered to 149 which is rare, but not too rare.

Big Baby seems to be the only guy on the Celtics who grabs any offensive rebounds at times.  The one thing that does seem to hold him back is his maturity level.  He earned a spot in Doc Rivers’ doghouse a few games ago after committing a stupid flagrant foul.  Hopefully he can overcome these maturity issues by the time Boston is looking for him to step into a starting role or it may never happen.

The black parallel is sharp as well and is numbered to just 75 copies.  The white outline around the player gives this card a little bit of a different look.

I think that I’ve been having the most fun with my Glen Davis collection because I’m able to pick up some cool cards at great prices.  That’s not the case with Paul Pierce, Mike Piazza or David Ortiz.  Piazza cards especially climb way out of my price range quickly.  I don’t have any Piazza autos while I have multiple autos of Davis and Pierce and now one autograph of Ortiz.

In typical eBay ridiculousness, I ended up paying less for the black refractor than I did the green and this one is rarer.

I’ve got a couple of Dee Brown cards that I got signed in person as well as an NBA Jam strategy guide that he was promoting.  So, why would I pick up a sticker autograph card?  Well, winning it for a dollar may have had something to do with it.  I also don’t really have many pack inserted autographs for the former Slam Dunk Champ so I figured that I would pick this up.

Brown is now coaching the NBA D-League team in Springfield.  I don’t know if the team was on the road, but it would have been cool for Panini to get this Celtics fan favorite to be a part of their Adrenalyn promotion in Springfield.


There’s no way that I could pass up this lot for a dollar.  I’ve been coveting the Larry Bird from this set ever since I bought one for my wife at a card show last year and this lot contains the refractor.  I would have paid a dollar just for that card, but I also got the regular Pierce and Parish cards from that set, a Pierce Finest rookie, a Garnett Finest card and three other Pierce cards.

The first thing that I did after trading away my Babe Ruth Yankees hat logo card was to start searching eBay for Red Sox players that I could add to my collection.  I got this Ortiz for a great price.  My auction closed at $5.50 when most others were ending in the $10 - $15 price range.

I know many collectors hate manufactured patches on principle.  These are great looking cards though.  I don’t mind at all that the B in this card wasn’t ever touched by David Ortiz.  Somewhere down the line, nice looking cards started taking a backseat to ugly cards with bits of crap in them or a random serial number printed on them.  These are great looking cards.  ‘Nuff said.

I picked up one Clay Buchholz autographed card for my collection prior to this just to have one.  I was at the no-hitter and have a mini collection of Buchholz cards.  Buchholz has a terrible autograph and I never saw myself picking up another one of his scribbles.  Seeing this card changed my mind.  First off, this is signed on-card while my other autograph was on a sticker.  Second, Allen & Ginter autograph cards are beautiful.  Third, Buchholz’s autograph doesn’t look quite as bad on the little mini card.  Next up, for the Buchholz collection: one or two of his 2005 rookies.  From there, I’d love to get something nice framed with the ticket stub and a signed photo.  Maybe not something this elaborate, but I would love that as a gift some day.

I’ve picked up these cards before, but I haven’t had the best of luck getting these cards in good condition.  I win the auctions cheaply and always seem to find people that think shipping cards wrapped in paper towels actually does something to protect them.  These cards aren’t necessarily damaged, but they don’t look at that great either.  One day I’ll just buy one of each of the stamped factory sets from my Rockies and Marlins inaugural year collections.

I love the Lumberjacks inserts and was holding on to the one that I pulled from a box back when these first came out even thought it wasn’t of a player that I collected.  Now that I have this Piazza in my collection, I can trade away that other card.

The Lumberjacks card is numbered to 5000 and the Great American Heroes card is numbered to 2500.  Big deal back when they were released, high print run by today’s standards.

The good thing about that is that I can now pick up insert cards that sold for $20 back when they were first released for a fraction of the cost.  There were a lot of cool Donruss/Leaf and Fleer Ultra inserts that I couldn’t pick up then that I can now add to my collection.

I never would have known about the Topps Tek set if it weren’t for card blogs.  Now it is safe to say that I’m officially hooked on this set.  I’ve picked up a few Piazza lots here and there and am slowly growing my collection.  Some of the designs are ugly, but the majority of them look nice.  The backgrounds with the various team logos in them especially look good.

Last, but not least, another Jeremy Piven letter.  I only grab these when they’re listed cheaply so I may never finish off this phrase.  Many people don’t want to list these cheaply after getting one of these as a hit in their Icons box, but they don’t really sell for more than $3 or $4.

On the letter front, just the second H from Kent Hrbek that I’ve ever seen showed up on eBay and went for a ton of money just like the first.  That’s another word that I may never complete.

That’s all for now.  Time to get the room together and things put away before I starting bringing in a bunch of new singles.

Technorati Tags: Mike Piazza,Glen Davis,Paul Pierce,Jeremy Piven,Clay Buchholz,Dee Brown,Larry Bird,Jorge Garcia