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:

Box Break - 2007 Upper Deck SP Rookie Edition

This wasn't the first box that I opened, but I thought it was one that was relevant to current baseball playoff events.  I love busting cheap, older Upper Deck products, but you'll rarely see me buying anything from them when it's brand new.

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

Sponsored Blaster Box Break: TRISTAR 2010 TNA New Era

There’s been buzz about this release ever since it was first publicized.  Say what you will about the TNA product on television, but this release contains autographs from some of the biggest names in the history of wrestling.  Hulk Hogan was the driving force of the WWF for decades while Ric Flair was doing the same thing over in WCW.  Now they’re facing off in the same federation and TRISTAR is striking while the iron is hot.

Those two cards aren’t the only ones available in this release though.  The Jeff Hardy autographs in the set should prove to be popular as will RVD’s autographs.  There’s a large autograph checklist though and the majority of the 55 autographs don’t have the amount of name recognition that the average WWE wrestler does.  I know that I’d be tempted not to rip the card in half if I were to pull a Bubba the Love Sponge autograph.  He’s not a wrestler and doesn’t belong in this set no matter how good of a friend he is to Terry Bollea.

I doubt that there will ever be a market for wrestler “rookie cards",” but if there were, this would be RVD’s TNA RC.  TRISTAR did a great job with the quick turnaround of this set.  Hogan, Flair, RVD, Hardy and Mr. Anderson haven’t been in TNA all that long, but they got them into this set and did a good job of it.

The cards look very nice and the photography is great especially when you consider that a lot of these images were taken from the big TNA Monday night special and the show where Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair made their debut with TNA.  The time period between those shows and the release of this set wasn’t long at all.  You’ve got to give TRISTAR plenty of kudos for that.  They definitely struck while the iron was hot and it is paying off.  The cards have improved by leaps and bounds since the first TNA set.  I still don’t know of too many people who are a fan of the glitter, but it’s TRISTAR’s thing so I don’t mind them sticking with it.

Each blaster box contains 24 cards and that includes one autograph card.  So, you are basically paying $20 or whatever the blasters sell for at retail for just the one autograph card.  These are unnumbered retail versions of the autograph cards.  That seems pretty pricey for what you get in a box.

TRISTAR continues to deliver fun autographs on their cards.  The card of Mr. Anderson reads, “Mr. Anderson… Anderson!!” which is what the wrestler yells into an old school microphone lowered from the ceiling as part of his entrance.

On the downside of things, the stickers are once again on stickers.  I can understand it for this set since there was a quick turnaround time, but there’s no way that there should be sticker autographs on future sets.  All that TRISTAR has to do is send a representative or two down to Orlando on a Thursday night with cards to be signed and they’re all set.  It’s really inexcusable.  On-card autographs would really bring these sets to the next level.

Technorati Tags: TNA Wrestling,TRISTAR,box break,TNA The New Era

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

Traded: Cards from BA Benny’s Baseball Card Buffet

This traded was started when I saw the Ortiz autographed jersey card that was posted over at BA Benny's Baseball Car Buffet.  A couple of e-mails later, I had sent away my Babe Ruth hat logo card and a few other cards and got three Ortiz jersey cards and a nice pile of Red Sox in return.

One interesting thing of note is that Ortiz signed this sticker upside down.  If I thought that it would carry any sort of premium, I would hold on to it, but I think that I’m going to send it to Topps for a replacement.  I already contacted them and they said that they had replacement of this card available.

Technorati Tags: David Ortiz,Boston Red Sox

Topps redemptions are a fucking joke

From this point on, I’m selling each and every Topps redemption card that I get my hands on.  The ridiculousness that I’ve endured regarding 2009 Finest redemptions is beyond asinine.

I purchased my box of 2009 Finest 2 addresses ago which is very relevant to this story.  That was the address that I entered when I redeemed these cards.  I waited and waited and waited and nothing arrived.

Eventually, two of the six total redemptions that I was waiting for from Topps arrived.  One was a Finest redemption and one was a 2009 Red Hot Rookie.  Why would just one Finest card show up when all but the Hanson auto were sent out at the same time?  I’ve got no clue so I went back to waiting and waiting.

Getting sick of waiting, I contacted Topps Customer Support who I normally have good luck with.  They researched and found out that the other cards were shipped to a different address.  Why would some of the cards be sent to one address and others to a different address?  Again, I’ve got no clue.

So, one card trickled in with one of those “Please notify sender of your new address” stickers on it and another was re-sent from Topps.  I was still one card short and am still trying to have Topps send that card to me again.  That card is not the reason why I am writing this post though.

I’ve been obsessively following the progress of my Tommy Hanson autographed redemption ever since Topps tweeted about Hanson coming in to sign stuff.  It was marked shipped with a tracking number and so I checked it on an almost daily basis and waited and waited and waited.  Three weeks later, some tracking information finally arrived and… the card was sent to the wrong address.  Are you kidding me?  At this point my new address has been on file with Topps/Tristar Fulfillment for 6 months.  There’s no excuse for this.

Since the cards are now out in the wild, I decide to take a quick look on eBay so I’ll at least have an idea of what might someday magically appear in my mailbox.  So, I stumbled across this eBay auction.  A sticker auto!  A STICKER AUTO!  Are you fucking kidding me?  I’ve been waiting close to a year for this card and it’s a sticker auto.  What a joke that is.  There’s on-card autos in 2009 Topps Chrome, but this redemption card that was produced after that card is a sticker.

Not only is it a sticker, but it is a sticker stuck on an ugly card.  The area on the card is too small for the sticker and it ends up looking horrible.  Take a look at the completed auctions for this card and you’ll see some piss poor sticker placement.  There are crooked stickers.  Stickers that are partially covering the Finest logo on the card.  Stickers with off-center stickers.  I think I would have gotten better results if I had my four year old daughter put the stickers on these things.  So disappointed.

The only saving grace of this whole thing is that the card is selling for a decent price on eBay.  So, once the card comes in it is going to go right up on eBay and get the heck out of my collection.  I’ve got no tolerance for abominations such as this.  I’m also open to trade offers.  Anyone out there have a 1992 Fleer Update set or a really nice card of someone that I collect that you’d like to transform into this card?  Drop me a line and let me know.  I’d love to salvage something out of this fiasco.

Topps, if by any chance you end up reading this.  Please, for the love of god, cut way down on the number of redemption cards that you use.  The rookie redemptions rarely add any value to a set because by the time the cards are redeemed these rookies have a bunch of other cards that people are looking for instead.  I can see issuing a redemption card if it is for something like a dual signed card that you got signed by one player, but couldn’t hook up with the second player in time for the release, but issuing redemption cards for cards you don’t know if you’ll be able to get signed or for cards that you don’t plan on producing for another 6 months isn’t any good.  Just focus on giving those players great cards in an upcoming card instead.  Most importantly, redemption cards lead to frustration and wasted space in packs when you go and open older boxes.  It’s not the fault of the purchaser that you couldn’t get your cards done in time, but they have to suffer by getting useless, expired redemption cards in their boxes.  Hopefully you can keep redemptions out of Chicle and Ginter or else I think I’m done with Topps products for the year.

On a related note, these same Finest cards led to a terrible eBay experience as well.  Since these cards sell for next to nothing these days, I decided that I’d try and put together the set.  So, I found one sell on eBay that had three of the cards listed.  I asked if he combined shipping and he replied that he did.  I won three of the cards for .99¢ and one other card for $1.29.  The seller didn’t seem happy about that since no matter how many times I contacted him, he wouldn’t send me an invoice with the combined shipping.  I waited two weeks before leaving him negative feedback as directed by eBay.  I find it strange that they have non-paying bidder strikes, but not non-selling strikes.  That’s eBay for you.  I’ll end this tangent before it takes on a life of its own.

Sorry for the bitch session.  I plan to follow this up tonight with some much better content.  Who knows, maybe someone will benefit from this by adding a Tommy Hanson card to their collection.

Trading Block: Non-sports Trade Bait

I’m not quite sure why I decided to touch this stuff, but I did.  There are some decent cards to pull, but it seems like there’s a lot more junk than quality stuff.  Stupid, spur-of-the-moment decisions.  If anyone is interested in any of these uncirculated autos, drop me a line and we’ll work something out.

Pictured is Peter Wingfield as Methos from Highlander, Adam Baldwin as Jayne Cobb from Firefly, Patrick Flueger as Shaun Farrell from The 4400 and Dan Butler as Rev. Sorenson from Supernatural.

Box Break: 2010 Rittenhouse Lost Seasons 1 Thru 5

Rittenhouse is the second company to have the Lost license with the first being Inkworks.  I wasn’t a big fan of the Inkworks products as the boxes seemed too expensive to me for what you got.  Rittenhouse took over the license and they seem to have gotten things right.  For just about the same price per box, you get three autographs instead of just one and there aren’t any redemption cards.

Rittenhouse as a company puzzles the heck out of me.  They don’t take advantage of new media at all.  They barely have a website.  You won’t find Rittenhouse Archives or Scifihobby.com on Twitter or Facebook.  You won’t find any sponsored breaks to check out before you buy.  The company does have a rewards program, but the amount of points needed to get any of the rewards are ridiculous.  You have to buy 6 boxes and some loose packs just to qualify for one rewards.  They may as well not even have the program since it’ll really only benefit dealers and case breakers.  Just put that money towards some nice box toppers and you’re all set.  That’ll save the postage on mailing in the wrappers and reward normal collectors.

Rittenhouse makes some high quality cards.  They aren’t glossy, but once you’ve held them in your hands and looked at them, you won’t mind at all.  The pictures look great on the sturdy, bright white card stock.  The fact that there’s no gloss makes them perfect for autographs.  I wish that I had the Hurley card pictured above when I sent my autograph request to Jorge Garcia because I would love to have this card signed and in my collection.

The set consists of 108 cards (kudos Rittenhouse for that little detail) with one card for every episode of the first 5 seasons.  Header cards for each season that double as checklists fill out the rest of the set.  This set makes me wish that Rittenhouse had this license from the beginning and had done 108-card sets of each season as they aired.  Those sets would have been beautiful.

There are insert card for another ABC show to be found in packs.  While I am watching FlashForward, I wouldn’t be extremely upset if it were to be cancelled.  It has taken what could be a very interesting concept and gone almost nowhere with it.  It started off well, but the hiatus killed it and it hasn’t regained the momentum since coming back.  I would have much rather seen promo cards for another show that J.J. Abrams helped create and that’s Fringe.  That’s quickly become one of my favorite shows and I look forward to seeing what ridiculousness Walter Bishop is going to do and see each week.

There are some fun inserts to be found in these packs.  There’s a six card set of the Oceanic Six printed on acetate with clear sections.  It looks like there’s a picture of the character off of the island in color with a picture of them on the island ghosted in the background.

The other two cards pictured here are lenticular cards.  They really don’t scan well, but they look good in person.

The middle card pictured here is of the Smoke Monster.  This season, the Smoke Monster aka The Man in Black is spending most of his time in the form of John Locke.  Popular theory says that in the past the Smoke Monster took on various forms such as Christian Sheppard, Dave and possibly even a black horse.  Hopefully they’ll explain why it could do that then, but is unable to now.

The bottom card shows Hurley’s Mr. Cluck’s Chicken Shack restaurant as it is struck by a meteor and destroyed.  The explosion killed reporter Tricia Tanaka who was covering the grand opening.  This was just another example of the terrible luck that followed Hurley around off of the island after winning the lottery with the cursed numbers muttered repeatedly by another patient in the mental hospital Hurley spent time in.

Rittenhouse jumps aboard the painted card bandwagon with their own insert set.  These cards would definitely appeal to fans of Topps Gallery, Turkey Red or Upper Deck Masterpieces.

You won’t find any gloss on these cards either and these would be beautiful cards to get signed.  This is a set that I could definitely see myself tracking down if some of them show up online at a decent price.

The theme for my box seemed to be deceased characters as three of the four characters are no longer on the show.  Shannon was shot by Ana Lucia.  Boone died after being crushed by a plane while tagging along with Locke.  Juliet died due to injuries suffered while detonating a hydrogen bomb back in the 70s.

Enough about these cards though.  The main reason that people buy these boxes is for the autographs.  Who did I pull?  Let’s find out…

My first autograph card is of Patrick Fischler as Phil.  Phil was a member of the Dharma Initiative back in the 70s.  I can’t say that I was too impressed with this autograph, but these autograph cards are great.

All of the autographs are on-card and there’s a nice, big, white area for the actors and actresses to sign in.  The front of the cards are not glossy, but the backs of the cards are.  I like this decision because it prevents things like eBay idiots adding a “1/1” notation to a card and then trying to find a sucker to buy it.

Before I go any further, I have to warn you not to buy these Lost cards by the pack.  These packs are extremely searchable.  In my box, packs without an insert contained 6 cards and packs with an insert only contained 5.  You might not be able to tell the difference by holding them or looking at them, but anyone with a caliper could easily tell the difference.

My next autograph was of Andrea Roth as Harper Stanhope in “The Other Woman.”  They had to include the episode title for this autograph card because otherwise no one would have any clue who this character was.  She appeared in one episode as Juliet’s therapist

It’s nice to see that crappy autographs aren’t confined to athletes.  Actors and actresses can have terrible autographs as well.  Seriously, what the heck is that supposed to be?  Was she drawing a picture?  Getting an autograph of a minor character is even more disappointing when the autograph looks like this.

So, I had pulled two out of my three autographs and wasn’t feeling all that great about the box.  The autograph cards are easy to pick out when you open a pick due to the borderless design.  So, when I saw the next borderless card I slid the card above it aside slowly.  I saw a cursive T and then a printed T and then a familiar bald head.

Terry O’Quinn autograph!  My second favorite character on the show behind Hurley.  This card totally saved the box in my opinion as I think this is the best autograph there is to pull out of the box.

This set has a great design and the insert sets give you a little bit of variety as you open the packs.  I got a complete set out of my box which should always be the case with a non-sports box.

You can’t beat the value since you get a handful of inserts, a complete set and three autographs per box.  Even if you get three of the lesser autographs the box is worth it.  If you pull one of the bigger stars, they go for close to the cost of a box.  This Terry O’Quinn has sold on eBay from anywhere between $35 and $50, but this one won’t be making it’s way to eBay as it will find a permanent spot in my collection.

I would give this set an A- just because the autograph checklist is a little weak and you could very possibly get three clunkers who have each only been in one episode of the show.  The set itself is beautiful and the inserts add a lot of fun.  I have no choice but to give my box an A+ for a grade.  The only way that it could have been better was if I had pulled O’Quinn, Michael Emerson and Nestor Carbonell in the same box.

Technorati Tags: Lost,Rittenhouse Archives,Terry O'Quinn