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Nothing But The Best For You

Don't feel like writing much tonite but I will show you what I consider to be one of the top three cards I own. I'll pass along the story at a later date!

2008-09 Upper Deck Radiance

More scenes from the Galaxy

I opened almost a case of the Star Wars Galaxy 5 and was able to pull some great cards. I also bought several off E-bay and traded for a few more. Here are some of my favorites.

Brent Engstrom

Rhiannon Owens

Michael "Locoduck" Duron

Tim Proctor

Die-cut by Appro Nation

I was also lucky enough to get the opportunity to purchase two artist returns, cards that the company allows the artists to keep and sell on their own.

Stephanie Yue

Rhiannon Owens

Extended Sketches

Back in February of 2010 the Topps company came out with the much anticipated Star Wars Galaxy 5 card set. The base set consisted of 120 cards numbered both for the individual set and the total Galaxy set. Within the base set there were several subsets including commissioned art, some of the best of Star Wars art and manga. There are several inserts also including silver, bronze and gold foil cards, drawn by Randy Martinez, Lost Galaxy, autograph, printing plates and everybody's favorite sketch cards. This year within the sketch cards there were several subsets as well. You had the regular sketches, manga sketches and shaped sketches. The regular sketches came one per box with the other two types being an added bonus in boxes.

The base cards are beautifully done with several cards being done by well known artists. Some of the funnest cards had to be the propaganda posters that Topps asked some artists to do. Several favorites being shown here.


The sketch cards again are stunning for the most part and I'm going to focus one of my favorite new Star Wars artists Shea Standefer. Shea focused her sketches on the Extended Universe mainly from the books and comics. One of the first cards I was able to get was a sketch of Asyr Sei'lar the Bothan pilot from Rogue Squadron.

Other cards I've been able to find of hers include Luke and Mara Skywalker's son Ben and Boba Fett's granddaughter Mirta Gev.


She also focused at least one card on the Extended Universe books showing a pivotal moment from that book. The one I've been able to find is from the New Jedi Order book Invincible showing the death of Anakin Solo and the reaction of his girlfriend Tahiri Veila with his twin siblings Jaina and Jason in the background.

One of the nicest cards I've been able to get is one of the few full color cards that Shea did. this is Tahiri Veila after the failed attempt of the Yuuzhan Vong to "shape" her and left her forehead scarred. This is an amazing card and I'm very glad it's in my collection.

I do have one more card coming in the next week or so that is part of a puzzle showing four of the Rogue Squadron pilots: Wedge, Tycho, Wes and Hobbie. I'm receiving the Tycho card and will be looking for the rest!

Shea was asked back for the new Empire Strikes Back Widevision 3D set and has some great cards for that set as well. Hopefully she's able to get back to the Extended Universe in future sets as not many artists will take on the challenge.

Happy Father's Day!!

Well I'm still steaming about the US soccer team getting SCREWED out of 3 points by a ref that has never been in a big game situation and apparently doesn't know what a mugging looks like. But I digress a bit here and really want to say Happy Father's Day to my dad and all dad's out there! Thanks for being around when we need you. Here is a picture of three generations of the Shipler men from this last Christmas

Small and Growing

One of the things that I discovered on the Scoundrel Art is a small company run by artist Nathan Ohlendorf called Sadlittles. Nathan has a fun back story that you can find on the site and explains that his drawings are crap! Nathan's company produced it's first preview card set in March of 2009 called Legends & Lore. The only requirements that he put on the set were the character has to be "public" and no nudity. Artist soon started being added including some of the industry greats such as Axebone, Sanna U., Ingrid Hardy and Locoduck. There were also newer artists looking to break into the ranks.

The preview set included 10 cards and each set was numbered out of 750. The full 50 card base set appeared August 1st, 09 and included one sketch card and one collectors blank. The run was limited to 1000 sets and of that 10 were JAM sets that included sketches by Tony and Eleina Perna and Soni. I ordered several sets and eagerly waited hoping to find some great stuff. When the cards arrived I wan not disappointed. Full color sketches and beautiful base cards with a brief history of each character on the back made for a great buy. I decided to focus my collection on sketches of the legend of King Arthur and also by artist Cassie James, as I liked her style. The first Arthurian sketch I pulled was by Doug Riggsby of the man himself
I soon started trading with other collectors to get the cards I wanted as well as scouring E-Bay for those that might show up there as well. One of my best finds came from the auction site as I was able to, on a best offer, get one of only 20 cards done by Sanna U. showing Guinevere and Lancelot.
Nathan also provided the artists with over-sized Artist Proof cards to sell and I have had Cassie do two of them for me.
After the success of the Legends & Lore Nathan now has several sets in the works or already out including his first fully licensed set the AC Comics Femforce. The other sets that he is working on are Rantz Angels, Damsels and Dinosaurs, Dreamers of Darkness, Essence of Fairyland and Crap Dude!. The Damsels and Dinosaurs set is the first that is a sketch card only package and has seemed to be a hit. I've bought several and had some great looking cards come out including this one,
I can't wait for the other sets to be published as I've seen lots of previews. It's awesome to see, in a market of the big company, that one independently run can succeed that way Sadlittles and Nathan have. Keep up that great work Nathan!!

Tired.....of the day.....of Topps and it's crap.....only a picture today, enjoy!

Topps Clone Wars Widevision Sea.1 Michael(Locoduck) Duron

More sketchyness

So in the continuing story of how I started my non-sports and sketch card collection I soon was trying to find any Galaxy cards packs at every Target store in the area. I was only able to get luck one more time but she was well worth it!
I found this beautiful Padme by the artist Leah Mangue. The scan isn't great but the card appears to be in colored pencil and is stunning in person. As I was spending more time on the Scoundrel Art site I discovered that a lot of the artists offered commissions at varying prices. This meant that I could have any character that I wanted on a personal sketch card (PSC.) One of my favorite shows of all time is Battlestar Galactica and my favorite character off the show is played by Grace Park (not the golfer!) her name on the show is Sharon Valerii also known as Boomer or Athena depending on what season you're watching. I wanted to try and get several different artists to draw her for me and give their interpretation of her. The first artist I contacted was Terry Tibke and I got this back.....
I love the hentai style that he chose and the full body with the nice background was a plus as well. I didn't give any instruction to him for a style or pose and normally don't with any PSC I commission. I think it's more fun to see what the artist has in their own mind. For Boomer I do have to find references for the artist at times but that's not hard to do at all. I have now amassed a collection of over 20 different Boomer sketches. It may not sound like much but it can be an expensive venture depending on the artist! Here are a few of my favorites and the artists who did them

Michael "Axebone" Potter
Cassie James
Sanna U.
Rhiannon Owens
John Watkins-Chow

Non-sports start

So I have slowly been getting away from the sports collecting as a lot of the new sets are just boring or too expensive for me. I have gotten more into the non-sports cards in the last two years and amassed a nice little collection since then. My first sketch card I got was also one of the rarest. I had stopped at Target on the way home from my job and saw in the card aisle a new item, Star Wars Galaxy 4. I picked up six or seven packs to see what they were like and like most barely made it to the car before I started ripping into them. About halfway through the packs I found a card with it's back to me and it had a 1/1 in the corner. I flipped it over and found this beauty.
I knew the character was Darth Nihilus from the Knights of the Old Republic video game but nothing else. I started researching the next day focusing on the artists signature. I soon discovered the artist is Grant Gould and from there located one of my favorite web sites now, The Scoundrel Art Community.

On this message board there is a listing for just about every set that includes sketch cards. I discovered I had pulled a rare Target exclusive red sketch card. Grant only did 25 red cards to be inserted. I soon was stopping by Target any chance I had to see if they had more Galaxy 4 cards in. The odds of a red sketch were 1:48 or every other box which led to some frustrating rips but was worth it to try to find more of these rare cards.

I'll talk more about getting to know artists and collectors on Scoundrel later and also show off a lot more of my collection in the coming weeks. I have loved trying to find these 2x3 pieces of art and am waiting for some new sets to come out in the next few months including Rantz Angels, Marvel Heroes vs. Villains and Empire Strikes Back 3D.

So Long Kid

As I'm sure most have heard Ken Griffey Jr retired today at the age of 40 from the Seattle Mariners. Griffey started his career in 1997 at the age of 19 and came full circle back to the Mariners to finish. He ends up 5th on the all-time home run list with 630 in 22 seasons. He collected 10 Gold Glove awards and one MVP, but sadly no appearance in a World Series. He's the one true home run hitter of this era not to ever be questioned if he cheated or not. I'm sad to say I never had the privilege to see Griffey play and sadly won't get the chance now. This may not have been a good season for him but it will on no way tarnish his stellar career. So Mr. Griffey...enjoy your retirement and thank you for all the great memories you've left behind and we'll see you in the Hall.

Old Box Break of National Treasures

So I thought for today I'd share an older box break that I did for myself of 2007 National Treasures. I don't normally break expensive boxes like this but when I get my tax return each year I buy something I normally wouldn't and a couple years ago I went for the Treasures. I decided that since I spent so much on it I would also video it so I could share. So it is in all it's glory, enjoy!



And a few pictures of some of the better hits.

And the granddaddy of them all!!!
The National Treasures set has some great cards in it and to me the base set is just as fun. Hopefully Panini can re-tool from the last years set that looked so bad and come out with another killer set in 2010.