Contest from the South

Check out this contest over at Georgia Mindset... you could win a box of Topps Chrome Baseball.

Redemption Update

As I mentioned in the previous post I received a redemption out of our Philly case split for Joey Porter. Well today I put in the code to see when I would get my card. Scrolled down and see the infamous words..... "Inventory depleted. Please contact customer service for exchange." So now I get to call UD in the morning and see what they can offer me instead of Mr. Porter. I'm going to shoot for a current Viking, maybe Allen, Greenway or Gerhart. I'll keep you guys updated on the progress.

The Week In Review Cardboard Style

So this has been a fairly fun week for me with all the stuff I've gotten. I had my three boxes of the new Star Wars release that I had pre-ordered get here on Friday. I got my packs of the new 5finity release Hack/Slash on Monday and today I got my box from I Am Joe Collector with the results of the Philadelphia case split. Good Lord I'm not even sure where to start.... ok, let's go from today backwards.

Philadelphia case results. As I'm sure many of you saw we got an amazing case of Philly. It included autos of Harvin, Allen and Sanchez. Unfortunately in the randomization process I didn't end up with any of them, oh well. I did get the 5x7 box topper auto of Brandon Pettigrew and regular autos of Matt Forte and Jerry Porter, who is a redemption for some reason. No huge names on the jersey cards but I did get one of the buybacks. A 1964 cards of the Giants Dick Lynch. It's not a valuable card by any means but I love buybacks. I'm hoping to either get in another case split or save up enough to get a case for myself sometime. I really like the design of the '09 Philly, and I have a bunch of short-prints I still need to finish out my set.


So now on the Friday. I had pre-ordered three boxes of Star Wars The Clone Wars: Rise of the Bounty Hunters a couple months ago and they finally showed up. The cards to look for are the one per box sketch cards and if you're lucky you might get an extra hit of an animator sketch. I pulled everything I was supposed to and no extra cards. My sketches were all nice but I would have liked more color in them. I pulled a Shelli Paroline, a Lawrence Snelly and a Brent Engstrom. Brent's card was my favorite but was also damaged by the infamous roller at Topps. No damage to the sketch itself but something like that should NEVER happen. I'm not sending the card in to be replaced instead selling it as is on E-bay. I might pick up a few favorite cards but I'm not planning on any more boxes of this. I'll be saving for the Galaxy 6 release coming in 2011.



Now back to Monday and Hack/Slash. This is 5finity's newest release based off of a comic series. It's not a series I'm very familiar with so I actually picked up a couple back issues last month to see why Steve and 5finity chose their subject. The main characters are Cassie Hack and her partner Vlad who hunt slashers, click here for more info on the comic. I ordered five packs and pulled five great cards. 5finity gets some of the best artists and work out there for their sets. I pulled cards by Mike Norton, Josh Flower, Jon Riggle, Robin Thompson and rare artist Tony Scott. The Thompson and the Scott are my favorites. The Riggle made me laugh when I pulled it since Jon is know for his female drawings more then his male. I mentioned this to him the other night and he commented back that he figured he'd get that response to the Vlad's that he drew. It's a great card either way and I can't wait to see more of his work for official sketch card sets.


I also picked up a few more of the Topps Chrome football value packs and a couple blasters. Nothing real huge in the value packs but do now have a completed page of the orange refractors. In the blasters I got all kinds of x-fractors and managed to pull a purple refractor of Percy Harvin then in the last pack I got a great surprise, one MOJO should be familiar with, an Aaron Hernandez autograph! Can't argue with that at all. Hernandez is playing well and I got a hobby box hit at less then half the price. Here's a look at the auto and a couple completed pages of joy from Chrome.



Hope everybody else had as good of a week as I've had this past one. Now if the Giants can finish out this last half inning I'll even had the World Series I want to see. (Thanks to the Rangers for beating the "Best Team Money Can Buy"!!) Oh.... and GO VIKINGS!!

Boxes 'O Chrome

So my LCS owner had a bunch of boxes of Topps Chrome and gave me a deal on two of them. I love Chrome this year especially with the Lineage and the Rookie Reprint inserts. I wish that Hobby boxes had more color in them. To me it's the second biggest downfall of buying the Hobby boxes. The biggest complaint for Hobby is the fact that for the price you only get one autograph. And it may be like one of my two boxes where you curse the day that player even agreed to sign for Topps. I had my son help me open the packs and he by far pulled the best card. My box had this beauty-


That's right people I pulled a SIXTH round draft pick that has yet to see the professional football field. What a FRAKING WASTE of cardboard!! Ok...... deep breath..... back to the actual good stuff. My numbered card I actually missed the first time through and had to go back for. It's a Gridiron Lineage Refractor of Emmitt Smith and Felix Jones numbered 4/99.


As I said earlier these are some of my favorite cards from Topps base and Chrome. Some of the match-ups are kinda silly but the design is really nice.

My sons' box was much better autograph wise so I'll show that last. His color came in the form of a Panther. A blue refractor of Jon Beason numbered 180/199.


His autograph is out of the "A" column and has a similar theme as his color for the box.... it's also a Panther. This time it's Jimmy Clausen. I like these autos and the way that Topps put the team name under the sticker. At times it makes things hard to read but overall I'm going to give it a thumbs up.


As for the Rookie Reprint subset I'll show off two of my favorites I've pulled so far. Gayle Sayers and Peyton Manning. They just look spectacular "chromed" and I'll be looking for more of these for my collection.


I also picked up a couple singles for my PC. The first was a Topps Chrome Refractor of the KC Royals rookie Kila Ka'aihue and the second being one of the Topps UFC Nickname SP's. I went through all of his UFC singles and managed to find one, Marcus Davis "The Irish Hand Grenade."


Both the autographs and the Blue Refractor will be on E-bay soon if anybody is interested. Or you can make me an offer and we'll talk. Looking at this week I have several packs of 5finity's newest sketch packs, Hack/Slash, coming and three boxes of the new Star Wars The Clone Wars: Rise of the Bounty Hunters should be here sometime as well. I'm hoping to pull some nice sketches from both to fund some other fun stuff. Hope everyone had a good weekend, With the Vikings winning mine sure had an up side!

Recent Additions

So I've been gone awhile but that hasn't stopped me from picking up a few things in the mean time. Starting on E-bay I was able to get a costume lot from my favorite TV show Battlestar Galactica. These are from the premier set that came out back in 2005 and I haven't seen any boxes for a long time. I was mainly after just two of the cards, the Number Six red dress card and the Boomer card. I've seen the Boomer card go for $30-$40 just by itself so I was glad to get a good deal on the whole lot. I'll end up keeping three or four for my collection and probably resell the rest. The Starbuck card is a piece of her flight suit and has a leathery feel to it.


I've also bought a few boxes of the Topps 2010 UFC release and am working on a complete base set now. My two latest boxes were quite good and produced extra hits for me. All told I ended up with five autographs of Wanderlei Silva, Keith Jardine, Nate Diaz, Dan Hardy and an Ultimate Fighter of Josh Bryant. My relics were just ok until I got the last one which is a three color fight mat from an Anderson Silva match. The last hit was probably my favorite. Topps pulled thier usual "hidden treasures" and replaced 25 fighter names with their nicknames at a ratio of 250 for each, basically a case hit. I was lucky enough to pull one.... Chuck "The Iceman" Liddell. This is staying with me for awhile. These are easy to miss if you're just opening trying to find your hits so if you've opened boxes of 2010 UFC you might want to go back and see if you missed any.


I also have a few new sketches that I've added to the collection and have a few others that haven't reached me yet. First off I bought another box of Star Wars Galaxy 5 while I'm waiting for the new Clone Wars cards to come out. I was fortunate enough to get a nice sketch from Jason Keith Phillips of Darth Bane.


Then this last weekend Nathan at Sadlittles offered up a special. For $20 he was selling triple sketch packed sets of the Essence of Fairyland, two color sketches and one test sketch from the preview sets. I hit him up for two and got them yesterday. My favorites are the Axebone test sketch, the Michael "Locoduck" Duron and the Kathryn Layno Lewis. I also received sketchs from j(ay), Nestor Celario and Scott Zirkel.



As I mentioned I have more sketches coming and I'll post them when they arrive. I was also in a group case break of UD Philadelphia football and will show those as well when they come in. If I don't talk to you before everybody enjoy your weekend! And don't forget the Randy Moss makes his BIG comeback with the Vikings in prime time on Monday night. How will two of the best players ever get along??? I personally hope REALLY well!