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!

Mixtape

Today's post is short and sweet. I recently won a 5finity Mixtape sketch card off E-bay by the amazingly awesome artist Rhiannon Owens called "Shuriken Throwing Dart" From the info I've seen Rhi only did 25 sketches for this set and all of them are amazing.

Shameless Promoting

I'm selling several non-sports and sports cards on E-bay right now. If you want to take a look just go here. And thanks in advance if you bid on anything. If you win and mention that you read my blog I'll ship your winnings for free!

Essence of Fairyland

I wanted to show a couple of the sketch cards that came with my sets of the newly released Essence of Fairyland card set that Nathan of Sadlittles produced.

Lance Sawyer

Chad Cocconi

If you get a chance to support this great company please do. You can get there by clicking HERE.

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.

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

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.