So since I haven't been lucky enough to get any free boxes to review I stopped by the card shop today to pick up a couple boxes. I just got a new computer and don't have my scanner running so no pics but if something strikes you in the description let me know and I'll try to get a pic to you. I wanted something a bit different then my normal fair so I decided on Upper Deck World of Sports, 2010-11 Upper Deck SPX Hockey and 2011 Playoff Contenders Patches.
I'll start with the SPX Hockey and beg for your help as it's one of the sports that I know the least about. I purchased a box that had been opened but still had 18 packs and the Bonus pack included. This means I had no idea how many hits there were going to be. The bonus pack had an Ice rookie card of Jared Cowen #405/999. The box itself actually ended up with five hits! The first was a dual jersey of Sidney Crosby, dual white pieces but still "Sid the Kid," good start. Second a rookie jersey of Marcus Johansson. Third an autographed jersey of the Bruins Zach Hamill #35/799. Forth another autographed jersey this time of Flyers keeper Sergei Bobrovsky #191/799. Fifth a single jersey of rookie Zac Dalpe. I feel really good about this box. A normal box only gets four hits and looking at a breakdown it appears that I got an extra autographed jersey rookie card. I like the base cards but won't be collecting the set or anything. There are a few cards I'll keep of some of my favorite players but if anyone is collecting I can help out.
Upper Deck World of Sports seemed like a good idea when I first heard about it but some of the box breaks have been less than stellar. I took a chance and am very pleased with the results. The box states that there are two autographs in each but most have been producing three, including mine. Autograph one is of pitcher Andrew Liebel who was drafted by the Blue Jays in the 3rd round of the 2008 Amateur Draft and is currently playing A+ ball in the Florida League. The second autograph is staying in the personal collection as it's U.S. National Team member and Colorado Rapids midfielder Pablo Mastroeni. The picture is from his college days as a member of the NC State Wolfpack but what a great pull for a soccer fan. The third autograph followed the same line but as one of the Athletes of the World subset that has an autograph only and no picture of the athlete. Mine is, again, U.S. National Team member and Hannover 96 midfielder DaMarcus Beasley. Beasley has been hampered by injury recently but is an excellent player and will hopefully get the chance to play for the MNT in the coming years. I also pulled a relic card from the box and have to wonder if it could have gotten much better. The swatch itself is solid red but comes from a jersey worn by Team Canada's own "Great One" Wayne Gretzky! Two boxes and jerseys of two of Canada's greatest hockey players...... frak...... Captain Canuck is going to drive down here and steal both of these if I'm not careful!
Now on the the basketball. I choose Contenders Patches because I love the look of the autograph rookie patches. I know that they are manufactured and that there is a "gimmick" of home and away logos and truthfully I don't care! They look even better in person. All four of my autographs were of the rookie persuasion which is ok but it would have been nice to get one of the other autograph types that you can pull. No real big numbered diecut hits except for a Rookie of the Year Contender of Blake Griffin #37/99. As for the Rookie Patches they are as follows: Spurs gaurd Gary Neal with a black patch, Lakers forward Derrick Caracter with a yellow patch, Wizards forward Trevor Booker with a blue patch (Crap wrong Wizard! Oh well) and the hit of the box, Kings center DeMarcus Cousins with a gray patch. The base cards are very similar to the football Contenders so if you like that look, as I do, then you should like these as well.
Recent E-bay pick-ups include two 2008 Razor Letterman cards to finish Royals first round draft pick Aaron Crow's last name. I also received a great package from Eric at Manupatches & Chrome Scratches that had a stack of Royals cards along with Letterman patches of Eric Hosmer #1/5 and a Jeremy Beckham #13/20 that we had agreed to trade. Off E-bay I also now have autograph number six for my Harry Potter art and autos set that I'm working on, Natalia Tena as Nymphadora Tonks is now in hand. Also picked up a 2011 Topps 60th autograph of Alex Gordon cheap. This will make a nice addition to my Royals collection and the blue card with the white and blue Royals jersey looks really nice! Hopefully I'll have some pictures to show you guys soon. Thanks again for reading, ciao!
Showing posts with label Harry Potter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Harry Potter. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Monday, December 13, 2010
Pictures
Finally got my scanner up and running so here are some pictures of recent pulls and purchases.
If you see something you like let me know. The Philly Edwards is already spoken for.
If you see something you like let me know. The Philly Edwards is already spoken for.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Art and Autographs
I recently commissioned one of my favorite artists to do a couple new 5x7 drawings for me, Beck Kramer of Beckadoodles.com. She has a great flexibility and can do cute kiddie stuff and also amazing pin-ups. You can see both styles at her website above. Earlier this year she had a sale trying to get rid of some 5x7's that hadn't sold and I picked up a couple, Alice from Alice in Wonderland and Hermione form the Harry Potter series.
After getting the first two pieces I talked with Beck about doing a couple more pin-ups for me. I love the Harry Potter series and decided to have a couple more of my favorite characters done. I first went with Harry's future wife Ginny Weasley and then with a character that I wish was in the books (and films) more, Nymphdora Tonks.
As Beck was working on these I came up with another idea. For the Harry Potter pin-ups I wanted to try and add a little something to tie them into the movies. The best way I came up with is to try and get autographs of each of the actresses from one of the multiple card sets that are out. Now this may take a while and I don't think it will come real cheap as Emma Watson's (Hermione) autograph is always limited in each release. I'm please to say that as of today I've got one down and, at the moment, two to go!
I'm going to get other characters done as well including the Patil twins, Bellatrix, Fleur DeLacour and Cho Chang and match them up with autographs also. The pieces that Beck did for me are matted but I'm looking around and seeing if there is a good way to display a 5x7 and a trading card together. I hope I can find a nice display and use it for each of the drawings I have done. Thank you so much to Beck Kramer who does amazing work. If you need great work done at a good price don't be afraid to talk to her.
After getting the first two pieces I talked with Beck about doing a couple more pin-ups for me. I love the Harry Potter series and decided to have a couple more of my favorite characters done. I first went with Harry's future wife Ginny Weasley and then with a character that I wish was in the books (and films) more, Nymphdora Tonks.
As Beck was working on these I came up with another idea. For the Harry Potter pin-ups I wanted to try and add a little something to tie them into the movies. The best way I came up with is to try and get autographs of each of the actresses from one of the multiple card sets that are out. Now this may take a while and I don't think it will come real cheap as Emma Watson's (Hermione) autograph is always limited in each release. I'm please to say that as of today I've got one down and, at the moment, two to go!
I'm going to get other characters done as well including the Patil twins, Bellatrix, Fleur DeLacour and Cho Chang and match them up with autographs also. The pieces that Beck did for me are matted but I'm looking around and seeing if there is a good way to display a 5x7 and a trading card together. I hope I can find a nice display and use it for each of the drawings I have done. Thank you so much to Beck Kramer who does amazing work. If you need great work done at a good price don't be afraid to talk to her.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Box Break: Harry Potter Heroes and Villains
So I hit up my favorite LCS today while I was running around. He just moved to a new location that gives him a lot more room. He does a good job of keeping all sports in and also the non-sports as well. I saw he had the newest Artbox Harry Potter release, Heroes and Villains, in and decided to try a box. Looking a\on the bottom of the box I see I bought #181/3000. Your standard hobby box is 24 packs of 8 cards. The base set is 54 cards and 18 clear cards. There is a box topper inside as well as a 9 card foil puzzle to try to put together. The box also says to look for costume, prop and autograph cards.
The base cards look good with gold foil stamping on the front. The first 36 cards are characters and Artbox did a nice job covering characters from the first movie, the Sorcerer's Stone, to the latest, the Half-Blood Prince. The good guys have a blue border around them while the bad guys have red. The rest of the regular base set is comprised of scenes from the movies. These aren't quite as comprehensive and I wish they had added more of the scene cards to the set and made it a bit bigger. The backs of the character cards have a brief description of each person and also tell what organization they belong to if any. Such as: teacher, Order of the Phoenix, Death Eater, etc. The scene card backs give a very short synopsis of the picture on the front. I haven't gone through to make sure I got a complete base set but I'll go out on a bit of a limb here and say that I did. I saw a bunch of doubles and it wouldn't surprise me if I actually came close to two base sets when all is said and done.
The insert cards for this set are nice. As I mentioned before the end of the base set is actually comprised of 18 clear cards. These are good looking cards that have a major flaw...... they get scratched very easily. Most of mine have some scrapes on them straight out of the pack. Fortunately it doesn't really take away from the overall good look of the cards. I pulled 12 of these with no doubles! Guess this means I have a bit of E-bay scouring to actually finish the SP set. The other insert is the typical 9 card puzzle. The front of each card has different characters and when put together the back will create a picture. I have four of these cards and will hazard a guess that it will form the picture form the top of the box when completed.
Finally we get to the hits. There are 14 costume cards and 13 prop cards with several variants of each depending on what "piece" you get. My first hit is a costume card of Kingsley Shacklebolt from the Order of the Phoenix numbered 82/460. As you can see it's a nice three color swatch but I'm going to have to watch the movie again to figure out what it's an actual piece of.
My second hit came in a pack with only one other card. As in it's the thickness of seven base cards, I didn't even realize I had a hit in my hands until I opened the pack and saw it. It's a prop card and numbered 38/190. Actually it's a double prop card! I managed to get card containing a piece of a quaffle or bludger and bristles of broom from the Sorcerer's Stone.
I'm going to guess that between the quaffle and the bludger I got is actually a piece of bludger. It has a real leathery feel to it and appears to be darker then the quaffle is. No telling what broom the bristles come from, though I'll use some imagination and say they are from the broom that Harry flies to rescue Neville's remember-all (ha ha.) Now I didn't pull and autograph and was a little disappointed until I did some research. Seems that for this release autographs fall one per case, hmmm, don't feel quite so bad now but sure would have been nice. The costume cards are 10 per case or one per box and the prop cards are said to fall 4 per case. If those numbers are correct I don't think I did too bad overall. Final impressions have me thinking this was a fun box to open. Both hits are going to stay in my PC for now and I think I'll try to finish the SP and puzzle sets as well.
The base cards look good with gold foil stamping on the front. The first 36 cards are characters and Artbox did a nice job covering characters from the first movie, the Sorcerer's Stone, to the latest, the Half-Blood Prince. The good guys have a blue border around them while the bad guys have red. The rest of the regular base set is comprised of scenes from the movies. These aren't quite as comprehensive and I wish they had added more of the scene cards to the set and made it a bit bigger. The backs of the character cards have a brief description of each person and also tell what organization they belong to if any. Such as: teacher, Order of the Phoenix, Death Eater, etc. The scene card backs give a very short synopsis of the picture on the front. I haven't gone through to make sure I got a complete base set but I'll go out on a bit of a limb here and say that I did. I saw a bunch of doubles and it wouldn't surprise me if I actually came close to two base sets when all is said and done.
The insert cards for this set are nice. As I mentioned before the end of the base set is actually comprised of 18 clear cards. These are good looking cards that have a major flaw...... they get scratched very easily. Most of mine have some scrapes on them straight out of the pack. Fortunately it doesn't really take away from the overall good look of the cards. I pulled 12 of these with no doubles! Guess this means I have a bit of E-bay scouring to actually finish the SP set. The other insert is the typical 9 card puzzle. The front of each card has different characters and when put together the back will create a picture. I have four of these cards and will hazard a guess that it will form the picture form the top of the box when completed.
Finally we get to the hits. There are 14 costume cards and 13 prop cards with several variants of each depending on what "piece" you get. My first hit is a costume card of Kingsley Shacklebolt from the Order of the Phoenix numbered 82/460. As you can see it's a nice three color swatch but I'm going to have to watch the movie again to figure out what it's an actual piece of.
My second hit came in a pack with only one other card. As in it's the thickness of seven base cards, I didn't even realize I had a hit in my hands until I opened the pack and saw it. It's a prop card and numbered 38/190. Actually it's a double prop card! I managed to get card containing a piece of a quaffle or bludger and bristles of broom from the Sorcerer's Stone.
I'm going to guess that between the quaffle and the bludger I got is actually a piece of bludger. It has a real leathery feel to it and appears to be darker then the quaffle is. No telling what broom the bristles come from, though I'll use some imagination and say they are from the broom that Harry flies to rescue Neville's remember-all (ha ha.) Now I didn't pull and autograph and was a little disappointed until I did some research. Seems that for this release autographs fall one per case, hmmm, don't feel quite so bad now but sure would have been nice. The costume cards are 10 per case or one per box and the prop cards are said to fall 4 per case. If those numbers are correct I don't think I did too bad overall. Final impressions have me thinking this was a fun box to open. Both hits are going to stay in my PC for now and I think I'll try to finish the SP and puzzle sets as well.
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