Today at the LCS

So with a little extra money burning a hole in my pocket I decided to stop by my LCS and see if I won anything off the bid board last week and see what was new and looked good. As it turned out I did win the two cards I bid on. I now present pin-ups of the 1890's......


Both of these cards have the Sweet Caporal Cigarette logo on the back. I don't know if they are real or reprints but either way I think they are great.

I actually had gone to find a box of the new Topps Finest football but the owner said he had gone through all 4 cases he had ordered already and was getting some tomorrow. Nothing else in sports really caught my eye box wise so I checked out his non-sports area. He had a bunch of the Empire Strikes Back 3D boxes still so I talked him down $10 on the cost and put that in the pile. I pulled the one per box sketch out of the very first pack I opened. A really nice color sketch of R2-D2 by Jennifer Mercer who did 100 sketches total.


I did pick up one other box but I'll get to that in a second. The next thing in the pile was three packs of 2010 Topps Jumbo football. Got the standard inserts and such so nothing special until the last pack....


SWEET A CASE HIT! And he's even the starter now!! Not sure if I'll keep this or throw it up on E-bay yet but gotta say it's cool to finally get one of the rookie variations.

Now on to the last box I bought. After watching a bunch of breaks on You Tube of this I decided to take a chance on 2010 Topps UFC. You're supposed to get four hits, two relic and two autographs, in each box plus an insert in each pack and another numbered card of some sort. The base cards look nice and show either a fighter or a specific fight from one of the UFC Pay-Per-Views. The inserts are all holo-foil cards but I really like the looks of them. They range from UFC 2010 video game cards, Pride and Glory, fight poster cards, Octagon of Honor and my favorite Bloodlines. Here is a sample of all of them,

I got all four of my promised hits. My numbered card of Rafaello Oliveira 156/188


The relic cards were both just ok. One was a fight mat of Amir Sadollah numbered 83/188 and the other was fighter worn gear of Chris Tuchscherer.


The first autograph is one of the normal autos in the set and it's of UFC Lightweight Jim Miller. Miller has an overall record of 18-2-0 with eight of those fights being in the UFC. His record there is 7-1-0.


The last autograph was defiantly the hit of the box. A short-print autograph of welterweight Josh Koscheck numbered 3/8! Josh has an overall record of 17-4-0 with 17 fights in the UFC and a record of 13-4-0 record there. Josh is also one of the head coaches for the current season of The Ultimate Fighter vs. George St. Pierre.


Overall I would say this was a productive day at the LCS. Now I just have to start saving for the next time!!

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.