Star Wars Galaxy 6

Topps recently came out with its newest offering in the Galaxy line, number 6. When it was first announced there was a lot of skepticism about what most of the collectors go after, the sketch cards. Some of the cards for Galaxy 5, ESB 30 and the Clone Wars were shall we say less than stellar. This happens with a fair share of releases and not just with Topps but history has shown that buyers can get burned from time to time. However when people started getting their Galaxy 6 cases and boxes and started opening them we quickly realized that Topps wasn't fooling around this time. A normal box has one sketch and case will include one or two die-cuts and maybe a printing plate. What people were finding was two or three sketches a box and as many as 18 or 19 hits a case, WAY more than normal. Prices immediately went through the roof. Boxes went from $50 up to over $100 and cases that pre-ordered at $500 pushed $1000. I wasn't able to pre-order anything but this time wanted to save my money and just buy the cards I wanted, hopefully saving me a little money in the process. The main cards I'm after are by one of my favorite artists Shea Standefer. She continued her depiction of Extended Universe characters for Galaxy 6 and I can't get enough. Here are a couple of my favorites I've picked up so far.


I did find that my card shop owner had ordered a case and this last weekend I bought two boxes from him hoping to get a good card or two. I'll let you guys decide.......

Box 1:

Darth Vader by Bob Stevlic

2-1B die-cut by Martina & Frank

Aurra Sing by Lawrence Reynolds

Box 2:

Qui-Gon Jinn by Otis Frampton

Me personally, I'm thrilled. Box one was the killer box as the Vader was in the very first pack I opened! My original goal was to sell any sketches I pulled to buy one I really want but I'm having a hard time as these are some of the best I've pulled from a Star Wars product. I may have to track a few prices and see what I might be able to get, and if someone makes me one of those offers I can't refuse I won't say no. But for now I'm going to hold onto them and see what happens.

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!

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!!

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.

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.