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!!