Pick-Ups Off A Tip-Off

While reading Dennis' blog recently he mentiond that one of his favorite sellers on the Blowout Forums was having a great sale on his game used and autographed cards in his $2.50 folders. This sounded like it might be promising and I proceeded to see what I could find. There wasn't much in those two folders that interested me but I did see he had some really nice breakdowns of higher end cards. I dove into the folder containing the Vikings and went broke. Well maybe not broke but it would have been really easy!! I limited myself this time to some nice PC stuff. I started with the 1st round draft pick from 2006 who is quickly becoming one of the best linebackers in the NFL Chad Greenway. And for those who don't know Chad attended the University of Iowa so that makes him a great home state player to collect. I picked up three rookie autographs for my collection.

Playoff Contenders Rookie Ticket

SPX #32/1299

Bowman Sterling #1/900

All three great cards. My favorite is probably the Contenders as it's the best picture but the Sterling is a close second. It's kinda fun to own the very first autograph in the series and the gold card looks great with the Vikings uniform.

The last card I picked up is a 2009 Certified of Percy Harvin. It's a bit of a gimmick and I won't deny that one bit but I really like it and got it at a great price.

#22/25

I have a couple of the stamp/patch/autographs in my collection but this makes my first Percy Harvin jersey or patch card. The Vikings stamp is a nice touch as well. So there you have it, short and sweet. I'll post the link to the Blowout Forum for those who would like to try and make a deal as well. For now enjoy March Madness..... ciao!

Mdskyhawks Buy/Sell/Trade Thread

New Stuff

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!

The Week In Review Cardboard Style

So this has been a fairly fun week for me with all the stuff I've gotten. I had my three boxes of the new Star Wars release that I had pre-ordered get here on Friday. I got my packs of the new 5finity release Hack/Slash on Monday and today I got my box from I Am Joe Collector with the results of the Philadelphia case split. Good Lord I'm not even sure where to start.... ok, let's go from today backwards.

Philadelphia case results. As I'm sure many of you saw we got an amazing case of Philly. It included autos of Harvin, Allen and Sanchez. Unfortunately in the randomization process I didn't end up with any of them, oh well. I did get the 5x7 box topper auto of Brandon Pettigrew and regular autos of Matt Forte and Jerry Porter, who is a redemption for some reason. No huge names on the jersey cards but I did get one of the buybacks. A 1964 cards of the Giants Dick Lynch. It's not a valuable card by any means but I love buybacks. I'm hoping to either get in another case split or save up enough to get a case for myself sometime. I really like the design of the '09 Philly, and I have a bunch of short-prints I still need to finish out my set.


So now on the Friday. I had pre-ordered three boxes of Star Wars The Clone Wars: Rise of the Bounty Hunters a couple months ago and they finally showed up. The cards to look for are the one per box sketch cards and if you're lucky you might get an extra hit of an animator sketch. I pulled everything I was supposed to and no extra cards. My sketches were all nice but I would have liked more color in them. I pulled a Shelli Paroline, a Lawrence Snelly and a Brent Engstrom. Brent's card was my favorite but was also damaged by the infamous roller at Topps. No damage to the sketch itself but something like that should NEVER happen. I'm not sending the card in to be replaced instead selling it as is on E-bay. I might pick up a few favorite cards but I'm not planning on any more boxes of this. I'll be saving for the Galaxy 6 release coming in 2011.



Now back to Monday and Hack/Slash. This is 5finity's newest release based off of a comic series. It's not a series I'm very familiar with so I actually picked up a couple back issues last month to see why Steve and 5finity chose their subject. The main characters are Cassie Hack and her partner Vlad who hunt slashers, click here for more info on the comic. I ordered five packs and pulled five great cards. 5finity gets some of the best artists and work out there for their sets. I pulled cards by Mike Norton, Josh Flower, Jon Riggle, Robin Thompson and rare artist Tony Scott. The Thompson and the Scott are my favorites. The Riggle made me laugh when I pulled it since Jon is know for his female drawings more then his male. I mentioned this to him the other night and he commented back that he figured he'd get that response to the Vlad's that he drew. It's a great card either way and I can't wait to see more of his work for official sketch card sets.


I also picked up a few more of the Topps Chrome football value packs and a couple blasters. Nothing real huge in the value packs but do now have a completed page of the orange refractors. In the blasters I got all kinds of x-fractors and managed to pull a purple refractor of Percy Harvin then in the last pack I got a great surprise, one MOJO should be familiar with, an Aaron Hernandez autograph! Can't argue with that at all. Hernandez is playing well and I got a hobby box hit at less then half the price. Here's a look at the auto and a couple completed pages of joy from Chrome.



Hope everybody else had as good of a week as I've had this past one. Now if the Giants can finish out this last half inning I'll even had the World Series I want to see. (Thanks to the Rangers for beating the "Best Team Money Can Buy"!!) Oh.... and GO VIKINGS!!

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!

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!!

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.

Brand New Wood

Now on to the last subject from my little teaser I gave a week or so ago. One of the best things about my LCS is the weekly bid board. He'll have everything from cards to sets to autographed pictures, some with certification and some without. and a couple weeks ago he had this bad boy.

One Louisville Slugger autographed bat. Some of you may know that here in Des Moines we a lucky enough to have a AAA baseball team, the Iowa Cubs farm team for the Chicago Cubs. In the course of a game if a player breaks his bat a lot of the time it will end up in the souvenir shop where you can buy it. I'm guessing that's what happened in this case. The bat itself has 30 signatures on it but as I'm going to guess, again, that it was signed at the game no authenticity with it. Some of the guys already have certified autographs in sets so I used that to see if the autos matched. It's also a good thing that several of the players sign with their number as well, it really helps when trying to figure out who they actually are! So let's see who I have of the bat, not going to do all 30 signatures here but just some of the ones I could find. Who knows some of these guys might be playing in the bigs this next year and some of them already are.

#16 is catcher Chris Robinson. Chris is hitting .231 with 2 HR and 25 RBI in 62 games this season

#37 is pitcher Jeff Stevens. Jeff has been called up this season and has appeared in 18 games for the Chicago Cubs. With Iowa he has appeared in 32 games, has 7 saves and is 0-2 with a 3.58 ERA.

Here we have Micah Hoffpauir. Micah has been called up several time this year and is currently playing for the big boys in Chicago. In 7 games this year he is only batting .077. I know that doesn't sound great but he was doing MUCH better in the minors.

#20 pitcher Jay Jackson. Jay is 11-8 with a 4.28 ERA this year.

#1 2nd baseman Matt Camp. Matt has appeared in 122 games and is hitting .274 with 1 HR and 35 RBI's this year.

Taking a bit of a guess here but this looks to be #36 pitcher Hung-Wen Chen. Chen is from Taiwan and with the Iowa Cubs is 2-3 with a 5.70 ERA.

I saved the best autograph for last. As most baseball fans now know the Cubs organization has been grooming a new manager over the last few years and this year he came to Des Moines to take over........

Hall of Fame 2nd baseman, #23 for the Chicago Cubs, Ryne Sandberg. Ryne has been nothing but great to the fans this year. He takes the time to sign before each game and we love him for it! This year with the Iowa Cubs Ryne has coached them to a record of 77-58 and has them headed for the playoffs (not something the Chicago Cubs can say is it!)

There are many other auto's on the bat including Sam Fuld, another player that is spending time with Chicago. But these are just highlights for you. One thing I didn't mention at the beginning of the post was how much it cost me. Well, I think I got a great deal $15.00. I know, no certification.... not a big deal to me. I know how easy it is to go down to Principal Park and have these guys sign. It's the first autographed bat that I own and will be a great keepsake for me in the future.

.....But I'm not dead yet!

So it's been a while since I've put anything here. Just wanted to let you know I am still alive. Went on a family vacation and when I got back my computer had died...FRAK! So I don't have a whole lot of access to any new pictures or scans. So time to show off an old favorite or two and leave it at that.

Here is one of my favorite female wrestlers that is being horribly misused in the WWE currently. Gail Kim is one of the most athletic if not the most athletic females and good old Vinnie Mac has her doing jobs nite after nite. Gail has been in several of the Benchwarmer sets and this is one of my favorite cards of hers.


And secondly I'll show off an Ultimate Collection Signatures numbered to 10 I picked up last year. Living in Iowa we don't have any pro teams to call our own so we adopt from the nearby states. For basketball I have followed the Chicago Bulls the closest since the Jordan years. This meant I was thrilled when in 1989 the Bulls drafted the point guard from the Iowa Hawkeyes B.J. Armstrong in the first round. He went on the be a three time champion and an All-Star once. I remember writing to him and sending several cards I had to try to get them autographed when I was a kid but never got a reply so it's nice that I was able to pick up this low numbered auto cheap.


Hopefully I'll have my computer fixed soon so I can get some more recent stuff posted. I have some new art by Beck Kramer to show off and a couple of purchases from the 'Bay to reveal as well.