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!!

Million Card Givaway

This is courtesy of the Beckett Blog:

By most accounts, Topps‘ Million Card Giveaway has been a resoundingly popular promotion this year with countless baseball fans and collectors from the past and present redeeming their codes for their MCG account, trading (electronically) their cardboard like the days of old.

However, I noticed something in the official rules that I wonder if many a collector noticed. (I hadn’t even after redeeming more than 30 codes.) Once a promotion’s deadline hits in March 2011, undelivered cards in your account vanish.

As in your mom threw them out electronically.

Here’s what the rules say:

Warning: Giveaway ends 03/15/2011. After 03/15/2011, Option (iii) will no longer be available and all Accounts will be closed by Sponsor. Once closed, the contents of Accounts automatically revert to Sponsor and Accountholder waives and releases any and all property rights in Account and its contents without compensation of any kind. Participants may not receive any further notification prior to Account closure on 03/15/2011.

Delivery of the cards in one’s account costs $2.92 for the first card and 53 cents for each additional card claimed in the same sitting.

That means we all now have a deadline to decide whether we really want our 2007 Xavier Nadys along with our 1967 Chris Zacharys and 1966 Ron Swobodas. For the most part, the promotion yielded many a card I already have and probably don’t need, but for me anything before 1970 might need to be claimed. (And, of course, if you pulled some money card, the answer to the question is obviously “yes, it needs claimed.”)

It should be obvious that Topps can’t manage its MCG database forever — and of course the code cards themselves do have a 2011 expiration date — but the aspect of having an account to store a virtual collection is something that many collectors probably enjoy more than then hassles of digging through cardboard boxes to find one of their cards.

I’m just not sure how many MCG collectors — even ones who have entered hundreds of codes — know about that deadline yet.

This item is the first step. Pass the link along to those who you know use the MCG.

Count me as one of those who didn't know about the deadline. I don't have many cards in my account but do have a few that I wouldn't mind keeping. Guess I'm gonna have to break down and have some sent to me. Thanks again to Beckett for pointing out the expiration date

Sketches For a Cause

One of my favorite sketch card companies out there right now is 5finity run by Steve Frank. 5finity is different from most companies as all they produce is sketch cards, no base set to collect. They also focus mainly on non-mainstream comics. They started out with their first sketch set based on the Archie comics for the March of Dimes. After this release quickly sold out many other sets followed, Greatest American Hero, Dean Yeagle's Mandy, Zombies vs. Cheerleaders, Moonstone Maximum, Voltron, Dead@17, pin-ups and puppies, The Pro, Mixtape and Pulp Girls and the latest offereing The Female Persuasion. I've purchased several packs and love the quality of the art that is produced. I was able to get two packs of The Female Persuasion. This was also a March of Dimes charity set with at least two sketches per pack. My pack were numbers 4 and 5 of the total run. I received one rare artist sketch of Sabrina the Teenage Witch by Amy Clark

Sabrina is the face of The Female Persuasion and I also got a card of her done by Remy Mokhtar


The other two cards fall under the "female" part of the release. I'm not sure who either character is or if they are based on actual characters. The first is by Patrick Finch


and the other is by Jason Worthington

The next release for 5finity is based on the Hack/Slash comic and is due out October 15th followed by Lady Death in January of 2011.

Contest

Hey guys, check out this great contest on a fantastic blog, DrewsCards. He's giving away several lots of cards from the new 2010 Obak release. Click on his blog name to get there.


Also want to mention another new blog out there, Too Many Grandersons. The box breaks are really well done and the Simpsons references make the reading well worth your 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.

The Joy of Completed Pages

I'm borrowing this idea from other bloggers as it's fun to do and it really is the best way to show off what I've done.

My LCS is a great place to shop, lots of selection and the prices aren't off the wall crazy like some I've heard about. One of the best things is he keeps a nice supply of older boxes and sells them at just over his cost. Last year one of the boxes caught my eye, 2008 Upper Deck Goudey. I had bought several packs of this when it first came out and liked the design so I bought a box and tried to see what I could get. Hit wise it's not overly great, you get one jersey and one on-card autograph per box. If you're lucky that autograph is a Sports Royalty version or one of several SP's. You could also pull original 1933 Goudey buybacks, these fall one per case. After I got my first box opened and sorted I decided to try and put the set together. The base set was no problem as I had most of it in one box. However, the last 130 cards were short-prints and you only got 8 or so per box. So almost every time I went into the shop I bought a new box. I probably bought a case worth of Goudey trying to pull the SP's to complete my set. Along the way I pulled several of the Sports Royalty autographs including my favorites Kerri Strug and Kerri Walsh. For regular autographs I pulled a Don Mattingly and a Brooks Robinson. I got a couple of the Yankee Stadium Legacy jersey cards and I managed to get one 1933 Goudey buyback of Lew Fonseca.


I finally got to the point where I had only five or six cards to go and I decided to quit buying boxes as I was getting too many doubles of the SP's. I had pulled three of the hardest cards: Tiger Woods, Sidney Crosby and Jack Nicklaus and started looking for singles online. This last month I finally got down to two cards I needed, Kerri Strug and Terry Bradshaw. After some searching I found both on E-bay. The Strug was an auction that I ended up winning for $.99 and the Bradshaw I actually found on a buy it now/BO. I offered the seller $3.00 and waited. The offer was accepted and I never heard from the guy again. I had to open a case and get my money refunded. So I started looking elsewhere for the card. In came Check Out My Cards and the one seller on there that had my Bradshaw. I again made an offer and less than a week later I got the last card I needed for my fully complete 2008 Upper Deck Goudey card set built by hand. Now I know some of you will look at the first scan and say it's not a complete page, well, you're right. It starts with card 200 as I don't have the regular base set in pages yet. I put that part of the set together months ago and it's stored in a box that I need to pull out.


If there is anyone out there that is trying to put this set together and needs some of the Sp's please hit me up. I have a stack and will gladly work something out with you.