Super...err..."BIG GAME" Blogging Reminder

Hey there, I didn't want the week to go by without mentioning that once again I will be live-blogging the Superbowl...err..."Big Game" - NFL please don't sue me.

Can you believe that though, the NFL has trademarked Superbowl and will not allow you to use the name in conjunction with any event unless you pay them. So, for example, the party that 570 KLAC AM is holding during the game at Dave and Busters in Arcadia cannot be advertised as a Superbowl party. Silly isn't it?

In any case, yes, I own that Superbowl I - err...AFL/NFL Championship Game ticket from 1967. It was my Fathers' who left it to me. I also have a Rose Bowl ticket of his from 1963, not that I care mind you, since that was a USC victory year. I've never been to the big game, even though it was held in my home city twice in 1988 and 1998. In '98 I did go to the NFL Experience, which was a blast! I knew then that price-guide value was BS, when I couldn't even get Emmitt Smith's father to buy his own son's Classic Die-Cut Auto, which was booking at $500 according to Beckett.

I did have a buddy who went every year, the season that the Rams won I had him buy me a program from the site, which is really cool. Little known fact, that the Superbowl programs on site are different than the mass-market editions they sell everywhere. Thus they are more valuable. I have five or six programs from years past, including XXV (Giants v. Bills), which is really nice as it's a comprehensive history of the game. Of course I also have one from the year that the Chargers lost to the Niners. One of these days I'll do a nice blog entry on programs of all sort, but that will have to wait because they're all in storage.

For what it's worth, I'm rooting for the Packers, but I think the Steelers will win. I don't really care mind you, I'd rather not see Pittsburgh get a 7th Superbowl, but the Packers winning their 4th doesn't really thrill me much either. I guess I just want the old cliche' - a good game.

Topps 2011 First Impressions Part 2

More Inserts

Sorry about that, had a slight family emergency to attend to. Nothing spectacular I assure you, all is well. So moving on...

Here we have this year's version of "The Cards Your Mom Threw Away", which are more reprints. Yes, I realize the back here doesn't go with the front, why should I do more than one scan? In any case, I actually really like the backs this time around, as they don't really focus on the play on front, but rather the set as a whole. Plus they seem to be written by someone who actually knows about the hobby! Here we have an insert set that I actually want to pull, sweet! Oh and there's original backs too. These are seeded at 1:3 retail/unlisted rack (which I guess means 1:1). The original back versions are 1:12/1:36.




There's also the "Lost Cards" insert set, which I haven't seen yet, but they list out at 1:4/1:12 and then there's an original back version of those too which are 1:36/1:108.

The first actual insert I pulled this year was this card, which is a "Vintage Reprint" and seeded at 1:2/1:8. Considering this is reprinting the most famous card in history, that's not too shabby. The set is numbered with a "CMGR" prefix, and this is #10. They're also old-school cardboard stock. Another cool set, but I'd have to see what else is in there before I pass judgement.




The last card I will be spotlighting today is this mini of some damn Yankee or another. I'm not a HUGE fan of minis, I think they're nice an all, but the multiple sizes across sets kind of turns me off. I mean they're kind of nifty, but they don't really float my boat. This set is called "Kimball Champions" and is 1:4 in retail/unlisted in rack. It's a 50 card set and has the usual suspects, including some pretty common vintage names. The checklist is on the back of this one (and I ASSume every one) and really isn't that special to be honest. I'm not sure why there are so many vintage card styles out there, when this looks just like Allen & Ginter to me.





I also got two ToppsTown cards, one in each pack. They're actually very shiney as well this year and the backs aren't just fluff and a code. OK they still have the code, but the fluff text is a bit more beefy this time around. I've completely the ToppsTown Baseball set each of the past three years, and I expect to do so again this year. You can't put the codes in quite yet though, Mid-March says the website. They have never actually had an online component launch on day and date of the set thus far, and I think that's a real failure on the marketing team's part. If the site isn't ready, then don't launch the product. There's nothing more frustrating than buying a product with an online component, only for the component not to work when you buy the product. Happens way too often too. Companies have to learn that the online component isn't a selling feature to a product if the component doesn't work immediately upon purchase. I venture to guess that the Diamond Redemption Site isn't working yet either. I didn't pull any codes, so I can't say for sure, but considering the ToppsMillion site didn't go live right away, I wouldn't be guessing that this new version would be working on drop day.

So in all I purchased 48 cards at a retail price of $6.98 + tax. That works out to just under 16 cents a card, which in today's marketplace isn't all that bad. Consider that Bowman Chrome at retail is $2.99 and comes with three cards, and virtually ever other brand runs above 50 cents per card, your value is definitely with Topps Flagship. Plus to me, there's still some cachet value to the big T's main set. Especially in this anniversary yet, if you had all 60 years worth of sets you'd really have a great chronicle of Baseball for the second half of it's entire life, and that's not too bad.

I'm sure I'll be buying more of this product than any other this year, in fact, at the moment I'm not planning on buying any other product, except for a few packs of Heritage, A&G and Chrome when they hit. I'm no longer interested in one-off brands or Topps "High End" products. Gimme a few packs of Topps Base and I'm a happy Budget Collector.

Topps 2011 Arrives at the Budget Collector! Part 1

First and foremost, I have joined the Twits and now have a Twitter account. At the moment I'm following Jim Rome only, but hey you never know, once I get into something I usually go whole hog. Anyway, my twitter name is @wnoetling.

Topps 2011 First Impressions

I don't believe that you can ever really tell whether or not you'll like a set from a photo, I think that you have to hold the things in your hand and open some packs before you can really give an accurate assessment of the product. So with that in mind I didn't post anything about the sell sheets for this year's Topps flagship, rather I waited until the new product hit stores. And hit it has. My local Target had a box of rack packs and at least three gravity feed packs. I managed to snake a one each. While I wasn't thrilled with my pulls, there some solid cards in there, which I'll be highlighting as well as giving my opinion on each of the inserts that I received.



I chose Erick Aybar here for the main card design example because he was my only Halo in two packs. I have to say, I really like this design. It has the classic elements that all good cads must have, including the official MLB logo, and it's color coded. My only major issue is that there's too much foil, but this has been the case with every set of Topps since I can remember. Here the foil is fairly attractice, but the smaller text is awfully hard to read. Also make sure you pay attention to the space above the name frame, some cards have "flavor text" there, such as denoting who the 2010 ROYs were, or a superlative like "first to 600 saves" (for Trevor Hoffman).



There are three parallel sets that I can see from the wrapper. Most folks will never see the Platinum Parallels or the Canary Diamond Parallels which are 1:9,200/1:27,000 (rack odds/retail pack odds). However, most people will pull a ton of these "Diamond Anniversary" foils which are 1:4 in retail and not listed on the Rack, though they are advertised on the front. These aren't serial numbered, which I think is a shame, but they are awfully shiney. I like shiney.




The ubiquitous 'gold' parallels are serially numbered to 2011 and are a bit harder to come by at retail falling 1:5/1:17 . Here's the back of the one I pulled. I really like the fact that they actually put a space in the design as to where the serial numbering is supposed to go. I also like that they're still using the same font/type for the serial number as they've used in years past. Continuity is important you know.



Diamond Duos are this year's version of Legendary Lineage. After awhile the LL cards really bored me, and I have no doubt these will as well. On the back are listed some comparison stats and a brief blurb, but they really aren't all that special. They are numbered with the initials of the player's depicted, so this Boggs/Youklis is # "DD-BY". I hate that. They are also being produced as a relic edition. They're 1:4 in retail packs and unlisted in Racks. The relic edition is 1:3460/1:10,500.




This set is called Topps 60 and has the obligatory Mickey Mantle that no modern collector needs at this point. These are also 1:4 in retail and not listed in racks, but since I got one in each, I'm guessing they're 1:1 in racks.

Part 2 will have the rest of my review.

Free Andre Agassi Trading Card

I love free. I love it so much that I subscribe to several different "bargain" and "free stuff" blogs just to get free stuff. Today on the Free Stuff Stimes I saw free trading card and I signed up. Here's the link:

Free Agassi Trading Card


Now here's a secret you might want to pay attention to: create a new email account with one of the free bulk email services, like yahoo, or gmail or whatever, and use that account to sign up for all your freebies. Then your regular email won't get junked up with spam, though it probably will anyway.


Every now and then I run across free trading card offers, I always try to pass them along.

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays

Merry Christmas y'all

I Bought a pack of Hockey Cards!

Yes, I bought a pack of Hockey Cards for the first time in over five years. It was a 99 cent Score pack, and honestly I can't say I'm going to buy many more. I would like to buy more Topps Baseball update, but I'm so not interested right now that I can't bring myself to even purchase the odd pack here or there. This is monopoly in action folks. Topps baseball products this season were a solid effort, but so unspectacular that I know I'm not the only one going, "meh" over their entire line.

FYI my next pack of Baseball update will be my second. I'm burning up with the fever over here.


The fever to

SELL STUFF ON EBAY

yes, that's right, I've got more items on eBay, mostly comics, but some pretty rare ones. I'm planning on posting many more comics in the coming days, it's Christmas and all, and I've found that everything sells on eBay better during Christmas.

Once again, if you let me know via comments I'll refund 10% of your final bid if you buy one of my items. That's a special present from me to you for reading my blog.

And if I get any smarmier, please shoot me.

Thanks.

Some of the odder things I've put on Ebay Recently

I think I've mentioned that I'm in the process of paring down my collections on eBay, if I haven't well, you haven't been reading. Yeah, that's it.

I love books, that's not a surprise. I love most everything about them, except the fact that they take up so much space. Alas, I do believe eventually I will do all my reading electronically, and honestly I don't think that's a bad thing. The ecology needs humans to stop producing paper, it really does.

I really love Taschen Books, and I have since they began some 25+ years ago. When the Taschen store opened in Beverly Hills, a SHORT walk from my wife's workplace, I was ecstatic. I pretty much buy ALL my Taschen books there since they have the best prices, believe it or not. One of the great things about the store is that they will often display copies of upcoming books as an enticement, and when I saw the preview of "Content" way back in 2003 I knew that I had to have that item. What is it? I'm glad you asked.

Content is a hybrid magazine/book by renowned architect/designer REM KOOLHAUS and it's basically a catalog of his work over the previous decade. It's a follow up to his previous book S, M, L, XL, which was the first 10 years of his work. It also contains timely interviews and reportage from around the globe. Honestly I wish it had been more of a one-off thing, because it was the kind of project that I really could have gotten into.

In any case, I read the entire thing on a Camping Trip way back when and put it on my bookshelf, taking it down every now and then for perusing. A few weeks ago I decided to check out how collectible it might be, and lo and behold I found people selling copies for OVER $100! Not bad for a little $15 book eh?

So it's now On Ebay along with a ton of other stuff I'm trying to sell. Listings are all free right now, so I can list a lot of things that I wouldn't normally bother with. That includes some Hockey Cards, so do me a favor and check out My Items and once again if you buy something, let me know via comment and I'll knock off 10% of the final bid price for ya just because you read my blog.