Presidential Victor Card

Oh boy, Upper Deck has chosen to end it's Presidential Predictor program with a single card of our newly elected President Barack Obama, and they're GIVING it away. Yes, that's right, it's free, but you have to go to one of a handful of card stores in your area and buy something. I suppose that's OK, you have to support a brick and mortar store to get the card. In my area there's two stores that will have it, so I'll try one then the other, because I wouldn't mind having more than one copy of this bad-boy.

Read the back of the card though, there's a phrase in there that to me seems like a back-handed compliment, or at least an inappropriate one. See if you can guess which phrase I'm talking about.

Oh and here's the press release from UD.



Change Has Come! Upper Deck Releases
‘Presidential Victor’ Card of Barack Obama

Limited-edition trading card shows the nation’s new Commander-in-Chief being doused with Gatorade. Available in select hobby shops nationwide



North Las Vegas, NV (November 5, 2008) – Maybe it wasn’t quite as lopsided as Ronald Reagan’s 49-state thumping of Walter Mondale in 1984, but it was almost as convincing. On Tuesday, Democratic nominee Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States after defeating Republican John McCain in their hard-fought race to the White House. And once again, Upper Deck is recording history by producing a single “Presidential Victor” card of Obama, bringing the trading card company’s year-long crusade of chronicling the 2008 Presidential race to a dramatic close.

Unlike the previously released caricature cards of many of this year’s candidates, the final card from Upper Deck will not be included in any of the trading card company’s releases. Instead, it will be shared through select hobby shops across the country. Each of the participating stores will receive no more than 100 cards, keeping demand for the sought-after trading card high.

“The best way for us to bring our ‘Presidential Predictor’ series come to a logical end was to release a ‘Presidential Victor’ card showing the winner,” said Chris Carlin, Upper Deck’s hobby marketing manager. “We are happy to work with our most supportive hobby shops to provide them with these unique cards, which they can share with their customers. No matter which party you supported, this was a historic election, and this card represents a great way for Upper Deck to commemorate the 2008 Presidential race.”

The latest card (PV-1) is appropriately entitled “President Barack Obama.” Its cardfront illustration is based on the postgame Gatorade dousing of Indianapolis Colts Head Coach Tony Dungy after his team defeated the Chicago Bears, 29-17, in Super Bowl 41. Upper Deck changed the participants in the celebratory scene to represent Vice President-Elect Joe Biden, President-Elect Obama and future First Lady Michelle Obama. Timely with a sports theme, the cardback text reads:

With his resounding victory in this year’s U.S. presidential election, Barack Obama made history in more ways than one. Not only was he the first African-American to be nominated by either party as a candidate, but he is now the first of his race to be sworn in as Commander-in-Chief. Just like Tony Dungy’s accomplishment in 2007 when he became the first African-American head coach in NFL history to win a Super Bowl, Obama did the same for White House politics in 2008. “Change We Can Believe In” was his campaign slogan throughout the year. Now it’s time to start believing.

The Barack Obama Presidential Victor card will be available in mid-November as a gift with purchase of any Upper Deck products at hundreds of hobby shops nationwide. Please visit www.presidentialpredictor.com for a list of shops that will be sporting these special cards.

Get Ready to VOTE!

I will digress from my normal pastiche posts about whatever flits into my mind that's sports related for a moment and beg, plead, and implore you to get yourselves to the polls tomorrow and VOTE! Democracy only works when citizens participate, and this is the lowest level of participation. If you don't vote, then you have no voice. Good men and women have died to give you the right to vote, don't let those sacrifices go to waste. I've already marked up my ballot and after I drop the wife off at work tomorrow morning, I'm voting, I want to get it done so that I can come home and watch returns all day. In years past I've been stuck at jobs watching the numbers roll in, not this year. I can camp in front of CNN and MSNBC all day long.

Which reminds me, I'm in LOVE with Rachel Maddow. Yes, I know she's a lesbian, which makes her that much more attractive to me. When I say LOVE I really mean that she's the latest person who I actually WANT to listen to speak. She's just so damn smart (she's got a Doctorate in Philosophy for Pete's sake), and eloquent. I love her MSNBC show, for all the reasons that I love Air America as well. Seriously though, you can learn a lot from watching her show which is on at 9 pm EST/6 PM PST.

Some Sports Content

The UCLA Men's Basketball Team has their first exhibition game tonight against...err...Cal Baptist, which is the #5 ranked team in NAIA Division I. It's not on TV or radio, but it's supposed to be streaming on CBS All Access. If you want to pony up the $60 for CSTV's season long web coverage you get the game for free, but since I'll be watching as many games as possible on television, it isn't worth it to me to buy the package as well, though if I lived anywhere else other than Southern California I'd buy the package.

Starting Point Guard and returning Senior Darren Collison was just voted onto his SECOND straight Pre-Season AP All-America team. The Bruins are just looking awesome as we head into the 08/09 season, with THREE returning Seniors in the lineup and FOUR incoming Freshmen who are the cream of the crop when it comes to recruiting. Seriously, I've been following Jrue Holliday, Malcolm Lee, Jerime Anderson, and Drew Gordon since before Kevin Love took his first shot at UCLA. We also managed to get J'Mision Morgan (just call him 'Bobo') to forgo his plans to attend LSU and come to UCLA instead! Five freshmen, two seniors (Collison and Josh Shipp) who have been to the Final Four in each of their college seasons and now want to cap their careers with a National Championship, and a healthy underclass featuring Alfred Aboya, Michael Roll, James Keefe and Nikola Dragovic give the Bruins ELEVEN scholarship players, each of which will get game time. Yes, I was excited about the Bruins last season, even knowing that K-Love was one-and-done, but this year I'm QUINTUPLY excited. FIVE FREAKING FRESHMEN!

Trading Update

OK I admit it, I SUCK when it comes to checking lists and prepping trades. I always have. I'm slow. I often forget to check lists as well. It's not that I don't WANT to trade, I definitely do, it's just that my time, such as it is, is limited. When you have a toddler that you're taking care of all day you have to go by her schedule, and pulling out cards to check want lists is a recipe for disaster around a two-year old, and it's not like you can just point her at the TV and tell her to watch Dora for two hours. So I know that I owe people the courtesy of checking their lists and putting together trades, I'm just a bit slow.

The good thing is that I only have one package to send out at the moment to the U.K. for a great trade that I was offered. The bad thing is that I also sold some non-sports and wrestling card on eBay over the weekend and I have to ship those out too, and I need to get boxes. Darn it. Nice thing is that I've got a decent amount in my Paypal account, that I'll probably have to put towards house bills. I'll be lucky if I get to buy a few singles this go-around.

I'm also about half-way done with an UD Baseball Heroes set, so as I get closer to that I'll post a want-list because I've decided that will be my second set I'm going to put together this year (the first was 2008 Upper Deck Base). I'm still not sure about 2008 Topps, since even though I'm almost complete with Series 2, I still need about half of Series 1, and I just bought my first four packs of the Highlights.

Topps Town

Hey I've got about five or so Baseball codes that I won't use because I've already completed my baseball set that I'd like to trade for basketball or football codes. We DO NOT have to trade the actual cards, I'll trade code for code.

Fantasy Football

I'm going 1 - 1 this weekend, winning in my league by about 10 points, and losing in Gellman's lead. I think I've lost 3 out of the last 4 in his league dammit. Fortunately I'm still in the playoff hunt in both leagues. Yeay! I'm doing horribly in my pick 'em pools though. Bah.

Hockey

I'm still off of Hockey, and the Kings don't seem to be doing much to bring me back. They have been at .500 twice this season, and are now under 500 by something like three games. They need to start WINNING games, they're skating well, but not winning, just like the last three seasons.

Celebrity Sightings

This last week was a very strange one for me. Living in the capital of the entertainment industry I do often see celebrities in public, so many that I forget about them half the time. Last week was a feast for the eyes though. I saw Scott Ian of Anthrax leaving my local Target (with wife I guess), and he acknowledged me when I asked him about Battlestar Galactica, so that was cool. I saw Thom Christopher (soap opera actor and he played "Hawk" on the old Buck Rogers in the 25th Century TV show in my local post-office. I see b-movie actor Tracey Walter all the time in Beverly Hills now, I think he lives there.

The sighting of the week though HAS to be when I was at Toys R Us on Friday picking up a couple packs of Topps Basketball, I noticed that there was a tall good looking lady with seemed like a dozen kids checking out a HUGE basket of toys. I could hear the English accent lilt across the room, but I didn't think much of it, because she was with a HUGE blonde American guy. I got in line next to him, and noticed he had a Secret-Service type earpiece in and was talking to someone else outside. Hmm...then there was the HUGE SUV outside, not sure what type, but it was massive and brand new. Then I realized who it was I was standing next to, Mrs. Victoria Beckham, aka Posh Spice. I asked the bodyguard very slyly if it was indeed her, but he just shrugged as they all do. It was her, I recognized some of the tats on her back. You know what, not as attractive in person to be honest. Her kids were really cool though, my daughter was being rambunctious so I was really paying more attention to her than Posh. But it was something.

Your 2008 World Series Champions - The Philadelphia Phillies

In what will have to go down as the worst rated series and the matchup that no body outside of Tampa or Philadelphia wanted to see, the Phillies won their second WS title in 126 years. Good for them.

Actually it's kind of cool, they played good ball when it counted, and that means a lot. I was happy for the Rays to even get there, they played their hearts out, but came up short in the end. Cinderella made it to the ball, she just didn't get the glass slipper.

And so it ends. For two lovely days all four major sports in the United States were going at the same time. That doesn't happen very often, or at least, it SHOULDN'T happen very often.

Now the less interesting part of baseball will begin, the business. It used to disgust me how Baseball would dole out it's post-season awards one per day for about two weeks, but I now see why they do; Baseball is at a cross-roads. It is the game of the 19th Century, changing little since the adoption of the foul-strike rule in 1903. When it boils down to it, mechanically they're still playing the same game. Of course the athletes and equipment are technologically advanced, but the game itself is still the same.

As much as those of us who like baseball still do so, we have to realize that our past-time has certainly seen it's time pass. Still, MLB is doing some things right, their internet business outpaced the other sports by leaps and bounds, and continues to lead the pack in terms of embracing new technologies. The move to instant-replay is a good one, and while I don't want to see the human element of umpiring removed, replays can certainly enhance the game by getting calls CORRECT.

Of course the real business of the off-season is in player movement, who's going to sign with whom, what trades are there going to be, what rookies are coming up, etc. That stuff is already begininning and there will be a rash of it as soon as Free Agency begins. The "Where Will Manny Sign?" quest is going to begin shortly. I'm as intrigued as the next guy, but ultimately it won't be my number one sports interest this Winter. That will be the UCLA Bruins Men's Basketball team.

Go Bruins.

Adventures in eBay - Part of an Ongoing Saga

Howdy all, I'd like to call your attention to some items I'm currently selling on eBay. I need to get rid of some older sets of cards that I no longer have a passion for, namely wrestling cards.

Yes, I know wrestling isn't real, it's scripted. I've known for years and years, but it doesn't bother me. The entire "sport" and what it's become bothers me, but for sheer entertainment value, you couldn't get more bang for your buck than wrestling in the 80's and 90's. I've collected a LOT of sets in my past, from all sorts of subjects besides sports, and wrestling cards were always a favorite. My wife is very glad that I haven't delved into the recent Topps Heritage WWE cards. ESPECIALLY since 95% of my favorite wrestlers are now retired.

So on the Bay you'll find an odd assortment of wrestling cards that I no longer want or need. Some are complete sets, others are just short. I hope you might find something you like and will buy it from me, and if you do, and as an added incentive, if you inform me that you read about my latest auctions on my blog, I'll give you a 10% discount on your final purchase price as a rebate (meaning I'll refund you 10% of your final purchase price when you pay).

Custom Cards on a Budget

Readers, have you ever want to make your own custom trading cards? Well, you can on the web in a number of places. Both Topps and Upper Deck have programs on their sites that let you upload your own images and create your own text. Problem is that they tend to be not on the cheap side. Upper Deck's program "My Own Trading Cards" program is currently being updated, which is good because the previous iteration of the program had only a few uninspiring designs, none of which were actually based on real Upper Deck cards.

Topps actually offers quite a few designs, including classic set designs like '59, '72, '74, '75, '76, '77, '87, '07 and '08, as well as a couple of nifty insert types AND Wacky Packages templates. Not only do they have nicer templates, but they also offer a number of different color selections within each template so you can really customize your cards. You also get to include as much information as you can fit on the back of a card, if you have a little-leaguer you can put his or her actual stats, or you can make up your own. The pricing is not great though, the most expensive package is the 5 cards for $10 deal, and the cheapest is 1000 cards for $420, so it ranges from 42 cents to $2 per card depending on your quantity. The cards are supposed to be printed on the same presses as their retail cards. At some point I'd love to order cards of my daughter once a year so that I have a complete set!

There are, of course, many many other companies that will do pretty much the same thing, and most of them have really nice templates, though you can only get official designs from Topps and UD. The nice thing about third-party presses is that the pricing won't be quite as steep, you're looking at between 25 cents and $1.00 per card depending on quantity.

BUT this is the BUDGET Sports Card Collector, I wouldn't be doing my job very well if I didn't have a deal to tell you about. Nestle's Drumstick Ice Cream has been running a promotion all Summer, and it's still going on now that gets you 16 Custom Topps cards for the bargain price of $4.19 in shipping plus two product codes from Drumstick packages. Here's the real secret, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BUY THE ICE CREAM - simply copy down the codes off of two packages in the store, and go to this site to start off your cards.



You don't get the same selection of cards, only the last three years' worth of designs, which actually has one design that's not available on their mainstream site (the 2006 design). The text options on the back isn't quite as good either, and you don't get to put on a card number like you do with the paid versions, but hey, they're a lot cheaper. I just ordered a set of cards of my daughter today, and here's the pics:





Personally I love custom trading cards, and I already have two of them of myself. One I made in 1992 at the All-Star Fantasy-Fest when the Baseball All-Star game was held at Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego. They had a booth set up where you took a picture in front of a backdrop in your favorite team's uniform and they printed it on a trading card. These aren't the same stock as normal cards, and the photo isn't near the quality of a retail card, but they're still nice, and they were free. I got a second one done at the Hockey fan-fest when the Hockey All-Star game was held at Staples Center, and that's pictured below. I also got to touch and take a picture with the Stanley Cup that day, so it was all good. My biggest complaint is the back of the card, the stats are nowhere NEAR realistic, but again, it was free.



I love the fact that I played in 76 out of 80 games, but that 3.2 Goals Against has GOT to come down if my team is going anywhere...

So has anyone else ever had custom cards done? Got pics?

2008 Upper Deck Baseball Wants

Right now I'm only going to list regular cards (by number, I didn't look up the names to be honest). If you can help me complete this set, I'd be much obliged. I have a TON of doubles for this set, and of course, I've got the team-trading thing set up. Just let me know what you want and I'll see what I can do.

Here we go:


Star Quest (Can be any rarity)
5
10
12
14
20
22
25
35
37
40
43
44
49
52
53
54

Base Cards
17
23
26
38
61
66
86
89
91
95
101
105
125
128
140
173
179
194
197
203
212
242
260
281
299
310
311
319
320
328
337
338
347
355
356
365
373
374
383
391
423
449
653
728
800

As you can see it's a lot of Series 1 cards, and not much from Series 2. I busted quite a bit more of Series 2 than Series 1, dunno why, just did.

The other sets that I'm considering putting together from 2008 products are Allen & Ginter (currently about half complete), Topps Base (maybe 60% complete) and UD Baseball Heroes. I'm giving up on Topps Heritage, because even though I love the cards, I cannot possibly put a set together. Next year I'm going to pick one set outside of the base brands (call me crazy, but I'm a sucker for base brands, must come from the fact that when I started collecting cards, that's all you could get) and that's going to be my set for the season.

Weekend Sports Wrap-Up & This and That

World Serious?

I completely underestimated the tenacity of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, losing game six only to come from behind to win game 7 and a trip to the Big Dance. I honestly don't really care who wins the World Series, though if I had to pick I'd say I'm rooting for the Rays. I love it when teams who have never won a championship win their first one, it's always a special moment. I also don't particularly care for the Phillies, though I don't hate them either.

I would think that several executives at Fox are shitting bricks right about now, estimating that they'll get the lowest ratings of any World Series that they've shown. Ratings have been pretty low for the World Series since the 2004 edition (featuring the BoSox vs. the Cards) which got a 15.8 average with about 25 million viewers. The last several years the ratings have been just above a 10 average with about 15 million viewers. Think about that number for a second, if there's about 305 million people in the U.S., 15 million viewers is less than 5% of the population. If you compare the numbers to the Superbowl, you get a HUGE disparity because of the 40+ ratings that the big game gets year in and year out. What that translates to is that almost HALF of the U.S. population tunes into the Superbowl at some point during the game.

Now the World Series does get better ratings than both the NHL and the NBA finals. The NBA finals routinely draw under 10 ratings, and in fact haven't scored higher than last year's 9.2 since 2004! The NHL finals aren't really even in the same ballpark in reality, they aren't on broadcast TV and they don't even draw more than a couple of points each season. I could go on for days on television ratings as they fascinate me to no end, however, I would just be flogging the same dead animal. Football is America's #1 sport and everything else pales in comparison.

Adjusted for Inflation

Wasn't like that when I was a kid, but then again gas was under $1.00 a gallon when I was a kid too. Heck the year I was born (1971) the average price for a gallon of gas was just over 35 cents. Adjusted for inflation that would be about 1.77 now. Then again, my first packs of trading cards were $0.25 in 1977, and today they're at least $2.00 or more. It gets worse though. Comic books were $0.35 when I started collecting, now you're LUCKY if you can find a comic with under a $2.99 cover price, and more likely they're $3.99 or higher. In fact in the last two weeks I've bought two, count 'em TWO comic books both with the $3.99 cover price (The Barack Obama comic and the new Ghostbusters comic both from IDW).

Inflation only covers some of the increase in prices. That 35 cent comic according to the inflation caluclator should cost 85 cents now, BUT they don't make comics like they did in 1977. For one, the paper and printing process are all very high tech now, that old newsprint that will distintigrate over time is long-gone, replaced with fancy glossy stock. The old hand coloring and hand lettering processes have joined the dodo in extinction with most everything being done by computer. Same thing goes with trading cards. What you bought for a quarter back in 1977 (any set of Topps really) doesn't exist anymore. For that price you got 10 cards, one of which was always screwed up by the wax wrapper, and another of which might be screwed up by the gum, which was bloody awful. Now I respect both Topps and UD for having entry level card sets that approximate the old days in both tone and set content, but the card stock and photography are all technologically advanced. When you think about it though, for a dollar you do get about the same contents as you would in 1977. Then again, I didn't have the opportunity to pull an autogamer or a piece of a dead Presidents hair in 1977 either. I could pull a C-3PO card with a stiffy so it's all good.

Fantasy Football Update

I lost BOTH games this weekend, second time in two weeks. UGH. My players just had awful days in both leagues, and I didn't pay much attention to my lineups on Sunday, which meant that I ended up starting Chris Chambers when he didn't even play. In my league my top four performers all scored in double digits, but the remaining guys didn't break 7 and that was for my defense. In Gellman's league, where I WAS tied for first place, I did horribly scoring my worst performance of the year. Thankfully it's only week 7 and there are 7 more weeks to go in both leagues. In my league I'm 3-4, tied for 5th place. I'd still be in the playoffs though because top 6 go in my league. In Gellman's league I'm now 5-2 and there is currently a five way tie for first. Talk about parity. The three teams that WERE tied for first last week at 5-1 all lost, and the two teams that were 4-2 both won, leaving a HUGE log-jam at the top. I believe that I still have the number one seed though, like it means much since there's only 4 teams in that league that make the playoffs. I need a few of my guys to get healthy really quickly, just like the UCLA Bruins Football squad.

This or That

I'm working on a piece about the difference between retail and hobby, when to buy what and why. Seems like this is always a sore subject with hobby bloggers, and I think that my take will be a little different than most. Here's a quick preview: I like retail, but I'd prefer to shop hobby, even though currently I buy more at retail. There.

My next post will be my list of needs to complete a 2008 Upper Deck Baseball set. You might remember that I was able to get a box of both series gratis from Upper Deck, not to review or anything like that, though DAMN I wish that I could get free product like Chris and Mario (kudos to both of you too), but because I enrolled my child into the Upper Deck Kids Points Club, and amassed a huge number of points in a short amount of time. If anyone's interested I'll do a post on the club in the future and other freebies that you can get from the hobby.

The "Free" Controversy

Speaking of freebies, I'd like to weigh in on the current blogger controversy between Mario of Wax Heaven, Chris of Stale Gum and JV of Treasure Never Buried. If you don't know what's going on, in a nutshell, Mario announced with pride that he had been contacted by Upper Deck to start receiving free product that he can review on his blog. Pretty standard stuff to be honest, this goes on in pretty much every industry. As soon as the announcement was made other bloggers started to weigh in, JV being the most vocal. Mario was accused not of being less than objective, but rather lying to his readers about the origins of a couple of boxes he broke earlier in the year. Whoop-de-doo. Later Chris also announced that he had entered a similar agreement with UD and would also be getting free product. Both Mario and Chris are also sharing much of that product with readers through free contests.

Here's my take:

WHO THE HELL CARES if they get free product. AS I said earlier, free product is RAMPANT in pretty much every industry. DO you think that movie reviewers pay for their movies? No way no how. For every 100 movie reviews that a reviewer writes he or she will have paid for MAYBE one or two of those films. Why? Because the movie industry has set up a process where they screen films for critics for free, at least in major cities they do. I know this for a fact, I have family in the movie industry. I've been to COUNTLESS press screenings in Los Angeles dating back to the early 80's when my Uncle edited one of the oldest trade publications in Hollywood. It's been my privilege to see some great films days or weeks in advance, including a rough cut of Back to the Future in 1985 and two out of the three Star Wars prequels.

The same thing goes for DVD reviewers, they get FREE copies of the DVDs they review. If they didn't they wouldn't review them, plain and simple. Book reviewers get advanced copies, they show up on eBay all the time (seriously do a search in the books section for ARC or Advance Reader Copies). Plays aren't any different, critics are given passes to early performances or full dress rehersals. This is the way of the industry my friends. Television critics often get cool advance DVDs with episodes on them way before they hit the airwaves.

It doesn't just go for the media either, I worked for Price Club for several years in their buying office. Samples would just show up at work, and though we had a strict no "graft" policy, most of the samples would end up in some employee's hands. Hell I had a Hasbro Millenium Falcon that they gave us as a sample for the toy department on my desk for YEARS in the 90's, and when I left the company they let me take it home. Wasn't just toys either, jewelry, watches, cameras, food, clothing, gifts - you name it, it got sampled.

Did I mention that I haven't paid to get into a major convention since the early 90's either? I went to two or three Wizard World Los Angeles cons, a couple of GenCon Anaheim cons, and I stopped paying for San Diego Comic Con in 1988. Granted I haven't been to one since 1997, but from 1989 to 1996 I didn't pay a thing to get in.

Does this have anything to do with objectivity? Absolutely not. Whether you pay for something or not, as a reviewer you are OBLIGED (get it) to be objective in your opinion. Those who question other's objectivity have issues with their own. As I learned in journalism class, your integrity is the most important thing you can have, you have to be objective to be a journalist. Now, I don't really consider blogging to be professional journalism, it's more of an amateurish kind of thing, that said, bloggers should STILL conform to the rules of professional journalism. They should be fact-checking their articles and confirming their sources. Both Chris and Mario have their own domains, meaning they've paid someone some money to host their site. The don't get any income as far as I know for doing what they do, they do it out of love. Surely they're entitled to some perks along the way.

Now, having said all that, if you have some stuff you'd like ME to review, go ahead and shoot me an email to wmnoe at yahoo dot com, and I'll be happy to review it for you, no matter what it is. I promise to give an unbiased objective opinion as well. Even if it's McFarlane Sports Picks toys. Really.