I am just going to list this under “Why Topps?”

As I was searching through the recently released Topps UFC sets, Champions and Chronicles, I noticed something that just had me confused. The fighter is Heather Clark, a career 7-4 fighter with a single fight in the UFC, and I realize that since Clark has only one UFC fight Topps was limited on their image selection which they decided to use the same image in both sets. Now the reason I am asking “Why Topps?” is because in her fight against Bec Rawlings at TUF 20 Finale Clark got a pretty good mouse under her left eye.

Why Topps?

 

 

After a year the question of who will be getting the NASCAR license has been answered and to nobody’s surprise it is Panini. At this point not a lot is known other than they have four sets in this year’s lineup with three of the products being re-hashed from their other licenses

2016 Panini Prizm

2016 Panini Torque

2016 Panini Certified

2016 Panini National Treasure

 

I have not watched NASCAR regularly for 4-6 years but I still have respect for what Press Pass did for so many years and I don’t like this idea. I realize it is all about who is willing to pay the most cash but I would have rather seen the license go back to Upper Deck, who did a solid job for the 6 years they had a NASCAR license.

NASCAR really is a different creature when it comes to cardboard, brands like Prizm and Certified just are not the correct medium for these fans. A card that is complete foil with bad angled designs are not what the license needs. National Treasure should do very well and will replace Press Pass’ Showcase and Five Star as a top end product. As for Torque we will have to wait and see.

 

 

Last year when I began organizing my collection I made the decision to cut out impulse purchases as best I can. It can be a chore sometimes when you find an insert or set that is really interesting but if I have no interest in the set otherwise than I don’t want to waste money on a card I will just sell in a couple of months when I question why I bought it in the first place. I do occasionally break the rules when it comes to cards that just grab me and drag me in making not buying them seem like a sin.

I picked up two cards from the 1995 Batman Forever release, specifically the Gold Blaster inserts. I was not a fan of the Batman Forever movie, I could not get in to Val Kilmer as Batman after watching Michael Keaton rock the first two movies, but these Gold Blaster cards are defiantly worth paying attention to. There are 10 cards in the insert set but these are the only two that I like, the rest include Two Face, the Riddler and mixtures of close ups, and they are relatively cheap so I was happy to add them to my super hero collection.

 

After a number of pickups and trades over the last month I have spent the last few days organizing my additions and I am to the point where I have them mostly scanned in and adding them to my Zistle account and today I hit my 630th unique Griffey cards, which is his career homerun total. Card #630 is nothing special, it isn’t limited, an autograph or a hit, but it is a card that I dig. The card comes from the 1995 Donruss Top Of The Order release which is a collectible card game (CCG).

The card front shows Griffey in swing, eyes locked on the ball and arms extended as he begins his follow thru. The card back is green with the Top Of The Order logo. The Griffey card, card #150 on the 360-card checklist, is a Rare card which came 1 per 12 card booster pack.

 

 

Gavin from Baseball Card Breakdown hit a milestone with his 700^th post and is running a contest to celebrate. Winners will get their choice of a Wade Boggs autographed custom card along with some other goodies. To take part head on over:

 

Baseball Card Breakdown contest link

I have been on a bit of Superman kick lately and this card caught my eye. It actually was not my primary want but the seller was offering a deal on multiple purchases so I bid on this one too. I ended up losing the auction for the first card that I wanted but won this cards. The sketch is from when Superman was fighting Cheetah and she scratched him which infected him and turned him in to a cheetah like creature.

This month’s VCoM comes from the 1968 A &BC Superman In The Jungle release, a card set that was released in the UK. This is my second 1968 A & BC Superman In The Jungle card, the last one I posted in September last year.

What draws me to the set, besides being a Superman set, is the interesting history that the set has. In 1968 the set was released in England and it drew interest from Topps which went on to create a test set based on the set but in the end decided not to release the set. You can find some of the Topps Test Proof cards, I would suggest sticking with ones that have been graded so you know they are not counterfeit, and they can run up to $100 each and because they are only proofs that were never intended to be released that are usually graded very low or just “A”.

You will notice there is a difference between the cards with the original 1968 A &BC card being smaller, pink background and issues with the coloring. Here are the cards together for comparison.

I have never seen the 1968 Topps Test Issue of this card but I would eventually love to pick it up to complete the trilogy.

 

I ended last week on a political note so today I am going in a different direction and taking aim at a White Whale.

In the 1970s every little boy knew the name Evel Knievel, a daredevil that influenced us greatly. He started in 1966 and made his final appearance in 1981 but in between broke every bone in his body while he made jumps over Caesar’s Palace famed fountains, Snake River Canyon, buses and even sharks.

Which brings me to today’s post. One of my White Whales is the 2007 Sportkings Autograph Evel Knievel #A-EK card but I don’t have hundreds of dollars to spend on one of his autograph cards so I went in a bit of a different direction and instead picked up a 5x7 autograph picture he signed in red ink, now it isn’t same as having an on-card signature but I am calling it a fair exchange. To add to my EK collection I picked up a 2015 SportKings memorabilia card with a nice swatch of leather from one of his jackets.

 

I love when something as simple as an autograph and leather swatch can bring me back to those days in the 1970s when I was a kid living in New York and me and my brothers used to shoot our Evel Knievel bikes at each other down the hallway over the red shag carpet.

 

The other day I came across a set called Decision 2016 on Beckett and I was intrigued, it is a set based on the upcoming 2016 Presidential election and while I am not one to discuss politics on my blog (way too much of a controversial subject) I am still interested in politics and Presidents so this set is right up my alley. The set is created by Brian Wallos, he is the man who created the Bench Warmers sets, and being distributed by Leaf.

When I first saw the images of the cards, which currently are all just mock ups, I thought it was actually a joke and if it wasn't covered by Ryan Cracknell I would have just passed it completely. It appears to have designs taken from Topps and Upper Deck with just enough Panini for that extra “gaudy” flair. There is a web site but it is only a basic site with a pixelated image of the logo and a link to sign up for a newsletter, I did sign up.

Cardboard Connection states it is to be released next month and it will be available through hobby and retail outlets but I am unable to find any presell options and I found a distributor that claims the product will be “Print to order” which means only enough product will be printed as sold but how can you purchase it if there is nowhere to buy it?

 

Now on to the $64,000 question:

Would I buy in if the boxes offer some real type of value at a reasonable price?

I sure would if the set produced is as nice as the mockups.

 

Would you buy this?

 

 

In less than one year’s time (now former) Mets pitcher Jenrry Mejia went from being the team’s opening day closer to permanent ban under the MLB’s drug testing policy.

Beginning with his first suspension on April 11, 2015, which was 80 games, for testing positive for Stanozolol. He returned on July 12, 2015 and appeared in 7 games for the Mets before failing another test, this time Boldenone, on July 28, 2015, which led to a 162 game suspension. Today it has been announced that the 26-year old Mejia failed his third test within 10 months and since this is his third positive test, again Boldenone, he has been banned from baseball.

He is able to apply for reinstatement after a year but what are the chances that happening when he has showed that he obviously doesn’t work within the rules. Mejia is now the first player to permanently be banned under the leagues anti-doping policy.

I would normally say it is time to dump Jenrry Mejia cards but he really has not made too many appearances on cardboard since he was drafted nearly a decade ago. Out of the roughly 425 listing, most of which are BIN, there is only one lonely bid. I think the Mets will miss him but collectors probably not as much.

A bit of a back story on today’s post.

I once pulled one of the double jersey cards which had one swatch on each side of the card. It was a double Red Wings card with Yzerman on one side and I believe the other side was Lidstrom and they were both basic white swatches but what made the card awesome was that the Yzerman swatch was covered in blood. How freaking cool is a card with blood on it? Very cool, not as unique as the Manny Ramierez corked bat relic card that Pacific packed out but still unique

But about 6 years ago I went through a purge because I felt my collection was getting out of hand and I pulled aside a couple of hundred autographs, relics, patches and limited # cards and tossed them in to two different lots and sold them each for around $200 on eBay. I included some cards I now wish I had not, including that specific Yzerman/Lidstrom card, but hindsight is 20/20 and I am out of luck.

 

Now, last week I was scrolling through some Gary Payton cards and I came across a listing for a 2000-01 Fleer Game Time Uniformity Payton jersey relic with what appeared to be a splotch of red across the white fabric. Could I have found a Gary Payton jersey with blood?

 

 

I didn’t stop to second guess it and just purchased it for the $5.99 BIN. The card comes in, I am happy but once I have the screwdown in my hand I notice that something is not as I thought it was. I remove the card from the screwdown and slide my finger over the red and no big surprise here but it was a piece of fuzzy red fabric.

 

This one is totally on me, the image is a bit blurry and I could have sent the seller a question but I went total Great White shark and once I saw blood I was in a frenzy. On a slight positive side there is a dark red thread running under the white swatch that comes from the brick red piping near the jersey edge so it is sort of a two-colored swatch… ok that is a stretch.

 

After waiting three years I finally picked up a 2013 Spider-Man The Original Animated Series Lenticular Motion Trading Cards set. When the set came out in 2013 Rittenhouse was selling the 9-card lenticular set and one of two different Paul Soles (the voice of Spider-man in the show) autographs for $99 and that just seemed unreasonable plus I figured that people would cherry pick the set for the autograph and flood the eBay machine with the base set for $15-20, which is when I would have grabbed one, yeah I was wrong.

Three years later and I have never seen a base set show up without the autograph so I finally picked up one of my Grey Whales. I selected the set with the Spider-man autograph card, the other autograph card is of Peter Parker. There is actually a dealer who sells the sets for $39, usually about once a month, otherwise expect to spend around $90 for a set. I would eventually like to add the Peter Parker version autograph.

 

The cards do not scan very well because the lenticular texture but here is a video of the first card in the set. They are quite beautiful in hand. The backs of the card are basic white with a card number #L1-L9 and copyright information.