Monday, September 30, 2013

Today's Card

Today's card is a 2013 Elite Phillips Rivers #82. I've got Rivers on my fantasy team but never seem to start him when he does well, and vice versa with Russel Wilson who's having a bit of a sophomore slump this year. Such bad luck in fantasy this year that this week might be my first win and it's week 4. That's pretty bad for me. I lost the first week's matchup by half a point so bad luck there.

These are some great cards and I'll keep them coming. Broke a box of Elite earlier in the year and I'm starting to log them all in.


Sunday, September 22, 2013

Comparing Box Breaks to Buying Singles on Ebay

Just how much money can you save by buying singles on Ebay? I did a little experiment this month. I bought a couple of boxes of 2013 Finest Football. At 114 per box you are guaranteed 2 autographs and you will usually get about 10 non base cards whether these are refractors, atomic refractors or even printing plates. While I did get a printing plate of Randall Cobb my best box yielded one decent autograph and one so-so one. So I went on Ebay and went on a buying spree to see just how many good cards I could get for the price of a box. The results were pretty astounding. I got three Aaron Dobson Autographs, (one regular, one red and one blue refractor auto) one Giovani Berndard, one Denrard Robinson, a Jimmy Graham blue auto refractor, a Mike Gillislee, a Marcus Wheaton, a Brent Celek Blue auto refractor, a Keenan Allen Red Refractor, a Montee Ball auto and a Zach Ertz case hit on card auto (/50 copies) along with a DeAndre Hopkins Atomic refractor Rc, a Clay Matthews Red refractor (/50 copies) , an Andre Ellington RC prizm refractor (25 copies) and  a Hakeem Nicks Blue refractor (/99 copies) To sum it up I got 12 autographs and some good inserts for the price of a box. Not getting the top guys like EJ Manuel of Geno Smith is ok when you get this many cards. Part of this is that I bought many of the cards in a bulk lot. You save even more doing this. I'd have to say this is a compelling argument for sticking to eBay when purchasing your cards. When the top guys don't even pay for the cost of the box then it's not worth it to keep busting.

Got all these for 1/4 of a price of a box. Wow.

Sunday, September 15, 2013

2013 Elite Box break with Review

So yah, it's gonna take a while to post all these cards. In a box of 2013 Elite you get 100 cards. I have to say while the Green Rookie autographs look pretty nice I think the base set falls flat. I really don't like the all silver background, foil in general is a bad idea. Very very condition sensitive. With any foilboard card you're going to have this problem. Sure it makes the card shiny, but if you're going to do that, why not use chrome technology? These cards are a bit thin and generally leave much to be desired. Most of the inserts tend to fall flat too. I do like the "Hard Hats" and the acetate autographed rookie cards. I'm going to give this brand a B-.

Here's the first card out of the break! I pulled a stock photo from Ebay, but for any of my cards that are too rare for that I'll snap a photo of it for the site.

Saturday, September 14, 2013

Last card from 2012 Spx Posted today

Here's the last card from 2012 spx that I just added to my collection today. These shadow slot cards, while an interesting addition to the 2012 lineup I felt kind of ran flat. I don't like the idea of accumulating all of these "half cards" in the chase to try to get the outer shell that you can put these in. These cards are super prevalent falling at about 2-3 cards per box. The outer slot cards are very rare. This idea might be good for those that break cases of the product but not so good for the box breakers. I think the idea would have been better if you were guaranteed one slot card per box, then it would not be so bad having 2-3 of these inner cards because you might have a chance to get the outer card. Then again, any of these cards are pretty easy to get on eBay so if you want the outer card just go shopping on the internet! I suppose the idea here was to get a bit of interactivity with some of the cards, people like to customize things so UD figured why not incorporate that into a card set? Personally I'd rather just have a single card that doesn't pull out, doesn't require a bunch of handling and stays mint in the holder, but maybe that's just me.

As a side note I've decided to change my focus on breaking boxes. I think the thrill factor of seeing what you get in a box along with the chance of getting cool 1/1's is probably better than searching for the best copy of a no-name 70's player. I enjoy modern cards more than I do vintage so I think for me, this is the way to go.


Monday, September 9, 2013

2013 Finest Football Box review

I opened up a couple of boxes of this product. I had a BLAST opening this. I like the fact that you get two patch autos for every full box, you are also going to get some refractors, atomic refractors and even some special red, pink and blue, even camouflaged refractors. I normally only open a box at a time but these seem to be very popular as it's the beginning of the  football season and really the best looking product so far this year. I'd say Topps Platinum is pretty close but I like the look of these cards a little better. I even pulled my first 1/1 EVER! This was out of my second box. It was a Randall Cobb Black Printing plate. Not a superfractor which are much cooler but I was stoked anyways. The photo I'm posting is from Ebay but I pulled one of these Le'Veon Bell Blue RC patch autos.

The pluses: You will get many variations of color refractors with a good mix of rookie and veteran base cards. You will probably pull at least a Geno Smith base RC or EJ Manual so you'll probably get a top QB if you choose to break a box. The patch autos are very cool and look much better than last year. Topps did away with the ridiculously high numbering on the base refractors. Last year I pulled two refractor RC Autos both numbered over 1000. This time if your card is numbered it is 99 or less. There are a ton of variations so you can chase the blue, the reds, the pinks, the military camo, the prizms numbered to 15 or even the superfractor versions which look absolutely off the chain this year. There are some cool "extra" autos that sometimes get included, these are on card and will usually be put on a really rare card (25 or less in the print run). These boxes are very fun to break and they aren't too terribly hard on the pocketbook. The breaks usually won't earn you the money back you put into the box but sometimes you can get lucky, just like with any other product. You should only break if you're planning on keeping everything.

The cons: Some people may not like all the variations. If you don't like parallel after parallel then this probably is not the set for you. I'd say there has to be at least 50 different Geno Smith cards in this product alone. Maybe you just go after the base set or the refractor set but it can be a bit overwhelming. The rookie class is weak this year. Topps has tried to offest this somewhat by including veteran autographs like Andrew Luck and Alfred Morris. This is a welcome addition that adds value to what could otherwise be a weak offering.

Thursday, September 5, 2013

1995 Images Limited Card is here!

I got my 1995 Images Limited card today that I posted earlier; the Jim Kelly #9. You can really tell this is a Classic brand because the Dufex technology is not as pronounced (or as nice) as say the Pinnacle Museum proofs in baseball in the early 1990's. The effect on these cards is very slight unless you get them in the correct light. The back photography is very dulled and yellow. They pay much more attention to these things now that cards are such a big business. Back in the 1990's cards were picking up steam but Classics was just one of those companies and brands that did not make it into the new age of cards that we're in right now. Just saw a post on Beckett.com about a new brand of basketball cards that carries a price tag of over a grand for a 10 pack of cards.

Here's what Dufex should look like.