Thursday, November 21, 2013

Last two Portis cards are autographs

Got two more Portis cards, the Leaf Rookies and Stars which Beckett lists as 150 copies but doesn't seem to be numbered. I also added  a Sage Hit Rarified Gold Auto card which is numbered to 100 copies.
I got all of these in a cheap lot on Ebay and ended up selling one of the doubles that I had for a pretty good price. It really does pay to buy in lots if you can afford to wait while you sell off whatever you don't want. I did get a box of Bowman Sterling at the local card shop. I'll be selling off all of the cards that were not Broncos. I was thinking of doing a box break and selling spots but it seemed like too much could go wrong with this. One of the better cards out of the box (a Montee Ball RC auto) was a Bronco and I could see people calling "Shenannigans" on me and claiming I knew the contents of the box before it was broken. I may try a box break dividing up into Divisions so I don't have to worry about what happens to those who don't pull anything. In this box Broncos, Cardinals and Jags all came up pretty big getting most of the hits. The cards are really really sweet but the secondary market doesn't seem to be keeping up with the box prices at all. Here's one of the cards I pulled that's been put on EBay.

Saturday, November 16, 2013

The newest Portis card joins the fold

I'm still adding one card a day from last week's purchases. I added various serial numbered cards last week, had not posted in a while. Here's an example of today's card although my actual version is the "Sepia" version numbered to 499 copies, not this version which is numbered to a scant 25. That being said, a serial numbered card even to 25 is not considered that rare anymore which is pretty crazy, but the fact that there are so many versions out there it's understandable. I can see why player collectors go crazy for them because each addition gets more and more difficult the more cards you add to your collection. Right now I'm having an easy time adding cards to this Portis collection because I only have 109 cards which is not even one percent of what has been produced. On a side note I'm now part of the box breaking group on CardsInfinity, a well-known guy in the business who operates out of Wilmington, North Carolina. I'm looking forward to my first case break very soon. I'll post the results on my blog for all of you guys!
The card I got....

The card I wished I got.... still on the hunt!


Sunday, November 10, 2013

The next Portis card in my collection

I have a feeling that card 200 will come up pretty fast. An interesting way to collect might be to go through the Beckett list and just try to find and win the next card on the list? Might be a good way to save up money for the really hard ones. I looked at the next card and it will be the UD Superstars Cam Esslinger (Rockies Pitcher) and Clinton Portis Gold numbered to 250 copies. Shouldn't be too hard.... should it?

Today's entry is brought to you by Mike's Stadium Sports cards. Went to see them yesterday and got 10 different Portis cards I needed for my collection, cleared out everything they had. This one is numbered to 250 copies and is #123 in the set, it's the Red Parallel.

2009 Certified Red #123 196/250 Copies.

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Another Portis card, plus cleared out my local card shop outta Portis cards

This one's the next entry in my Portis collection. Very similar to the Upper Deck version but has a different card number and the Upper Deck logo is printed in color instead of silver foil. The back is exactly the same. Why would they do this? Seems kind of silly but got both versions in my collection bringing the count up to 102 cards. I have a feeling that I'm going to hit 200 unique cards very quickly. The cards I got from the local shop were mostly base but there were a few rare versions numbered to 250 or less, one card was numbered to 99. No autographs or jersey cards which is probably a good thing because those types of cards are much better to get on Ebay. Base cards are often better to get at a local shop because you're not paying for shipping. On a side note I saw a beautiful 1997 Upper Deck Jersey card (three colors no less) of John Elway. This insert set is still insanely popular and the cards are next to impossible to get. I didn't realize it but there were actually 10 jersey cards in that set, I mistakenly remembered there only being 3 of them. Terrell Davis is in this set, might have to pick that one up if possible!

First Edition looks nearly the same as the Upper Deck version.

Friday, November 8, 2013

101st Clinton Portis Card

So it's not my "White Whale", (a term collectors use to describe a card that eludes them, much like Moby Dick eluded Captain Ahab in said tale.) but it will do! Might make a trip on over to Mike's Stadium Sports cards tomorrow to see what cards he's got hiding over there. Mike has tons of cards in the display case but he's got tons of base cards and singles in boxes that would take hours to sort through. That and a big screen TV makes it a great place to hang out for any sports fan.

This card is from 2009 and is card # 164, from Upper Deck First Edition.


On another note, I know not many people in this world are die-hard metal fans, but for those of you who get it, I highly recommend Devildriver's 6th studio album "Winter Kills". This is a great soundtrack for getting drunk and popping someone in the mouth about a thousand times. Or making sweet love to the woman of your dreams. Either one.

Thursday, November 7, 2013

The Century Mark has been Hit! 100th Portis card in my collection!

Yep, it's just a base card. But the 100th unique card is pretty special in any player collection. This means you've really put some dedication into it, or you bought a shoe box full of their cards online. While that can happen originally I set out to get only autograph or jersey cards. With many of his autographs being less than 10 dollars apiece right now this player is much more affordable than when I first started out in 2002. His first card that I got was a 2002 Topps Rc card, the staple of any collection. I have not seen any Portis cards produced in 2013 and only 2 cards produced in 2012 so the tide has stemmed so to speak so it's time to get my hands on the other 3,095 cards that have been made so far. The 1/1s will be very difficult and of course I won't worry about the ones that are out of reach due to unrealistic seller expectations on Ebay. Seems like you see the same 1/1's listed at outrageous prices for months on end and you have to wonder what's going through the seller's mind by doing this.

Anyway card 100; 2010 Score Clinton Portis #295....


Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Another Day, another Portis. This is getting fun!

Here's the 99th unique Portis card in my collection. Tomorrow will be magical as I'll hit 100! I really forgot how much fun it is to work on a player collection. You see so many variations of the same card with different numbering, photos, a different color, a chrome finish or jersey swatch size. It's kind of cool to see how the card companies create 15-20 different variations of the same card. I'm sure this is done because player collections are much more common than the set collections. I enjoy putting together the base set for some brands. I did it for 1999 Spx (this set took me years to complete), the 2000 Spx set and the 2008 Spx set. All of those brands have tons of other types of cards in them such as the "spectrum" parallels, various jersey card sets and the like. Player collections allow you to get rare cards that would be extremely difficult to put together as a set. I don't know how you'd even put together a set of cards that was numbered to 25 unless you started hard and fast right when the product came out.

99th Portis card...

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

The newest Addition to my Portis Collection

This here is the 97th unique Portis card I have in my collection. Just added this one today, got myself a large lot of Portis cards too keep this rolling. Back in the day I had the SP Authentic Gold RC Jersey numbered to 25 copies. I purchased this back in his second year when his cards were through the roof. If I ever find this again I will definitely be making a run for it. This is just a base card but for a player collection it will do just fine...

Monday, November 4, 2013

Another Topps Finest football addition, but from a different decade

Here's the key card I would imagine to the whole 2002 Topps Finest Football set. I don't typically like college jerseys on a pro football card but the fact that these are hard-signed and there is so much white area in the card helping the signature to really stand out makes a huge difference. People complain about the weak draft class this year but take a look at 2002 and you'll see a huge dearth of talent in that draft class. This was the class that featured Joey Harrington, Patrick Ramsey, David Carr and a bunch of other who's who in the draft bust rotisserie. Portis might have been the biggest star I can think of in this class although Julius Peppers still comes to mind, a great defensive player that's still making an impact with the Chicago Bears.

I got a few other Portis autographed cards in this bulk lot and they will be featured soon. Enjoy!

Sunday, November 3, 2013

2013 Finest, my vote for brand of the year!

Here's my card for the day, a 2013 Topps Finest Joe Flacco #1. Unfortunately the Ravens have really fallen off this year but we all knew they couldn't lose Ed Reed, Ray Lewis, Anquan Boldin and Paul Kreuger and be any damn good. We knew it. Even with the bullshit coachspeak coming out of the front office saying they'd be fine, that they would be even better this year. I guess they can't ever just tell the truth. Anyways, not a big card day today obviously but I got some sweet Clinton Portis autographs on the way...


Saturday, November 2, 2013

Why not start off the month with a couple of Topps Finest cards!

Yesterday's card was a 2012 Finest Gold Refractor numbered to 50 of Cyrus Gray of the Kansas City Chiefs. Today's is even better. You can't get much hotter than Peyton Manning right now and I could probably even sell this at the local card store since we're in Denver and all of his cards are selling well right now. I never imagined when we signed him that he would be this successful. Manning's playing out of his mind right now and I bet we're going to go deep into the playoffs with the team we have. 

This card is one of the many many versions of refractors. There are two unnumbered versions of refractors, regular and this X-fractor version which has a distinct pattern to it. You also have the gold, blue, red and my favorite, the cammo refractors numbered to 10. I was lucky enough to pull a Vernon Davis, this will be shown and posted soon. The Broncos are on a bye week so I'll probably be watching some other games this week. Redskins and Vikings is probably the one I'm going to tune into for sure. I really enjoyed the Bengals and Dolphins, it was a much more exciting game than most people would have thought and ended in a surprising fashion.


Any Manning cards are great but rare parallels are even better!