Sunday, December 13, 2015

Today's base card is... Kendall Wright

My singular addition for today is a Kendall Wright base card bringing my total up to 105/220 cards. I'm getting up to the halfway mark and that's only with buying one box and getting some base cards in a case break earlier in the year. The Titans lost embarrassingly today but that still hasn't stopped people from chasing Mariotta cards in the slightest. It's been a while since Wright's cards have been very high on people's wantlists regardless of the fact that he had over 90 catches in 2013. While not a particularly exciting card it's still one that I needed and am happy to add it to my 2014 Chrome collection today.

Saturday, December 12, 2015

So where'm I at now?

Since last I checked in I was chugging along on the base set of 2014 Topps Chrome, all products of boxes or lots I've acquired in the search for a 2014 Topps Chrome Blake Bortles autograph. I'm still working the first box I purchased back in August but the base cards are nearly at an end. Here's my card for the day, a guy who was big time for the Baylor Bears but never quite made his mark (or any stats for that matter) on an NFL team. This Lache Seastrunk base card brings my total up to 104/220 cards or 47.27 % of the base set being complete. I'm fairly certain that I won't stop collecting the 2014 set if and when I ever find a Bortles autograph as new products just are not appealing to me very much. The 2014 class seems to have a huge amount of solid and upcoming players as well as the fun of collecting colored refractors and inserts that abound throughout the release. Getting as close to a master set as possible might be quite a fun project. Here's the card!


Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Topps Chrome Jeremy Hill Rookie

One of the better base cards I've added in a while this is one of the top rookies of 2014 to pull. He's has more fantasy and real world value than 95% of last year's draft class. Playing for the Bengals all the sudden isn't a bad place to be with their ridiculous 6-0 start this year. Hill luckily is one of those guys that you can pull autographs of fairly easily in this product (he's not short printed like Manziel and Bortles) and could be one of the saving graces for the 2014 class. This particular card is also saved by the action photo in uniform (and helmet) that you want to see on football cards. The uncluttered background, nice pose and photography and clean design makes this a perfect rookie card in any era. Could it one day be as iconic as the 1958 Topps Jim Brown Rookie card? Perhaps we'll see in another 57 years just what these cards become.



2014 Topps Chrome Jeremy Hill # 125A



One per case card of last week's fantasy darling

Today's addition is a rather nice Drew Brees 4000 yard club refractor that can only be found 1 per case of 2014 Topps Chrome. I pulled the Roethlisberger on my own but this one was part of the large refractor lot I got on Ebay. I've got 2 of the 8 in this very small set so this set's coming along pretty nicely. There has been a little bit of action on Drew's cards this week since he had a monster game against the Giant on Sunday putting up 7 TDs and 511 yards passing. I had him in one of my fantasy leagues and he only had 30 points ABOVE his projected fantasy point total. Needless to say I won that game. I'm a little surprised that these cards are not numbered but it's possible that there were so many boxes produced this year that Topps didn't want to tip their hand as to how many cases were produced. The formula would have been # of cards x 8 and that would produce the number quite easily.


  Here's the card for the day! 
2014 Topps Chrome 4000 Yard Club # 2 Drew Brees

Sunday, November 1, 2015

Orange Montee Ball Chrome Refractor, a Halloween flavored card!

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. There's no presents to buy and no commitments to make, the only thing you have to do is have fun, eat candy and watch scary movies. This Sunday's card is a great addition and being an orange one is as Halloween as you can get!

Last night I enjoyed Halloween by watching the movie "Crimson Peak", a film by Guillermo del Toro and then Episode 1 Season 5 of American Horror Story. Both were pretty damn good and I recommend both very highly. This is coming from a horror movie aficionado and a pretty critical one at that.

Anyway, not a whole lot to report on Topps Chrome additions this week. I addes a few base including a CJ Mosely RC, a Kevin Norwood RCNick Foles base, Victor Cruz base and a refractor of Sheldon Richardson.

2013 Topps Chrome Montee Ball Orange Refractor #11 (Retail only)

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

2 more Chrome cards to the collection!

Today's additions are Patrick Peterson #39 of the Cardinals (base card) and the hit of the box, Topps Chrome #220 RC Autographs Damien Williams. At least he played some this season and there are many worse autographs to pull than this one out of the 73 possible cards.

Here's the cards! Peterson brings me up to 30% of the base set collected and Williams has me at about 8% of the RC auto set. I love the fact that this particular one is on-card, there's no way a sticker would have contained this sprawling autograph. Certainly we could have hoped for a game action photograph instead of this rookie premier stuff but perhaps that's getting a little picky considering how soon after the regular season started that this set was released. Both of these are solid exciting cards and get me that much closer to my set goal.



2014 Topps Chrome Rookie Autographs #220 Damien Williams


2014 Topps Chrome # 39 Patrick Peterson

Monday, October 26, 2015

The newest Chrome card awaits!

Today's card is an insert from 2014 Topps Chrome called the "1965" variant. These "tallboy" cards are pretty fun to look at although the Chrome technology ruins any illusion of it actually being an old card. The famous Joe Namath rookie, one of the better football cards to own comes from the real 1965 set. This Aaron Murray card could be a beast one day if he ever gets the chance to play. This card was pulled from the box I bought in August and is finally being revealed today. It's the third one in my Tall Boys set; the two others were pulled in my January case break at the local card store. I really like the colors and layout of this although I, like many other collectors are somewhat annoyed by odd sized cards as they make storage and display more difficult than the standard 2.5" x 3.5" trading card size.


Sunday, October 25, 2015

Sunday will be part of a new series, 2013 Topps Chrome Montee Ball Rainbow!

Every Sunday I'll be adding a new Montee Ball 2013 Topps Chrome card to my collection. I purchased  a huge lot of cards from one seller that will help me go very far in this series. With today's addition I have 5 out of the 63 cards needed for a Master set of Chrome. I've got them sorted from least difficult to most. Every Sunday I'll add a new card. I'm also on the look-out for the extremely rare cards that can be found at a fairly reasonable price. Many of his cards have not come down to earth because of ridiculous sellers on Ebay (You know the type, they are everywhere) but some can be had for what they are truly worth. I think this will be a great master set to try to complete because it's Chrome, I love the Broncos and with Ball being cut at the end of training camp these will be very reasonable and easy to come by. Here's what I have so far....




Last Sunday's addition, Rookie Relic Refractor 2/5 (Not even in Beckett Organize)


1986 Topps Chrome 1986 RCs


Base Autograph /600


Base RC #11


Today's addition Refractor RC ( found at the odds of 1:3 packs)

Saturday, October 24, 2015

2 more cards from my box

Today's addition consists of two cards since I didn't have time to add or post anything yesterday. The cards are a base Michael Crabtree #32A (can't believe they made a shortprint of this guy but hey everyone has their fans) and a 1963 Minis of Logan Thomas #31. Neither one of these cards are earth shattering by any means but it's not every day you can get a 1/1 autograph of your favorite player like I did earlier in the week.  I do really like the 1963 minis as any retro design in a chrome product is pretty awesome. Just wanted to give a shout out to my readers from outside the USA as I thought this would be a very American based blog but turns out I got a few people from Russia and Europe that check out my ramblings and base cards for each day. Thank you for checking this out!



2014 Topps Chrome 1963 Minis Logan Thomas #31 (3/45, 6% of this set complete)


2014 Topps Chrome Michael Crabtree #32A base (65/220, 29.5% complete)

Thursday, October 22, 2015

The 100th Topps Chrome card in my collection (Broncos Rookie Autograph!)

This is no Blake Bortles in terms of either rarity of price but in terms of the cesspool of last year's checklist selection this is a pretty good card. Roby is part of a stunning Broncos defense this year that might go down as one of the historical greats. This card isn't commanding much more than some of the scrub autographs but this might be due to the lack of defensive player love in the hobby. To me this is a far better buy than the only other Bronco rookie auto in this product, Cody Lattimer. If there's one guy I see tons of autographs being pulled of with no on-field production it's Lattimer. People are still asking top dollar for his cards with little to no justification. I bought this specific card outright for around 5 dollars online but I would have been pretty happy to hit it in a box too despite the low value that most collectors are giving it right now. I love it when I can check off a Broncos PC item as well as a set item at once. This particular one is an on-card autograph making it that much better.


2014 Topps Chrome Rookie Autographs #209 Bradly Roby
(5/73 Rookie Autos, 6.8% complete)

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Card # 99 in my 2014 Topps Chrome Organize (and it's a refractor /99 too!)

Today's card is from a lot I got on Ebay that had a bunch of numbered refractors as well as some retail only parallels (orange and purple) that I'd never get otherwise. This nice little refractor is the 1963 minis parallel # to 99. My particular copy is 58/99 but you get the idea. This is the first one of these I've gotten so that brings this set up to 2 % (44 more to go!)

When I searched on Ebay it looks to me like he's one of the most sold players on the market. I don't think anybody wants a Terrance West card. He was massively overproduced in every single product I saw last year, seems like every case had a TW autograph in it. This year he's on the Titans and hasn't started a game this season. If you're in his cards to invest you can pick up autograph after autograph for 99 cents plus shipping so for the penny stock collector this
might be the player for you!

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

A little baseball flavor

Here's a card I got as a bonus, pretty sweet one at that. It's not too often that you get bonuses in the mail that are actually worth more than a dollar and looks like I got 2 that were worth around 5 dollars each. Both in toploaders and ready to go. While they are baseball cards and I haven't really gone for baseball cards since I was a kid these would have been great cards for me at the time. I used to really be into Yankees cards back in the wood borders 1987 Topps days (Don Mattingly was the guy I would be happy to pull). I'd go down to the local 7 11 and grab some packs for 50 cents each and hope for Yankees. I can't seem to find any info on the insertion rate of this card but it was a part of a 50 card insert set in 2011 Topps Series 1. Topps Baseball has a huge following in the card collecting world and this would have been a card I would have been happy to pull from a pack.

T60-26 from 2011 Topps

Monday, October 19, 2015

Card of the Decade for me!

I've been quietly working plugging away at my 2014 Topps Chrome (perhaps master set) on my way to that elusive Blake Bortles Autograph. I've got 29% of the base set done, 4 % of the refractor set done and a few inserts here and there. I did pick up a very cheap lot on Ebay with a super rare blue wave refractor autograph (numbered to 20) for about a quarter of the cost of a box. Primarily I'm a Broncos collector and more specifically I love Terrell Davis. Watching him play when I just started to watch the game were some of the best moments, especially when he rushed for 2008 yards in 1998. I wasn't specifically in the market for another autograph as I had a few of his already but this one I just had to have the moment I saw it. The price was fairly reasonable too as there is a slight bit of damage on the back right hand corner. Being that it's a 1/1 though? I don't really care as there's not another in the world. This is my first 1/1 autograph in my collection and may have surpassed all others in terms of being my favorite. Enjoy!




Saturday, September 5, 2015

Manning, Brees, Culter oh my!

I'm adding a flurry of cards today because I've been dormant for a few days and it's honestly probably not worth making a post every day that a base card is pulled for the Blake Bortles Rc Auto Challenge. I'll just quickly sum up the fact that I'm up to 17.7 % of the base set and these are the cards that I've added to my collection since the last post.







Sunday, August 30, 2015

Another one down for the base set

Today's card is a nice card of Matt Forte, RB for the Chicago Bears. I thought I'd showcase the Spx Rookie card that I have of his since it's always fun to pull a base of players where you've already got some cool autograph of. I'm now up to 15% of the base set and I have about 5% of the rookie autographs all from a cheap auction where someone had listed some no-name players a while back for around a dollar a card. Sadly that's about the price you can expect to pay for many of these autographed cards (or happily if you're a buyer completing the set).

On another note I'm really enjoying all of the Topps Digital card apps that you can play on your phone. I'd say the thrill of opening packs in the Bunt, Huddle or Star Wars Trader apps is nearly as fun as opening a real pack and you can do it for free which adds to the appeal. They even have a soccer player card app and I'm on all of them collecting my daily reward and busting packs. If you have not tried it I highly recommend checking any of these apps out to see what suits you.



Matt Forte Spx Rc /599 #171 (from my finished 2008 SPX set)


2014 Topps Chrome Matt Forte #46 (Base set 15% complete)



Saturday, August 29, 2015

3 more base cards for the set..

To keep it short and sweet here's 3 more base cards for the 2014 Topps Chrome Base set. All of these are vets so they fall within the first 110 cards. I'm slowly building up the base set from the group break I did in January but I'm coming to the end of the cards that I got from that one. There will be some nice rookie and base inserts to get added in a few days or so. Once I add these I will purchase box 2 so I'll always have a ton of cards in the pipeline even with all the duplicates.






2014 Topps Chrome Base cards, Jordan Reed # 4, 
Jordan Cameron #69 and DeMarco Murray #110


 Base set 14.45% complete

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

2014 Topps Chrome Blake Bortles RC Auto Challenge (new Base card)

      Today's card features a player that I don't have any autographs of. He was a rookie in 2008 and I did complete the 08' Spx set but it didn't feature this future star player. He was a part of National Treasures (a horridly overpriced brand that I don't understand the draw for) but also Contenders. They don't go for huge money but they are pretty cool. I wasn't even sure if Garcon had any RC autos or not.

I realized my calculations on the base card percentage completion rate were off, each card is not = .5% exactly, it's about .45% so over time the percentage gets thrown off. Got some cool cards in the mail today but I don't have any doubles yet so they won't come to light for a while.



2014 Topps Chrome # 18

Base Set 13.18% complete

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

2014 Topps Chrome Blake Bortles RC AU Challenge (base card added!)

Today's card is a Super Bowl winning QB and someone who plays the opposite of Peyton Manning. In the regular season he's very average but when the playoffs come he performs really well. I heard it said of Manning that he's the best regular season QB of all time but once playoff time comes he turns into Rex Grossman. I'd have to say that's pretty accurate as much as I enjoy watching and collecting Manning. Maybe some day Flacco's cards will be more valuable as he's got more chances to add to his ring count. More valuable than Manning? Maybe a stretch. It's always fun adding a base card of a player that you have an autograph of. Here's my Flacco Auto RC from 2008 Spx (I completed this set in 2012).

Here's the base card for my 2014 Topps Chrome base set. Nice photo on this one!


2014 Topps Chrome Joe Flacco # 6

Base set completion 13%

Monday, August 24, 2015

New base card (Blake Bortles 2014 Topps Chrome RC AU Challeng)

Hey guys, here's another installment of my "card of the day" feature, one that will one day culminate perhaps in a RC Autograph of Blake Bortles. After viewing over 75 boxes being opened on YouTube through various sources I finally spotted one that was pulled. This confirms my belief that this will be very difficult to pull myself. By that same token I've seen some of the garbage that's coming out now (Yah, I'm talking about you 2015 Panini Certified) and I really don't mind just opening this product for months and years to come. It's difficult to find boxes at 35 dollars which is what I think the true value should be but when you have to tack shipping on that is what's partially responsible for this. Tonight's card was one of 2013's top hobby kings if 2013 had one. Look at some of the guys that were hot in 2013 like Geno Smith and Montee Ball and most everyone's on the COLD list with the exception of Eddie Lacy from the Packers. Tavon Austin still has some potential but since WR get no hobby love this is little more than eye candy for Rams fans.


2014 Topps Chrome # 57 Tavon Austin

12.5 % of base card set complete



Sunday, August 23, 2015

3 more cards getting closer! (Blake Bortles RC AU Challenge)

Here are a few more sweet cards, 2 more for the base set as well as one insert. The base cards bring my total up to 12 % complete (base set) and the insert brings me up to 10 % complete for the "Fantasy Focus" set. I had a couple already added, the Tom Brady and a Jason Witten, so this makes it 3/30 cards. Even the insert sets look really nice here. I will enjoy adding the Broncos cards as well as some of the top players like Adrian Peterson.

In terms of viewing box breaks on YouTube I'm up to 40 boxes and I have not seen a single Bortles Autograph surface. The two best cards I saw broken online were one in a case break where CardsInfinity pulled a Jordan Matthews /25 black refractor autograph and a single box break where a guy pulled a Sammy Watkins pink /75. The difference between the main set and the Topps Chrome Mini is readily apparent. People cracking the mini version are getting far more colored autos and are not getting skunked very often on the autograph that they pull. As Adam Gellman said in his blog, mini is what Topps Chrome should have been.

Enjoy the daily cards and I'll be posting soon! I appreciate everyone that takes time to read my ramblings and pulls; this is the most fun project I've thought of in a while!


2014 Topps Chrome #45 A.J. Green (base set 11.5 % complete)


2014 Topps Chrome # 72 Jamaal Charles (base set 12 % complete)


2014 Topps Chrome "Fantasy Focus" #FF-DM (Insert Set 10% complete)





Thursday, August 20, 2015

11 % of Base card set complete (2014 Topps Chrome Blake Bortles RC AU Challenge)

Today's card is 2014 Topps Chrome # 55 Josh Gordon of the Browns. This brings me another card closer to the base card set completion date and another card for the master set.

As I've researched the elusive Bortles card I'm seeing just how short printed it really is. So far I've watched a total of 30 boxes broken on YouTube and have not seen a single one pulled; I'll continue to keep track of this as I have time to watch the videos. I see how over produced the cases really must be because there are very few color autographs that are being pulled, even just the refractors that are numbered to 150. I usually see about 1 sepia card per case so by this math we see that 99 * 220 (the total number of base cards) = 21780 we can probably surmise that there were close to 22,000 cases of this product made, or around 250,000 boxes. Seems crazy but this would explain the difficulty the average collector has in pulling anything good from these packs.




2014 Topps Chrome # 55 Josh Gordon

Group Break January 2015

Base set 11% complete

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Card for the day (2014 Topps Chrome #187 RC AU Blake Bortles Challenge)

Today's card is another base card but by the same token another card closer in the master set and another .5% complete in the base set. If you're a Colts fan this one oughta shake you up as it's just one the best WR to put on the horseshoe. This comes from the 3 team break I did in January. I can't get that excited about a base card anymore (I'm sure many of my readers feel the same way) except for the relevance that it holds to completing a set. I do also enjoy pulling any Broncos even if they are base cards, ESPECIALLY Peyton Manning. Base rookies are pretty cool to because those sometimes hold their value. Just look at the 2005 Aaron Rodgers Topps Chrome base RC which often fetches 50.00 or more now. And to think, when the product first came out it was a 3.00 card. I've got 25 more of these cards from my group break, some base and some refractors to show off and add before the first box gets underway.


2014 Topps Chrome Reggie Wayne #14

10.5 % of base set complete

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Another base card down, now at 10% of the base set! (Blake Bortles RC Auto Challenge)

Today's card is 2014 Topps Chrome # 2 Cecil Shorts who now sports a new uniform for the Houston Texans. Reports out of camp say he's a legitimate #2 receiver (but we knew that right?) along DeAndre Hopkins. I'd say the Jaguars were crazy to let this talent go but their front office has never exactly been on top of things. This is one of the guys who could have helped Bortles' stat line this season and perhaps made my chase card more valuable. In any case I'm already up to 10% of the base set just from some throwaway base cards from the group break. Many more to follow. I've made up a couple of rules and thoughts for this challenge as well.

1) No group breaks. I feel like getting into some Jaguars group breaks may be much easier but at the same time it wouldn't be as challenging and I am sure I will see many MANY sets completed for my Topps Chrome master set before this feat is complete.

2) If I pull a double (which will happen quite a bit with base cards as time goes along, maybe even some inserts) I will pull another card from the box. If that card is a double as well I'll add a different card to this blog that's been stored away in my "vault" of cards which includes box breaks, sets and team breaks over the years.

3) I know this can go on for quite some time. Could literally be years. It cheers me up to see box breaks posted online that are 15 + years because it means I will probably be able to find boxes many years down the line for this project.


2014 Topps Chrome # 2 Cecil Shorts
From Group Break January 2015
Base set 10% complete

Monday, August 17, 2015

Today's base card from 2014 Topps Chrome

Today's card is a beauty, I love the photography on this particular card. This is the 21st card that I have, the base set totals 220 cards. Last year I purchased the 2013 Topps Chrome set outright and usually this would be the way to do it. I will most certainly end up with many sets over and will sell some to buy more boxes as this challenge goes along. Heck I may have several refractor sets complete; I have no illusions to how hard this challenge is going to be. I certainly don't mind opening box after box of Topps because after this year it will be gone for who knows how long.




2nd card of Challenge (From Group Break Jan. 2015)

2014 Topps Chrome #87 Luke Kuechly 

9.5 % of base set completed

Sunday, August 16, 2015

New Challenge Card!

Randomly choosing an autographed card, I landed on one that will get me excited to find it and a method that will get me much closer to the thrill of opening packs. The card in question is 2014 Topps Chrome #187 Blake Bortles Autograph as pictured here.


The method I've chosen is to try to pack pull it. I know this could be quite a difficult endeavor but this will make for a real challenge. Once I've pulled it I will move on to a different autographed football card. I will only post new cards that I don't have to the blog and as I list them I'll post the percentage of the total complete set that the new card brings me to. I purchased a box today from Ebay for around $44.00 so that's a good start. I did a group break earlier this year in which I got the Cowboys, Bills and Patriots as well as about 30 base cards. I've added some of those to my collection already but still have some to add. I think this will be fun and perhaps frustrating at times since this particular card is considered a short print in a bloated autographed checklist.


First card of the challenge (2014 Topps Chrome #1 Frank Gore)
Base set completion (9.09 %)
From group break January 2015




Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Back to the Challenge!


It's been quite a while since I've chosen a random card to get and actually pulled the trigger. This was first up in lists of all cards about to be sold when I pulled up Ebay. I actually want to expand my search to other sports so I thought it sort of odd that the first card that popped up was a football card from 2014 since I've purchased several boxes and singles of 2014 football.


I will review this card having it in hand and I must say it's the nicest base card I've ever seen and that includes all the high end that's been released so far. Scans truly don't show how cool this card is. The black background, the gold foil and the acetate background is super cool. Additionally there is a printed shadow that looks really awesome and gives the card some depth. The card is extremely thick and was obviously produced in layers. I have to give Panini an A+ for the base card design, I'm not so sure about the other cards in the set though. The large NFL logo and team logo cards don't make much sense to me. If the price point were better I'd probably go and pick up a box but as it stands right now I think singles are the better way to go.

Saturday, April 18, 2015

The newest card for my 1998 Topps Chrome Refractor set


Here's the newest addition to my growing set of 1998 Topps Chrome Refractors. Kanell never really had what you'd call a stellar career in the NFL but he did have some moments. As the back of the card notes, he did have a good 1997 season where he led the Giants to a 7-2-1 finish after the team had started off poorly with Dave Brown as their starting QB.

This is the 12 card in the 165 card set that I've purchased. I've been getting the cheapest cards available on Ebay but so far I have not come across any lots of these whatsoever. They've all been one-by-one purchases which is what one should expect for such rare cards and the fact that they are from 1998; not too much demand for 1998 cards with a few exceptions. One nice thing about collecting a set like this is there isn't too much demand. These cards aren't new and they aren't vintage yet so they are kind of in a grey area in terms of demand. Off to find the next!

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Since last I posted some great football cards!





      Here are some photos of highlights of the cards I've added last week. The only one of these highlight cards that I pulled was the Peyton Manning refractor but since I'm a Manning collector this was a great one for me. Even base cards are great so an insert like this is even better. My favorite of these cards is the PSA 10 Andre Ellington which was going for big money about a year ago. This PSA case is very much larger than I've ever seen and must be part of this rollout

      I managed to get the PSA 10 for under 10 dollars which is pretty much a steal in my eyes. PSA 10s are not very easy, especially with thick autographed cards like this.
I went on a buying spree this week, two boxes of Finest as well as a few Finest singles (most from 2014 but the Ellington I could not resist the price) I also picked up a Topps Chrome Mini Black Refractor of Geno Smith (15 copies!) and another 1998 Topps Chrome Refractor for that ongoing collection. Pretty sweet adds for this last week!