Today's addition is a Patriots Star Refractor

The card I added to my collection today was of Rob Gronkowski. These parallels are the most insidious of the bunch. The blue, red, pink and prizm refractors are all very easily identifiable. The base refractors have a rainbow shine to them but they are not numbered. I've mistaken the refractors for the regular cards a couple of times. They do have the word "REFRACTOR" on the back of the card but they are not numbered (nor are the x-fractors) I believe I pulled about 7 or 8 of the refractors out of my two boxes so I'm guessing a collector can expect about 4 per box of these little beauties. Can't go wrong here with one of the best tight ends for a dominant team.

Last couple days of additions. 2013 Topps Finest Football base cards complete

These are the last two cards that I pulled from the base set out of 2 boxes. Since I pulled 87 of the 150 base card set I probably would have needed to break another two boxes, maybe even three to build the base set.

The next football release I've read about is Leaf Metal, a well designed predraft product that I'm sure will be pretty popular for the next month or so. It will be the first chance for collectors to get autographed cards of Michael Sam and Johnny Manziel. Johnny according to many mock drafts will end up going to the Raiders. The Raiders have been notorious for fucking up their first round draft choices over the last 10 years (see Robert Gallery, Jamarcus Russell, Darrius Heyward-Bey, Fabian Washington, the list goes on and on. 

I don't see Manziel being much different unless the Raiders drastically change their culture or somehow use their other draft picks wisely to get him some help. There have actually only been a few instances where a first round QB went to a horrid team and within a couple of years made the team much better. Peyton Manning, John Elway and Phillip Rivers come to mind. For every one of these there is a Brady Quinn or a David Carr. Any team that gets him should be very careful in how they bring him along.

Today's add a 2013 Finest RC of Vance Mcdonald

Today's card is one of the better tight ends selected in this year's draft. The 49ers were already pretty deep at Tight end having one of the best in the game in Vernon Davis. Losing Delanie Walker to the Titans forced them to use a high end draft pick to try to make up for this huge loss. Mcdonald from Rice only had 8 catches but he made the most of them this season by racking up over 100 yards of offense, a stunning 14.9 ypc average. Pretty nice card here and these are actually the only true rookies in the set despite all the parrallels and even the autographed cards are not considered true rookies because they aren't part of the base set. I've always thought this was kind of strange, that all first year cards should be considered rookies. 

A pair of offensive players from 2013 Finest

I'm excited about the Denard Robinson because he could end up to be a great player. Mired on the lowly Jaguars doesn't help much and it looks like he almost garnered negative fantasy stats last year with 66 rushing yards and 2 lost fumbles. Once a team figures out how to use him he could be dangerous. I think he would best be used in a wildcard offense where he could be a threat to throw, run or receive. Barner was even less effective on his team with a sickly 1.2 yard per carry average. Both of these players are "wait and see" type guys how had almost no impact their rookie season. 

Robinson seemed to be the guy I was pulling the most this year out of boxes as I got 3 of his autographs from various products. Not a terrible guy to get haunted by, much better than Ryan Swope.

Today's addition a good Saints WR

Statistically Stills was better than I remembered last season. I didn't watch too many Saints games but to have 32 receptions and 5 TDs as a RC wide receiver is pretty good. With Brees throwing to him and being in that Saints offense he could end up being as good as Colsten in a few years. This is card #143 so we're nearing the end of the Topps Finest base set from 2013. I added Marcus Lattimore, Ryan Swope from Texas A&M who some collectors might know has already retired due to concussions. I also added the base RC for Mike Gillislee for the Dolphins. It seems like Mike's auto is something you will pull out of nearly every football box this year. Obviously I'm being factious but I don't know how many YouTube breaks I witnessed where his auto was pulled. Tavarres King also had a ton of autographs made this year and he couldn't even make the original team that drafted him.

Next year's class looks to be deep and wide and a welcome relief for us box breakers who had a rough time pulling even this year. I don't do it for profit but it's always nice to have a card that, if sold is worth more than the box price. Even with my Bowman Sterling box which was VERY pricey I didn't pull a single card that could fetch more than 15.00 on the secondary market. I decided against selling any of the cards that I pulled in this product because any card I sold would just compound the pain of the money  I spent on it. I know I will enjoy the cards far more than the money I would get from selling them. The only cards gone from that box are the Montee Ball base auto which I traded and a black refractor (/75) of Russell Wilson that I sold a little before the Superbowl. I am not sure if I would have made more immediately after because the market for his cards instantaneously flooded, so much so that his prices are only a little more than the overhyped prices before the SuperBowl. If anyone actually watched the game they'd realize that Wilson didn't have a whole lot to do with the Seahawks win. It was the Defense, pure and simple. Yes he made some plays with his feet and arm but his numbers all told were very pedestrian. Sidney Rice was really the offensive player that made the most difference but his cards have not seen a significant increase.

Two WR rookie card additions

My two newest additions to the collection are a pair of WR rookie cards. Bailey was best known for the tandem that was Geno Smith, Tavon Austin and of course, himself that combined for some stunning college numbers in West Virginia.  Oddly enough Austin and Bailey were both chosen by the Rams while we all know that Geno went to the Jets. King didn't have any impact for the Broncos, a quick check of ESPN.com shows that he's now with the Panthers although I'm not sure if he's on the practice squad or what. The Broncos already had a fine stable of WR's this year although the dynamic will probably change next year with Peyton's status up in the air and the fact that Eric Decker will be testing the free-agent waters.

Today's addition, A Packer RB.

This is one of the two RBs that Green Bay selected this year in the draft. I didn't pull the Lacy, but this one is #134 in the 2013 Finest Set. The hottest set at the moment is Topps Museum, these have a variety of on-card autographs and very beautiful photoshop work. This will be a new staple for years to come I'm sure. This originally was a baseball only product. Mike's Stadium Sportscards started carrying them last week and I was tempted to go in and bust a box but I'm trying to hold off on any card purchases for a while. Getting the ones I want on the secondary market will be much cheaper anyway.

I had not posted for a while but in the mean time I added these cards to my list:

Feb 5, (2013 Finest #118 Chris Harper) from box break 2013

Feb 6, 2014 (2013 Finest Stepfan Taylor # 122) from box break 2013

Feb 7, 2014 (2013 Finest Jordan Reed # 123) from box break 2013

Feb 8, 2014 (2013 Finest Luke Joeckel # 126) from box break 2013

Feb 9, 2014 (2013 Finest Bjoern Werner #127) from box break 2013

Feb 10, 2014 (2013 Finest Dee Milliner # 128) from box break 2013

Feb 11, 2014 (2013 Finest Jarvis Jones # 129) from box break 2013

Feb 12, 2014 (2013 Finest Manti T’eo #131) from box break 2013

Feb 13, 2014 (2013 Finest Gavin Escobar #133) from box break 2013

2013 Finest #116 Justin Hunter

Here's a  nice rookie from 2013 Finest. I had a couple of really cool adds the last couple of days. Gotta get back to clearing out this huge box of cards. I really did not think I'd get the Tannehill Black auto for quite some time as usually my MO is to get the cheaper ones first.

Getting cheap cards to your set is often the best way to do things if you're a set collector (I know there aren't too many of us that do sets any more) but I've learned this from experience. This allows some of the bigger cards to come down in many cases. Obviously sometimes this plan will backfire but so many times cards lose value over a period of time that saving the more expensive ones for last saves you quite a bit of money in the long run. This is assuming the set is fairly easy to find copies of each card. If you are doing a set with cards numbered 100 or less you pretty much have to strike when the iron is hot, get what you can when it's up for sale because over time the lower printed cards will not show up very often. This is especially true for less popular players where people just don't see an advantage to selling their low numbered Rex Grossman cards or low numbered rookie free agents that never made a roster cards.

Another Cool trade in the books, this one an autograph from 2012 Spx Football

This is 2012 Spx #73 Bernard Pierce. Since he's in his Temple uniform here some people may not know he was part of the Superbowl Champion Ravens team last year. He backs up Ray Rice in spots and is somewhat of a role player in Baltimore. I traded an Adrian Peterson Jersey card, an Adrian Peterson Xfractor from this year's Topps Finest and a low numbered Cowboys insert card (Jason Witten Gold "Portraits /49 )from 2013 Elite that I pulled this year to get this card. Overall pretty happy with the trade because any time I can get a card for a set that I'm actually getting close to putting together I'm happy. I'm more of a set collector although I am slowly working on my Portis collection. There's no rush for those cards because they are much cheaper than they used to be and there are plenty on Ebay to be had on any given day.

Not going to even go into how disappointed I am with the Bronco's Superbowl play this year. Seemed like nothing could go right and I'm not sure honestly if they can make it back next year. Too many things have to go right for them to duplicate their season up until their monumental collapse.

Very Sweet Card from Trade Night.

Got this card in a trade last night, super pumped as it brings my Panini Black RC Auto signature count up to 6 out of this really awesome 30 card set. It would have been nice for it to be a multiple color patch but I'll take it! I still think there's a lot of hope down the road for this guy even though he does play for what at the moment, is a bad team.

I added a Portis 1894 Insert numbered to 600 yesterday as well shown here... Got that one at Mike's Stadium Sports Cards for a good price.

I did a 2013 Limited case break at Mike's last night and it was wildly successful. I ended up getting the 49ers which is a huge team to get for most products this year. I came away with several base cards of Joe Montana, Frank Gore, an Eric Reid RC numbered to 299 a Limited Patch AU RC of Marcus Lattimore #ered to 25, a Quinton Patton redemption called "Logo RCs". Not sure what that is or what it's numbered to but it looks really low. Have not seen any of these on eBay EXCEPT as redemptions which is very strange. Finally rounded it out with a Vance McDonald regular Patch AU RC numbered to 299. I had the chance to get a dual Jersey card of Jerry Rice and Steve Largent and a quad auto for Zach Ertz, Vance McDonald, Tyler Effiert and Gavin Escobar but the Cowboys and Seahawks guys got those cards. Some people just walked away with a few base cards so I consider myself Very VERY lucky. I've had it go the other way on those case breaks before so it's good to finally be on the winning side of one.