Today's addition 2009 Sp Authentic Wes Welker #23

Today's addition comes from a box break I did in December 2012. I've always loved the SP authentic brand and this was the last year that UD had their football license. All players are shown in team colors. What's interesting about these cards is there is a retail version of SPA, something I wasn't aware of until I put this in my Beckett Organize. The retail version looks similar but has a different player photograph on the front. If I saw SPA at my local walmart or target I'd jump for sure. Retail odds don't tend to bode as well for the "hit collectors" though so this is something to be aware of.

A real blast from the Past 1991 Wild card Draft #119 Brett Favre

Today's card looks rather primitive by today's foil board and autographed card scene. The cardboard is as thin as you can get and could be in no way considered a premium card. This is a collegiate licensed product so Favre is shown here in his Ol' Miss uniform. Initially I thought it was a Falcons uniform with the logo airbrushed off the side. One could see how I might make this mistake but because it's clearly marked as a collegiate licensed product on the back I realized this was not the case. The draw for these cards was the "stripe designation" for the insert cards. Each higher tier of "stripe" on the top was progressively more difficult to get. This might not have been the first insert but I could imagine the Beckett magazine was filled with these cards topping the hot list back in the early 1990's.

Despite the gaudy printing style and general ugliness of the card one can't deny that this is a cool one because it features one of the game's greatest QBs of all time. Would I want to go out and seek the other 3000 or so cards with all the variations and shortprints? I'd say not but I'm content with one of the best cards from the set. It sells any where from 2-5 dollars on Ebay and it's safe to say that it will never lose value. Eventually it might even be viewed as a classic.

Today's card, a super sweet RC year card of Cam Newton Carolina Panthers

        Today's card is 2011 Sp Authentic #94 Cam Newton. This is not officially considered a rookie card as Upper Deck started doing a strange thing with their products in 2011. We're all used to the base cards of veterans, a pack will mostly yield 18th year cards of Peyton Manning, 14th year Tom Brady cards and the like. Well with 2011 Sp authentic (Spx and Threads were also lumped together in this large set) we started to see the era of the base rookie card.  Base cards in 2011 Spx/Sp Authentic/Threads were rookie year cards but not officially considered rookies for some reason. 

         Despite the fact they are not rookies and they don't feature pro uniforms they are still pretty damn cool cards that are well designed and balanced. I pulled this from a pack in 2011 and it's sat in my "to be filed" box until today. Looking in my collections on Beckett this is my second Cam Newton card.

Something old and something new

These two cards are pretty dissimilar in era and production methods. The first one is 1992 Skybox Impact #190 Russell Maryland of the Cowboys dynasty. The cardboard is ultra thin but was just pulled from a pack that my boss gave me from his old stuff laying around. The second one is a really cool Blue Wave Refractor autograph parrallell of Dernard Robinson numbered to 125 copies. Looking at these two cards side by side it's crazy how much card collecting has changed since I started in 1987. The first card came from a .50 cent pack though and the second from a 50 dollar pack. I never would have expected the shift to autographed and memorabilia cards 20 years ago and I never would have believed that packs would be so expensive. That being said I'd much prefer the way things are now.

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.