New cards for the last few days

       Here are my latest additions to the football collection. As you can see it's all Chrome and Finest. Two of these are older ones from 2005. My favorite one here is the Vincent Jackson followed by the Montee Ball 1986 RC insert from last year's chrome. 

        I've been reading a ton of posts on the Blowout cards forum about how purchasing a box or god forbid a case of 2014 Topps Chrome is a "dumpster fire" this year because of the massive amount of cases released. You can tell the print run is huge because of the gigantic (73 RC base autograph) checklist. Some of these guys like Conner Shaw (no longer in the NFL) and Jordan Lynch for the Dolphins (Who? That's what I said...) will be really disappointing for collectors as their box hit. There are still many cards that collectors WILL be happy to pull, many more than last year. The receiver class is insane this year and if you pull one of the other top QBs it's not so bad either. The problem is that the really good autographs are so hard to pull that the box prices have tumbled by 20 dollars in the last few days. This is absolutely unheard of and a testament to just how bad these boxes are for rippers and flippers. I actually am not sorry to see it happen because it means cheaper prices for real collectors like me. You can find a ton of singles for rock bottom prices right out of the gate on Ebay right now.  

In three days I've added 2 case hits of Topps Chrome and an older base card

These three cards are my additions for the last three days. The first two don't look very special but they are in fact the base variation cards for 2013 Topps Chrome. Each one of these cards were had at  a great price, the Austin was .99 cents plus shipping which is what you could expect to pay for a base RC card. The Peterson would have had much more interest earlier in the year, these were typically selling for around 20.00 but due to his legal troubles I was able to pick it up for about 2.50 plus shipping. When I set out to do the 55 card SP set from this year I expected to pay an average of 10.00 a card. So far I've been able to pick up quite a few for much much less than that. Even though these were correctly named variation cards in the listing I'm not sure if the buyers really know the rarity of the cards, hence the low values. Another possibility is the demand has fallen off greatly due to the newest Topps Chrome release which just came out on Wednesday.

The Steven Jackson is a base card I pulled from a 2005 box I broke but never cataloged and organized. A better design than the 2004 set, I love seeing how the designs progressed year after year.

In terms of Chrome I went looking for the inaugural set on Ebay, the 1996 Topps chrome set. While you can find many singles, I haven't seen the set for sale nor any completed auctions. While it's easy to get a full set from the last few years it seems like any sets that were for sale were bought a long time ago. With older sets you just have to be patient. If I decide to so the 1996 set I may have to do it the old fashioned way, card by card.

In celebration of 2014 Topps Chrome Football...

Today's card comes at you from a decade ago. I'm assuming I opened a bunch of packs back then because lo and behold I have at least 100 chrome cards from years past. I like this look with the white borders. The text and photo only are chrome as you can see from this pictures. Looking back on this set as it has progressed you can see the variations have gotten out of control depending on how you collect. As a set collector it's a nightmare. If you're a player or team collector all these variants are much more attractive. I remember buying a box of 2005 Topps Chrome for roughly 55.00 in the year it was released. All I got were a few inserts, 5 or 6 refractors and that was it. Autographs were in the product but at vastly long odds. If I remember correctly the best card I got out of this box was a Darren Sproles RC.

Things have changes in some ways for worse but in many ways better for the hobby. Now you will always get an autograph and with inflation, (for another 20 bucks a box than it was 10  years ago)
75-80 dollars for a box of Chrome is in my opinion, not so bad.

Sunday's football day right?

This is a rookie refractor out of 2013 Topps Chrome that I bought last week at my local card shop. Part of the fun with a real card shop is sifting through all the singles to find the cards you want. Sort of like an Easter egg hunt when they have thousands of singles. This will by my ninth refractor card out of that 220 card set. I've always been a closet Eagles fan ever since Donovan Mcnabb got drafted in 1999. He went on to have a great career and was pretty fun to watch. Barkley's rookies have cooled off significantly since it's clear he's a third string QB (although with the injury to Foles he's now #2). I love all the attention that Mark Sanchez has gotten but last week's stumble just proves that he's Mark Sanchez and is prone to turnovers. Who knows? We might see this guy playing quicker than collectors might think.

These refractor cards are cool in the right light but at first glance they do look like the base cards. Luckily there is the word "Refractor" on the back to help collectors out.

1997 Pacific Prisms Baseball

Today's card is another beauty from 1997 Pacific Prisms Baseball. This is #55 in the set. This would have to be my first card with a player named Geronimo for sure. The Oakland As are another one of those popular teams, not as popular as the Yankees but they have some championships. 9 of them in fact, something which I wasn't aware of since I don't follow baseball very closely. The last one they've won was in 1989 so it's been a while for this club. Every time I see these cards I'm still blown away by the intricacy of them. My only complaint on the design of this is that by having the name in all those colors and printing it in vertical fashion it makes it very very hard to read. Obviously they were trying to think outside the box on this design but this doesn't work very well.

Going with a baseball one today

Today's card is one of the really nice 1997 Pacfic Prisms Baseball. This is #55 Bernie Williams. I remember as a kid loving every Yankee card I pulled just for the sheer fact that I knew they were more valuable. I used to trade all my Padres for Yankees. This one would have been no exception. The photo doesn't do it justice as the photo is printed on a clear acrylic. This card illustrates the height of late 1990's insert parallel goodness that you used to be able to find in packs. The innovation continues, there's a new sports release nearly every week of the year so the companies have tried it all. This was on the cusp of the autograph and jersey revolution. Manufacturers were trying to find new and interesting ways to market and sell these cards. I love this baseball set, it's a pretty one to look at in person. Unfortunately I probably only have about 80% of it from buying packs in 1997. Cards on the internet were just becoming a thing back then. I'm sure I could complete it pretty easily now if I dedicated the effort to it.

Finally some Football card additions!

It's been a bit since I've had any football cards to add to my collection. Most of the cards I've added over the last couple of weeks have been baseball and in keeping with trying to keep this blog focused on the football end. As you might have noticed I've become pretty enamored with the 2013 Topps Chrome brand. Two of these cards are off of eBay, (The Justin Hunter Photo Variation RC seen at the bottom  and the Luke Joeckel Blue Wave autograph numbered to 50 at the top). The middle one I got from Mike's Stadium Sports Cards in Aurora CO for a fair price. The Lacy is probably the most valuable of the three because of his hobby status. The other two are only important to me as a set builder. The Blue wave autograph which I love by the way is my sixth in the set. The variation photo card is my second in the set, I added the Peyton Manning not too long ago. I got some other cards at Mikes, very Broncos heavy as usual but I'll keep those under wraps until the time comes.