Breakin Wax:1995 Topps Football Series One 1-Pack Break

Another week, another break from the trade I made with @batcavelv. This time it is one lonely Topps 1995 football pack.

I remember opening a ton of these back then. But, I haven't opened any since and all it took was this one pack to bring me back.

In every pack of 1995 Topps football, you will get veterans, rookies and possibly 1,000 or 3,000 yard subset cards.

The base card design was the usual Topps with the white border but this time they used a funky font for the players name in gold.

A few good players here including Leroy Butler.

And the better of the group here with Troy Aikman and Junior Seau.

One of my most favorite Yard club designs.

Rookie cards design. Pretty basic except the draft pick addition.

And my final card of the pack was a Hit List insert that showcased the leagues better sacker/hitters. These fall 1:4.

One pack, one rookie, one insert, few good players and many memories. Well worth the break.

1/1 Printing Plate Patch Trade Mail Day

This post is just the beginning of posts for my MONSTER TRADE with Shane from Project Pedro blog.

A couple weeks ago, @SCUUniontownPA posted a deal of the day on Twitter along with their weekly hobby box giveaway. The deal was for A BEAUTIFUL Andre Williams 1/1 printing plate patch card. Obviously I drooled over the item for my Williams PC, but with recent card expenditures exceeded, I couldn't pick it up. Shane being the great guy he is, swooped in and snatched it for me to be included in our MONSTER TRADE. Yes, I keep putting that in big letters because I want it to be known how large this trade actually is. 

On Monday, the card arrived even more beautiful in person and it came with a bonus rookie card I didn't have.
    
Here is that bonus card....

And here is that amazing printing plate patch card.

A big thanks goes out to Shane for picking this up for me and another thanks is due to SCU for the great deal.

Keep in mind readers this is just the beginning of this trade. More posts to come next week!

Calling Terrell Davis? My First TD Autograph 90's Style

I can't say I was ever a Denver Broncos fan, but I loved to watch TD when he hit the field especially when he scored a TD and did the "Mile High Salute" that I used to mock every time I scored against buddies. It's too bad injuries took a toll on his career as I believe he could have broken some big time records in the league had he played his entire career.

Terrell played from 1995-2001 all with the Broncos and was a 6th round draft pick. Davis' best season came in 1998 where he rushed for 2,008 yards. He also helped lead Denver to two Super Bowl wins late in John Elway's career and was a Super Bowl MVP in Super Bowl 32 where he ran all over GB Packers defense. Imagine if he hadn't sat out the second quarter.

 I knew over time I would have to acquire an autograph of him. That time was now.

This may not be the prettiest autograph in all of the land, my camera didn't help it much either, but it is an autograph and an affordable one. It also fits my 90's collecting trend.

 

He is one of many I would like to add an autograph of from the 90's. So the way I look at this is, one down, more to go.

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TOPIC:

Who is the one player from the 90's you would like an autograph of?

2015 Yard Sale Autograph Pickups Part 4:IT'S PRIME TIME!

After picking up what I had in the first three posts, could I really leave behind this Deion Sanders autographed Plaque? Nope. And after a quick check on his autograph from other sites, I thought the $ for the S was cool, but wanted to make sure he signed that way before throwing S I mean $ at it. It seemed to turn out he signed that way.

So here is pretty cool addition to my collection and for a reasonable $15 as well (I do wished he wasn't in his Cowboys uni but a deal is deal)

I Did The Salsa When I Opened My Mail Box

Waiting....waiting....waiting...

Feels like forever when you are expecting a package and it doesn't arrive when you expect it to. You then start to question whether the USPS had lost, the person forgot to send it or even worse, someone else was enjoying the card(s) you were supposed to get. No matter the situation, it gives you unease til it arrives.

But how do you feel when a package arrives unexpectedly, well, depends on who you are. Excitement, unease til you open, or you start to scream like a little girl are some that may occur. I had a unexpected mail day yesterday and  what actually started as the happy dance quickly turned to the salsa after opening.


So for about a year, @TheRealDpan has had a Victor Cruz card I have wanted. But, I just never really had the chance to snatch it for a variety of reasons. So for the past week I have been putting together a monstrosity of a trade with Shane over at Project Pedro blog (give it a check out if you haven't yet) and mentioned the card to him. We thought about adding it to our trade but we moved on from the idea. Which was fine since I had spent a year moving back and forth on the card and it still hadn't gone anywhere. I was hoping it would always stay til I picked it up.

I guess by now you can tell where this story is going. The envelope I started to dance to then did the salsa to afterwards first contained this note......

And then this awesome card. A card I had dreamed of for a year. It contains a piece of pylon from Super Bowl 46 where the Giants once again took down the powerhouse Patriots. Oddly enough, Shane is a die-hard Patriots fan so it must had stunned a bit to pick up a Giants card even for a friend.

    

 

A HUMONGOUS thanks goes out to Shane. He has become a great friend and is a good all around guy. I was shocked by the surprise and very appreciative .If you haven't checked out his blog, please do so. If you have any Pedro Martinez's you are looking to unload, I recommend you hit him up. You can also find him on Twitter @ShaneSalmonson . Thanks must also go out to @TheRealDpan for mailing the card to me.

This was the tip of the iceberg for a great week. I finished up two trades, one with Shane that involved roughly 500 cards, and the Giants won their first game. Cannot wait to show off the epic trade in the upcoming week!

CAPTION THIS CARD!

This card is crying out for a Caption.

 Leave a caption below for this card. Please keep it free of language and clean please for our younger audience!

HOBBY TOPIC

This series is all about you, the readers. My opinion is mum on every subject, however, you guys have the open mic per say on here. So without further ado, here is today' topic:

Odd Ball!

What's the oddest card/item you own? This can also be an odd memorabilia item.

I ROSE To The Occasion!

When you think Pete Rose, what are the first words that come to mind? Mine, Hall Of Famer.

And when you have the chance to land a "future" Hall Of Famers autograph for a deal, you take it.

So here is my latest addition, an 8x10 auto from Fanatics Authentic of Rose pointing to the crowd. My first Rose auto.

I know other than the MLB, the rest of us baseball fans agree that Rose should be in the Hall. He made a small mistake, but that wasn't as a player. As a player, Hall Of Famer. Manager, no. To me, they should have banned him from the Hall as a manager, but, put him in as a player. He was a career .300 hitter, had over 4,200 hits, and batted in over 1,300 runs. Those to me are numbers deserving of such an honor and I am happy to have finally added his autograph to my collection.

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TOPIC:
Do you own a Rose auto? Do you agree that he should be in the Hall?

BREAKING NEWS! I LIKE GOOOOOLD! Ruben Randle Topps Chrome Rainbow Update!

What seemed like a stretch for years, has now turned into a reality with this addition

That's right, the Gold refractor numbered to 50!! I also got an awesome deal on it from COMC. My first purchase from there as well.

I am now ONE card away from completing my 2012 Topps Chrome rookie rainbow of Rueben Randle! However, that card being the Superfractor, may make my rainbow always one card short.

I recently did a search of the Super to see if I could even find it or have a shot to afford it. This was the last appearance by it:

Then I got excited, despite the price, when it said view relisted item!

Happiness turned to sadness very fast.

Despite possibly never having the "full" rainbow, I am pretty happy with my accomplishment and to me, this is a rainbow. That doesn't mean I will end my search for the Super, but if it is never listed again, I will be okay with this:

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TOPIC:
Have you ever completed a rainbow? Are you finding it hard landing the super?

Far Ahead, Yet, So Far Behind

If you have been reading Sport Card Collectors as of late, you will notice a good amount of mail days, pickups (such as the autograph yard sale ones) and Breakin Wax's going on. It's not because I have come upon a pile of money (even though I wished I had), it's because I have fallen really far behind on here posting my pickups when I pick them up. A lot of what you have been reading recently was picked up months ago.

Now you must be wondering , why did he put far ahead in the title then if he is that far behind? Well, I am actually far ahead in terms of writing the posts. I was able to get ahead on writing them by sticking to my once a week dedication to blog posts where I spend a couple hours putting together as many as I can. Not sure how many of the rest of you bloggers do that. I would be interested in hearing if you do or how you get your posts done.

All of these older posts are scheduled to publish until October 23rd which should get me caught up on ALL older pickups/mail days. The 24th should start NEW posts as long as nothing pops up that needs to be published before the others. Which you never know as those kind of things have already happened delaying these ones.

Anyways, enjoy the upcoming posts as there is a lot of fun stuff to share coming up. It's actually a surprise to me as well as I don't remember what's publishing on what day til I wake up lol.

Also, while I have your attention, if you haven't voted for your favorite segments on here yet, to the right of the blog on top you will find a poll. It just takes a second to click on a couple and hit submit. It would be greatly appreciated :)

Breakin Wax:1996 Stadium Club Baseball 4-Pack Break

Continuing my weekly posting til I am done with them, another break from the trade I made with @batcavelv. Today's offering is baseball and what I consider one of the best products out there. Stadium Club has caught our collecting attentions with it's top notch photography making us feel like we were alive at that certain event.

1996 was no different.

In every pack of 1996 Topps Stadium Club baseball you will find 12 cards. One of those cards will be a TSC card that you will see coming up. You can also find inserts!

The base card design for 1996 Stadium Club was simply clean and photographic. Topps should dig back to these times of making baseball cards. They were so much better then.

Here is the above spoken of TSC rainbow foil card. Very nice and clean just like the base cards.

In my four packs, I actually pulled an insert in each one. Each of the inserts were Extreme Player. This is the Bronze version that fell 1:5 packs.

And these are the Silver Extreme Players that fell at 1:10.

Extreme Players parallels existed for 180 of the players on the checklist and at the end of the 1996 regular season, an "Extreme Player" from each position was identified as a winner based on a statistical formula. It appears none of mine were winners.

If they were and this was 1996, I would be able to exchange them for 10-card sets of the winners of whatever level I have.
Card backs came with the info on how to claim.

Can't go wrong with these. I got some fun base cards for my PC, some inserts and they brought back a few memories. Couldn't ask for more.

Vote Please!

Once again I have placed a poll on the upper right side of the blog. It is also one I have done before a couple of months ago on your favorite segments.Why do this one again and especially so quickly? I just wanted some feedback for an end of the year post that will publish on December 31st. I have also given more time on this poll to vote and hopefully everyone that reads this or stops by will give their input.

You can vote for more than one segment if you enjoy more than one. This is not a vote to eliminate any of the current segments and is just being used as feedback to me on possible new ones for 2016 to add to this already star studded lineup.

Thanks to all of you in advance who take a second out to vote. You guys rock!

PS: You will notice one NEW segment on the poll that will be coming up soon. I am very excited about this one.

WHAT'S IN THE BOX:SPECIAL FLOWERY EDITION

The segment you thought was over last week, has one more addition to it. A very special addition at that.

Recently my mother-in-law dropped off this box and told me I would like it's contents. She had picked up this item at a yard sale she happened to stop at before coming to my house.

I slowly opened the box expecting to find some oddball items and hopefully not earnings. Luckily I was in-agreement with her after opening it up. .

SWEET! CARDBOARD! She knows me so well and is always on the lookout for cards at yard sales. She paid a dollar for the box and it's contents. I immediately started to rummage through the goods.

There wasn't really anything too special in here, but here is the rundown of every card that I found.

Not a bad McGwire amongst some prospects

STAR!

Classic. A few names here.

Can't go wrong finding a Nolan Ryan

Pedro I will have to send my buddy Shane. Boggs too!

The Straw-man!

It seems to be at least worth the dollar she spent. A few of these I will keep and the rest will be used to pay-it-forward especially since I have most of them.

I must also note before you ask, the box isn't FT or FS as my mother in law took it back. Sorry!

Hoping this isn't the last time I get to do a What's In The Box post but in all likelihood it is. Unless another surprise like this arrives.

Packer Fans Don't Look, The Kick WAS GOOD!

My first two weeks of the NFL have been awful. The Giants continued to blow games late this week, my NFL pick 'em looked to had been done by a 2 year old (they might have done better) and even though it appears I may get a fantasy win this week (need 11 points total between Andrew Luck and Chris Ivory) my team has a long way to go.

So to help bring some cheer to this NFL season I have had so far, I will have to take a look back. Where you may ask? Well, to the 2008 NFC Championship game between the Giants and Packers. An amazing game with a great finish. At least for Giants fans.

So the game was tied 20-20 . It honestly shouldn't have been, Lawrence Tynes had missed multiple FG's including one at the end of the game in regulation that would had won it.

But he we were. Green Bay had the ball and I was covering my eyes sweating like a pig with my jersey pretty much glued to me at that point. Brett Favre suddenly released the ball and I was thinking "oh no" but somehow and someway CB Corey Webster jumped the route intercepting it. I shouted so loud I was shocked the windows didn't break. I mean, they did this off from the LEGEND Brett Favre who had been put in winning situations many times.

Now a few downs later, it was up to Lawrence Tynes again. Could he kick the Giants to the Super Bowl or crumble under pressure.

Let's see if my newest pickups, roughly under $3 from Steiner Sports, can tell the story a bit. They are quite impressive shots.

Tynes lines up for the kick. He has his focus on......

The kick is up in the air, by now I am down on one knee like the players on the sidelines....

And IT'S GOOD! The Giants are going to the Super Bowl!!!!!! And if I have any Patriot fans reading this, I must remind you of how great that Super Bowl was :-D

Those were the days. Feels like forever ago and that same feeling I have is about the last time I have watched a playoff game with the Giants.

This years Giants have played well like I thought they might. The offense did pick up last week, the defense is slowly improving and now with the best players Dallas has out for awhile, the Giants with a few wins could put themselves in good position. Of course this is saying they can stay healthy too and I think Victor Cruz or another WR is really needing to step up. Odell is dominant, but if teams start to pile on him, Eli has nowhere to go.

In closing, another thing to note as well, in that same season in the above article I just wrote, they started out 0-2, gave up a ton of points/yards before playing the Redskins and turning their season around. Guess who comes to NY on Thursday night......

2015 Yard Sale Autograph Pickups Part 3:SHAQ ATTACK!

I didn't need any Icy Hot to pick up this autograph at the yard sale. That's right, it's a Shaq auto.

The authenticity company wasn't one I had heard of before. I tried to do some research on them but came up empty.

The autograph is spot on to Shaqs after looking around at some. The only differences it seems in Shaq autos is his jersey number placement. Seems to be all over the place with every auto. But, for $10, I couldn't go wrong with this multi-NBA champions autograph..

BREAKING! Latest News On Rueben Randle Topps Chrome Rainbow!

It's almost been a year since I posted any updates to my Rueben Randle 2012 Topps Chrome rookie rainbow mostly because the last three cards I needed were tough to find and expensive. The final three were the Red, Gold and Superfractors.

As you can tell by today's title, I have an update!

My rainbow did appear as this..........

But now, BAM! I added the really tough to find red refractor! I probably overpaid for this item, but this has been the only one of these listed for the past year and if I am going to make any progress on this rainbow, I needed to just fork out and buy it.

What makes these tough to find is the serial numbering to 25.

I am excited to knock this one off the want list and bring myself two more steps closer to completing this rainbow. Something I am really hoping to accomplish since it is on my hobby bucket list.

Time to search for the gold and super!

90's Flashback:1999-2000 Upper Deck Powerdeck Gordie Howe

Upper Deck was a new innovative idea from Upper Deck that brought together both the computer and sports cards. It was a genius start of things if you think about it today. The thing I liked about this idea better than today's interactive cards is that you got this physical one as well (product had a paper card along with a CD one). Today's are just cards stuck on your phone or other mobile devices.

These also offered much more. Each CD-ROM has game clips, sounds, photos and career highlights of the featured players and can be played on almost any computer.

HOBBY TOPIC

This series is all about you, the readers. My opinion is mum on every subject, however, you guys have the open mic per say on here. So without further ado, here is today' topic:

What year did you start collecting? What got you into collecting?

I started in 1993 and my father and I got into it together. Enough with me, I wanna hear about you!

2015 Sport Card Collectors Panini Player Of The Day Blogger Promo (NEW ADDITIONS)

Well folks, for the 4th year in a row Sport Card Collectors blog will participate in the Panini Player Of The Day blogger promo. However, this years edition will be a bit different.

What's going to change? Mostly locations of the contests as I will try to hit all social media sites this year. None of these contests will be hosted on here however like in years past.

Why the change? Well, Panini changed things up a bit almost deleting the blogger promotion all together as they are trying something new and moving to a different POD promoting field. But, I luckily begged for you guys and will be hosting it again. So please make sure to make some noise so I can continue to host this for you. If not, this could be the final bow.

Another reason for the changes in my promotion this year, in years past, not only were you guys getting some sweet prizes, but if I ran the best promotion, I would also receive some cool prizes. It was a double bonus which I enjoyed immensely. I liked giving away the prizes both from Panini and myself and I also liked using my mind/knowledge of promoting and trying to outdo other bloggers and myself yearly. I like a good challenge and being an underdog blogger I always rose to the occasion. Which if you didn't know, I was crowned champ the last three years out of the three years I have participated. This year the big change is that you guys will be getting the prizes and benefiting and I won't be getting anything since technically the blogger promo is no more. This means I put in the work, pay for shipping and do it just for you guys. That's how you know I love ya!

So with these changes being made this year, I decided to take my promotion in a different direction. I wanted to make it easier since I didn't need to push myself as hard. In the last few years I spent many, many, many, many countless hours on here uploading, downloading, commenting, posting, sharing and so on with the contests. Not this year. NO WAY!

1. You will find the contests mostly on the BRAND SPANKIN NEW SCC POD Promo 2015 Facebook page. You can find and LIKE that page HERE. Yes, I moved most of this promo to Facebook! This will make it easier for most to post pictures or comment. YOU MAY WANT TO HURRY UP AND LIKE THE PAGE AS THE FIRST 100 LIKES WILL BE ENTERED TO WIN A PRIZE. (IMPORTANT Note: Like with all of my contests due to shipping costs, these will be open to ONLY U.S. Residents or residents outside the U.S. who have a mailing address in the U.S. or have someone willing to ship it to them)

Contests will start next week once the prizes arrive so you have a week to be one of the first 100. Please SHARE the page with friends, on Twitter or if you are another blogger even on your blog. Let's make this contest successful.

As for the contests themselves, they will be easy and fun. Some will be just comment, some will be adding a picture and some may involve you checking out SCC or the POD website. Details will come next week on the Facebook page.
 
2. The rest of the promotion, the bigger prizes will be given away on our brother blog The Card Bin. You can find that HERE. Please FOLLOW the blog, add it to your keeps list and like the SCC POD Promo Page or follow me on Twitter @sportcardcollec to keep track of when the bigger contests will come.

3. I may run a couple of Twitter contests as well.

So here is to another fun year of hosting this contest. May the luck ever be in your favor!

Thoughts on this are always welcomed!

PS: THIS IS ONLY ONE OF TWO MAJOR CONTEST ANNOUNCEMENTS TO COME! KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR THE NEXT ONE AS WELL!

Upper Deck Game Dated Cards...I GOT ONE!

When you bought Upper Deck in the late 1990's, other than filling action photography base sets, chasing the elusive UD Game Jersey cards and nailing down some impressive inserts, you always wanted to pull a rare UD Game Dated card. Well, I didn't pull one but I did finally add one to the 90's PC.

These cards fell at a rate of 1:1500 or 1 in every 1 or 2 cases so they were not easy finds. Rumors also had it that only a certain number of these were produced for each of the Game Dated cards in the set. Even as low as 10-25 limited on some.

Some collectors, including myself early on, found these cards were also a bit confusing as many have claimed to pull them since Upper Deck put Game Dated stamped on some of the base cards. Well, I am here to tell you that cards that look like this......

ARE NOT Game Dated parallels.

However, this one I picked up for a great price on eBay, is. Ain't she purty!

Here they are side by side. The foil on the card with the side by side really shows you a great example of what to look for.

 Not Real                                                                Real

   

I am pretty stoked to had finally added one of these to my PC. There are not many of them around, but most can be picked up for about $12 unless they are MJ. I found this one for under $5 so I had to snatch it.

I hope you enjoyed my newest addition and I hope the extra info on these helps you if you want to add one to your collection.