Matt,I Am Your Trader

My search for Christmas related cards has been endless. I have been posting on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, blogs and even on Trading Card Database to help me land some cards from my favorite holiday. I have had some fairly decent success, I actually had higher hopes, but I have landed some solid cards so far.

On Twitter, @Cardboardsushi saw my wants and messaged me that he had some help if I wanted to trade. Since I wasn't going to turn that down I jumped on it and we worked out a deal pretty fast.

Since it is not Christmas season yet, though I am a very early decorator, I am holding off on showing off my return from this trade until then. December 1st kicks off 25 Days of Cardmas on here where the first 25 days of that month will feature Christmas cards. It will be a new yearly tradition so if I don't get to show off all of my new acquisitions this year, I will over time. 

 

Since our trade was more than just some Christmas cards, I will dive into the other part of it.

First up, he passed along a couple of freebie Collins cards.

Both of these I have, but it's always nice to have better shaped ones to replace the ones that may not be as good. The Paydirt card I don't mind owning a ton of. It's one of the Top 15 favorite inserts of the 90's hence the set I built of it.

Also in our trade were some Star Wars cards. I can say I am a fan, but not a die hard one. I really enjoy the first three original movies which turned out to be Episodes 4-6 later on but I haven't seen any of the new stuff Disney has been flowing out. I worry it will ruin those three movies I like for some reason. Maybe some day I will take a chance and actually watch them. I don't have interest however to watch the spinoff ones as I don't care about backstories.

Kylo Ren medallion card /99

And a pretty sweet Princess Leia commemorative patch. I assume these must spell out her first name and I am digging it. Question becomes, should I chase the other letters down now?

 

Thanks to @Cardboardsushi for the trade. I hope we can do this again.

 

As for you guys, which one Star Wars movie was your favorite and why?

Breakin Wax: 2014 Upper Deck Conference Greats Football 2-Box Break

After busting ten hobby packs of Upper Deck Conference Greats, I was hooked. So when I had the chance to open two hobby boxes, I was even more excited.

In every box of 2014 Upper Deck Conference Greats football there are 24 packs with 8 cards per pack. There is also one autograph and two memorabilia cards per box as well and one box topper.

I did really well with my box toppers, especially with pulling soon-to-be offensive rookie of the year Beckham that also fits in my PC. I haven't been more excited about a Giants rookie in some time. This guy is incredible to watch and made the bad Giants season more watchable.

Speaking of Giants, one of my favorites in Rodney Hampton was found in here. The base set is a mix of legends, veterans and rookies. There are also team schedule cards that I wasn't really a fan of.

There are also Hi-Series rookies and veterans that fall at different rates. I like these a lot. This product reminds me a lot of 1997 Upper Deck baseball in terms of design on these and being short-printed into the master set.

There are base cards parallels as well. Pewter, Copper and Black. Black is the toughest pull only numbered to 10.

- Regular Cards Pewter Parallel (1:1)
- Regular Cards Copper Parallel (1:4)
- Regular Cards Black Parallel (# to 10) - See more at: http://www.dacardworld.com/sports-cards/2014-upper-deck-conference-greats-football-hobby-box#sthash.otuvv9Yg.dpuf

BOOM! Just wished it wasn't a lineman.

Here are the memorabilia hits. I like the School Pride hits and there are rare versions to find to. The regular memorabilia hits are a bit disappointing only because they are not game worn and to me, that hurts them. I am not an event worn kinda guy.

My two autographs. Craig Yeast who I used to pull a lot in the 90's of when he played for the Bengals and former Patriots Quarterback, Babe Parilli. The funny part, the Parilli autograph and memorabilia card both came in the same box.

I like the autographed cards a lot in this product. They are from players you may or may not remember and includes superstars from today. I think the gold signatures from what I have seen look best on the back and white older photos than the newer ones as they seem to get lost.

Overall, not a bad break nor a great one. I will say there is plenty to find in this product when you do hit something and I do like the base cards despite not filling a simple set in 2 boxes worth. Right now prices on it are good, so if I were you and you like what you see, give it a try. Couldn't hurt.

The Card Bin: What Did I Find This Time?

I really enjoyed doing this post over at The Card Bin blog and I wasn't just going to leave you all hanging with it. So without further ado, another post from The Card Bin, which is what I call this this tote right here:

 

I think most of us collectors have that one place we store all of our extra cards that are not PC related. This is where I stick mine. I also use this as a once-in-awhile dig through to bring back memories or for a just for fun experience. I will start posting cards from this bin to show you what's hiding in there. I honestly have no idea what is in there, I only know its autographs and memorabilia cards from the past 14 years. So this should be fun for both you and I!

Onto today's find:

2010 Topps Commemorative World Series Patch Johnny Podres

Thoughts on today's find are welcomed!

Review: Topps Football Blaster 2013

With a lack of funds for a jumbo box and the fact a hobby box only has 1 hit in it, I always give retail Topps a go. As with every year, I am mainly searching for rookie cards in a product like this. The exclusive commemorative patches are just bonuses.

We did pretty well in this break and for $20 felt like it was the worth the buy. Read on to see why.

Box Break Down:

• 10 Packs Per Box
• $20 a Box 
• 1 Commemorative Ribbon Per Box

   

BASE CARDS: Topps most of the time struggles with action photography. But this years flagship set is some of the best photography we have seen from Topps and may also have reminded us of what Upper Deck used to bring to NFL cards. All of the rookie photo's are from the Rookie Premier so a lot of them have the players on the field. Rookies fall about one to two per pack.

The base cards also have the trademark white border which isn't quite as wide as we have seen it some years. The bottom of the card design with team logo and player name looks great. One of the better designed Topps base cards in awhile.

And as with all Topps flagship products there is the Sp base and rookie card factor as well with the different photography.

Nice blaster box find at 1:63 packs

 

 

 

INSERTS:  In recent years Topps loaded up their base flagship products with inserts. This year it was nice not to find 3 inserts per pack. Most of our packs in the blaster only had 1. A few had two. So overall this blaster only had about 15 inserts. Not bad. The designs were nicely done as well and we were glad to see 1,000 Yard club make its return. Mini's also make another return in this years product.

And there are a good amount of parallels to find as well. We only landed one in this blaster in the Military one above.

Here are a list of the inserts:

- Gridiron Legends
- Legends in the Making
- Future Legends
- 1,000-Yard Club
- 4,000-Yard Club
- 1959 Topps Minis

And here is a list of parallels to find:

- Gold-Bordered Parallel Seq #'d to 2013.
- BCA-Bordered Parallel Seq #'d to 399.
- Military-Bordered Parallel Seq #'d to 399.
- Black-Bordered Parallel Seq #'d to 58. HOBBY ONLY
- Platinum Foil Parallel Seq #'d 1/1.
- Base Card Printing Plates #'d 1/1 HOBBY ONLY

AUTOGRAPHS: N/A unless you are very lucky.

 

JERSEY/PATCH CARDS:With every Topps NFL blaster release comes with a commemorative patch. Our patch was actually a bonus surprise as it was the military parallel. Most of the patches you find will be pink Breast Cancer awareness ones. We lucked out and pulled this paralleled one. We don't have much in terms of info on these. We tried to contact Topps football to find odds but never got an answer (are we at all surprised by this, no). If you have some info on these, please feel free to comment with it :)

OVERALL THOUGHTS: With 80 cards total, 1 commemorative patch per blaster, one rookie and about one to two inserts per pack its a reasonable price at $20. But the better retail buy to us for Topps football 2013, not that this one is bad, is the Blister pack. It has one rookie oversized jersey card per blister at $15. It's also loaded with inserts and rookies as well. And the Sp parallels fall 1:35 packs. W also believe there is 72 cards in there as well. The only un-fun part of those is it's only one big thick pack.