Topps Aces

 

This year's Topps came out hot with some great looking inserts. Something I haven't seen since the 90's. Well, besides the use of the 1988 inserts that I have no use for.

One of my favorite inserts from Series 1 was the All Aces inserts. I am not usually one to want pitcher cards, even from my own team, but these look great and so great that I want to chase the set.

I finally got my first one in hand this week when I did a Twitter trade with @matth3wbrigg5 who needed help for his Series 1 set and I had some for him.

With Cole being the only one down so far, here is what remains,

AA-1 Nolan Ryan - Texas Rangers

AA-2 Bob Gibson - St. Louis Cardinals
AA-3 Greg Maddux - Atlanta Braves
AA-4 Randy Johnson - Arizona Diamondbacks
AA-5 Pedro Martinez - Boston Red Sox
AA-6 Justin Verlander - Houston Astros
AA-7 Clayton Kershaw - Los Angeles Dodgers
AA-8 Jacob deGrom - New York Mets
AA-9 Gerrit Cole - New York Yankees
AA-10 Corbin Burnes - Milwaukee Brewers
AA-11 Shohei Ohtani - Los Angeles Angels

AA-12 Shane McClanahan - Tampa Bay Rays
AA-13 Carlos Rodon - San Francisco Giants
AA-14 Sonny Gray - Minnesota Twins
AA-15 Shane Bieber - Cleveland Guardians
AA-16 Aaron Nola - Philadelphia Phillies
AA-17 Sandy Alcantara - Miami Marlins
AA-18 Joe Musgrove - San Diego Padres
AA-19 Alek Manoah - Toronto Blue Jays
AA-20 Max Fried - Atlanta Braves
AA-21 Stephen Strasburg - Washington Nationals
AA-22 Dylan Cease - Chicago White Sox
AA-23 Luis Castillo - Seattle Mariners
AA-24 Julio Urías - Los Angeles Dodgers
AA-25 Max Scherzer - New York Mets

I will update this as I go along but if any of you have any for pwe trade, hit me up please!

Thoughts on this insert set is welcomed in comments.

Let's Talk About Sets Volume 39:1997 Spx Racing Complete Set

And the final add to the Spx family, is the 1997 Spx Racing set. I already completed the 1996 Spx Racing set, now it's time to do the base version of the 1997 Spx.

1997 Spx is once again a small base set but it also has multiple parallels to it that need to be built as well.

Here's a glance at the 25 card base set,

I have always liked the 1997 Spx design more than the rest.

With the base set down, that's one thing. But, many more to go with this product.

• I need three 25 card parallel sets Blue, Gold and Silver
• Speedview Autographs
• Tag Team
• Tag Team Autographs

 Thanks to Bryan over @90sNicheFBCard for the set help. If any of you have anymore help towards any of my Spx sets, give me a holla and we can definitely set up a trade!

Trading With Cliff

@oriolesrise was someone in the last couple of months or so I have begun to follow on Twitter. Before that, we would still have conversations about his postings but I never actually had followed til I realized I wasn't. It was shameful I wasn't already.

Anyways, he posts some really cool stuff and as we began to talk a couple of weeks ago, he had posted a few things I really wanted and he nicely set them aside. We quickly, very quickly I thought I was dealing with The Flash, agreed on a trade and a deal was done. The only problem I am having with the deal is that my end hasn't arrived to him yet after almost a week. Gotta love USPS. If it doesn't, I will just have to send another and hope that arrives. But, I am hopeful that USPS will do their jobs and get what I sent to him. I have never had a PWE get lost before and I don't want this to be a first.

In the meantime, @oriolesrise mailed mine right out and I got it in two days.

A cool Fleer Giants schedule sticker for my PC from 1989 I believe.

 

Up next, a cool unopened Pinnacle Cooperstown set that had a Griffey I needed. I am not sure yet if I will open or keep it sealed.

 

 

Look! I am 1 of 200,000 people to own one!

 

 

And finally, the big draw in for me was this Pinnacle The Naturals set. It also has a Griffey I needed and just looks stunning overall. Once again the set is sealed and I am torn on whether I want to open it yet or not.

   

 

A big thanks goes out to @oriolesrise for the mail day. I hope my end arrives to you soon and that we can work out future deals down the road. Go give this guy a follow people if you haven't yet!

1995:My Hobby Explosion

1995 was a great year for me in the hobby.

I was going all-in for card collecting. I started sorting cards by brands, star players, and rookies and putting them into binders, boxes and sleeves. I had a notebook where I kept track of how many cards of each we had and what they were. I was also reading the backs of card wrappers like a book and studied the odds of each.

1995 also had taken our grocery shopping trips and turned them from trips for food into trips for cards as new releases came out.  We also began to discover that local pharmacies and the big local box store Ames carried packs in a drop down case as well.

Cards were starting to appear everywhere! Such a great time to start in the hobby as opposed to today.

With my growing knowledge of football, the sport I began to know best and collect the most of, I started recognizing names, players and teams that were good. You know, the Cowboys, Steelers, 49ers, Packers, Favre, Rice, Montana, Sanders, and Smith to name a few.

Greatest running back I have ever watched

I also grew into a NY Giants fan after my father, so I was always on the search in packs for Giants especially Rodney Hampton who grew on me. My knowledge was also was starting to grow in other sports as well, but I was mainly football still at this point.

Rodney is always hitting Paydirt

One of my most consistent buys of 1995 was Fleer Football. I know many of you shudder at the product for it's design, but it was quite sharp for a 12 year old boy. I can't remember how many packs of these we bought at the grocery store. But, it was enough to help us fill some of the insert sets and almost a base card set.

One of the insert sets we almost filled just from packs alone was , the 1995 Fleer Flair Preview Set. These cards looked amazing and I was happy just to open the packs to find one of these per-pack. Just from packs alone we were able to accomplish all but one card in the set. That final one took me another year to chase down and to me was the most important one, the Rodney Hampton. But, thanks to some hobby love, that was fixed. More on that in a different post and you will have to wait til we hit 1996 to find out.

The Fleer Provisions set for 1995 was really cool and was the first insert set we were able to put together. It was a very exciting moment. When you put all of the cards together they made a puzzle. Sorry I couldn't find the rest to show you right now.

 

Gridiron Leader was a groovy dance floor looking insert we fell a few cards short of from filling the set of. Someday I may try to chase them down and get this one done. The background colors on these matched the teams color scheme.

 

TD Sensations was the second full insert set we completed. It was full of big name stars like Jerry Rice, Marshall Faulk, and Emmitt Smith. I couldn't remember where the last card in the set went but it's buried on my desk somewhere.

 

Fleer was only one of a few handful of products I bought a good amount of. As we move along I will discuss a few others including one that provided my first big pull.

The Card I Have Wanted For 4 Years

My buddy @JGfan24ever struck again with set help and a surprise!

I knew he was sending some help for my 2014 Flair Football chase , but what I didn't know was about the extra card he tossed in.

Up first, my Flair set needs. I have officially completed the Row 2 set-thanks to him- and now have narrowed down the search for Row 1 even more thanks to @JGfan24ever.

With 11 more down, I am currently just 3 away from having the Row 1 set as well! I am quite impressed.  I am quite excited as I haven't completed a full set of anything newer in years as most of my set focus has been on the past which I will put a post about on a later date.

However, this Flair set brings back the past and present so this is my main new set chase right now.

 

And finally the card I have sought after for 4 years. I know it's a bit silly and most would laugh at me for wanting it, but it's a unique one of a kind card.

Introducing the 2013 Score Leon Sandcastle rookie card done in the glorious 1989 Score design:

If you don't remember anything about this card or the player, leading up to the 2013 NFL Draft, NFL Network's and former NFL Player Deion Sanders made some promo's starting in the commercials for Super Bowl XLVII featuring the fastest and most impressive player of that NFL Draft, Leon Sandcastle. They made it appear as if Sandcastle would be the Chiefs #1 pick that year because "Leon doesn't jump, Leon flies". 

Nobody in that draft could do what Leon could. Actually, taking a look back at that draft now, Leon would have been the obvious number 1 pick because of that poor year.

The promo's were so popular, that Panini decided to make a card of him in the 2013 Prestige (I want this version too) and the 2013 Score products. There were autograph versions as well. I am not sure how tough any of these cards were to pull, but I busted plenty of Score and Prestige and never saw a single one.

You can see this card crossed off my want list and the Prestige one still on there and the rest of my complete want list of cards and toys HERE.

A big thanks goes out to @JGfan24ever for the set help and for the Sandcastle. Please give him a Twitter follow if you haven't yet, great guy.

Handwritten Blog Post Challenge Accepted

 

Bloggers Note: This was probably one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. I have no flow with this handwritten piece, couldn't use a backspace to correct words or to add some and felt like it was all over the place. So yes, my challenge by Gavin was accepted and was fun, but I felt like I failed lol. He just makes it look so easy lol.

How many of you that attempted at this felt like you struggled? I know when I blog I take a couple of days to do a post as I take things out, put them in, do research, so on and so forth.

Breakin Wax: 2014 Upper Deck Star Rookies Set

STAR ROOKIES. Two of my favorite words in this hobby. So when my mother-in-law got me this box for Christmas, I was pretty excited. For one, I knew the box was rookie laden, two, that Odell was in there and three, there was a chance at autographs.

In each box of 2014 Upper Deck Football Star Rookies is 42 rookie cards for $20. Every few boxes contain an autographed card making them a very rare pull but valuable when you do find one.

The card design is very simple. It drifts away from the usual amazing UD photography, but still works in a product like this knowing it's a set. I was a little surprised not to find the word Star Rookies written somewhere on the cards however.

Here is what the cards look like and some of the key players you will find.

Back of the card

And I end this gallery with some Odell of course!

Overall, I didn't pull the autograph, but I do like sets like this. They give you a chance to load up on rookies which is very important in a big rookie year like this one was.

NY Giants Super Bowl Sets

As I look forward to whatever set they come out with this year for my Super Bowl Champion NY Giants, I reminisce back to Super Bowl 42 and the sets that were created after that huge upset win.

I would say however, the Topps set was more creative. And to me, much more collectible. I own 2 of these. Each set comes with an authentic Super Bowl stub relic from the game. A pretty awesome piece to my collection.

The Upper Deck set is nice too and has a oversize card for its bonus. But it doesn't top the Super Bowl Stub relic. Probably one of the nicest Super Bowl team sets ever produced, from the greatest Super Bowl game ever played.