Panini Card Of The Week: 2013 Score Johnathan Hankins

Set Collectors Still Live! (at least I do) PT 2 of 2

As I spoke about at the end of in yesterday's post about set collecting, today's part is telling you about my biggest and most favorite set I put together ALL-TIME! I hope this kind of post will influence some of you who may not set collect to give it a try. It's honestly quite the rush and relief when you accomplish something like this. This is as much of a high as getting a big hit or busting a box.

My ALL-TIME favorite set that was both challenging, yet tons of fun to put together was the 1997 Upper Deck baseball. The set was in two series and an overall 520 whopping cards not including the update cards which I didn't do.

There were some fun inclusions in both series including this tribute cards to Jackie Robinson to open up the first 9 cards of the set:

Then some great photographs for the base set including this unique one:

The base cards were border free and each were "game dated". The base set also included these subsets within:

Strike Force

Defensive Gems

Global Impact

Star Rookies

The challenge to this set, other than the 520 cards, was trying to complete all of the "Griffey's Hot List" subset cards in Series Two. The subset, that was packed with many super stars at the time, fell 1:4 packs (at least I think it did) and was card numbers 415-424 in the set. Chasing down 10 of these wasn't so easy. Upper Deck baseball 1997 was one of the first sets to feature cards SPed in it on purpose to add value to the overall set.So I knew what I was up against especially knowing these were the last cards I needed to have all 520.

 

So pack upon pack. Box upon box. Card show upon card show and I finally acquired them after many months of the chase.I felt so relieved and couldn't wait to put the entire set into a binder to view.

To this day, this is still my favorite set despite the many I have put together since. This set will always remain in my collection in that same binder til I hand it down someday along with the story behind it. Along with this, I hope to hand down the art of set collecting as I will do my best to help keep it alive.

You Might Be A Card Collector If......

You Might Be A Card Collector If......when your wife asks you what you were looking at on the computer and you say some really nice big "RAKs" and she slaps you in the face for it. Later she finds out you were talking about Random Acts Of Kindness mail days.

Card Collecting TV...Sounds Good To Me!

Imagine flipping through the channels and stumbling upon a channel that was talking only about sports cards. Wow...what a dream....

Yesterday, I threw out my dream into social media first starting on my Twitter and than onto my Facebook page about a TV channel solely dedicated to sports cards. The feedback about my idea was simply amazing! With that kind of reaction, I knew I would have to blog about it for those who may have missed this conversation and to continue the discussion about it since it's so hard to cram anything into a Tweet or a Facebook post.

Here were the Tweets (ignore the top one) and the Facebook post I sent out yesterday:

It seems many collectors agreed with my idea. Many said this would be a great marketing move for the hobby. I agree with that. I think it could also be a decent money maker for whoever was willing to invest into it. First, you could charge breakers to have a time slots for their breaks live on TV. Secondly, you could make money from manufacturers charging them to put up ads promoting their products. Third, big online companies like Dave&Adams and Blowout cards could put up ads for their sales and Beckett Media could use this as an outlet as well for the many services they offer. Lastly, you could get places like COMC, eBay or Collector Revolution to pay for paid programming slots to try and promote why you should sell your cards on their sites. Sounds like money to me.

However, when coming up with this idea, money making wasn't at all on my mind til I wrote this post. It was more about the fun and entertainment a channel like this could provide. I came up with this idea while waiting for a break video I had wanted to watch slowly buffer on YouTube. To be honest, most of the time when people post break videos, I don't watch them. My internet is always iffy and waiting for it to buffer is a pain. That's when I thought, this would be so much better if I could just sit down and watch it live. So why not on TV? Could you imagine seeing this kind of thing on a 50 inch (if i had one)?

So I sat down and thought if there was such a channel what kind of things would I like to watch. Here are some things I would find interesting:

1. Box Breaks. Who wouldn't want to watch breaks non-stop and see the mojo!
2. Go behind the scenes at major manufacturers and see what goes into making the cardboard we treasure so dearly. Let's see every angle of it from product design to printout. This could be the reality show side of the programming.
3. Let's see fun things that companies do at the Drafts and Rookie Premiers.
4. Let's see pro athletes do some signings and discuss not only their trading cards but their signatures.
5. Let's get some personal collections on there. If you have a collection, show it off! Let's not have any specifics. You could probably get three or four people per half-hour episode. Maybe it could be called, "Show and Tell"
6. I think a show on grading and how to tell fakes would draw attention
7. VINTAGE! Let's see some sweet vintage cards and memorabilia
8. An "LCS Road Trip" show taking us around the best shops in America
9. Do a show on card shows taking us to some of the bigger ones around. This would be great for those of us who don't have shows and may have forgotten what it was like.
10. "Collecting Basics" or "Card Collecting For Dummies" type of show helping out the rooks in the hobby explaining everything to them from toploaders to Sp's to 1/1 3-color patch cards. Some of us could use a refresher course as well.

These were just a few ideas. I am sure there are many more angles of the hobby you could do.

Overall, if this kind of marketing was to ever happen I think it would be big. Not to mention, this may help intrigue people who know nothing about the hobby to come and check it out. With it being easy to access since its on TV and we all know what curiosity does. I say more exposure on the hobby, the better. You never know where this idea could lead the hobby...

Note: This is my original material and original idea. It MAY NOT be used without my permission.

That 90's Card: 1993-1994 Fleer NBA Jam Slam Dunk Heroes Patrick Ewing

Set Collectors Still Live! (at least I do) PT 1 of 2

Hi, I like to sport card blog and collect sports card. I also have something else to admit, I like to set collect.

Set collecting seems like a thing of the past to most. Some may not even have heard of such a thing in the new generation of collectors. But, I still know what it is. I spend countless hours rummaging through my finds and buys and try my best to complete the set. Some are more fun to try and complete than others, but I still have fun sorting it all out in hopes I have pulled off a set.

This week, I was sorting through about 600 2014 Score base cards to try and put a set together. As you can see, I am very precise on how I do this. I sort them it into piles of 100's, 200's, 300's (or more if the product is bigger). Those then get broken down into piles of 10's, 20's, 30's and so on for every big pile of 100's. I then sort them by number tossing the doubles to the side.

Here was the aftermath after an hour of putting these by number. On the right, is my set so far and on my left is a hefty load of doubles.

After sorting these, I went back through my "so far" set pile and found some numbers I was missing and wrote them down. I almost have the set except roughly twenty cards. I may have to go and search Jammin JDcards who just listed a bunch of singles for my missing numbers.

So even though I don't see much set collecting around anymore, I wanted to let you all know that it still does exist. Just look above at my pictures. WE SET COLLECTORS ARE ALIVE! And I think we always will be, though far and few in-between, as long as companies continue to produce base sets worth collecting.

Part 2 of this series, the finale of it, I will show you my favorite all-time set I put together. Stay tuned!

90's Rip Party: 1995 Score Summitt Football Box

When I wanted to go back in time to do a really fun rip, 1995 stuck out in my mind. Well, it was the year that I REALLY started collecting. It was also the year that a lot of fun products were coming out and when I was thinking about it, one product that I had always wanted to bust a full box of but couldn't before was 1995 Score Summitt Football.

There was a lot of great looking cards in this product starting out from the base cards to the parallels and all the way to the inserts. So I went eBay shopping for one and found an incredible deal on it and snatched it up.

In a box of 1995 Score Summitt football you get 24 packs per box and 7 cards per pack.

Here are the base cards. They are thicker than usual base cards with an elegant design. I especially dig the how the name is displayed and the team helmet done is a bronze foil.

The two subsets:

Rookie cards. This was the class with great rookies such as Kerry Collins, Steve McNair and others.

Checklists:

Now onto the goods, THE INSERTS!

The Ground Zero parallels (the glittery cards) fell at an average of 1:6 packs and the Backfield Stars insert below fell at 1:36 packs so that was a great hit here.

The Rookie Summit pulls I thought were some of the coolest ever and fell at 1:12 packs. The angles the photos were taken and the silver foil in the background made these stand out.

Overall, I was pretty happy with this break. It not only provided a ton of great looking cards, but a lot of memories along the way. I would definitely go back and break another.

Sorting....Accomplished (well most)

Well, at the start of the week, I put up a post where my desk appeared like this:

Now after about a week of sorting, I have narrowed it down to this:

It might have fully caught up if I hadn't run out of page sheets for my binder to put away the last few piles. Gonna have to get some more from BCW to finish this project before more cards arrive.

I was actually quite fast this time with trying to catch up on sorting. But, as all of us collectors know, just because I sorted these and put them away, that doesn't mean they will stay where I put them forever. Cause in this hobby, sorting never ends.

August Contest Week 1

With the lack of entries from the switch of rules for the July Contest, I decided to go back to the original format for the final three months. One other change to note is Jammin JDcards will not be participating in this months contest, instead I have put some prizes in the pot. So here you go!

WELCOME! This is the first week of our August Contest. Now, compared to monthly contests in the past, this one is different. Instead of picking different winners daily, earning points, having the top three in points win prizes you only need to do this one entry where there will be one winner at the end of this week. This contest will run for three weeks and there will be a total of three winners. Once you have won for this month, you cannot win again as we want to spread the prize love around. Also, once you have won for the month, you will go into the WINNERS CIRCLE where you will not only be randomed to pick a prize for the month (all three names will be randomed and the person at the top of the list from the random picks their prize then so on), but will get a guaranteed spot in October's Monthly Contest. That is the ONLY way to be able to enter October's Contest. which has three prizes including a GRAND PRIZE from BCW Supplies.

This months prizes in the Prize Pot are:

Prizes from Sport Card Collectors:

6 Card Michael Jordan collection:

2 Autographed Rookie Cards:

And this from BCW Supplies:

Here is where you can buy bonuses of these items:

Album

Penny Sleeves

Protective Pages

 
WINNERS CIRCLE SO FAR FOR THE MONTH:


Now onto how to be entered this week to be in the WINNERS CIRCLE for this months prizes and the WINNERS CIRCLE to be able to participate in October's Monthly Contest.

1. Pick the winner of: Toronto at Seattle
2. Give me the TOTAL RUNS WITHOUT GOING OVER 
3. As a tiebreaker, the total amount of STRIKEOUT by both STARTING PITCHERS
4. Any other tiebreaker will be broken up by a random 
5. Another tiebreaker, go to THE CARD BIN and leave a comment on ANY POST. Earn an extra entry if it comes down to being a random for doing so. 
6. Entries are due by Monday Night August 11th by 10:00 pm e.t.

Your entries should look like this

1. Toronto
2. 6
3. 12

Good luck to everyone who enters. There are only two rules, one you must be a U.S. Resident to enter and you must have good clean fun.

PLEASE remember to not only follow BCW Supplies on Facebook and Twitter, please tell them thank you for their generosity and check out their websites for tons of great stuff!

That 90's Card: 1999 Leaf Rookies Stars Greatest Hits Barry Sanders