A Week Later With 2014 UD Goodwin Champions

Last week 2014 UD Goodwin Champions was released and we are seeing some cool cards hitting the secondary market now. One thing can be said about the checklist, Upper Deck does their best to include a variety down the line from checklists to autographs and relics.

 

My favorites are the 3D Monster Cards, WWI Museum Collection relics and the Art for the Ages painted cards. They have all come out of the gates running with the Art cards demanding prices in the hundreds.

 

The 3D Monster Cards are made up of 60 cards which are broken up over four monster types; Classic Creatures like Vampire, Minotaur and the Grim Reaper. Giants like Cthulhu and Frost. Bizarre Beasts like Cycloptopus and Renegade Robot. Alien Menaces like Maritan and Doppelganger

 

My favorite though, which I will be hunting down, are the Ghosts of WWI and the Headless Horseman. I would love to build this entire set eventually but these two are the first ones I plan on getting. The 60 card set was created by three different artists and they autographed 25 special versions of each of the 60 cards. With them being limited to #/25 I do not have a plan to hunt these down but if I do find some of the cards relatively priced I would be happy to add them to my collection. Many of the 3D Monster cards can be had for under $10 with the autographs running $15-20 with most cards. I am hoping that prices will drop as more product is broken.

 

I am a WWI fanatic and with this being the 100^th Anniversary of the beginning of the Great War we have seen some nice additions to various checklists but the Goodwin Champions Museum Collection set is by far the most comprehensive WWI addition in many years even topping the 2011 Topps Heritage WWI relics. This set includes 41 different cards made up of various uniforms, helmet and hats relics but there are also dog tags, rank insignias, buckles, brooches and medals. I have had no luck procuring any of the Museum Collection relics from the past two releases (Civil War and Wild West) but I am intent on adding some of these beauties to my personal collection. Most of these are selling for $50 and up. Most of the uniform relics are probably going to settle in price to the $35-75 range as product is broken with the more unique items like the medal and broochs going for a signigicant amount more and possibly even closer to $750-1000 each.

 

Easily my favorite insert in the Goodwin sets, topping even the WWI Museum Collection this year, is the Art of the Ages painted cards. Each year talented artists reproduce some of the world’s most famous and beloved paintings on cards and they are amazing. This year’s 300 cards include famous artists such as Monet, Picasso, Cezanne, Da Vinci and Rembrandt. This year also includes my three favorite painters; Edvard Munch, Vincent Van Gogh and Umberto Boccioni. It was Boccioni’s work that drew me in to the Futurism movement and I would love to add any of his paintings to my collection, not that I can afford any of these Art cards.