A Couture COMC Pick Up

On Black Friday COMC had free shipping as long as you had 20 or more cards on the order so I went on a bit of a spree of sub-$2 cards and ended up hitting 24 cards, enough for free shipping. I requested my cardboard treasure trove and recently got them. Most of my cards were Griffey with a small collection for my Ryan Bader pc but there were two Randy Couture cards that have been on my Grey Whale checklist that I can finally mark of.

First up is 2010 Upper Deck World Of Sports Clear Competitors #/550

The set was a multi-sport set using the licenses that Upper Deck had at the time and the set was kind of all over the board but that was the intent with a set named World of Sports. Plenty of autographs and some cool inserts, which is where this Couture Clear Competitors was included. I love a cool acetate card and this one is pretty well designed.

The second card also comes from Upper Deck but this time is the 2012 SP Authentic Golf release, this specific card coming from the Parade of Stars insert which shows various athletes playing golf. There are three versions, the base is green with the gold, blue and red being more rare. Some also have an autographed version.

 

Upper Deck Expands The Golf World Boundries

Upper Deck released 2012 SP Authentic Golf earlier this week, their first PGA release since 2005, and one subset that is catching collector’s eyes is the Parade of Stars. This is a 30-card subset showing professional athletes playing golf. The checklist includes top athletes (Current and retired) from the major sports leagues: MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, MLS and UFC. There is also a 14-card autograph subset which is based on the same checklist but uses a different layout, design and athlete picture. There are Red parallels (#/10) for each base card and the autographs are all on-card. From the auctions that I have seen it looks like only Mike Schmidt autographs are redemption with all others autos being packed out.

 

Most of the Parade of Stars base cards can be found in the $1-5 range with many of the autographs under $50 with the exception of Jordan, who has a couple of autos sitting in the $3,000 range.

 

A couple of cards use old photos, David Robinson and Larry Bird, while others appear to be set studio shots, Couture and Dr. J are wearing the same exact shirt (The color defect under the arm is pretty obvious) but these things do not detract from the set, you may actually get a nice chuckle out of the Admiral’s old-school clothing selection.

 

I have played golf a handful of times so golf sets do not appeal to me but when you begin to introduce outside athletes in to a product this is a good way to get the hobby talking about it. There are a couple of cards I would consider adding to my collection, like the Couture and Donovan cards.