Final Preview Images of 2010 Gold Standard Basketball

Panini posted up some final preview images of the 2010-11 Gold Standard Basketball release, which is scheduled to hit within the next 10 days and expect to pay $175-200/pack.

Each pack contains 12 cards and breaks down:

3 Autograph cards

2 Memorabilia cards

3 Base cards

3 Inserts

I may be taking a leap here but I see this as a product that sells to a specific type of collector. With packs running $200 and the obvious use of gold foil board will turn many people away. Yes there is a chance of pulling a card that contains actual gold (Gold Medalists relics) and who can complain about a solid checklist but there is just too much gold coloring for my eyes. 

 For more preview images, 48 to be exact, head on over to Panini’s blog The Knight’s Lance and take a look at Tracy Hackler’s post.

Wade Gold Medaists Gold Relic

KJ USA Relic

Nash Gold Records Relic

Brooks Autograph

Gilmore Base Card

Mavericks Dual Auto

Gold Threads Insert

Gold Nuggets Insert

Kobe USA Autograph Relic

Durant Relic

More Preview Images of Panini National Treasure NBA

Last month I posted up some preview images from Panini showing their upcoming 2010-11 National Treasure Basketball releases, still set to release in early August. Early pricing has it hitting @ $385/box and you will pull 6 Autos or memorabilia cards, 1 common #/99 and 1 Legend/Rookie/Parallel or other insert.

 I love the patches, who wouldn’t love a Logoman patch or prime multi-colored patch, but the design is just horrid. The designers just seemed to keep adding and adding on these cards. Take the rookie patch-autograph cards, it is like they started with a jumbo patch (good start) but then added some designs, I figure the conversation went something like this…

Designer #1- “OK, we have a solid start with the jumbo patch, oh wait… a quarter-sized player image should go here.”

Designer #2- “Uh oh, we forgot the autograph what should we do?”

Designer #1- “Well let’s just put it on the bottom border and toss in some laurels around it to make it pretty.”

Designer #2- “Sweet, we can now send it to get proofed and then on to print. What’s next on the schedule? ”

 The Logoman patch cards are pretty cool (Even though they changed from the promo images released last month) and I also like the Souvenir Cuts and ABA Legends autographs but the rest I could easily pass on without a second thought.

End Of The Great Yao Ming Project

Yao Ming has decided to call it a career, ending not like the “Great Center” that many predicted but more like a lamb playing in all of 5 games in the last two seasons due to foot problems. In 9 seasons with the Rockets he averaged 19.0 ppg and 9.2 rpg and he took Houston in to the Playoffs 4 times (3 First Round exits and a Second Round exit). I will admit that I was one of those people who expected him to have a memorable career but that never panned out. I have a feeling people will be saying the same thing about Greg Oden in a few years.

 He showed flashes of brilliance over his career but he has not played in 82 games since his second season. His lifetime total consists of 9,247 points and 4,494 rebounds playing 486 regular season games and 28 playoff games but he never won an NBA Championship, Conference Championship, Division Championship, MVP Award (No major awards actually). He was selected to 8 All-Star teams (His final as an honor not a deserved position), 5 All-NBA Teams (2x 2^nd Team and 3x 3^rd Team), the All-Rookie Team and the Rookie All-Star team.

 Ignoring his CBA accomplishments he was just an average NBA center, nothing more. I find it funny that people are already talking about his inclusion on the NBA Hall of Fame ballot in 5 years. Does he really deserve a Hall of Fame nod? Here is a list of players based on a monitor score to see how they stack up against other players (HOF, current and retired players). You will notice that Yao Ming is absent from the list (I tallied his score and he only hit 42) falling well below basketball monsters like Steve Francis, Shareef Abdur-Rahim and Charles Oakley.

You can find his autographs and relic cards for under $20 easily and his rookies range from a dollar or two up to $100-200 for his 2002 Topps Finest and Upper Deck SPX cards.

Preview: 2011 Topps Tier One Baseball

Topps is taking full advantage of their sole MLB license and have added another release in to their already-swollen release schedule. Topps Tier-One is a mid-range product consisting of serial numbered cards, patches and on-card autographs plus each 12 box case will contain 1 Top-Tier autograph. I am not a fan of this set, I do not like most of the card designs. The Pineda 1/1 is completely hideous, the ghosting around the edge ruins the card and this is coming from a life-long Mariners fan.

Top Tier autographs: Hank Aaron, Albert Pujols, Johnny Bench, Carlton Fisk, Bob Gibson, Tony Gwynn, Rickey Henderson, Reggie Jackson, Mike Schmidt, Sandy Koufax, Frank Robinson, Tom Seaver, Nolan Ryan, Miguel Cabrera, Adrian Gonzalez, Felix Hernandez, Roy Halladay, Prince Fielder, Josh Hamilton and Evan Longoria.

 Each box runs $84 and contains one pack with 7 cards. Each pack will include:

2 Autograph Cards
1 Relic Card
1 Parallel Card
3 Base Cards

Preview: 2011 Parkhurst Champions Original Artwork

I wanted to create a seperate post highlighting the original artwork by Ron Stark and Jared Kelly that will be included in the 2011 Parkhurst Champions set being released this Fall. These images are of the original artwork created by these artists.

The Gretzky and Bourque paintings are original artwork by artist Ron Stark used to produce the mini cards, the minis will not be actually painted cards but reproductions of Mr. Stark's original artwork.

Wayne Gretzky Mini Artwork

Ray Bourque Mini Artwork

The Masterpiece cards are all original artwork by artist Jared Kelley and limited #/10 of each player with each card signed by Jared Kelly. The first card of each player will have a hand-painted gold side-border.

Wayne Gretzky Masterpiece

Wayne Gretzky Masterpiece Closeup

Wayne Gretzky Masterpiece Back

Gordie Howe Masterpiece

Mark Messier Masterpiece

All images that I used are from Grant Soundground's video that has been posted on Upper Deck's blog (as can be seen from the time stamps seen in some of the images). I would like to thank Upper Deck and Chris Carlin for making this video available so the collectors can have a preview of these amazing cards.

Preview: 2011 NHL Parkhurst Champions

Schedule Release Date: Fall 2011

Box Configuration: 5 cards per pack, 20 packs per box

SRP: $77/box

Box Break:

2 Signature cards

5 Wire Photo cards

2-3 Renditions cards

20 Champ’s Mini cards

My Thoughts:

The return or Parkhurst hockey, a product that we have not seen since 2005, should make collectors very excited. The Parkie brand started in 1951 before disappearing in the 1960s, but made a resurgence in 1991. Between 1991 and 2005 the brand bounced around from Pro Set to Upper Deck to In The Game back to Upper Deck before being shelved for a bit. Now Upper Deck has gone full force in another resurrection of the brand and they have done a wonderful job in this re-release of the brand.

 Being an artist myself the wonderful artwork included in this set is a huge draw for me, Upper Deck goes above and beyond finding the right artist for their sets and it shows. Going back for many years now Upper Deck has shown love to the art world with their releases and this set continues that tradition.

Upper Deck created a 160 card base set and each card also has an autographed parallel version (hard signed too):

Regular Cards (100)
Wire Photos, Single + Multi-Plyr. (30)
Renditions, Color + B/W(30)

Not included as part of the base set is a 57 card mini card set which are based on original artwork created by artist Ron Stark. Minis come 1 per pack.

The product has some huge positives including hard-signed autographs parallels, multi-signed Wire Photo cards, Parkhurst Masterpieces, Champ’s Signatures along with fossils and artifacts.

Like the Goodwin Champions Presidents Masterpiece hand-painted set Parkhurst Champions will include a hand-painted Masterpiece set made up of 3 players- Gretzkey as an L.A. King, Gordie Howe and Mark Messier as an Oiler. There will be 10 beautifully hand-painted copies of each star signed by artist Jared Kelly and the first card of each player will have a gold painted side-border to differentiate it from the other 9 cards.

Pros:

Hard-signed autographs

Beautiful artwork by artists Jared Kelly and Ron Stark

Multi-signed autographs

Fossil and artifacts

Cons:

Not a “Parkhurst” design but an Upper Deck product with the Parkhurst name

Based on retired players so modern player collectors may not be interested

Fossils and artifacts do not appeal to all collectors

Rating: 

I rate this at 4 1/2 out of 5 because the product is solid and really relies on players from the history of hockey, these are the guys who laid the foundation for what we see on the ice today.  I am a old-school collector so that may be the additional draw for me to this release along with the love of fossils and other artifacts.

 

 I want to include Upper Deck's list of the break down of the product because I do not feel like I can do it justice by listing the products out in my write-up. This list is posted on their Facebook page:

Regular Set:
Regular Cards (100)
Wire Photos, Single + Multi-Plyr. (30)
Renditions, Color + B/W(30)

Product Highlights:
Regular Card Autograph //’s (1:22)
Wire Photo Autograph //’s (1:400)
Parkhurst Masterpieces (# to 10)
Champ’s Fossils & Artifacts (1:1,280)
Champ’s Signatures (1:90)

Box Break: (on average)
Two Great Hits Highlighted by 1-2 Signature Cards
Five (5) Wire Photos cards (1 multi)
Two-to-Three (2-3) Renditions cards
Twenty (20) Champ’s Mini cards

Case Break: (on average)
Ten (10) Renditions B/W cards
One (1) Fossils & Artifacts OR Champ’s Red Ink (SP) Sig (# to 15) OR Parkhurst Masterpiece Sketch (# to 10) OR Wire Photo Multi-Player Autograph card OR Renditions B/W, Color Autograph card

Wire Images Autograph Parallels include players like Gretzky, Lemieux, Yzerman, Beliveau, Lindsay/Howe, Esposito/Bucyk/Orr all hard-signed.

Key Inserts:
Wire Photo Autographs:
Orr, Gretzky, Messier, Lemieux, Clarke, Beliveau, Lindsay; Howe/Bower, Hull Mikita, Messier/Kurri, Esposito/Orr; Esposito/Bucyk/Orr and more!

Renditions Autographs (Black & White variation):
Roy, Lafleur, Beliveau, Hull, Howe, Lemieux, Gretzky!

Champ’s Signatures:
Orr, Mikita, Brett Hull, Messier, Lemieux, Bossy, Shutt, Bowman, Robitaille, Bucyk, Kurri, Sakic, Bower, Neely!

Some of the artifacts and fossils includes Greek & Roman coins

The brain cavity of an Auroch

and teeth from a Spinosaurus.

Independance Day

Happy Independence Day to everyone

I was reading about a survey that was done last month and sadly people seem to be losing their history or to be more exact not learning their history. In this survey only 58% of all Americans are aware that our country declared independence in 1776. Even worse, for those under the age of 30 only 31% knew of our independence in 1776 and only 25% of Americans know that we declared our independence from Great Britain. I blame politicians for this debacle, let the teachers teach kids and not worry about state standardized testing to dictate how kids are taught.

 On a lighter note, Joey Chestnut continued his dominance at the annual Fourth of July Nathan's Famous Hot Dog eating contest at Coney Island. In typical form Chestnut downed 62 hot dogs in 10 minutes to win his 5^th consecutive mustard yellow belt. Takeru Kobayashi (2001-2007 Champion) stayed away from the contest after last year’s outbreak when he actually charged the stage and was arrested. This year Kobayashi held his own contest in downtown New York where he ate 69 hot dogs showing he still has dominance in the sport of competitive eating.

Contest Time At Plashke, Thy Sweater Is Argyle

Greg at Plaschke, Thy Sweater Is Argyle is has organized a contest to celebrate his 50^th follower and it is time to pimp his contest. I am not sure when the contest ends, more on that later from Greg, but there will be 2 winners selected and they will each win 3 cards (1 War-era card, 1 Tobacco-era card and 1 scrub autograph). His requirements are simple and instead of me telling you, head on over to his blog for your chance to get involved.

Preview: TriStar TNA Signature Impact Wrestling

TNA has recently re-branded it’s flagship program TNA iMPACT as IMPACT WRESTLING and TriStar is releasing the first product to represent this change with the release of 2011 TriStar TNA Signature IMPACT WRESTLING set to hit shelves in August.

Schedule Release Date: August 3, 2011

Box Configuration: 6 cards per pack, 20 packs per box

SRP: $78/box

Box Break:

3 Autograph cards (At least 1 multi-autograph card)

1 Memorabilia card

2 Parallel cards

1 Short Print

My Thoughts:

TriStar has done another excellent job with the TNA license hitting on all cylinders and they made sure to stick with the “Big 3” of Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair and Sting. The set is pretty small, consisting of only 99 cards with 90 Base Cards and 9 Short Prints. There will only be 90 cases of this product made and with each case containing 24 boxes there will only be 2160 total boxes made, so a pretty limited release. In an interesting move TriStar even created 3 different box designs (Hogan, Flair and Sting) and each case will contain 8 of each box design.

Some of the things that we will see in this set include Matt Hardy’s first TNA card after jumping from WWE, TriStar’s first 7 & 8 signed autograph cards, Ric Flair Letter Memorabilia Cards and best of all a 1/1 Macho Man Cut Signature card as a tribute to the loss of Randy Savage.

Pros:

7 Hits per box gives pretty decent value for the price

Limited production

1 Multi-Autograph card per box

Jumbo swatches and multi-relic cards

Chance to pull Macho Man’s 1/1 Cut Signature card

 

Cons:

Centered around the Old Big-Three (Hogan, Flair and Sting)

Autographs may be sticker autos

Hogan, Flair and Sting autos are very limited

Rating:

I give this release a solid 3.5 out of 5 because TriStar did a good job using quality pictures on a nice clean design. Non-wrestling or non-TNA fans will not be very interested in the product but for fans of the genre or TNA will definitely be delighted.