R.I.P. The American Dream

The wrestling world lost a legend today with the passing of The American Dream Dusty Rhodes of an unknown cause, possibly related to a fall.

In the early 70s Rhodes got his start in some of the smaller wrestling circuits spending time in the NWA, WCW, TNA and WWF/E. As a kid in the early-1980s I remember watching his rants while he was wearing his black and yellow polka-dot tights and thinking “That dude is hilariously insane.”

Even after retiring from wrestling he stayed active in the community, eventually being elected to the WWE Hall Of Fame in 2007. He has made numerous appearances on WWE in the last decade, usually on the behalf of his two sons Dustin Rhodes Jr (Goldust) and Cody Rhodes, including this past February.

Dusty Rhodes, born Virgil Runnels Jr., was just the type of guy you liked, you didn’t know why but he put a smile on your face and that was all that mattered.

Rhodes has been appearing on cards since the early 1980s all the way up to 2015 releases so there are plenty options for his base cards and he even has a couple of official autographs, most common seems to be his 2004 Pacific TNA Legends & Stars autograph, which have all been shooting up in price since the announcement of his death earlier today. He was such a common signed for the fans so you can find plenty of index cards, 8x10s and IP/TTM autograph cards for a more reasonable price.

How To Ship The Hope Diamond

 

Recently there have been a handful of posts by bloggers showing card packages they received that were beyond what most people would consider secure when shipping a card. I have received a couple of packages that were pretty well packed but this one takes the cake.

I picked up this Tom Kane autograph card, he is the voice for Yoda (among others) in all of the Star Wars animated shows, movies and games, for just under $10 plus free shipping. I got the card today and it was definitely secure, 8 levels of packaging.

 Priority Mail small flat rate box, white 8x10 packaging envelope, bubble wrap (2 layers), heavy cardboard wrap, packaging invoice (wrapped around cards), one-touch magnetic holder as support inside team bag, team bag with card inside a rigid top loader. And this was all with free shipping.

 

 

It Is Wonderful When A Company Gets It Right

 

Every so often you come across a unique and limited card that is so awesome that you would consider selling your first born, well maybe not your child, but you know where this is going. A perfect example was last year’s 2014 Topps Archives Major League Ricky Vaughn autographs.

This year it seems like the attention will be turned towards 2015 Topps Allen & Ginter’s with the inclusion of Sylvester Stallone and Hulk Hogan autographs, which are both popular pulls but Topps takes it one step further by making the cards Rocky Balboa and Thunderlips from Rocky III, my favorite of the Rocky films.

The ultimate male versus the ultimate meatball!

Eisenhower's Star Sells

I want to thank everyone for their support during this tough time.

 

The 2012 American Heroes & Legends Eisenhower Cut-Sig General Star card auction ended yesterday, hitting $2,400 after 36 bids.

There are many options when it comes to Presidential cards including DNA/hair and cut-signatures but I think this card is one of the more unique cards including one of Eisenhower’s General Stars. I wonder if this opens up other Presidential military rank relics. There have been 12 Presidents who reached the rank of Brigadier General or higher and I am pretty sure Teddy Roosevelt’s Colonel bird and John F Kennedy’s Lieutenant bar would be a big seller too.

A Very Painful Day

Today is my blog’s 6 year blog-versary, it should be a day where I do something special or at least have something exciting to post but sadly my world was rocked pretty hard today.

In the 6 years that I have been posting I say very little about myself. I don’t think I have ever used a real name only my nickname (Corky) outside of the people that I have traded with but today is different. Today I am going to open up about my family a bit.

This afternoon at 1:05 pm after battling lung cancer, which metastasized in to her liver and kidney, my aunt Dawn passed away. She has been a major part of my life since I returned to Arizona in 2008 and for the past 8 months I have been her caregiver while she fought a valiant battle. This has been a painful day for my family and while I went back and forth about the post I felt I needed to get something out.

She was diagnosed with small-cell lung cancer in August 2014 and after a heavy regiment of chemo and radiation, plus three hospitalizations, she was declared “Cancer free” on January 2, 2015. Sadly a follow up scan two weeks later showed that while the cancer in her lung had disappeared, it had spread to her liver and then later her kidney and adrenal gland. She began a second round of chemotherapy in February and felt she was doing well but on April 14^th she was told that the tumors had spread and were getting larger, after discussing the options it was decided to end all treatment and she was given 4-6 months. We have been celebrating her life ever since.

 In honor of continuing her celebration I am opening up and I am posting the last picture I took with her, which was one month ago shortly after we shaved out heads in support.

So here I am, the real guy behind the avatar, and this is my aunt Dawn (lovingly called Anty).

A Set Worthy Of Including Danny Trejo

I am a Danny Trejo fan and I love Machete. Trejo is not a classical trained actor, he comes from the streets and the parts he plays are created specifically for him in mind. He isn’t the best actor in the world and his movies are not Top 100 films but in a world where it seems like every “Blockbuster” movie is either a sequel or reboot it is refreshing to watch Trejo jump out of a window using someone’s intestines as a rope.

I have been hunting for the 67-card Machete trading card set but most were priced $30 or more and I felt that was a bit outside of what I wanted to spend. One dealer had sets at $29.99 and I made a $20 offer and he declined my offer, only to drop it to $20.99 a week later. A couple of weeks later he dropped to $19.99 and I held up buying it because I was being thick headed about him declining my offer when he changed it within days. Anyway, he finally dropped the price to $16.99 with free shipping and I finally clicked the BIN button.

The set comes in a matchbox style packaging with a inner box that slides out. Inside the inner pack the cards are wrapped in a black sleeve. The back of the box includes the serial number, mine is #166/300

The first 50 cards make up scenes of the movie beginning in order at card #1 with the card backs describing the scene. Cards 51-66 are the character cards and the backs make up a 3x5 puzzle. The final card is a checklist and there is a Shé poster sticker.

On to the cards:

The good guys; Machete, Agent Sartana, Luz (also known as Shé), Padre and the Avellan twins as Nurse Mona and Nurse Lisa

Lindsay Lohan plays a character that switches roles as the movie progresses, beginning as the crack head (I know, a real stretch) April Booth but redeems herself as Sister April at the end of the movie.

The bad guys: Torrez, Booth, Von, Senator McLaughlin, Osiris and henchman (Surprisingly he has a large role in the movie)

The backs of cards 51-66 make up the Machete “Sandwich” scene with April and June

 

Checklist and Shé poster sticker

 

Eisenhower's Star

This is kind of a follow up to a post I did a couple of years ago. In September 2012 Panini released the 2012 Americana Heroes & Legends set and it was pretty much the standard Americana release with military leaders, Presidents and athletes. Some of the most popular pulls were the military related hits, which included Tuskegee Airman autographs and relics.

This was a set that Panini did a wonderful job from top to bottom and so diverse that it fit within everyone’s (who collected non-sports cards) interests and wants.

There is one card that grabbed my attention and while I knew I would not be able to afford it I still wanted to see how it would do. The Eisenhower Autograph-Relic card with one of his General stars. I had never seen one show up for auction, I had never even heard of someone pulling one for that fact until last month when someone posted on Blowout’s forum that he pulled #2/4, a card he has since put up on eBay.

It started at ¢1 but after 23 bids it is now up to $870 with nearly 3 days left in the auction. Since this is the first one to show up I would expect to see the current price triple and I don’t think I would be surprised to see it top $5,000 even.

Is Cam Worth The Collector's Cash?

With Cam Newton’s new $103.8 million contract it moves him to the #3 position of top paid NFL players in 2015 behind Aaron Rodgers and Ben Roethlisberger.

Since 2011 his top QB rank is #8 (2014) and has been sacked/hit 587 times (nearly twice the amount of the next QB), he is 30-31-1 and has thrown 54 INTs. On the flip side he has thrown for 14,426 yards, 82 TDs, run for 2,571 yards and 33 TDs, 2011 ROY, 2 Pro Bowls and led the Panthers to the NFL Playoffs twice.

 The question: Is Cam Newton worth the money to collectors?

 Is he a Top 5 collectible QB?

I would say Top 10-12 Collectible QBs but not in the Top 5 Collectible QBs, that is reserved for the elite Brady, Peyton Manning, Rodgers, Brees and Luck. You could definitely make an argument for Romo or Roethlisberger being in that group too but not Newton, at least not at this point of his career.

Jason Crosby's Awesomeness

Yesterday the Kickstarter campaign for Topps upcoming Mars Attacks: Occupation ended not only topping their initial goal of $50,000 but actually topping all of their stretch goals, finally closing out at $198,002 in pledges.

The way that Topps went about it is pretty interesting, it gave them the ability to help fund a project through the collectors but additionally they were able to add on to the initial set through the stretch goals, some which are quite cool like Dinosaur Attack Vs Mars Attacks, metal cards, additional cards and (my favorite) adding Martian sand and T-Rex fossil dust in to the ink used for the woodcut cards.

While this is all interesting what I want to talk about today is the artist Jason Crosby. Crosby is still kind of new in the world of trading cards, though still quite accomplished in his short time, having done sketch cards for Breygent, Upper Deck and Topps over the last couple of years. He has now worked as a base card illustrator for Topps with the last two Star Wars Illustrated releases (New Hope & Empire Strikes Back) plus the two recent Mars Attacks releases Invasion and Occupation.

What I love about his work is that he is does a variety of styles and he likes to work a sports theme in to some of the cards. He did it with the recent Star Wars Illustrated: Empire Strikes Back sketch cards and Topps is giving him a complete subset in the Mars Attacks release. Here are the cards that he has posted so far but one of the stretch goals was to increase the size of the sports subset.

 

Last year he worked on a personal project when he put together a dual-autograph Freddy vs. Jason booklet card. I think this card is so awesome, I wish it would have been packed out.

 

Some Wrestling Autographs

Some wrestling autographs to make it in to my collection

From the WWF I finally picked up a Rickey “The Dragon” Steamboat autograph. This is a 1991 Classic WWF which he signed with a silver paint pen. Steamboat doesn’t have any official autographs, none that I can find, so I was forced to go elsewhere to find an autograph of one of my favorite wrestlers from the 1980s. These 1991 Classic cards are typical flimsy cardboard from the junk wax era but due to the nice photography used by Classic they make an ideal autographed item.

Next up is Jerry Lawler. The King has been connected to various wrestling leagues, mostly with WWF/WWE, for decades. I first remember him from his feud with the comedian Andy Kaufman in the early 1980s. At the time I didn’t like him but he has grown on me over the years. Lawler has been associated with the WWF/WWE for about 20 years now and has made the switch over from wrestler to commentator in the last decade.

Lawler is a guy who will happily sign for fans and there are literally hundreds of his autographs available for a reasonable price. This card grabbed me because it truly represents him as his persona “The King” and I like blue, it seemed like an obvious selection for me. It helps that the seller tossed in a signed 3x5 autograph card.

What brought me over to liking Lawler is he is an accomplished artist, he has even had his work included in to Topps WWE releases. He has done actual sketch cards as well as complete inserts. His authentic sketch cards inserted in to packs of Topps WWE run hundreds of dollars if you are lucky enough to find one.

Another 1980s baddie who’s autograph that I recently picked up is Nikolai Volkoff, real name is Josip Peruzovic. He actually is from Yugoslavia and defected to Canada in 1967, eventually making his way to WWE predecessor (WWWF) and winning various titles as Bepo Mongol.

When he returned to the WWF in 1984 he came back as Volkof and was teamed up with The Iron Sheik as foreign heels, the people everyone hated. As a red blooded American kid in the 1980s I hated Volkoff but it is fun to look back now to those opening match antics and laugh at what was done. Peruzovic is a good guy and enjoys his fans. He works for the City of Baltimore and volunteers for the city’s athletic kid’s league.

He has quite a few official autographs through Leaf and Topps but because he is so happy to sign for fans you can find plenty of TTM/IP autographs at reasonable prices. This card is from Topps 2006 Heritage WWE release.

In all I spent $25.05 shipped for all three cards, an amount I was happy to spend for fond memories from my childhood. I am still on the hunt for an Iron Sheik autograph, his official cards tend to $15-30 and he doesn’t sign in person to often so the hunt is slow going.