Its Gotta Be The Shoes

A one card post today, but a cool one. I picked up this Gary Payton 2014-15 Panini National Treasure Sneaker Swatches shoe card late last year. I’ve always thought that shoe relics are some of the neater and more unique relics.

One Card Post- Steve Kerr Vs. Gary Payton

This Steve Kerr-Gary Payton 2009-10 Upper Deck Dual Materials relic card has been a gray whale of mine for a number of years that I finally picked up. The card has two of my favorite guards to ever play the game and both Kerr and Payton are mini-PCs for me so a double win.

Just Because It Glitters Does Not Mean It Is Gold

A bit of a back story on today’s post.

After I began to collect again in the early 90s I came back full force and by mid-decade I was collecting all sports. Around 2000 Pacific began including hits in every pack of some of their hockey products like Titanium and Vanguard and I was digging it, I still look back at these products fondly.

I once pulled one of the double jersey cards which had one swatch on each side of the card. It was a double Red Wings card with Yzerman on one side and I believe the other side was Lidstrom and they were both basic white swatches but what made the card awesome was that the Yzerman swatch was covered in blood. How freaking cool is a card with blood on it? Very cool, not as unique as the Manny Ramierez corked bat relic card that Pacific packed out but still unique

But about 6 years ago I went through a purge because I felt my collection was getting out of hand and I pulled aside a couple of hundred autographs, relics, patches and limited # cards and tossed them in to two different lots and sold them each for around $200 on eBay. I included some cards I now wish I had not, including that specific Yzerman/Lidstrom card, but hindsight is 20/20 and I am out of luck.

 

Now, last week I was scrolling through some Gary Payton cards and I came across a listing for a 2000-01 Fleer Game Time Uniformity Payton jersey relic with what appeared to be a splotch of red across the white fabric. Could I have found a Gary Payton jersey with blood?

 

 

I didn’t stop to second guess it and just purchased it for the $5.99 BIN. The card comes in, I am happy but once I have the screwdown in my hand I notice that something is not as I thought it was. I remove the card from the screwdown and slide my finger over the red and no big surprise here but it was a piece of fuzzy red fabric.

 

This one is totally on me, the image is a bit blurry and I could have sent the seller a question but I went total Great White shark and once I saw blood I was in a frenzy. On a slight positive side there is a dark red thread running under the white swatch that comes from the brick red piping near the jersey edge so it is sort of a two-colored swatch… ok that is a stretch.

Some Sea-Town Pickups

My day has been a long one and I planned on posting earlier but my Prism tv service went down and I ended up on the phone with a rep for nearly an hour. Sadly I told him it was an issue with the router and that it needed to be replaced when I first talked to him but we had to go through the steps anyway. So now a tech is set to be here tomorrow morning and before long I got sidetracked doing some research and I realized I forgot to post.

Here are a couple of recent pickups of Seattle athletes just for fun

1995 SP Legendary Cuts Jay Buhner Legendary Lineage Patch #50

Any time I can add a bad ass Bone patch to my collection for under $7 shipped I am cool with it. The card would be ideal for his signature under the patch but there is no way I am sending this for a TTM request. I have sent a number of requests to Buhner and he has never responded so if anything it would be one to bring to a show to get him to sign if he ever does a show in the Phoenix area.

2013 Bowman Inception Mike Zunino Blue parallel #/75

I love the Inception releases and this one has been on my list for a number of years so I am happy to add this to my Zunino collection.

 

1997-98 Metal Univese Gary Payton Silver Slams

Gary Payton is one of those athletes that I am considering adding as a PC but I don’t want to have to many player collections, not to mention Payton’s cards can be high dollar. I love this card because it has a pinkish/purplish hue and it really stands out.

This was a TTM/IP autograph that I picked up. I am really picky about what signatures I get just because they can be easily faked so I check every swoop, loop and twist before I consider buying something like this which I did and felt comfortable.

 

Box Break: 2013-14 Panini Immaculate Basketball

First I would like to thank Tracy Hackler and Panini for holding the contest, otherwise I would have never had the opportunity to open such a top-end box of cards. The box comes in a cool tin, with sleeve, and inside is a velvet-like inner pack which holds the gold colored box.

Each box contains one numbered base card and 5 numbered hits made up of autographs, patches and relics. Some of the top hits are 1/1 Logoman autograph patches, booklet cards, Insignia patches and Game-used Nameplate Nobility patches but the top of the heap, be all-get all hits are the Sneak Peek shoe relics. These Sneak Peek relics contain a large sneaker swatch  of star players like Kyrie Irving, Shaq, LeBron James and Kobe with the cards all numbered to either 1/1 or #/2 and even the cheapest cards are running a couple of hundred with most selling well over $1,000.

One thing to remember though is that these boxes are high-risk/high-reward. If you are lucky you can make out big but if you don’t have a four-leaf clover growing out of your butt you will have buyer’s remorse. Don’t get me wrong I don’t want to seem ungrateful, this was a unique experience, and I pulled cards from my two favorite teams but if I paid for the box I would have been disappointed.

 

First up is the Joakim Noah base card Gold Parallel #/10

 

A Kendrick Perkins jumbo relic #/75 from my least favorite team, the OKC Stolen Sonics

 

A Bill Sharman autograph #/99

The card has chipping along the green bottom

 

A Michael Kidd-Gilchrist Sole Of The Game shoe relic #/35

 

A Gary Payton Scorers Club autograph #/49

This card is very cool with the gold auto on black paper

 

Finally, an Alex Len Rookie Patch Autograph redemption

 

I collect Suns and Sonics so I got two cards for my collection, including the amazing Payton autograph. I also got a shoe card, just not the kind I was hoping to pull. So there you go…