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.

LeBron + Cleveland = Collectors $$$?

Will LeBron’s move back to Cleveland make big waves in the hobby?

 

 

Sellers Location, Does It Matter?

When looking to purchase a card there are a number of things that I review before I bid. Obviously the price is an important starting point but I check a collector’s feedback, shipping cost and the seller’s location. Normally I do not have a problem with a seller’s location as long as everything else seems right (feedback and shipping cost). In the last few months I have picked up items from England, Canada and Singapore but I have heard horror stories of cards never being received, seriously late, high shipping charges or mangled when received due to the long distance shipping.

So I throw out a question to the readers

Will you skip purchasing a card/item if it is a foreign dealer?

Vintage Card Of The Month: 1933 R136 National Chicle Sky Birds

This month’s VCoM comes from National Chicle’s Sky Birds set, which were inserted in to packs of National Chicle Gum, and is designated as R136 1933 National Chicle Sky Birds. The company went bankrupt before the end of the 1930s but between 1933 and 1936 (I know, not a long time) they produced some of the most desired cards of the decade both in sports and non-sports releases. The Sky Birds set was brought back to life by Goudey Gum in 1941 but that set was built around the planes only, no pilots were included.

 

The Sky Birds set was a multi-year continuous skip number set, the checklist states there are 144 cards in the release but there are actually only 108 cards. I am not sure if they did this intentionally or if they planned to release another year with the remaining 36 cards but canceled production once they started having money troubles. In 1933 cards 1-24 were released and in 1934 cards 25-108 were released.

 

The set was designed around famous pilots plus 25 planes. Some of the pilots on the checklist; Eddie Rickenbacker (America’s first Ace in WWI), Orville Wright and Roy Brown (The man “officially” credited with shooting down the Red Baron though often debated) Some of the planes on the checklist; Sopwith Camel (the plane made famous by Snoopy in his battle with the Red Baron) and the Spirit of Saint Louis.

I have been a World War I history buff for most of my life so I was drawn to the connection with this set. I picked up this Max Immelmann (It is misspelled on the card front but correctly on the card back) because of his historical significance. He is best known for the Immelmann Turn, a turning maneuver he designed so he could immediately change positions to attack another victim after shooting down an enemy aircraft. It is no longer used as a combat maneuver but it is still used by jet pilots today so they can make tactical turns at high speed.

 

Additionally, Immelmann was Germany’s first ace and was credited with 15 victories before his death in June 1916. He was the first German pilot to ever be awarded the Pour le Merite, Germany’s highest military honor. The award has since been known as the Blue Max Cross in his honor. He is actually shown wearing the Blue Max Cross in this illustration.

 

The card is seriously distressed, there are creases, bends and it is peeling around the edges. It actually looks like a small animal took a bite out of the top right corner. It is pure ugly, but a beautiful ugly. There is a personality to cards this damaged.

In Hand: 1992 Pro Set Flopps Promo Set

After Germany’s 7-1 trouncing of Brazil I initially planned on posting another soccer themed post but when I went to my mailbox something special arrived that made me change my mind, I received my 1992 Pro Set Flopps 5-card promo set.

 

In the early 1990s sports cards were all over the place, companies were looking for any way to make money and that includes coming up with goofy and horrible sets. Pro Set was already producing football, hockey, golf and racing sets so they decided to take a step in to baseball by doing what is most logical… a parody set.  Their intention was to create a 66-card set (55 base cards, 10 scratch & sniff and 1 “collectible” card) using the big named players of the time and to kick things off they created a 5-card promo set to get interest built up. As expected the MLBPA did not appreciate the idea and things went legal, Pro Set ended up stopping production but not before the promo sets had already made it out to dealers.

 

The five cards set includes

Wade Bugs and Stickey Henderson

 

Barry Bones and Lance Perishable

and the reason I bought the set Ken Groovy, Jr.

I never paid much attention to the set over the years but with my recent re-focusing on building my Griffey collection I have started searching out his cards. Individual cards run .99 cents up to a couple of dollars so when I found a sealed 5-card promo set for $1.99 shipped I jumped on it.

 

While I was doing research on the set I came across a rumor that a couple of the base cards made it out to the public but I could not find any information about anyone every actually seeing one of these “back door” cards so I am going to write that off as just a legend.

A Father's Love For The World Cup

The World Cup is down to the Semifinals with tomorrow’s Brazil-Germany match and Wednesdays Netherlands-Argentina match with the winners moving on to the Final on Sunday July 13^th. At this point, with the way that the final four teams are playing, it could go any way. If Silva wasn’t out with his second yellow card and Neymar out with a back injury I would have picked Brazil to take it all but with those loses any of the four teams can win the title.

 

To celebrate the final leg of the World Cup I am going to post up some of my recent soccer pick ups. As I have said before the 2014 Prizm World Cup release is one of my favorite releases of the year so I am targeting these cards to build a set. One of the things that bothers me about this set is the flood of parallels but that doesn’t mean I don’t mind picking some up from time to time and here are the three Father’s Day parallels that I picked up this past week. The cards were inserted in to Panini’s Father’s Day packs and are #/7 each. The cards are exactly the same as the base cards except for the "Panini Limited Edition" on the front and the #/7 on the back.

 

While the top named players Father’s Day parallels are selling for well over $150 there are plenty that are selling for less than $5 with shipping. Together these cards cost me a total of $9.05, including the shipping.

 

First up is Alexandre Song

 

 If it were not for Suarez biting Italy’s Chiellini on the shoulder during a match Song would have taken the “A-Hole of the World Cup” award. He was beyond physical, hitting and punching other players during his two games. He received a red card against Croatia and was banned for 3 games by FIFA. He is currently at the center of an investigation, along with 6 other Cameroon players, by Cameroon‘s football federation for fixing World Cup matches. It was no surprise that I was the only bidder of this card and it cost me .99 cents and $2.50 shipping.

 

Next up is Joao Moutinho

 

Moutinho is a solid player but no goals, no assists and being overshadowed by Cristiano Ronaldo on a Portuguese team that did not advance past group play kept his card prices very reasonable. I was happy to pick up this card for $2.25 shipped.

 

Finally is Igor Akinfeev

 

Akinfeev is by no means the best goalie at the World Cup but in the first two games he gave up only 2 goals and with Russia needing a win over South Korea to move along he had to become a brick wall. If you want to surmise Akinfeev’s World Cup experience just watch Korea’s Keun-Ho Lee’s long distance goal in the 69^th minute. Just plain ugly goalkeeping but it worked out in my favor, .99 cents plus $2.32 shipped and I was able to catch and keep the card in my hand.

Happy Birthday America!

In June of 1776 a committee of five politicians; John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Livingston and Roger Sherman, were tasked with drafting a declaration of independence from the English. The War for Independence had been raging for over a year and the politicians felt it was time to officially separate from the Crown.

It took roughly 3 weeks to put together the document, which went through re-writes and revisions and on July 1^st it was time for Congress to put the final draft on the table and get to voting. After a day of votes, arguments and speeches the Declaration of Independence was adopted on July 2, 1776 with twelve “Yea” votes and one abstention vote.  

Over the next five months a total of 56 delegates signed the document with John Hancock signing first on July 4, 1776 when the final document was approved for printing. The final signature was Matthew Thornton on November 4, 1776. Additionally it is believed that the document that was signed and is currently on display in the National Archives is not the original document nor the only one to remain. The original document that was submitted to Congress in June 1776 was destroyed while it was being re-written and edited, it is also believed that there were up to 200 Declarations printed up and sent to politicians around the country with 26 copies still known to survive.

There have been a couple of Declaration of Independence depictions on cardboard over the years, most recently by Topps and Upper Deck. One of my favorite depictions comes from the 1930 R129 American History release. The cards were issued in strips so it is common to see the cards cut off-center or even ripped where they were separated. They were your typical 1920-1930s color illustrations that actually looked like water color paintings. Beautiful and educational.

 

I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe day celebrating our nation’s independence.

What If Curt Schilling?

It was October 24, 2004, Game 2 of the World Series between the Boston Red Sox and the St. Louis Cardinals. The Red Sox were dealing with 86 years of the Curse of the Bambino but after winning Game 1 things were starting to look up and with Curt Schilling on the mound hopes were high for Boston, the only problem was worrying about Schilling’s injured right ankle.

 

As he pitched through the evening his sock showed a noticeable patch of blood. The Red Sox won the game plus the next two to sweep the Cardinals and put an end to the curse. The sock was eventually loaned to the Baseball Hall of Fame but after Schilling made some bad investments he sold the sock in early 2013 for a little over $92k to a private buyer but it gone me wondering what if Schilling had decided to sell it following the game and Donruss were to have purchased it with intent on including it in a 2005 release?  

 

So for my next installment of custom What If? Cards

  2005 Donruss Prime Patches Portraits Curt Schilling Bloody Sock jumbo relic

The Rise Of Carmelo Anthony (Sort Of) And The Downfall Of Jeremy Lin

The Houston Rockets have not been shy about saying they want Carmelo Anthony, just as obvious is the way the Rockets are telling Jeremy Lin that his days in Houston are numbered. Today Anthony was in Houston talking with the Rockets and the team went all out to bring Melo to the city. What is funny is that the Rockets bent over backwards to bring Lin to Houston and now they are tossing him on the junk pile.

 

These are images that greeted Carmelo Anthony during his visit to the Rocket's Toyota Center arena today. The Rockets are pretty straight forward that if Melo ends up in Houston he will be wearing Lin's #7 jersey.

 

I wonder how those collectors who spent big money on Lin during his “flash in the pan” days in New York feel about the purchases. Cards that were selling in the thousands can now be picked up for a small percentage.

 

A perfect example of a delusional seller versus a realistic seller:

 

2010 Panini Rookie & Stars Lin autograph #400/499

$559.99 (Currently on sale from $699.99)

 

Vs.

 

2010 Panini Rookie & Stars Lin autograph #337/499

$79.99 or Best Offer

 

What is worse is that the delusional seller who has the card at $559 is also selling a 2010 Panini Threads Lin Jersey shaped autograph #28/99 for $1039.99 (on sale from $1299.99) and a 2010 Panini Prestige Lin autograph #44/99 for $879.99 (on sale from $1099.99). If you want a laugh read the descriptions for the three Lin cards, they are promoting Lin as a Knick and have probably not been changed in 2 years. He probably bought them when they were at an all-time high and is determined to make his money back even though he is re-listing the cards over and over and over again in hopes of suckering someone in to make as poor an uninformed purchase as he made in 2012.

Why Do Signatures Have To Be So Difficult To Collect?

 Besides sticker autographs the only thing worse than your favorite athlete having a crappy signature is your favorite athlete having someone else sign their autograph for them. One of my favorite upcoming NFL rookie this year is the Chicago Bears Ka’Deem Carey, a University of Arizona product.

 

When he was still playing for the University of Arizona Ka’Deem had a very unique, and highly collectable autograph. He signed a large “K” with “deem” along the upstroke of the “K” and his full last name. Here are a couple of examples that he signed, some have been signed in person while others were PSA/DNA verified. Notice he signs his full name plus adds the inscription “Bear Down” and/or his uniform number even on the shoe. Each "K" matches, the "d" is lower case not capital, the "C" and the "Y" match on each item. These are items he has signed between 2011 and 2013.

 

 

When he signed for Upper Deck, Press Pass and Leaf prior to the NFL Draft he cut his signature down to a craptastic “KC” which can be seen in this 2014 Leaf Metal Draft card that I picked up back in April. Other players have done a similar change to their autographs when they were heading in to the draft/just drafted in anticipation of having to sign a ton of cards once they made it in the NFL.

 

He are a couple of his other UD, Press Pass and Leaf autographs that are available. If he were not one of my favorite U. of Arizona players I wouldn’t pick up any of his autograph cards because these are horrible signatures that rival Chris Johnson’s “CJ” signatures. These cards were all signed in 2013 and early 2014 prior to the NFL Draft.

 

You can imagine my surprise when I do a search of the recently released NFL licensed Topps and Panini products and I see signatures are that are quite alien. What is even more disgusting is that there are signatures within the same product line that do not even match. None of which match anything that he has signed for the past 3 years

 

Here are four Bowman cards, all hard signed and I am sure they all say something along the lines of the signing being witnessed by a Topps employee but I am having trouble believing that. I realize that a signature may have slight changes from card to card but not this significant. Going down the line:

 The “K” looks different on three cards (the mini and X-Fractor are a bit similar) and none of them match the way he used to sign the “K” for years.

There are four different “D”, four different “C” and two different “Y”. Only the “Y” on the Bowman Refractor looks correct to the “Y” he has signed for years.

 

It looks like Panini at least used stickers from the same sheet or at least signed by the same person because all of the cards that I have seen all match up to each other, though are still incorrect from Ka’Deem Carey’s original signature.

 

At this point I am done purchasing Carey’s autographs, his signatures are either a crappy “KC” or fake. At least I know the “KC” was signed by him while his newer signature is completely up in the air as to who signed it.