2020 Topps Big League Group Break Results

While I had other plans for this week's break, it was requested that we break some 2020 Topps Big League so I grabbed two hobby boxes and postponed my original plan to next week. I'm glad that Cynical Buddha from Collector's Crack made the suggestion as it was a lot of fun and we pulled some pretty good cards if you ask me.

Maybe one of these days I'll figure out how to make those cool YouTube thumbnails for my videos! We had a good crowd join in for the video, including a few new people. Napkin Doon even joined in on the recommendation by AJ/Lost Collector! Prior to this break I had opened a few hobby packs of Big League and I loved the simplistic look of the cards. The insert designs were fun looking and its a good set to build with the lower price point. I had no idea going in though that we'd have the success that we did with some of the cards pulled. If you don't want to watch the video, then keep reading for a break down of the two boxes.

The base design is very simple, which I find to be a good thing. One comment during the video was that it reminded someone of some of the old Fleer Tradition sets...which I can see. No gloss. No foil stamping. Just a good old fashioned baseball card set.

In the hobby packs these orange parallels fall 1:1 packs. These are much brighter in hand, almost a safety neon orange!

When I saw the Defensive Wizards on the sell sheet I immediately new that this year's iteration of Big League was going to be fun. These are some of the best cards I've seen in some time. I can't wait to build this set myself.

Flipping Out celebrates the many bat flips seeming now occur on a regular basis. Not my favorite set, but at least it uses a theme not widely used before.

Roll Call features some pumped up images of the players with their name in all caps behind them. This reminds me for some reason of a subset featured in the old 1998 Fleer Dugout Axcess set.

Even though 2020 Big League hasn't been on shelves for very long, I saw both on Facebook and Twitter the autographs pulled by various people. I wasn't sure if we'd pull anything since the Big League Autographs were seeded 1:78 packs and the hobby boxes now only contained 18 packs. As you can see above we beat the odds!

In the second box our big pull was this beautiful red foil parallel of the Pirates' Chris Archer. I remember seeing on the packs that these were seeded 1:3820 and I saw the asterisk so I knew they would be serially numbered...but I didn't expect to pull a 1/1!! I had an extra One Touch laying around so I put the card in that so nothing bad would happen to it. Shortly after the break Wade, who always claims his Pirates, requested that I ship his stack. I don't blame him, I'd want to get my hands on that card as soon as I could too!

Another week, another great break. I'm really having a blast hosting these and I thank each and everyone that continues to buy in and participate. We'll have another break next week before I take a week off. I'm super excited about next week's break too as I haven't opened a box of this since I included a box in a break back in April 2011! Next Friday, 07/03/20 we'll be busting series 1 & 2 of 1996 Topps Laser! Sign ups will go live Sunday, 06/28/20.

Less than 12 hours left to bid Cubs fans!

I may should have waited and listed this card later in the day last Sunday, but as of right now there are less than 12 hours left to bid on my 2015 Topps Allen & Ginter Kris Bryant RC Glossy Mini 1/1. I'm hoping that one of the near 30 people currently watching the auction place their bid(s) tonight while I'm sleeping so tomorrow morning feels like Christmas morning for me!

Can a baseball card cause a heart attack?

If you follow my Facebook page for the blog then you would have known that Sunday evening I nearly had a heart attack. No, my health is fine...thanks for the worrying. What caused this was what I found sitting inside a discounted blaster of 2015 Topps Allen & Ginter I was sorting.

I'm way behind on organizing 2015, 2016 and now 2017 A&G. I didn't have them in pages/binder yet alone have a want list created for 2016 before a few days ago. While going through these opened packs, I had set aside the minis since I usually don't do much with those. As I was doing so, one card caught my eye as the front was a little different than the others. It was glossy instead of the normal matte finish. I looked at a pack and saw the odds were 1:2,167 for a glossy mini parallel. I thought cool, it's of Kris Bryant RC...perhaps I can trade this for something good.

Then I flipped the card over and saw it was a 1/1!! Cue heart attack.

I never have good luck buying packs. Its rare these days I buy a hobby box/packs so most of my purchases come from retail outlets like Target and Walmart. After I composed myself, I took my latest find to social media to try and figure out what I should do. I was given all sorts of advice before I settled on listing it on eBay with a starting bid of $9.99. The Sewingmachineguy (remember him bloggers?) gave me some of the best advice. Just toss it on eBay and let the market decide it's worth. Within hours of putting it on eBay, the price jumped to $50, then doubled to $100. The auction will run until Sunday morning, 08/13/17. While I hope it brings in a nice amount, I just hope someone gets it that will cherish it as a part of their collection. 

** EDIT ** By request, here is a link to the auction.

This is easily the best pull that I've ever had. It just kills me that its been sitting right there underneath my nose all this time and I never knew it!

Rey Ordonez Holy Grail

Being a super collector of a player is tough, especially when that player played in the 90's and early 2000's. Card companies were much more plentiful back then and they loved their parallels. I already have enough trouble trying to keep track of the cards released. I can't even fathom trying to be a super collector of a modern day player.

Speaking of parallels, Pacific Trading Card Company had their fair share of different colored parallels, including low serially numbered parallels. I also believe they may have been one of the first trading card companies to include 1/1 printing plates into packs. Unlike the Topps printing plates, Pacific didn't include a sticker on the back of the slab of metal with card info. Kinda bland if you ask me, but again they were pioneers in this area.

Recently I had a chance to pick up not one, but two Rey Ordonez 1/1 printing plates. I ran across a seller that was selling printing plates of many different players and he had two cards of Rey. I didn't even know these cards existed and I took a lot of pride into the completeness of the list of his cards I've compiled. Needless to say I was quick to strike a deal. The cards just arrived the other day and man are these awesome. Of course it threw off my organization in my binder and had to move a lot of cards to make way for these, but hey that's part of the growing pains collectors go through.

1998 Pacific Omega 1/1 Printing Plate

I honestly can't remember if Topps releases the print plates for the back of their cards, but obviously Pacific did. While it's cool to own this card, it's really not the easiest card to read because of blue text on the light blue background. I also recently discovered the front side of this card was recently on eBay...but I was sniped at the last minute this week and lost out. I really wish I could contact the buyer and make them offer so I could "complete" this card.

1999 Pacific Private Stock 1/1 Printing Plate

I also grabbed this '99 Private Stock printing plate. I particularly loved this set by Pacific and was able to build the entire set by hand. I'm so thrilled to be able to add this card to my Rey Ordonez super collection as well.

I'm getting down to a few autographs, low serially numbered parallels and 1/1 of cards before my collection will be complete (if that will ever happen) so you can imagine my being on cloud 9 with these purchases. I've been at collection Rey ever since his rookie year in 1995 and I'm thrilled I'm getting closer and closer to picking up every card he has. Still have some work to do though so if you can help me out or at least point me in the right direction I'd very much appreciate it. Here's a link to my master collection of what I have (in blue) and what I'm looking for still (in black).

An interview w/ a Topps sketch card artist, James-Michael Smith

Today I present a different type of post.  It turns out a friend of mine has been doing some work for Topps, lending his incredible artistic abilities for 1 of 1 sketch cards!  I've posted a few of his Topps Museum Canvas Collection sketches on my Facebook page in the past.  I asked him if he'd be willing to sit down for an informal interview and he agreed.

1)      First of all, tell us a little about yourself.

Well, I’m an artist/Bible teacher/martial artist who grew up in Savannah, studied fine art at Reinhardt and UGA, went to seminary in Massachussets, and has lived in Charlotte since 2003. I’m also a ginger and my favorite movie of all time is Big Trouble in Little China. What did I leave out?  J

2)      What is your favorite sport?  Did you play sports growing up?  Do you have a favorite athlete?

Hands-down my favorite sport is MMA (Mixed Martial Arts)! I grew up playing basketball and doing martial arts. I wasn’t particularly great at the former, but I always did well at the latter. My favorite basketball players as a kid were Magic Johnson and Dominique Wilkins. I was also a big John Stockton fan in college. For the last seven years or so, I’ve been concentrating on Brazilian Jiujitsu, which is both a sport and a martial art and I’ve loved seeing the explosion of BJJ and MMA in American and around the world over the past decade or so. It’s hard to narrow down the fighters I’m a fan of, but I’d say my favorite MMA athletes are Renzo Gracie (whose association I train under) and Lyoto Machida for the men, and Felice Herrig and Tecia Torres for the women. Oh, and as a UGA alum I’m definitely a Bulldogs fan. Go Dawgs!!

3)      How did you come about working for Topps?  Have you done anything else for them?

I’ve been doing portraits of fighters and martial artists for the past few years and ended up connecting online with other MMA artists, a couple of whom do illustration and sketch cards on a regular basis. When Topps was looking for artists for their 2013 UFC Bloodlines set, my friend Scott Cohn (a fantastic comic book artist and illustrator whose work folks should check out @ Deviant Art) suggested my work to them. The director for Topps’ UFC department got in touch with me and I ended up doing around 80 or so cards for Bloodlines. While working on those, someone in the MLB department saw my work and contacted me about doing a set for their 2014 Museum/Canvas Collection. I ended up doing about 50 for that set which was just released a few weeks ago.

4)      From beginning to end, how long on average did it take you to complete one card?  What type of pen did you use for the sketches?

It depends on how complex the composition is really. Some I was able to do in under and hour. Some took a couple of hours to do. I used mostly Pigma Micron pens and Prismacolor art markers, as well as colored ballpoint and gel pens.

5)      Did Topps specifically request certain types of sketches?  (i.e. portrait, in game action) 

For Bloodlines, they gave me carte blanche pretty much. I could choose the reference photos from a collection they had the rights to and go from there. They asked that I try to work in the fighter’s nationality or country of origin if possible, since the set focused on the international aspect of the fighters’ backgrounds. So I used many of the color schemes of the various flags on that set.

For the MLB set, they were more restrictive. Rather than letting me choose my reference photos, they sent me ones they wanted me to work from. Honestly, I’m not a big fan of that approach because different artists’ styles lend themselves to different poses or compositions. Many “action shots” in baseball are actually pretty awkward looking when drawn at 2.5”x3.5” scale…especially if the reference photo is poor quality. So that set was much more challenging than Bloodlines (also, I have to confess I’m not very knowledgeable when it comes to baseball…at least compared to my MMA knowledge! So there were a number of players I drew who I’d never seen before. But I won’t say which ones in case they happen to read this! Haha!).

6)      Which card ended up being your favorite and why?

In the Bloodlines set I’d have to say it was my Ian McCall (aka. “Uncle Creepy”) card. 

The reason being that I had Ian autograph it and we raffled it off to raise money for a friend who lost her husband after a long battle with cancer last year. We ended up raising over $700 for the family from the raffle of that card.

From the Museum/Canvas Collection set I’d say it was one of the Cal Ripken cards I did. My roommate of 11 years got married last week and he’s the biggest Cal Ripken fan you could ever hope to meet. So I did a few extra cards of Cal and framed a couple of them as a wedding present. 

7)      What does it feel like to see your cards selling for (usually) high dollar amounts on eBay?

It’s pretty cool, I have to admit. Seeing a sketch card you did go for 3-digit figures is really gratifying, especially if you know it went to a fan of that particular athlete.

8)      Lastly, do you have any more plans to work with Topps in the near future?

I definitely want to do another set for next year’s Bloodlines series! The UFC is launching a women’s 115lb division this year and a number of the women they’ve signed (Felice Herrig, Tecia Torres, Paige Vanzant, Bec Rawlings) are fighters  whom I’ve done charity portraits of before and who have been supportive of my work. So I told Topps that I absolutely want to do sketch cards of them for this year’s set.

Turns out that Topps sent him a few sketch cards back as part of his compensation, and with JMS not being an avid baseball card collector he has listed these on eBay.  Here are a few available:

* Atlanta Braves lot featuring John Smoltz, Tom Glavine and Deion Sanders
* Baltimore Orioles slugger Chris Davis
* Boston Red Sox great Dustin Pedroia
* Milwaukee Brewers slugger Ryan Braun
* Oakland Athletics bash brother Mark McGwire
* Philadelphia Phillies legend Mike Schmidt

James-Michael Smith is not only a great artist as you can see, but he is also a great all around guy.  Oh yeah, he does commission work too so if you like the sampling of his work give him a shout and perhaps he can craft a masterpiece that will be the centerpiece of your team or player collection!

JMS can be contacted via Twitter, or to view more of his work stop by his Art of the Dojo page (quick link to his other sketch cards), Facebook and Tumblr.

A huge thanks goes out to JMS for taking the time out of his busy schedule to share with us just one of his incredible talents.

Community Gum comes through again

A few weeks ago those great guys from Community Gum broke a case of 2012 Topps series 2.  While there wasn't any new Tim Hudson cards for me to chase there was plenty of other new Braves cards.  In their typical fashion the guys pulled some great Braves cards which I quickly swooped in on.

In addition to picking up all the base cards of the team and the normal inserts like the '87 Minis and the various gold themed cards I came away w/ 2 higher end inserts.

The Braves have a pretty young pitching staff this season and while most of the guys have had some rough starts lately it's always great to pick up autographs...especially when they come cheap.  Randall shows a lot of promise.  Even though the auto is a sticker at least it makes the Golden Moments design look better.

The highlight of the deal for me was picking up another 1/1 printing plate card.  This time it's #429 Michael Bourn.  He is having a great year and I really hope he gets that last needed push to end up on the All-Star team.  I've heard other Braves fans say he reminds them of Marquis Grissom and I can see the resemblance.

I think I'm going to start having Andy and Jon open up all my packs as they pull more and better Braves than I ever do.  Thanks guys!

The 'art' of collecting

If you've followed my blog for any length of time you'll know I collect more than just sports cards.  While I have cut back on non-sports card purchases, I am still intrigued by some of the Marvel Comics stuff.  A month or so ago Upper Deck released their Avengers Assemble set of movie cards.  I'll probably do a post on those cards themselves soon, but for now I wanted to talk about the 1/1 sketch cards found exclusively in hobby boxes.

Sketch cards aren't anything new, but they have seemed to get better and better over the years.  Since I don't buy many hobby packs I didn't know that sketch cards were included in this Avengers set.  I actually found out about them after my wife introduced me to Pinterest.  I started a board to showcase some of the great cards and artwork I could find online.  This lead to a few cards of some characters that caught my eye.  1) I was impressed with the art and 2) I was impressed that these lower tier characters were included.

I was first introduced to Jack of Hearts when he blew up the Avengers Mansion right before the Avengers Disassemble story.  I took the opportunity to go back and pick up other books he appeared in as my appreciation for the cosmic Marvel characters was growing.

Mockingbird was a member of the West Coast Avengers and married for a time to the Avenger Hawkeye.  She was thought dead until she and others were found alive during Secret Invasion.  Ever since I've been a fan of the character.  This card actually depicts her in her old uniform.  While dated, I still prefer it over her current look.

I was first introduced to Starhawk back in the early 90's when my brother bought me the first issue of Guardians of the Galaxy.  He is a strange character to say the least, but I always enjoyed the way Jim Valentino wrote him.

The early 90's were full of new, great Marvel characters.  Darkhawk was one of those.  He gained a cult following with his own title and continued to appear in other books after his ended.  He became a member of the New Warriors (my favorite team book) and later played a big role in the cosmic story War of Kings.  This card is particularly cool because it's signed by the artist on the back.  There is a small silver foil "AP" stamped on the front signifying it was signed by the artist.  If the 1/1 wasn't already cool enough this really puts it over the top.

I don't own many cards like this so these are the new highlight of my Marvel card collection.  I previously had one black and white sketch card (of Nova) so I was stoked to get 4 colored sketch cards.  Sure beats buying an expensive hobby box and getting stuck w/ a crappy sketch card of a character you don't want.

Rey Ordonez Collection: 2000 Pacific Printing Plate (1/1)

 

Score another one for the Rey Ordonez collection.  This time a 1/1!  I didn't even know Pacific was inserting printing plates into their packs of 2000 Pacific.  One day I may scan my whole Ordonez collection...but I wouldn't wait around.

Life and Baseball Cards...on top of a refrigerator

Early in December I got an e-mail from Life and Baseball Cards that he had a bubble mailer full of cards to send to me...but he misplaced it and only recently found it on top of his fridge!

When the package finally arrived a week or so ago I was surprised at just how much he was able to cram into a single bubble mailer.  The cards inside just about covered all of my collecting spectrum.  Baseball, football, a few basketball, wrestling and even some Marvel Comics cards!  I won't bore everyone with all the cards, but here are a few that jumped out at me.

I'm slowly working on this nice looking foil insert set from 2008 Topps.

  

Delhomme was fun to watch because you never knew if he was going to throw for 4 TDs or 4 picks.  He had a "connection" with Steve Smith (not to mention their Bojangles commercials!) when he played for the Panthers.

LeFors was another NFL QB bust, but I'll still add these jersey cards to the Panthers collection.

I don't normally bother with the collegiate stuff unless it's NC State, but I really like DeAngelo Williams so these were a nice surprise.



Since I don't buy a lot of football packs I don't have a lot of cards of either Carson Palmer or Kurt Warner.  I especially like the Gridiron Kings Warner card.

Love me some old school basketball cards - especially old Charlotte Hornets cards.  I went to many games at the Hornets old arena affectionately nicknamed the Hive.  Burrell was a great small forward out of UConn I believe. The fact that this is a sticker card gets bonus points!



If the sheer amount of cards weren't enough this Marvel Comics sketch card was also included in the stack.  I wasn't sure at first glance it this was a genuine 1/1 at first.  I have a good knowledge of the Marvel Universe, but I can't quite identify this character.  Any one care to help me?

I need to get busy and pull some cards to send back to show my gratitude.  Thanks for helping me end 2011 on such a great note!

A Mini 1/1

I haven't bought a lot of this year's Goodwin Champions so I'm not all that familiar with all of the possible cards and hits, but I stumbled across this card while looking for something else...a mini printing plate.  I didn't know those existed.  A few days later and I was able to snag it for around $4 shipped.  Not bad for a 1/1 card, huh?