Group Break UPDATE

I finally got the tracking info today from UPS and I'll have the boxes in hand Thursday. Depending on what my wife has planned for me this week I would like to start the break this weekend.

That said, if you have claimed a team please go ahead and remit your payment. PayPal accepted, but please mark the payment as a 'gift' and then send to colbeykatie at comporium dot net

Several teams still remain. Please help spread the word to others you may know that would be interested in participating.

For more info regarding the break please click here.

2010 Topps National Chicle HIT!

On the way home from church this afternoon we stopped at the local Target to pick up a few things. On the way to the register I stopped by the card aisle and grabbed 2 packs of National Chicle and held them in front of my 7 month old daughter Olivia to pick from. She immediately grabbed the pack on the right, so off it went into the buggy and to the register we went.

One settled in the car I pulled the pack out of the bag and ripped it open. I saw the card on the bottom of the pack was of Ichiro. OK, this may be a good pack. Flipped the pack over and the card on top was of Juan Pierre. Then it was Victor Martinez (Red Sox score for my nephew!), Carlos Beltran & Tommy Hanson. By the time I got to Hanson I was already happy. The next card in the stack I almost glanced right over until the Boston "B" on the hat caught my eye.

Then I realized I had just pulled a autograph of Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski! Mine isn't one of the numbered parallel versions, but considering the odds of this card are 1:1,167 needless to say I was happy.

Now I've got to figure out what to do with the card. Do I keep it? Do I trade it? Do I sell it? Do I hold onto it for my nephew until he's older? I'm leaning towards trading it for a nice autograph of a Braves player like John Smoltz, Tom Glavine, Brian McCann, Chipper Jones or Jason Heyward.

Whatever I do with the card this has to be one of the best cards I've ever pulled from a single pack. Perhaps my luck will continue on into this week when I begin my first group break.

2010 Topps Million Card Giveaway Results

1979 Topps #315

*yawn*

First ever Group Break coming for Cardboard Collections! Sign up now!

** UPDATED 5/22/10 **

It may be premature for me to try my hand at a group break, but I've had fun participating in 3 over the last few months (Nachos Grande & Thorzul) so I thought I'd give it a try. Since I'm rather new to the world of card blogging I'll need some help from everyone who visits. Please spread the word to other bloggers who may be interested.

I wasn't sure what to offer for starters. Do I go after something semi-expensive that offers guaranteed hits? Or do I go a little cheaper that offers lots of cards and inserts? After doing a little searching I've decided on the following 2 hobby boxes: 2008 Upper Deck SP and 2009 Upper Deck A Piece of History.

For starters let's take a look at what each box may offer.

2008 Upper Deck SP


Hits: One autograph per box

Key Rookies: Evan Longoria, Clay Buchholz, Clayton Kershaw, Jay Bruce, Jeff Clement, Joey Votto, Kosuke Fukudome, Max Scherzer, Nick Adenhart & more

2009 Upper Deck A Piece of History


Hits: 2 memorabilia cards, 1 autograph
- 1 Piece of Hollywood per box on average
- 1 other (Stadium Scenes jersey, Box Score Memories jersey, Timeless Memories)
- 1 Autograph (Rookie, Stadium Scenes, Franchise History, Box Score Memories, Timeless Memories)

Set Highlights:
- 50 Rookies
- 8 (on average) 20th Anniversary cards
- Several levels of parallels (blue, green, gold)
- Several different insert sets

TERMS:
I'm asking $8.50 for each team claimed or 2 teams for $15.00. This amount covers First Class shipping once the group break is over. To claim your team please send your payment via PayPal to colbeykatie at comporium dot net. Please remember to mark your payment as a 'gift' and let me know which team(s) you are claiming as well as your mailing address. I'm awaiting the boxes to ship and I'll update this post once I know when they'll arrive.

I'll be using Random.org to determine who gets the cards that are necessarily tied to one particular team.

As far as the teams go, I claim the Braves! (^8

Arizona Diamondbacks
Atlanta Braves - flywheels
Baltimore Orioles
Boston Red Sox - sportscards1013 (paid)
Chicago Cubs
Chicago White Sox
Cincinnati Reds - Nachos Grande (paid)
Cleveland Indians - Baseball Dad (paid)
Colorado Rockies
Detroit Tigers
Florida Marlins
Houston Astros
Kansas City Royals
Los Angeles Angels
Los Angeles Dodgers -Scott Clayton (paid)
Milwaukee Brewers
Minnesota Twins - Wax in Canada (paid)
New York Mets - BA Benny (paid)
New York Yankees - BA Benny (paid)
Oakland Athletics
Philadelphia Phillies
Pittsburgh Pirates
San Diego Padres
San Francisco Giants
Seattle Mariners
St. Louis Cardinals - Wax in Canada (paid)
Tampa Bay Rays - Scott Clayton (paid)
Texas Rangers
Toronto Blue Jays
Washington Nationals

2010 Tristar TNA Impact New Era - First Impressions

I noticed today while @ Target they had some new product on the card shelves so I took a few seconds to look everything over. They finally had the new National Chicle baseball which I picked up a pack, but they also had a brand new box of Tristar's TNA Impact New Era wrestling cards. I grew up watching the old NWA wrestling with my brother and grandfather. I used to love wrestling. Now it just seems different and I don't tune in every week like I used to. When I have sat down and watched TNA however it does at times remind me of the "old days". So out of curiosity I picked up a pack to see what the cards looked like.

Nothing too spectacular about the packaging outside of Hogan pointing at one of his famous "pythons".

The base design is nice. It has rather simple and clean layout. The pic of Hogan is a let down since it's the same photo used for the wrapper, but at least the back of the card sports a different albeit smaller photo. His "bio" is nothing new.

The regular set is only 90 cards so it shouldn't be too hard to assemble, however @ 5 cards per pack and each pack retailing for $1.99 a pop one would be better off just buying a hand collated set for a few bucks on eBay. There are an additional 10 short printed OBAK cards numbered 91-100, but supposedly are only inserted into hobby packs. My wrapper states these OBAK cards on the back so I don't know how they are inserted. There are also serially numbered autograph cards numbered to 1, 5, 25, 50 & unnumbered. No actual pack odds are given for any of the SPs or inserts.

I saw a preview of Topps 2010 WWE set and it looks nice, but Tristar has down an outstanding job with this set and I believe has raised the bar for wresting trading card sets.

Are the Braves back?

The last few weeks have been really hectic between work and taking a week to go to New England to visit family. It hasn't allowed me much time to catch many Braves games on television...until tonight. Top of the 6th has been pure bliss. Troy Glaus started it off w/ a solo homer followed later by Martin Prado's 2nd homer of the season...which by the way was a grand slam. Sure, it isn't a perfect game or anything, but if you have been following the Braves this season you should know any sign of Braves offense is a welcomed sight.

So to thank Prado for his efforts tonight here are 2 nice autographs I pulled out of the old Braves binder.

The Week in Review

I'm back...if only for a day. The family and I are headed up to New England tomorrow to visit some family so I wanted to get in one post before I left. I haven't posted because I had lost my cardboard mojo. Last week was just one of those weeks where you couldn't wait for it to end.

I manage several self-storage facilities and I started last week off by coming into work only to realize someone broke into 19 units earlier that morning. These thugs didn't just cut locks to access the units, they someone peeled the doors back at the corners causing over $1,000 damage to the property. After dealing with irate tenants, my district manager, the not so helpful police and crime lab and viewing several hours of surveillance video I was ready to fast forward the rest of my week. Throw this on top of my daily responsibilities & work and at home and it equals not a lot of time for my hobbies and such.

However, I'm back and I wanted to update the blog with several things I've recently picked up and some luck I had recently w/ packs of 2008 Topps Stadium Club.

While I've been waiting for some new card releases I stumbled across some '08 Stadium Club packs @ Target in those discounted boxes. The packs ran $1.59 each with 5 cards per pack. I bought one for the heck of it and after viewing some of the quality photos I was hooked. I looked up the set in Beckett and noticed it was a rather small set with the base being only 100 cards and the rookies adding another 50. Sure there were another 35 rookies that were autographed, but I don't consider them part of the core set. I figured why not try and piece the set together so I went back to Target and bought the rest of the packs that I could find. A few days later I stopped at another Target and bought all the packs I could find there as well. I believe I ended up with 26 packs total. I was pleased with the selection of players. The full bleed photos are great and the action shots even better. Design is rather clean and simple. I was able to piece together a good amount of the 150 cards and I even got 2 rare hits. I never pull anything nice from packs...never. I never expect to pull anything good so I almost passed over these 2 cards:

Autographed RC version of Gregor Blanco of the Braves and a redemption of Jed Lowrie of the
Red Sox. What are the odds that I'd get a hit in these packs much less multiple hits? What are the odds that the hits I'd pull would both be from teams I collect? Needless to say I was very pleased. My family just saw Blanco a week earlier when the Richmond Braves were in town playing the local Charlotte Knights AAA team. When I saw the redemption card however my first reaction wasn't of joy. I just knew the card had to be expired, but once flipped over I noticed I had until October of this year to redeem the card! A quick redemption code later and Topps says I should have this card by August of 2010. Why so long? This is a 2008 product! Do they have to chase Jed down to get his autograph since these are on card autos? Eh, who cares...I actually pulled these!

Having this luck got me to browsing the checklist to see what other Braves were in the set and I noticed another autographed rookie and a autographed Beam Team card. With a little luck I found both cards on eBay for about $10 for the pair. Behold...

Having this luck got me to browsing the checklist to see what other Braves were in the set and I noticed another autographed rookie and a autographed Beam Team card. With a little luck I found both cards on eBay for about $10 for the pair. Behold...

Brent Lillibridge #157

Jair Jurrjens Beam Team Autograph #BTA-JJ

I was a little puzzled at first at why the Beam Team cards have the sticker autographs while the rookie cards are on card autographs until the Beam Team card arrived in the mail. It was hard to tell from the small thumb nail photo on line of the card's translucent stained glass window design. I love this card. I don't recall seeing a similar design in any other card set. I also like that this is an autograph from Jair shortly after joining the Braves club. The back of the card offers the info that Jair beat all other first year pitchers in his rookie campaign on '08 to the nine win mark before the All-Star game. Nice.

While reading some of the other fantastic card blogs I follow I realized that the National Chicle release had snuck up on me. My hobby fund is a little depleted at the moment, but I was able to snag this bat relic of a Braves slugger:

Dale Murphy Diamond Stars #NCR-DM

I believe this is the first National Chicle card in my collection period. I didn't buy any of the football release last year so these are completely new to me. First impression is good. I like the artist's rendition of Murphy and the design has that artsy feel that regular baseball card sets lack. I'll have to pick up a Braves team set eventually.

The last thing I wanted to mention is a bit of a puzzle to me. If anyone out that in blog land can shed some light on this for me I would greatly appreciate it. A few weeks ago while browsing eBay I noticed this seller selling various "hot packs" of cards that guaranteed some sort of hit. t may be a autograph, a patch or a some type of relic. I was skeptical at first, but the guys feedback was rather flawless. I had a little money left sitting in the old PayPal account so I thought why not. I placed 4 small bids - 2008 Upper Deck Artifacts, 2010 Topps, 2010 Topps Heritage and 2008 Marvel Masterpieces set 2. Well I'm happy to report that the seller did deliver on his promises and here are the hits I pulled from each respective pack:

Jimmy Rollins Franchise History jersey #FM-40



Kevin Youkilis Peak Performance jersey relic #PPR-KY2



Kevin Millwood Clubhouse Collection jersey relic #CCR-KM1



Dr. Doom Fantastic Four movie memorabilia costume #FF5

Not bad hits. Outside the Youkilis jersey and maybe the Dr. Doom I don't plan on keeping the others. Those will be listed on my trade page so if you're interested in those let me know.

So that is about it. Time to wrap this up so I can get ready for some much needed vacation. See you guys/gals in a week or so. Perhaps I'll get lucky and stumble across a card or comic shop while jumping back and forth between states up north.