Gearing Up for The National

When it comes to card collecting, I feel like I’ve got a pretty good grasp on things. I mean, after all, I have been collecting some sort of trading cards (my interests have varied during my lifespan) for about 20 years now. There are many things that I have experienced and a plethora of things I have learned from The Hobby. There is, however, one glaring hole in my hobby résumé.

Card shows.

I hate to admit it, but I’ve never been to a card show. The closest I’ve gotten was that one time my dad took me to a county fair when I was about 12 years old. There was a tent with various locals selling a hodgepodge of junk, one of which was a brick-and-mortar card shop who had a nice (at least from my perspective at the time) assortment of cards. But all of that is set to change in just over a week.

I am going to the National Sports Collectors Convention.

The largest card/memoribilia show in America, if not the world.

It’s safe to say that I’m pretty pumped.

But just as quickly as those excited feelings rush in, nervous feelings are right on their heals. I’m nervous because I want to take full advantage of my day at the show (I would probably be far less tentative if I were going for the entire shindig). What if I miss out on meeting certain people? What if I run out of time to scour all of the important booths? What if I don’t come home with any of my “Most Wanted” cards because I couldn’t find them or they were priced too high? At what point will I consider the show a success or a disappointment, especially since I have no idea when I’ll be able to attend again given the recent East Coast snubs by the planning committee?

I need some help here, people, especially from those of you who have attended the National in the past (or even other card shows for that matter). What are some things I should keep in mind? Are there things I should be taking along (besides a camera and limited cash)? I am not really interested in the autograph signings but would love to add some cards to my collections. Should I take all of my have/want lists, or just focus on one or two?

Any advice you can afford would be greatly appreciated.

Blogosphere Kindness, Pt. 6

Just as a warning, this post is EXCESSIVELY late.

A little (ok, ok, a LONG) while ago, I got an email from a collector I had never “met” before. He said his name was Bo and he had a whole box of base Topps Pirates for me if I wanted them. This was right after I began my quest to collect every base Topps Pirates card, and this Bo guy must have found my blog and either read that post or took a look at my Buccos page above. I informed him I didn’t have a lot of trade bait as most of my baseball cards are from the height of the junk wax era. He said that was perfect as he loves those sets and he expressed interest in my early Upper Deck cards. Sweet. He sent along his box and it did not disappoint one bit. In fact, it exceeded my expectations more than any other package I’ve received so far.

Bo sent so many Pirates that I couldn’t scan all of them. Instead, I scanned just a one-card example from each set that was represented in Bo’s box, and it still took two scans to get them all. Below are those one-card examples…coming from a staggering 17 different sets.

Click images for full sized scans

In total, Bo sent an absurd 201 different base Topps Pirates. He was able to completely knock out my 1988 wantlist and nearly completed several other years. I was blown away by the sheer kindness and generousity of Bo. I did a little digging (actually, he may have sent me a link to make my “research” much easier) and found that Bo is a fellow card blogger and is the proud owner and author of the aptly named Baseball Cards Come to Life! If you enjoy old school ‘ball cards and some clever writing, you should definitely check out his site.

So, what did I send in response to Bo’s generous offerings? Absolutely nothing. Why? Because I’m a jerk. Actually, the truth of the matter is (and yes, I realize this sounds like a cliché and awful excuse), I just haven’t had the time to go through my old Upper Deck cards and compare them against his wantlists. I also have a bad feeling that one of my early collection boxes is missing because I know that I have more UD cards around somewhere than I am finding. But Bo, if you are reading this, please know that I am a man of my word and I promise to get a box to you someday. It may not be this week or even next month, and I may not be able to get together 201 different cards you need for your collection, but I will make good on my end of the trade and the excessive time that has lapsed since you fulfilled your side.

THANKS, BO!

Heisman Highlight: Pete Dawkins

Name: Pete Dawkins
Position: Back
College: Army Cadets
Class: Senior
Winning Year: 1958 – 24th Award
Official Heisman Profile: Click Here
 
 
 

Interesting Notes: Dawkins overcame polio to become a feared versatile player and captain for the undefeated Army Cadets in 1958…excelled in rushing and passing and was a more than able-bodied receiver…opted to pursue academics and a military career over playing football…went to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and earned his MPA and PhD from Princeton…rose to rank of Brigadier General and served in the armed forces for 24 years…was a partner for Lehman Brothers and served/serves as Chairman/CEO for several large companies…was elected to the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame in 1975.

Featured Card: Sports Illustrated cover. Opting out of a professional football career, Dawkins does not have any official rookie cards. In order to track down a collectible to complete your Heisman Trophy winners collection, you might consider magazine covers, such as this 1958 Sports Illustrated cover. If you prefer to stick with standard cards, there are various modern legends-themed sets that have included cards of Dawkins. Copies of these cards can generally be obtained for less than $5.

NOTE: You can find all of my Heisman Highlight Features by clicking the post banner above.

HOF Spotlight: Paul Brown

Name: Paul Brown
Position: Coach
Pro Career: 1946 – 1962
Team Affiliation(s): Cleveland Browns
College: Miami (OH)
Induction Class: 1967

Brief Bio: One of the greatest coaching innovators of all time, Paul Brown, perhaps more than anyone else, deserves to have a professional franchise named after him. Brown organized the Cleveland Browns in 1946 for the new All-American Football Conference (AAFC). In the league’s four years of existence, the Browns lost just four games en route to sweeping all four league titles. When the AAFC disbanded and the Browns were merged into the NFL, success came no less easily. The Browns played in the NFL championship game every year from 1950 through 1955, claiming the title in 1950, 1954, and 1955. In total, Brown amassed an incredible 167-53-8 record with the Browns. A great innovator, Brown changed the landscape of professional coaching as he was the first to hire a year-round full-time staff of assistants, institute a scientific approach to scouting college talent, use intelligence tests to gauge players’ learning capacity, use notebooks and classroom techniques, set up complete film clip statistical studies, grade his own players based on film study, use a sideline play-calling system (using alternating guards as messengers) and hold his team together at a hotel the night before game day for both road and home games. Brown was also a mastermind at creating pattern passing schemes to take advantage of early defensive strategies and then developed a superior defensive plan to counteract his new offense.

Featured Card: 1952 Bowman #14. While many football coaches never get their own card, Paul Brown earned that right (as did several other coaches included in the 1952 Bowman set). I assume that once the decision was made to include coaches in the set, Brown was the first obvious choice. Trivial Beckett value of this card is $250. Current listings on eBay range from $60 to $350 with most coming in around $100. There does not appear to be an obvious price difference between the small and large variances, but all of the highest priced listings do happen to be from the large set.

NOTE: You can find all of my Hall Of Fame Spotlight Features by clicking the HOF Spotlight banner above.

Product Review: 2010 Score

One of the longest tenured brands in football, Score is back once again for the 2010 season. Despite several ownership changes (Pinnacle Brands, Score, Donruss/Playoff, Panini), one aspect of Score’s offerings has remained constant: it’s cheap. If there is any one set that will help get kids interested in collecting cards again, it’s got to be Score on the football front. I know when I was a kid I wanted quantity for my dollar and quantity is what you get with Score.

The Box – Click for Detail

Hobby boxes come with 36 7-card packs for a total of 252 cards. I purchased this box from Dave and Adam’s Card World for $27 (I once again added some supplies to get free shipping), which translates into a $0.11/card ratio, and that’s rounding up. Like I said above, this is the ultimate cheapo set. It’s also a set collectors set with a 400-card base set and no guaranteed hits driving the prices up. There are certainly no secrets with this product, as has been the case for 20+ years.

1 RC and 1 Glossy Parallel in each of these

The Breakdown:
Base Cards
   Veterans (#1-300): 152 (50.7% with 0 duplicates)
   Rookies (#301-400): 36 (36.0% with 0 duplicates)
   Overall: 188 (47.0%)
Parallels
   Glossy: 36
   Scorecard (#/499): 2 base
   Gold Zone (#/299): 2 base, 1 NFL Players
   Signatures: 1
Inserts
   Hot Rookies: 7
   Franchise: 5
   All-Pro: 6
   NFL Players: 4

Click images for full-sized scans

NOTE: Please keep in mind throughout this review that this is a very low-end set and I am going to review it as such. If you only collect super high end products, you’re never going to buy this product anyway, so don’t piss and moan if you think my opinions listed hereafter are soft or too forgiving. Get over it. You’ll sleep much better tonight if you do.

FIRST AND GOAL’S FOUR DOWNS:
1st Down, Design: Honestly, it’s not terrible. To start, I like that Panini went with the team color scheme for the card fronts. I’m not necessarily a fan of the kindergarten art table design elements, with the paint splatters, water drops, and random burlap shreds, but it actually sorta works. Panini is staying true to the feel of Score through the years as this has always been a mediocre product with slightly behind the times designs. There is a certain charm in that. I like that the card back ties to the card front very strongly and although I’d prefer to see a headshot, I can pass on it if the only option was a further cropped copy of the front image. The only thing that really makes me cock my head in confusion is why the player position is so much larger than the player name. With some of the color schemes (like the Posluszny above), it sticks out even more. I realize some players have really long names and there is a desire to have all of the cards be uniform, but this probably could have been done a little better. One thing I really like is that now that mini camps are underway, there are very few rookies who are not in their new pro uniforms, which beats out earlier products that had airbrushed college unis and combine jerseys. Overall, for a super low-end set, it works. Kids might even like it. If you are an OCD adult who cannot stand clutter, looking at a binder full of this set might be overwhelming though. My biggest gripe? It looks almost idenitcal to last year’s set, including the inserts.

2nd Down, Inserts: To start, I will offer my quick insight into the various parallel sets included with Score: drop them. There are 6 parallel sets (Glossy, Scorecard, Gold Zone, Red Zone, End Zone, and Artist’s Proof) and none of them are worthwhile. The Glossy set is hardly distinguishable from the base set and the others simply have a stamp in the upper left corner of the card front and a serial number stamp on the back. What’s the point, really? Score has had the Scorecard parallel for years, so I get the desire to keep that one. But seriously, lose the rest next year, Panini. The insert sets overall weren’t bad. The Franchise and All-Pro sets feel very similar, although it’s kinda cool seeing a mini set with almost all Pro Bowl jerseys. The Red Hot Rookies set doesn’t do anything for me. Just give me another base RC instead. Some people may hate the NFL Players inserts because they are a little tacky, but I actually like them. It really reminds me of something Collector’s Choice would have made in the late 90s, and I know for a fact I would have loved these cards when I was first collecting as a wee lad. I really like that inserts do not weight the box down and although most people will only buy products with guaranteed hits, I enjoy that there were only a few autograph inserts to avoid pushing the price up. Cheap and simple. There’s a theme here if you haven’t noticed.

3rd Down, Collation: This was very good. Out of 252 cards, I did not pull a single duplicate, which is great. The collation of individual packs was very predictable: 4 base cards, 1 insert (or 5th base card), 1 base RC, 1 glossy parallel. It was in that exact order every time. Although I guess that just goes to show there was a method to ensuring the 1 RC and 1 Glossy parallel per pack promise. And actually, I appreciated that because like I said above, the Glossy parallels were VERY difficult to distinguish from the base cards. Once I had my entire stack, I went through and removed every seventh card to pull out the glossies. But really, for the quantity of cards included, this was very good collation.

4th Down, Overall Value: The old adage that “you get what you pay for” is definitely true in the case of 2010 Score. These cards, including the highly touted rookies, just aren’t going to pull a lot of interest on the secondary market. It is the nature of the beast. But on the flip side, you also aren’t paying very much with a $0.11 per card average. If you are a set collector, you could probably complete the 400-card set with just 3 hobby boxes and still pay less than you would for one box of most other products. If you are on a really tight budget or have some kids in your family, this is a great entry-level product to pick up. Hell, you could even kick it old school and put some of these in the spokes of your bike and not feel like you just wasted $50. So in summary, if you look at a raw dollar value, this is one of the worst products of the year; however, if you look at a value to price ratio, it is right up there with any other product on the calendar.

RED ZONE RESULTS: Four consecutive rushing plays netting 6 yards, resulting in a TURNOVER ON DOWNS 2010 Score decided to play it very conservative this year. The design was nearly identical to last year, the price point is very low, and the inserts and parallels were very predictable. Much like a smash mouth run-first football team, this product is probably more suitable for the 70s. But with conservative offenses usually comes stingy defenses (I love Big Ten football), so turning the ball over so deep in the opponent’s territory sets up a very good safety situation. In a colossial conservative battle, those two points could be huge (I was at the 2004 Penn State/Iowa game in which Penn State lost 6-4…2 field goals for Iowa, 2 safties for Penn State…and Penn State had a third safety called back on a phantom “forward progress” ruling).

NEXT UP (tentatively): 2010 Panini Classics

Redemption Song

Several moons ago, I bought a few boxes/tins of 2007 Sweet Spot. It wasn’t my favorite product of all time, but it was absurdly discounted in the tail end of the holiday shopping season. In one tin, I pulled the dreaded white card of doom. You know the sort. It’s just as thick as a major hit but it’s completely blank save a plain text sticker and silver rub off. Great…

I redeemed the code for my “ALAN BRANCH/LEON HALL 2007 SWEET SPOT FOOTBALL SWEET SPOT PIGSKIN DUAL SIGNATURES # ED TO 50 PDS-AL” and hoped for the best. A while later, I received an email from Upper Deck stating they could not fulfill the redemption for whatever reason but that I could request a substitute (another song reference!). I replied that I really only collect Emmitt Smith but since I highly doubt they would consider his autograph a replacement of “equal value,” they could send whatever they felt inclined to mail. It was a risk, but it wasn’t like I was due a cut 1/1 auto from Hognus Wagner or Abe Lincoln’s pubes.

Just the other day I received an asbestos-laden envelope from none other than 5909 Sea Otter Place in Carlsbad. I doubt it’s actually asbestos, but really, what kind of envelopes do they use in CA? Have they never heard of bubble mailers? I digress. Inside, I found a toploader and letter. I actually read the letter first which stated:

PLEASE READ

Dear Valued Upper Deck Collector,

   Congratulations on finding your redemption card. Please look on the front of the package for the redemption code(s) that are being replaced. We appreciate your patience and support of our redemption process. Upon request we have exchanged your card according to the policy in place on redemption offers for other comparable pieces. Please be assured that Upper Deck strives to produce the finest, high quality trading card products and memorabilia. We hope you enjoy this exchange item and hope it finds a cherished place in your collection.

Sincerely,

The Upper Deck Company

That’s nice. With key words like “congratulations,” “support,” “enjoy,” and “cherished,” I feel all warm and fuzzy inside having received this exchanged redemption card 7+ months after redeeming the code for a product that was already 2+ years old (although I will say at least it didn’t take as long as my second most recent redemption saga). I’m also a huge fan of the all caps “PLEASE READ” heading. What else would I do with a letter? I guess I would have been more confused if it had read “PLEASE EAT” or “PLEASE SNIFF”. Anywho, so what did I wind up with for my Alan Branch/Leon Hall dual auto? This bad boy:

Not exactly a dual pigskin rookie autograph card, but uh…it’ll do.