HOF Spotlight: Joe Stydahar

Name: Joe Stydahar
Position: Tackle
Pro Career: 1936 – 1942; 1945 – 1946
Team Affiliation(s): Chicago Bears
College: West Virginia
Induction Class: 1967

Brief Bio: A large and bruising force to be reckoned with, “Jumbo” Joe Stydahar was the epitome of the physically dominating Chicago Bears teams of the late 1930s and early 1940s. Stydahar was the first ever draft choice of legendary Bears owner/coach George Halas in 1936 and quickly became the quintessential 60-minute man. He was a hard nosed lineman and feared little, as evidenced by his refusal to wear a helmet through much of his career and his downright bold decision to trivialize superstition by wearing number 13. Throughout his career, the Bears went as he went. In his 9-season career, which was interrupted by his being called into the U.S. Navy during the height of WWII, Stydahar was named All-NFL 5 consecutive years and the Bears won five divisional and three NFL championships. In fact, in his final game in 1946, the Bears defeated the New York Giants 24-14. Not only did it mark the end of his hall of fame career, but it also marked the final notable achievement of the Bears dynasty.

Career Stats: 84 games played; 28/31 PATs; 1 INT

Featured Card: 1952 Bowman #99. While you might expect a 1952 Bowman card to be the rookie card of an early HOF inductee, it is worth noting that Joe Stydahar’s rookie card was released six years after his retirement. It’s also worth noting that despite playing his entire storied career with the legendary Chicago Bears, his rookie card features a Los Angeles Rams logo. Truth be told, Stydahar returned to the NFL to coach the Rams from 1950-1952 and the Cardinals from 1953-1954. Stydahar’s entire playing career landed between major football card releases (1935 National Chicle and 1948 Leaf and Bowman), so it actually makes sense that his first card was from his coaching days. Trivial Beckett value is $650 while current eBay listings indicate the approximate value of this card to be about $200, although there is one listing for a PSA 8 with a staggering $3,999 price tag.

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

Product Review: 2010 Topps Unrivaled

After taking the weekend off, let’s finish this barrage of product reviews with a look at 2010 Topps Unrivaled. The next product review won’t be for a little while as I have no more in stock and will need to decide what’s next, order it, bust it, and review it. So savor this one for a while.

The Box – Click for Detail

Hobby boxes come with 24 5-card packs for a total of 120 cards. I purchased this box from Dave and Adam’s Card World for $85, which translates into a relatively low $0.71/card ratio. Sets that may be deemed as introductory products tend to come out before the season starts, but this price point is right in that ballpark. At this point in the product release calendar, we usually see mid-to-top shelf sets, so I am intrigued how this product will stack up.

The increasingly rare different-photo-than-the-box pack

The Breakdown:
Base Cards: 108 (5 duplicates)
   Rookie Cards (#/999): 3 (included in base card total above)
Parallels
   Gold Parallel (#/759): 2
   Gold Parellel (#/499): 3
   Black Parellel (#/99): 1
Inserts
   Unrivaled (#/299): 1
   Unrivaled Veterans (#/999): 1
Hits
   Unrivaled Veterans Relic (#/349): 1
   Rookie Auto (#/780): 1
   Rookie Auto (#/480): 1
   Rookie Auto Patch (#/349): 1

Click images for full-sized scans

FIRST AND GOAL’S FOUR DOWNS:
1st Down, Design: The base design has its upsides and downsides. We’ll start with the good. I like the basic elements. The cards are not busy but not too simplistic and the use of the team colored border is a nice touch. The player photos really pop and the cards have an overall crisp feel to them. The silver foil is, in itself, a nice transition from the good to the bad elements of the card. It adds a touch of sophistication we would expect from a mid-year release, but the type of foil used is of the dreaded sometimes hard-to-see and often impossible-to-scan variety. This is especially evident with where the player name is imprinted over top of a dark team color (i.e. Brian Urlacher above). I am also not a fan of how much white space is left at the top of the card. On the colored parallels, it seems to work fine, but I feel like the base card would have been better with a full bleed color photo, even if the background was muted a bit. With at least 1/3 of the background being plain white, I get the feeling I’m looking at an updated version of the early 1990s Skybox basketball sets. And let’s just say that’s not the most flattering comparision.

2nd Down, Inserts: As I alluded to above, the parallels are pretty decent. I am not a fan of the gold foil parallel for its lack of obvious difference from the base card, although I will say the gold foil on the Ray Lewis card above is more pronounced in person than via a scan. The other gold and black parallels I pulled are nice though, particularly the black. I’m used to having super shiney and refractory parallels, so the matte finish of these was actually a nice change of pace. I wasn’t a huge fan of the Unrivaled or the Unrivaled Veterans sets. The Unrivaled set wasn’t bad, but Topps is bordering on a Panini backwards design issue here with the obvious jersey swatch window replacement. The Unrivaled Veterans set seemed like a stretch. I suppose people really like multiple swatch and multiple autographed cards, but I’m not a big fan of multi-player cards, especially when they are from different teams. The hits were decent, although far from stellar. The foilized autograph labels always leave a lot to be desired and there just isn’t anything appealing about a plain white swatch in an NFL product where rather vivid jersey colors are possible. The rookie auto patch is nice, but as I’ve said in the past, it would be nice to see an on-card auto for a change.

3rd Down, Collation: This left a lot to be desired. In 120 cards, 108 of which were base cards, I pulled 5 duplicates. That is nearly a 5% duplicate ratio. The collation’s one saving grace? I did pull all 100 base veterans. But that being said, I would much rather have another 5 rookie cards, even base rookie cards of third-round draft choices, than duplicates. This box didn’t have 300+ cards, so in my opinion, duplicates should be avoided whenever possible. Mid-shelf products seem to be very concerned with serial numbered rookie cards that only come 2-5 per box. I just don’t see the appeal of that, especially when you need to rely on dupes to fill out a hobby box.

4th Down, Overall Value: Once again, we have a product that would seem to fall short on the value to collectors. The best card in the box, the rookie auto patch, looks to be worth about $10-20 on the secondary market. That’s less than 1/4 of the box price, even if we assume the higher end of the value range. Given the type of product Unrivaled is and the general over indulgence of the Hobby in recent years, I just don’t see cards from this set doing well in holding their value. Granted, rookie auto patch parallels of the top prospects and maybe some dual or triple autographs of top-tier legends will pull a pretty penny, but that just swings this product firmly into the lottery ticket realm. You may get lucky and land some serious money, or you might just piss your money away.

RED ZONE RESULTS: MISSED FIELD GOAL The cards are by no means terrible, but they generally left me feeling uninspired. The lower price point certainly helps its case, especially during this part of the release calendar, but I just don’t see the value being returned on a regular basis. To try to accurately gauge my feelings on this box, we’ll say that after a solid drive, 2010 Topps Unrivaled missed the go-ahead field goal as time expired. Fortunately, the game was tied since the end of the third quarter, so it will get a chance to redeem itself in overtime. On the other hand, First and Goal’s Four Downs doesn’t have an overtime rule set, so we will just be left to wonder what could have been. Given another shot, this product could have a more favorable outcome, or it might fall flat on its face. I suppose the success of this product is comparable to the chances of pulling that sweet card that will almost guarantee to cover the cost of the box by itself: a gamble at best.

NEXT UP: ?

Product Review: 2010 Panini Certified

Let’s keep this gravy train rolling with another product review. Today’s featured entrée: 2010 Panini Certified. These intros get harder to write all the time, especially when doing several in a row, so let’s just jump into this one…

The Box – Click for Detail

Hobby boxes come with 10 5-card packs for a total of 50 cards. I purchased this box from Dave and Adam’s Card World for $85, which translates into a moderate $1.70/card ratio. This is branching into the territory where I start to get nervous, but not out of the question. It’s not Topps flagship and it’s not Exquisite. It’s more middle of the road than anything. Mediocre product in general? Let’s find out.

Mr. Manning sure is getting a lot of face time this year

The Breakdown:
Base Cards: 46 (2 duplicates)
   Rookie Cards (#/999): 2 (included in base card total above)
Inserts
   Gold Team (#/999): 1
   Certified Potential (#/999): 1
   Mirror Red Parallel (#/250): 1
Hits
   Fabrics of the Game (#/250): 1
   Mirror Jersey Prime (#/50): 1
   Mirror Green Autograph (#/5): 1
   Freshman Fabric Dual Relic Autograph (#/699): 1

Click images for full-sized scans

FIRST AND GOAL’S FOUR DOWNS:
1st Down, Design: I must say, Panini seems to be moving in the right direction, although their speed in getting there could be improved considerably. This is a decent design. It has enough design elements to lend itself to being a mid-shelf product but it certainly doesn’t look busy. I like that the side border-esque element still incorporates the photo’s background and I really like that the player is cropped by the bottom box, but allowed to free flow over the side borders. It adds an element of depth to the card that is nice. I do wish, however that Panini would stray from making all of their base designs so neutral with the various shades of grey boxes. I’d also like to see team logos on the card front, but I guess that is a minor point. One last suggestion would be something, anything, to vary the card back. After a while, all of Panini’s card backs start to look the same.

2nd Down, Inserts: For once, these are alright, but they could still use a fair amount of improvement. The whole backwards design thing isn’t AS painfully obvious for these inserts, but you can definitely still see it. I still don’t understand the jersey swatch window placement. The Polamalu looks a tad awkward with the obvious crotch shot and I really question the use of an all white jersey swatch on top of an all white, materialistic looking area on the Newsome card. At first, I thought I pulled a huge swatch…then realized most of that swatch was just cardboard. And once again I’m left feeling like on-card autos would have been a better option. Or at least better design work around the labels. Panini, we keep barking at you for backwards designing your cards because you plan where the jersey swatch windows and sticker labels will look good and then simply replace them with terribly desolate design elements to get to the more basic inserts. When we say we want you to do it differently, we don’t mean take the more basic card and just cut out a swatch window or slap on a sticker auto. Design each card as its own. It can’t be THAT hard.

3rd Down, Collation: I definitely was not pleased in this department, as you may be able to tell from my slightly smart ass scans above. No, the box wasn’t completely riddled with duplicates, but when I’m only getting 50 cards in an entire box, I sure as hell don’t want to see duplicates. And what is the deal with making rookie cards so scarce? I understand wanting to preserve the collectibility of them, but what’s the point when they’re so difficult to get in the first place? At the very least you could have given me two more rookie cards instead of veteran duplicates. Not cool.

4th Down, Overall Value: I struggle with this point. If I go by my box alone, the overall value, despite all of the product shortfalls, is fantastic. But that is almost entirely based on the fact that I was lucky enough to pull a Michael Vick auto #/5. There has only been one listed on eBay since the product released, and it sold for the full $400 asking price just 13 hours after being listed. Not too shabby. And yes, my copy is definitely hitting the bay as soon as I get a chance to list another batch of cards. I’m not trying to be greedy, but I’ve got to pay for these boxes somehow. If you got rid of that one card however, I would not feel nearly so optimistic about the overall value of the box. The base design is decent but not great. The inserts are tolerable but not stellar. The hits are adequate but not ground breaking. For $85 a box, I would normally expect a bit more. But then again, why would I expect more from Panini?

RED ZONE RESULTS: MISSED FIELD GOAL The product is by no means a complete throw away. It does, however, have its share of faults. The base design is decent, but it has that typical Panini-neutral flavor. The inserts have a solid theme, but still suffer from backwards design flaws. The collation was pitiful with a 4% duplicate ratio (I do however realize that this is still leaps and bounds above what some junk wax era boxes could boast). Overall, it really isn’t that bad of a product, but nearly all of my excitement was contained in 1 card, and that just not enough to cut it, or to get onto the 1&G scoreboard. I will say, as I said above, Panini products do seem to be improving, at least during this release calendar, they just aren’t improving fast enough for my liking. Hopefully by the end of the 2010 release year, or especially by 2011′s products, they will really start to click and produce some nice sets.

NEXT UP: 2010 Topps Unrivaled

Product Review: 2010 Panini Crown Royale

Next in my blitzkrieg of product reviews is 2010 Crown Royale. I’m not going to lie, this was one of the products I was most excited about when I was looking at the 2010 release calendar over the summer. Crown Royale was magnificant in the mid-to-late 90s and I was eagerly anticipating the return of the die-cut card. Would Panini’s revival stay true to form or would if flounder through mysterious floating swatches and incoherent design flaws? Only a true box break could reveal the answer!

The Box – Click for Detail

Hobby boxes come with 4 5-card packs for a total of 20 cards. I purchased this box from Dave and Adam’s Card World for $85, which translates into a salty $4.25/card ratio. I can’t say I bought any boxes of Crown Royale in its Pacific hayday, but this seems to be quite a higher price point. I actually debated skipping this box simply because of its pricetag, and did skip it on my last few purchase orders, but eventually my curiosity and the intrigue of the die-cut won out.

The pack is normal sized, but it came in the smallest hobby box I’ve ever seen!

The Breakdown:
Base Cards: 12 (0 duplicates)
   Rookie Cards: 4 (included in base card total above)
Parallels
   Blue Base Parallel (#/100): 1
   Gold Base Parallel (#/25): 1
Inserts
   Royalty: 2
   Living Legends: 1
   Kings of the NFL: 1
   The Zone: 1
   All Pros (die-cut): 1
Hits
   Kings of the NFL Jersey (#/299): 1
   Royalty Jersey (#/299): 1
   Rookie Autos (#/499): 1
   Rookie Autos (#/249): 1

Click images for full-sized scans

FIRST AND GOAL’S FOUR DOWNS:
1st Down, Design: This would prove to be Crown Royale’s finest achievement. The base design is, in my humble opinion, flawless. Yes, the design is a bit busy, but the player remains the central focus, assisted by the literal centering of the player image. The armor and team logo coat of arms were a great touch on a classic design and the die-cut crown was perfectly reminiscent of the older sets I loved. The foiling was done well and rather than being an over-the-top embellishment, it only added to the pristine air surrounding the cards. The team coloring of the background was also a nice touch, especially considering Panini’s knack for creating ultra-neautral base cards. If I had to summarize my thoughts on this base set in one word, that word would be “YES!”. It’s good to be the king.

2nd Down, Inserts: For everything Panini did well with the base design of the product, it did wrong in designing the inserts. The parallels are done very well with the different colored foils, but I have to say, they were the lone bright spot in an otherwise dark age of inserts. All of the inserts, despite trying to incorporate some team coloring (at least on the Kings of the NFL set), seem terribly boring and neutral-toned. When your insert cards, the cards everyone is supposed to love, are completely overshadowed by the base cards, you have a problem. It is also painfully obvious that Panini continued its backwards design paradigm with horrendous large open areas on the base inserts where the jersey swatch or autograph label would be placed in the higher-end inserts. Most of the inserts feature a terribly truncated player image and often far too small and hard to read player names. Even the autographs were a disappointment. If you have a beautiful and generally well executed base design, don’t just slap a foilized sticker on it and call it my chase card. Off to the stockades with these pagans!

3rd Down, Collation: Meh, what do you want me to say here? With only 20 cards, its awfully hard to gauge the collation of the product. I suppose it would be easier to judge with a case, but limited finances prevented that for me. The only thing that could have thrown me for a loop in this department would have been no guaranteed hits or duplicates. In an interesting turn of events, I actually got 24 cards. I don’t remember if I pulled 6 cards from every pack or if the non-jersey card packs had more, but I guess I got all of my hits for free? I’m not sure if this is true of the entire production run or if I just got a fluke box.

4th Down, Overall Value: In a nutshell, not good. The product started off on the wrong foot by charging an average $4.25 per card from the get-go (and I would assume the box price was higher when it first came out). I absolutely loved the base cards and base parallels, but I wouldn’t say they were worth $4.25 each. I might be willing to say the hits were worth $5 each, but normally hits are supposed to be worth nearly the price of the box themselves, and that certainly is not the case here. And the other inserts? I don’t think I’d pay $4.25 for all of them combined. Bleh. I will say I could have done better with my pulls. An auto of Tim Tebow or Sam Bradford obviously would have been superior to Pierre-Paul and Easley, but that’s the chance you take on a box. The product certainly has its high points, but I’d much rather see a significant increase in packs per hobby box and/or a drastic cut in cost.

RED ZONE RESULTS: INTERCEPTION ON SECOND DOWN AS TIME EXPIRED If Crown Royale started the series on the ten yard line, it clearly got 9.75 yards on a dazzling rush up the middle with its base design. The die-cut and foil work were what I loved most about the Crown Royale products of old and for once Panini did something right. The base cards were flawless. I love them. They were fantastic. But on second down, rather than rush up the middle again with solid design work, the Panini team decided to return to its roots and try a flea flicker roll-out and drop pass to its D-rated tight end who continually runs the wrong route. Result? Interception. The inserts were atrocious in this set and, while being overshadowed by the base cards while I was opening the box, wound up negating all of the pluses of the base card and threw the entire product into disgrace. I would love to see Panini try this theme again next year, but only after completely revamping the inserts. And can I get an on-card auto? This product isn’t super high-end, but it costs enough to warrant on-card autos. Get with the program, Panini. The base card design showed that you have incredible potential, don’t let it go to waste.

NEXT UP: 2010 Panini Certified

Product Review: 2010 Topps Platinum

‘Tis the season. The holiday shopping season, that is. That means with me finally getting time to list a bunch of singles on eBay over Thanksgiving weekend, people going to eBay to find good deals and gift ideas, and other online retailers having great deals themselves, I finally have some money and means to review more products. Don’t be surprised if you see a sudden barrage of product reviews in the next week or so (at least four are in line already). The first will be 2010 Topps Platinum, which was released in mid-September. What can I say? I’m behind the times right now.

The Box – Click for Detail

Hobby boxes come with 24 5-card packs for a total of 120 cards. I purchased this box from Dave and Adam’s Card World for $72, which translates into exactly a $0.60/card ratio. It is almost surprising to see a borderline low-end set released after the season starts, but it certainly is not Score or Topps flagship cheap and quite honestly, carries a lower pricetag than I would expect for this type of product.

A nice, simple pack design – keeping it classy

The Breakdown:
Base Cards: 112 (1 duplicate)
   Rookie Cards: 44 (included in base card total above)
Inserts
   Platinum Rookies Variations: 3
   Rookie Refractors (#/999): 1
   Rookie Blue Refractors (#/99): 1
Hits
   Rookie Autos (#/999): 1
   Rookie Blue Refractor Autos (#/599): 1
   Autographed Refractor Jumbo Patches (#/10): 1

Click images for full-sized scans

FIRST AND GOAL’S FOUR DOWNS:
1st Down, Design: This is a pretty sharp looking set that reminds me of the late 90s Playoff and Pinnacle sets. The metallic sheen of the cards is quite attractive and was not done justice by my scanner. The design elements are simple and effective and although the design is rather neutral, the player image “pops”, allowing you to quickly recognize your favorite players as you flip through a stack of these. One thing I thought was interesting was that the Rookie Cards were slightly different than the veterans. The RCs have a slightly shinier and smoother sheen and have a mildly darker grey color scheme on the back. I suppose it helps to make the RCs seem even more special, but it does look a bit off when you’re flipping thorugh a stack backwards (like when you’re sorting by card number).

2nd Down, Inserts: This was a fairly base-card focused set with emphasis on the few guaranteed hits per box. There are various refractor parallels, including the much thicker and ultra reflective Platinum Rookie Variations, which are quite nice. The Blue refractors are also quite a nice change of pace, although I suppose it lends itself better to some team uniforms than others. The autographs are decent, although it remains painfully obvious that Topps loves sticker labels. If these could be hard signed, they would be much better. The jumbo patch autograph was a nice pull, though. A quick search on eBay doesn’t reveal much since there are only 10 copies, but it looks to be worth about $100-200, which will cover the cost of the entire box by itself. That is always a plus.

3rd Down, Collation: I suppose it wasn’t terrible, given that I received a nice mix of teams and RCs and I got my guaranteed hits. However, I only got 2/3 of the base set and still pulled a duplicate. Anyone that has read 1&G Reviews in the past knows that is one of my few box break pet peeves. I know if you want perfect collation with equal value in every box and no duplicates, you would need to do a very scientific hand pack out every time. Given the timeline for releasing products and the current economy, that obviously isn’t possible. But when you give me 120 cards and 1 of them is a duplicate, it’s certainly going to affect my opinion of the product. This duplicate ratio certainly isn’t the worst however, as you’ll see in a future review (and in a free preview, Topps, you’re not off the hook).

4th Down, Overall Value: It’s hard to argue here given my quick Reggie Bush jumbo patch autograph research. Unforeseen events withheld, it looks like I should easily be able to cover the $72 pricetag with that one card alone, not to mention the other two rookie autographs and various RCs of top prospects I pulled (probably $2-3 each). However, I do realize that I was pretty lucky in pulling an autographed patch card #/10 of one of the bigger names in the hobby. Reggie Bush hasn’t nearly lived up to his college hype, but his high profile status, recent Heisman debacle, and Super Bowl victory have kept him in the news and minds of collectors. Should you pull 3 hits of unproven and relatively unknown rookies, you’re probably not going to recover your box price. If you are looking for a decent looking product to pick up some of your favorite players at a low-to-mid shelf price, however, this is a solid product to consider.

RED ZONE RESULTS: FIELD GOAL The card design is great and I felt like I was cracking open a higher end product of the late 90s, which is always nice. The inserts, though rare, were enough to keep my interest, although the sheer quantity of base cards in this type of product was a bit much. The lone duplicate was certainly an irritant, but was alleviated by my pulling a great chase hit. I can’t help but think that the Bush card has created an unwanted bias for me, but I tried to keep a level head when reviewing the entire product, which certainly had its flaws. Overall, it’s a solid product that has its fair share of upsides, but not enough to find paydirt with the game on the line. A field goal will allow the defense an opportunity to shine and get the offense back on the field, but if the opposition is too strong, I just don’t think 2010 Topps Platinum will have what it takes to sing the Victors song.

NEXT UP: 2010 Panini Crown Royale