2014 Sportlots purchase: You Complete Me is back once more

As many of you know, from time to time I like to hit up Sportlots when I feel an itch to work on my various set wantlists.  Well, a few weeks ago I again put in some time trying to track down what little was left on my football wants (plus a few Michigan PC cards you can view on today's TMM post) and five sellers later here's what I came up with:

2005 Topps Draft:

This product was one of the very first boxes I busted waaaay back when I started this here blog--the post was dated September 3, 2010!  I grabbed a 24 pack box on eBay for around $25 as my second attempt towards completing the set, but despite not pulling any dupes, I added only 28 to my original haul (from a box I grabbed quite a while ago).

As of the start of this month I still needed 31 cards from the 165-card set, including 18 rookies.  Thanks to Sportlots I grabbed them all, including the nine you see highlighted above.  I decided to show off "new" Raider Moss, a Bill for Doug, a Hokie for Adam, and a pair of Mountaineers for Matt.  I also included a few other guys most people would know in Campbell, Williams, Orton, and White.  It sure is nice to have this set completed nine years after it came out!

2013 SPx:

Bo knows he deserves his own scan

2013 SPx is a box I picked up at a show and busted back in early August.  In my 10 packs I picked up exactly 40 out of the 50-card veteran base set with zero doubles.  I managed to find one Sportlots seller who had the ten I was missing, plus help with both other sets I'm completing today, so that was another case of money saved on shipping.

Because I showed all 40 cards I pulled from the box, I figured it would make sense to post the remaining 10 in lieu of showing the whole set at once.  The real highlight here is Bo Jackson, who earned the right to be the card I highlighted with the remaining nine filling one scan page, mainly because he was awesome.  No disrespect meant to guys like Marino and Moon, though!

2013 Upper Deck:

The gorgeous 2013 UD set is one I started last May with a couple rack packs I picked up with my brother while visiting Milwaukee (and attending a Brewers game).  I followed that up with a hobby box at a show this April, and that allowed me to complete the veteran group, cards #1-50, which I don't always work on since the rookies are usually more obtainable in rack packs by themselves.  I also fell 27 rookies short of the Star Rookies cards, #s 51-150, since I scored just 40 from the box, with others coming from the racks.

Happily, I was able to find all 27 cards on Sportlots, and without breaking the bank too.  I scanned a few highlights, including another Hokie (Davis) and Mountaineer (Geno "Interception McGee" Smith), some great photos (Rhodes, Webb, Swearinger, Hopkins, and Mauti), and a hilarious name:  "Trevardo."

All of those purchases put the kibosh on my football set wantlists entirely, which is a great feeling.  I'm really not used to being in a position where I'm building some sets, and right now the only one I'm working on at all is the 2002 Fall Classics HOF Plaques on my baseball wants page.  I'm sure this won't be the end of my football set collecting, though, especially as I find some fun UD products to pursue.

I hope you guys enjoyed some cool scans and seeing me get something done.  As for me, I'm off to file these away with their respective sets and put triumphant check marks on the boxes!

2005 Topps Draft Picks & Prospects Football box

(I promise to get to some baseball boxes real soon.  I still have the 2007 Topps Series 1 box from DACardWorld, but we're making progress--this isn't a Topps jumbo football post)


Today I'm celebrating the 2010-11 college football season by opening a box of 2005 Topps Draft Picks & Prospects I grabbed cheap off eBay.  This is another set I started in the past, probably mostly through packs, though I might have grabbed a cheap box at a show not too long ago.  Because of the low number of cards per pack, I still need a bunch, so this was a cost-effective way to put a dent in that wantlist.  Plus, two guaranteed hits is pretty nice.
 

• Purchased from/price:  eBay, $25.49
• Packs/cards:   24 packs / 5 cards
• Set size:  165 base cards (110 veterans, 55 RCs) (same for Chrome versions)
• Key features: One Chrome per pack, one rookie per pack, two relics or one relic and one autograph
• Key cards:  RCs of Braylon Edwards, Aaron Rodgers, Heath Miller, Marion Barber, Frank Gore, Kyle Orton and Darren Sproles, among others, plus autographed RCs of Alex Smith and Ronnie Brown
• Michigan Wolverines: Braylon Edwards RC, Chris Perry, Drew Henson, Marlin Jackson RC, Tom Brady

Base card front

Base card back

Base RC

Chrome base card

• Set completion:
• Base:  96/165 (58%)
• Chrome:  21/165 (13%)
• Extras:  
• Base:  0
  
• Chrome:  0
  

Chrome Gold Refractor

 

Meh jersey

Sweet jersey

• Insert:  Chrome Gold Refractor J.P. Losman (1:35, #'d/199)
• Autographs:  None
• Relics:  Senior Standouts jerseys of Cedric Houston and Carlos Rogers (2:box)

• Best pack:  Believe it or not, I'm not going with the pack that included Chris Perry, Tom Brady and Carson Palmer.  This goes to #18 thanks to the presence of the beautiful Cedric Houston jersey patch seen above.  The rest of the pack wasn't as inspiring:  Tony Gonzalez, Domanick Davis, Chester Taylor and Marcus Spears RC.  But as an added bonus, the jersey replaced the usual 1:pack Chrome card I didn't want.  Sweet!
• Worst pack:  Nothing terrible this time, but I'll go with #13:  Derrick Blaylock, Billy Volek, Ernest Wilford, Carlos Rogers RC, Hines Ward Chrome.  Yawn.
• Quality control:  8/10  Some of the base card corners were dinged, and both jersey cards had pretty soft corners  
• Collation:  10/10  No doubles = A+ 
• Value: 8 /10  For about $25 delivered I got more than half the set (and a bunch towards my wantlist), 24 rookies and two relics, including a pretty spiffy jersey, even if it's a player I don't care about.  The only real negative was a small number of cards per pack, which meant I ripped through this box pretty quickly
• Set design and player selection:  8/10  The cons:  the cards are almost entirely white and the player choice leaves a bit to be desired, partially because the set is small, and most of all, the Chrome set feels like an afterthought and a waste of a base card towards the set.  The pros:  lots of rookies, and my favorite feature:  rookies in their college unis.  While I would have preferred the cards to denote which teams had drafted them, I'm guessing these came out before the draft, making that impossible.  But seeing some of my favorite NFLers in their college days was a big plus for me.  Also, one of the jerseys was a pretty boring white, but the Houston card had a nice swatch, albeit likely from a photo shoot/all star game-type jersey
• Inserts and extras:  6/10  One insert.  ONE.  And it was J.P. freakin' Losman.  But getting two guaranteed hits for that low price was a plus

Overall score:  40/50


This set has its flaws, and you'll need a few boxes to put together the set yourself, but at the prices you can get it nowadays, this is worth your $25.  And now the question on everyone's mind:  how much did this help me in my ongoing pursuit of the set?  I needed 61, including 28 rookies, and with only 24 in the box I wasn't going to finally complete it, but I knocked 28 cards off my list, including 10 RCs, so not bad.  The extras and Chromes as well as the Losman Refractor and Rogers jersey are available if anyone wants them.

Wolverines?

Wolverines