I'm in another one of those funks where I don't really feel like writing but have lots of cards to show off, so I'm going to try to let the images do most of the talking and see if that helps.
Today's post is a recap of all the fun I had over the last couple months participating in group breaks run by Colbey of Cardboard Collections. He calls them Affordable Group Breaks and that's a very apt title--nobody's gonna be accusing him of false advertising anytime soon! Colbey offers a nice variety of modern and older boxes with team slots going for reasonable prices, especially as you get closer to the breaks and some remain available, at which point he'll discount them. The fact that he lets you pile up your stacks until you want them shipped is also a nice touch. I paid about $7.50 for everything, most of which you'll see here.
Here's a quick rundown of what I ended up with:
2020 Diamond Kings--Orioles: Cal Ripken Jr. base (a great looking card!) 1996 Topps Laser--Reds: Reggie Sanders and Hal Morris base, plus Colbey was nice enough to toss in a Tony Phillips I needed for my PC, and a Frank Thomas too 1997 Pinnacle XPress--Blue Jays, Expos, A's, and Mets (see below)
Here's a look at each of the base cards (not including dupes) from the XPress break.
And here's the inserts: two Swing for the Fences cards plus a pair of parallels: Men of Summer, with a great gold look to them.
I also jumped into a number of football breaks at low prices partially for trade bait, a bit in the hopes of landing a few cards I'd like, and also to encourage Colbey to continue including the sport in his breaks.
Seen here are team stacks from those breaks: 2006 Bowman, 1999 Collector's Edge First Place, and 1996 Pacific Litho-Cel (see what I mean about the variety?). I won't go into too much detail about these but I'll show off the more notable stuff below. For my fellow Wolverines fans, I'll mention that I ended up with Collector's Edge base cards of Woodson and Harbaugh (who's seen above).
Here you see the non-base from '06 Bowman. Those packs included some Chrome prospect cards and these are the ones I landed. I also ended up with a pair of Orange parallels of the regular base set (I hate when people say "paper"): Randy Moss and Reggie Brown.
And now the best stuff from Collector's Edge: a Donovan McNabb RC, Ricky Williams Future Legends insert, plus a bunch of parallels. Gold Ingots include James Jett, Rich Gannon, Junior Seau, Jim Harbaugh(!), and Freddie Jones. I also got two of the numbered /500 Galvanized cards: Natrone Means and Bryan Still. Obviously the Chargers were a good investment!
Finally, I jumped into the '96 Litho-Cel break hoping for an Amani Toomer RC (one of just two I still need), and Colbey delivered, along with a Game Time insert to boot! Hopefully I can add a Cel card of his to complete the full image. Speaking of those, I landed Jim Kelly, Rodney Hampton, and Dave Brown.
All in all I had a good time without spending that much, and it's cool to have the option of watching the breaks live or on your own time on Youtube. Oh, and I have one more card to show off that came from a break in which I didn't participate.
Buddy of the blog Paul claimed the Pats for all of $2 in Colbey's 2003 Fleer Avant break and promised me any Brady cards he got, which would likely just be a base card (New England's only one in the small set). Colbey had a hot hand, though, pulling three very nice hits: a Jeremy Shockey patch, a Joey Harrington relic for Paul's Lions, and this guy:
Well damn, now that's nice--a beautiful blue jersey swatch of the GOAT, and numbered /250 too! I don't think any of us had any idea that many hits were coming out of this box, so I think all of us were fairly pleased by the result. Many thanks to Paul for being generous enough to think of me and keep his word when such a nice hit got pulled.
I also want to thank Colbey for putting in the time and effort to run such affordable and entertaining breaks. Everyone should consider this my endorsement of them, though anybody that's dealt with him at all already knows he's one of the good guys of the blogosphere. If you've got some extra card money from the lack of shows and retail stuff (the latter being a huge blessing in disguise, in my opinion), keep an eye on his blog where he announces his breaks most weekends and get in on the fun!
Everybody's favorite Texabama man, Sam (Daily Dimwit), held a group break over the weekend, and his expedience in shipping things out (very commendable, sir!) caused my cards to arrive to me not on Friday as expected, but this afternoon instead. I know! The USPS exceeded expectations! Anyway, hit the link up there for an entertaining video that encompasses all three boxes that comprised the break:
2007 Upper Deck Artifacts
2009 Upper Deck Piece of History
2009 SP Authentic
As you can see from the results, most of us pretty much subsidized the Pirates and especially the Marlins, but I still had a great time, and my haul wasn't all that bad. My two chosen teams were the Tigers (natch) and Mariners (hoping to snag a Griffey or King Felix), and randomization earned me the Brewers and LA/A/A/LALA/AALA Angels, which netted me this stuff:
All Tigers (Sheffield is #d 242/999) and a Guererro/Ortiz insert #d 154/999
Best of the Brew Crew and Ms
Weird stuff randomed to me from Piece of History
The strangest thing by far was this Mike Myers Austin Powers relic from Piece of History. I actually laughed out loud after Sam randomed it off to me. Also, yes, I now see there's writing on the penny sleeve, but I don't feel like scanning it again. Anyway, that's up for grabs if anyone has any interest in it.
All in all it was a fun, if not lucrative, way to start my group-breaking year, and Sam does a bang-up job of running breaks, so I'll be more than happy to join another of his in the future.
I should also mention that he sent me a card in trade that'll be posted over on TMM shortly, in return for something coming in my soon-to-be-shipped COMC monster lot. Thanks again, Sam!
Johnny told me to steal images, which I interpreted as all of his images
If you're reading this you may be one of my regular users, but more likely you were involved in Johnny/hiflew's exciting break over at Cards From the Quarry (and I do sincerely mean exciting considering what was pulled). Johnny politely asked me if I'd handle a couple randomizations for him since I was otherwise uninvolved and therefore impartial. I readily agreed, somewhat because we'd traded before and he's a cool guy, and mostly because he's got Ollie Williams doing his weather reporting.
Johnny's instructions were to take the eligible teams for each card and randomize them three times. I now present to you live footage of said discussion:
With that out of the way, here's what you probably already scrolled down to, or thereabouts considering there's a shiny video right above this. We've got two cards up for grabs from Johnny's 2004 Topps Chrome II baseball portion of his break.
The first that we'll Holy Hand Grenade into someone's loving hands is a Presedential Pastime Refractor of James Madison:
How many Refractors do YOU have, Marbury? That's what I thought, so suck it!
Here's your timestamped randomization, brought to you by random.org, the sports card blogosphere's official provider of randomizations. And now a word from Stampy, the random.org timestamp elephant:
I got nothing, just wanted a cheap Simpsons reference
Here's your list of eligible participants:
Four teams vie for the J-Mad. Who will it be?
And-a one
And-a two
CUBS WIN! CUBS WIN!
Congratulations to "Jon" whose name I don't recognize but who will now enjoy the Refractor-y goodness of Mr. Constitution Sr.
I saved the big prize for last, which interestingly has even more eligible winners, the Presidential First Pitch seat relic of Dwight D. Eisenhower:
Pictured: Ike giggling at the suggestion that Washington would throw THAT much money at Jayson Werth
Ok, that's enough context, on with the button-pushing:
Well that many people will certainly make this more interesting.
Juan
Too
And your winner is the OTHER team from Chicago, the OzzieSox. Congrats to Darren on the big win!
So there you have it, a couple impartial randomizations. High fives to both the winners and a tip of the hat to everyone else who participated in another fine break by hiflew. Now to make you feel more at home during your time away from his site, here's some purple so you don't suffer from withdrawal:
Come on, you didn't think I'd pass up a chance on that one, did you?
In all seriousness, Tim of the Great Sports Name Hall of Fame put on a unique event last weekend when he ran what was as far as I can tell the first ever trade bait draft. In hopes of a cash infusion, he managed to convince six participants to pony up $10 each to get to pick 25 cards from his available trade bait. Considering I was well aware of some of what he had to offer, I jumped at the chance. Luckily, I landed the third pick, which meant I at least got a couple of the cards I wanted most (alas, I missed out on a couple Rich Hill jerseys, but I'm still happy with how I fared overall). Here's a look at how I did:
2008 Upper Deck Heroes Navy Blue Autographs auto: This was my #1 target and #1 pick (which would have been grabbed by Justin of Justin's World, I'm sure, otherwise (he got one of the remaining Hill relics; the other was grabbed by BA Benny, who apparently enjoys kicking puppies and hates freedom). I'm trying to see how many of the nearly endless variations I can get after acquiring a good chunk of them from Tim, and this was another good step towards that. The blue suits the card very well since it goes along with Rich's team colors. It was a great start and I was very happy with it.
Wanting to get at the remaining autographs before they ran out, I grabbed this 2006 Bowman Scott Olsen autograph. He's now with the Nats and hasn't looked terrible effective, but I thought it would make good future trade bait for me, and an autograph is an autograph, plus all the other hits I wanted were gone at that point. In fact, that was the last auto/relic I'd end up with, and despite my 3rd overall pick I finished with fewer "hits" than everyone else. However, I still had another card on my radar that I hoped nobody would grab:
This 1967 Topps Bill Freehan. Tim had all of his non-hits listed pretty much by set and number but not player, but they were helpfully sorted by team and I was able to deduce that this one was a Freehan I very much wanted, which should now be pretty much my oldest Tigers card (beating my '68 Kaline by a year) to the best of my knowledge. It's at least my best old Tigers card anyway, and should help get me working on collecting the former Wolverine/Tiger. <segue>Speaking of former Tigers</segue>
throughout the draft I pretty much focused on getting Detroit stuff for me. Towards the end when I ran out of obvious choices Tim helpfully picked out some great stuff, such as the Black Gold Tettleton, some older Detroit players, and a trio of Rusty Kuntzes he was liquidating (and that sentence is about as dirty as the start of this post). One last Tigers card made it into the bunch along with some other great stuff:
That's right, some multi-player rookie cards! It's nice to recognize some of these guys too, such as manager Bruce Bochy. There's also a '71 Athletics dual RC in there, which is pretty cool. I also nabbed a Barry Larkin for the old Michigan PC, and Tim grabbed me a couple older Topps cards toward the end when I was out of ideas. Lastly, I ended up with some other nice stuff:
In this group you'll find a RC of Alex Gordon, a great Frank Robinson insert, a WBC Refractor, a Yo Mama of Ryno (non-Original Back) and a couple later round steals: a Finest Anquan Boldin RC and BowChro Marques Colston RC.
So overall I was very happy despite finishing with "just" two autographs--I still landed the card I wanted the most (the Hill) plus another that was tops on my list (the Freehan) PLUS a lot of other great stuff. I have the Olson available for trade, plus likely more of this stuff, and others will stay in my collection. Long story short, I can easily say I got my money's worth, and Tim's well within his rights to charge more next time. As a reminder, check out the full results here, and more importantly, keep an eye out for his next draft, because you won't want to miss out--it was definitely a major event and everyone had fun with it, even those that were just watching. I should mention that I've had preliminary discussions with Tim about co-sponsoring a similar draft to expedite getting another one going, so keep an eye out for that, especially once I'm able to reload on trade bait items myself.
Big thanks again to Tim and everyone else that participated!
First of all, make sure to follow along with BA Benny's group break. Another couple videos (including the first hits) are posted here, and I think the break's been fun so far. There's a hugely diverse and extensive group of boxes and packs, so you may see something you didn't know you liked. Head on over and make sure to follow future posts too.
Next up is yet another lot I grabbed from Blowout (with a couple more on the way from the same seller, if you can believe it). I know you'll all be shocked, but this is another 100% Jake Long lot.
We'll start out with a cool 2008 Bowman Chrome Green auto RC. It's kind of cool how it works out that the green theme sort of works with Miami's team colors (at least from the perspective of a guy who sees the color of the border and player's jersey and calls both "green" instead of teal or whatever). This one's numbered 076/150 and is worth more than what I paid for the whole lot, which is nice. Most of my Long autograph collection consists of RCs because who would want to make a bunch of hits of O-linemen, even if they're Pro-Bowlers that are former #1 overall picks? That's fine by me--it should make it easier to get close to getting all of them, so that's a plus.
The only relic of the bunch was this 2008 Leaf Limited dual jersey, which matches up with his NFL (and college, by the way) jersey number. Hooray for not being a postage stamp-sized white swatch! This is a decent design, and I like how the number corresponds to a decent shot of Long with his jersey number visible.
The next autograph is from 2008 Score Select Inscriptions. I have an Adrian Arrington that goes along with that, so count this as another set where I may try to grab all the Wolverine autographs eventually. This is a pretty slick foiled-up set with sticker autos that aren't too obtrusive (the clear sticker works in this case). Here, Long is either getting read to pancake a guy or get flagged for ineligible man downfield after running a curl.
Finally, a 2008 Topps Chrome auto RC. Not a lot to say about this one. I mainly like the design--the black border, the team logo, etc., but as with the Bowman Chrome above, I don't love the sticker window taking up about 1/4 of the photo part of the card. Still, you all know I loves me some Jake Long autographs.
This package deal for something like $18 was pretty reasonable in my opinion, and by my count it puts me up to 17 Jake Long hits, including 13 with autographs.
Coming soon: hopefully I'll finally put a contest together because I've got some cool stuff to give away; a couple more things from Blowout; a look at some other cool parts of my collection: TTM autographs and my favorites out of my RCs, relics and autographs; and more as I think of it.
A 2009 Philadelphia Fabrics jersey of Braylon Edwards. I can always use more stuff of Braylon, so this was much appreciated. Thanks again, Todd!
A couple more Blowout purchases:
Yes, I'm still sinking a good chunk of money into the Blowout forums, but at least not as much at once. Two purchases yielded the following three cards:
A 2010 Elite Turn of the Century RC/auto of Brandon Graham, which I caught after a guy posted a group break. He wasn't thrilled with his results, so I was happy to help him out and take this off his hands
along with a 2010 Rookies & Stars Longevity RC/auto of Graham, which I got him to add for just a bit more. Boy, that picture sure looks familiar, Panini.... I now have four auto RCs of Graham, along with a printing plate, which is a pretty good start to a collection for a guy who was a 2010 rookie.
My first Jim Harbaugh hit is a very slick autograph I caught while looking through some Photobuckets on sale last week. This will go great with my Tim Biakabatuka '99 Inscriptions card. Hopefully this is the first of a few cards of the former Michigan QB hero, who'll hopefully find success with David Baas and the 49ers.
Non-mail thing:
I wanted to give a quick mention to BA Benny's group break, which started today. He's posted two videos so far, one of an Opening Day blaster and another with some random packs. Mike does a great job of showing each card and even pronounces names correctly sometimes (but cut him some slack, he's reading them upside-down) and more importantly, I'd say the video quality is excellent. Go watch if you've got a hand in the break or to just enjoy watching someone open packs with a thick New York accent. And stay tuned for what I'm sure will be quite a few more clips of pack breaks considering the scope of the thing.
This is a LaMarr Woodley 2007 Topps Performance jersey/auto/RC that I nabbed in a Blowout deal where I sold a couple Pedro Alvarez Razor Letterman from the last break, and I got this guy as a throw-in. The trader, pskell02, was great and I highly recommend working with him, especially if you have Pittsburgh Razor letters he needs. He was even nice enough to get this shipped back from CheckOutMyCards for me.
As promised, Terrelloween!:
I mentioned a few posts ago that after a relative calm in the storm that was my Blowout forum purchases, I made another one that might make y'all laugh. Well here it is: a guy had just an absolute ton of football listed, and I scanned it diligently for Wolverines. A bunch of David Terrells popped up under each price range, though in total, one of each came out to be $100+. I inquired about a price on those, and without having to lowball him, he responded excitedly (who wouldn't be if someone was offering money for your David Terrells?) with a GREAT price, and even threw in a bunch of Terrell RCs. That haul is here (not including three doubles I accidentally got in the deal, not realizing I already had them):
Rookies group #1: Pros & Prospects /1000; Crown Royale /1250; Bowman; Ultra /2499; Fleer EX /1000; Score Select /275
Rookies group #2: Fleer Hot Prospects Draft Day Postmarks /1825; Leaf Rookies & Stars; Elite /500; Fleer Showcase AvantCard /500; SP Game Used /500
2001 Bowman Chrome auto RC
2001 Fleer Focus Certified Cuts auto
2001 Fleer Genuine Future Swatch jersey (0281/1000)
2001 Fleer Hot Prospects Draft Day Postmarks auto (0259/1825)
2001 Fleer Hot Prospects Rookie Premiere Postmarks jersey (1465/1825)
2002 Donruss Classics Significant Signatures auto (091/100)
2002 Leaf Certified Materials Mirror Signatures auto (41/50)
David Terrell-Anthony Thomas 2001 Upper Deck Top Tier 2001 Rookie Duos dual ball
Not a bad haul at all, and all that (including the aforementioned three I already had) for under $60 delivered, if you can believe it. So another well-deserved shout-out to a good Blowout seller, brianshaft.
My favorite of the bunch is the Topps RP autograph. I think I like it because it has some sort of glossy quality to it that the base cards don't. I don't know enough about photography or card stock to explain it, but if you see one in person you'll know what I mean.
Here's a good opportunity for a snapshot of my current Terrell collection:
25 total hits
7 single relics (jersey, ball, etc.)
5 dual relics (any combination, including multi-player)
12 autographs
1 autograph + relic
Additionally, this puts me at 187 Michigan football hits (205 in all sports), so 200 is just right around the corner! Terrell becomes the new leader of the collection, taking over for Jake Long (though I have more of him coming in very soon). I also made a great purchase on CheckOutMyCards (hooray for the offer feature!) but might not get those shipped for a while until I feel like paying the shipping fee or try to sell some stuff first.
Until I post more, a reminder that the collection is here (or you can go through the link on the bar to your right).
