NSCC Fallout Pt. 7: Boxes of Product

It felt a little silly to come home from the National with all of my treasures fitting into a brown paper lunch bag, so just before leaving I bought a few boxes of cards. The easiest decision I made all week was to pick up a box of 2018 Topps WWE Legends. Dave & Adam's must have been trying to get rid of the stuff, because the price was right. You are guaranteed two autos per box. I hit FIVE. Needless to say, you'll probably have to wait until January to see what was inside.


 I also got a box of 2019 Topps Opening Day. I enjoyed the packs I bought at Target this spring, so I made the decision to put the set together. Those mascots, man, that's where they get ya.
 

 But what we've come her to talk about is this box. 2017 Topps MLS Stadium Club. Two autos per box, $20, I decided to give it a shot. SPOILER: I did not like this product.


Let's start with the parallels. For some reason, Topps decided that Stadium Club, a brand built on exceptional photography and vibrant colors, should include black and white parallels. Stupid. I'm showing these a red card.
 

Oh great, more parallels, this time the name is in gold. This is a studs-up tackle to the back of the knee. Terrible.
   

Giovani dos Santos Photo Variation
Got a good player, at least. The thing is, this photo is less exciting than the one on the regular dos Santos card. (1:19 pack odds.)


Are the parallels done yet? No? Terrific.
Joao Plata Members Only (5/6)
This is a Stadium Club standby, and perhaps with the low numbering I can get a few bucks for this, even though RSL doesn't have any fans. (1:128 pack odds)


Okay, we made it through that mess and are on to the inserts. These are called "Profiles," and they... what the hell? Where did the color go again? What is with the obsession with black and white? See, MLS made this really great choice when they redesigned their logo a few years ago. The league logo changes color in relation to the team clothing on which it is featured. This is just washed-out image cropping. Donruss Studio did this almost thirty years ago, with much better results.
 

Up next, Scoreless Streak goalkeeper inserts. Now that's what I'm talking about! A focused insert set with something resembling creative graphic design. This is what should have taken the place of all those waste-of-space B&W/gold parallels. Two per box is uncool.
 

The AUTOS
#74 Ignacio Piatti
Perennial MLS All-Star, stuck in the backwater of the league so few know who he is. I will get $3 for this if I'm lucky.
   

#56 Ethan Finlay Members Only (19/20)
Not terrible. Finlay has an interesting story, with his family moving to north-central Wisconsin where soccer is almost nonexistent, and commuting to Milwaukee (well...Germantown) to play youth club ball. (1:80 pack odds)
 

With some luck, I might be able to eke a profit out of this box, since I sure ain't collecting it. Maybe I'll give the base cards to that little blind kid who sits outside my apartment complex.
More to come...

NSCC Fallout Pt. 6: Quarter Box Coma II

Nine more from the quarter box!  

2001 Pacific Jarious Jackson Premiere Date Parallel (29/45)
Let's talk about 2001 Pacific Football. To my eye, one of the best looking football sets ever made. I'm still collecting it because there are a lot of SPs and inserts to chase. Having opened up a lot of this product, I can tell you that these Premiere Date cards fall one to every couple of boxes. I've gotten a few over the years, no big stars, unfortunately. There are currently two of these available from the same seller on COMC for $23.24 each. Wishful thinking, yes, but I'd gladly sell mine for half that. The only problem is that I'd probably need to find a Jarious Jackson supercollector. Not bloody likely, but maybe there's a hardcore Notre Dame fan who'd like to put his money where his mouth is.
 

 2017 Topps Yulieski Gurriel Photo Variation
The only reason I caught this one is because I pulled this card from a pack in 2017 and sold it on eBay. I got a few bucks for it, and I'll try to do so again.
 

2007 Topps Updates & Highlights David Ortiz Gold (0102/2007)
Man, Topps Gold parallels used to look so much better when the cards had borders. This is a gold set (S1/S2/UH) I could realistically put together someday. Maybe after I finish 1993TAu, I'll start in earnest.
 

 2011 Topps Triple Threads CC Sabathia Bronze (81/99)
Why not?
 

 2007 Topps Triple Threads Barry Sanders Sepia (343/649)
 Again, probably a very flippable card.
 

2005 Donruss Diamond Kings Trot Nixon (31/50)
 

2013 Topps Jordan Pacheco Gold (0224/2013)
I think 2013 is Topps's most attractive design of the teens.
 

2008 Topps Triple Threads Justin Morneau Gold (98/99)
Trade bait? 
 

Ted Williams Magnet
Pretty cool item, a little smaller than your standard card. I looked on eBay and couldn't find another one. Available for trade or sale.


 More to come...

NSCC Fallout Pt. 5: Quarter Box Coma I

My first hour or so at this year's NSCC was spent fulfilling another one of my show goals: Slipping into a dime box-induced coma. Technically, it was a quarter box, but the effects were the same. My blood pressure fell, my REM cycle activated, and I had an erection the size of a Charleston Chew. Well, maybe not the last part, but I was relaxed and content to let the world around me disappear. I'll be recapping my purchases in chunks of whatever fits all at once on my scanner.  

2011 Topps Tribute Yogi Berra Blue (106/199)
The kind of thing that should resell for a few bucks.
 

4 2014 Panini Prizm World Cup Commons
Not too sure about the Froot Loop stickers, but these came from the same seller as all those great WWE cards.
   

1977 Topps Robin Yount
Already have it, of course, but probably don't have one for the '77 set.
   

1993 Leaf Gold Leaf Stars Ken Griffey, Jr. / Andy Van Slyke
   

2000 Fleer Showcase Long Gone Mark McGwire Seemed like a good idea to grab this as a 1:20 packs insert.
 

1974 Topps Ken Stabler I will eventually start trying to build this set, as it's the vintage football set I have the most of. Needed the Snake, good to get him cheap.


 More to come...

NSCC Fallout Pt. 4: '50s Madness

In order to not go crazy at the National, I took a relatively small amount of cash with me, and I made a list of collecting goals. Most of this plan turned out to be a success.

GOAL: Vintage Hank Aaron
Result: 1956 Topps Hank Aaron
This was sort of a broad goal. I could have gone cheap and picked up his '75 Topps or something like that, but this was a special occasion. I saw one in a 50% case at one guy's table, which would have made it $100. Later I saw the '56 for $75. At the outskirts of the show, however, I found one for even less than that. Very happy with this card.


GOAL: One 1952 Topps Card
Result: 1952 Topps Sam Jethroe
Well, I doubled my collection of '52 Topps cards, and what a good one to get! First black Braves player, 12th black MLB player overall, 1950 NLRoY, and two-time NL stolen bases champion.
 

Goal: At least 20 1959 Topps Cards
Result: Way more than 20
Here's a partial stack of the '59s I acquired. The Luis Aparicio AS eluded me (too expensive!), but I got close to 50 cards. It helped that in the last few hours of my final day, I found a guy selling off-condition '59s for a quarter each. The table that had high numbers for $2 each was also a godsend.
 

Here are some of the highlights:  
1959 Topps Larry Doby
   
1959 Topps Ken Boyer AS
   
1959 Topps Bill Skowron
Condition: Yikes!
 
1959 Topps Skowron AS
Much better condition.
 

Finally, there was this signed 1953 Topps Roy Sievers that I couldn't pass up. The signature looks pretty close to other samples, which aren't particularly uniform themselves. For $5, it was worth a shot.
 

Coming soon: Quarter Box Coma

2019 NSCC Fallout Pt. 3: More Wrestling Wrelics

Just a few more WWE relic cards from the same seller as yesterday's post.  

2017 Undisputed Becky Lynch (177/199)
Let's get right to the star of this post.  Maybe the guy running this table just wasn't very familiar with wrestling. This card is currently available on eBay for $24.99 or more. The level of hype over THE MAN might be subsiding a little bit, but with SummerSlam just a couple of days away, who knows what we might see?  I would pay $5 for this all day, every day.
   

2015 Heritage Xavier Woods Black Border (11/50)
A very attractively colored swatch, which is not surprising, considering the New Day's T-shirt offerings. This is another great steal. A card like this gets at why I have been sticking to opening wrestling products more often recently. The thing is, no matter who the hits are, it's going to be somebody I like 90% of the time. Contrast that with baseball. I want Brewers. Ninety-nine percent of the time the hit is not a Brewer, and more often than not it's some scrub that's not worth anything, or it's a guy on a team I hate. Unless I pull a Baron Corbin or a Dolph Ziggler, that's not happening when busting a WWE product.
 

2017 WWE Shinsuke Nakamura (171/199)
Nothing bad to say about this card at all. This looks to be a piece cut from his "Strong Style Has Arrived" shirt, even though I can't recall him wearing it (but I could be wrong on that).  It would be really awesome if it was his trademark red leather.  Just an awesome entertainer who hopefully hasn't hit his WWE ceiling yet.
 

That's it for the WWE relics, but there are more cards to come.

2019 NSCC Fallout Pt. 2: Wrestling Wrelics

In the middle of the Thursday session, I found a table that had a big box of wrestling inserts, autos, and relics. The prices were right and when I packaged a bunch of Topps WWE relics together, the guy cut me a nice deal that was about a dollar off each card's sticker price. Let's go.  

2015 Topps The Miz
Interesting two-color swatch on this one. This, you'll see, will be a theme moving forward.
 

2016 Heritage Cesaro Bronze (050/150)
This swatch looks to be from this piece of merch, but it's also possible it came from his later Cesaro Section shirt that was super popular.
   

2015 Chrome Kofi Kingston
Just blue, but $2 for a relic from the guy who's THE champ right now? A no-brainer.
 

2015 Heritage Seth Rollins
A bit of strange provenance on this card. The picture shows Seth winning the 2014 MITB match, but the back says the mat relic is from the 2015 event. Oh well, at least it reminds me of his heel run when I first got into wrestling that made Rollins my favorite current wrestler.
   

2015 Road to WrestleMania Dean Ambrose
Let's just call him MOX now.
   

2017 Topps Johnny Gargano Blue (38/50)
Perhaps the steal of this purchase. A quick check shows that the standard version of this card (#/199) is not selling for below $20 on eBay currently. Johnny Wrestling is a lot of fun to watch and should soon have a great run on the main roster.


More wrasslin' cards to show off later. Stay tuned.

2019 NSCC Fallout Pt. 1: Completion!

I went in to my first National Sports Collectors Convention with an airtight plan, and, for the most part, I stuck to it. One of the top items on my wish list was the remainder of the 1971-72 Topps basketball set. I knocked out about half of the ten cards I needed on day one, and decided that finding the rest would be day two's first order of business. Here are the highlights.

 #200 Dan Issel
This is Issel's rookie card, subject to quite a premium. He was a scoring machine, but splitting his time between the ABA and NBA hasn't helped his legacy.

#91 Rudy Tomjanovich
Like Issel, became a successful coach following his playing career. This is also his rookie card. He looks different not only because he is younger, but also due to the punch from Kermit Washington during an on-court brawl that nearly killed him. For some reason the phrase "rearranged his face" sticks out from something I read about the incident when I was younger. Rudy T of course led the Rockets to the NBA title in 1994 and 1995.

#121 Gail Goodrich
This was the only other one I ended up paying more than a couple of bucks for. Goodrich is a Hall of Famer who spent most of his career with the Lakers, so it makes sense. On this card he is seen using the backwards jersey technique to common to this set. Apparently Topps did not have the rights to NBA trademarks this year, so many players are shown with their name on their chest. I love a good workaround.

And then all the rest. No big names left, just ABA commons. I was able to find most in nice condition. All that's left now is to decide which vintage basketball set to chase next.