I have found a hockey set to collect!

My Dad had picked up a couple of 2007-08 Upper Deck hockey blasters on sale this week.  He had opened one and didn’t really get anything special.  He hadn’t opened the second one.  I was there for dinner last night and I asked if I could buy it off of him.  He agreed.  Unfortunately for him I had three great pulls.  I will scan them in tomorrow but here were the hits:

The third best hit was a Patrice Bergeron three colour jersey card which should be nice trade bait.  The second hit was a Nicklas Backstrom Young Gun where I was thinking, “finally a good card to trade for my other set needs!”.  Then I opened the last pack and saw “Patrick Kane”.  I pulled a Patrick Kane Young Gun!  It has a book value of $100.  I never pull cards like this.  It made my week.

I have been agonizing over a 2007-08 hockey set to collect.  I was thinking about SP Authentic and the Future Watch autograph set.  I find autograph and patch sets can be hard to collect.  I didn’t like that Hot Prospects increased the number of short print patches and that they increased the number of patch cards in the set.  I’m not a huge fan of the SPx design of their autograph jerseys and it’s hard to find multi-coloured patches in that set.  So… Upper Deck.  A good set collector’s set.  There are a lot of rookies to collect but they do not have huge book values and the most expensive cards will cost $50-60, not hundreds of dollars like autograph and patch sets.  I still might try to pick up some Future Watch autographs but I will collect them because I want the player, not because it will complete my set. 

It’s been a busy month for me at work and it’s only going to get worse.  I will try to post once or twice a week but I can’t guarantee it.  I will be able to post more in May and we can find out if I have any value in my collection that I built in the early 1990’s.

2007-08 Fleer Rack Pack!

My Dad was in Ohio visiting my grandparents and he picked up a 50 card rack pack of 2007-08 Fleer basketball.  I am interested in this set for the 1980 variations of the base set and the rookies.  The pack had two 1961 Fleer format cards of Chris Paul and Tim Duncan which have a nice design.  I really like the base set design.  It’s very 80’s and old school.  I’m going to try and collect the set with the variations.  The best pull from the pack (from my wife’s half of course) was a 1986-87 rookie design Greg Oden.  I need to get a box or two. 

It’s time to enter the checklist of the guys I need for the base set.  Thanks for reading and hopefully I will get a couple of cards in the mail this week to show for the blog.  Otherwise we will think of something.

Recent Purchases!

I know.  I start the blog and only one post since the first day.  I’m an accountant and it’s tax season so I work late a lot and I don’t always have the energy to blog.  When May comes along I’m planning on having a full court press of blog posts. 

I have made a couple of card purchases this past week.  I bought 2 packs of 2008 Topps Baseball from the local card/comic shop a couple of nights ago.  The highlight of the packs was a Mickey Mantle History of Trading Cards insert.  I think I’ll be able to trade it for set needs or sell it on EBay pretty easily. 

I also picked up my latest Hot Prospects autographed patch with a Shane O’Brien mult-coloured patch for just over $10 delivered.  This will be my 11th patch of the 41 card set and it’s my 5th this  year.  I’m still planning on picking up the cheaper patches in the next few months so I will eventually have purchased or traded for 10 patches this year.

There’s been some news around the hobby but it hasn’t involved sports.  Topps has announced letter patches of the presidential candidates in Topps Series 2.  Since I’m planning on collecting Heritage and I’m Canadian it doesn’t really affect me.  I’m sure the cards will sell for good money on EBay as soon as they come out and then will cool off a bit. 

I’ll try to post on the weekend with something a little more interesting. 

Thanks for reading.

Cards New Releases – Week of March 10th, 2008

There are 4 products out this week:

Baseball:

2008 Topps Opening Day - This is a low end set that looks to be geared to kids.  For around $35 you receive a box of 24 packs of 6 cards per pack.  The base set is 220 cards and it includes Topps Series 2 preview cards.  There are also “flapper” cards which can be turned into some other cards somehow.  If you have kids this might be a good starter set for them.  Autographs fall 1 per case so they are rare. 

2008 Upper Deck Premier- For around $230 you receive 1 box containing 1 pack of 4 cards.  The packs are collated as follows:  Card 1 is a base card #’d to 99 or a parallel base card #’d to 15.  Card 2 is a rookie signatures card #’d to 299 or 99.  Card 3 is a “woven” patch.  I looked on Ebay but couldn’t find an example of these types of cards.  Card 4 is an autograph that is #’d to 45 or less.  Card 5 is a memorabilia card #’d to 75 or less.  Card 6 is a patch card #’d to 75 or less.  Card 7 has either a bat barrel card, a premier logo patch #’d 1 of 1 and a premier card #’d to 3.  So there is a good chance you would get a nice card out of this.  But with every $200 and over product I recommend that you let other people break this and pick up the single cards you want off of EBay.

Basketball:

2007-08 Upper Deck Black- For around $220 you receive 2 boxes of 1 pack.  Each pack has 1 card.  Every card is numbered to 99 or less.  Every card is an autograph or a multi-swatch memorabilia cards.  One of the cards in the box will be an autograph.  There are a huge number of different types of autographs and patch cards in this set.  It’s a player collectors only set since there isn’t a base set.  If this set is anything like the Upper Deck Black baseball set the pulls will definitely not be worth the money.  So wait for the singles to reach Ebay.

Hockey:

2007-08 Upper Deck Ice - For $84 you receive a box of 20 packs of 5 cards per pack.  There are 4 rookies per box.  The rookies are of 4 different levels.  Level 4 is #’d to 1,999, Level 3 is #’d to 999, Level 2 is #’d to 499 and Level 1 is #’d to 99.  The 2005-06 set’s Level 1 rookies were very difficult to find.  The base set is 100 cards.  There are 3 hits other than the rookies in the box, either autograph or jersey/patch cards with at least 1 being an autograph card.  This could be a fun set to collect even though the Level 1 rookies will cost a bunch.  If this set looks like the Trilogy Ice Scripts set then it will be a nice looking set.  I will probably try to collect the Panthers from this set, especially any autographs.  The jersey cards have a number of parallels so if you are a player collector and they are in the jersey set then this will be good to collect. 

So collect singles from Premier and Black, buy Opening Day for your kid and take a reasonable gamble on picking up one of the Level 1 rookies from Ice.

Thanks for reading.

First post at my new card blog!

Hi!

I have made a number of card posts on my other blog, jefflingard.wordpress.com, but I have decided to spin my card posts off to this blog.  I have called this blog “Mid-End Cards” because I like to collect cards between the cheaper brands such as Topps Opening Day and Upper Deck First Edition Baseball and I don’t think I will ever spend anything on the $200 1 pack, 4 cards box. 

I collect hockey, baseball and basketball cards.  I collected football too when I was a teenager and I am hoping to get back into football this fall.  I am planning on having product previews, cards I buy and hobby news that interests me on this blog. 

So welcome to this blog.  I hope you like it here.  Check out some of the other blogs on my blogroll and happy collecting.