A Thick Mini Dickey from eBay

This card popped up in my eBay feed a while back, and as soon as I saw it I knew I needed to try to make it mine. I was aware of the 1972-style minis in 2013 Topps, but I don't recall hearing much about the relic parallel. Only 15 of the 50 cards in the Series 2 version of the 1972 Topps Mini insert had these relic parallels, and PC guy R.A. Dickey was one of them. The bidding didn't go quite as high as I thought it would and I came away as the winner.

When the card arrived in the mail, I was surprised at how thick it is. The fact that it is a mini enhances that appearance, but it is also just a really girthy piece of cardboard. It's not quite as thick as one of those manufactured relic cards with the pins or medallions in them, but it's closer to those than it is to your standard relic card. I don't think there's any way Topps could have disguised these hits in a pack with their small length and height and their large width. This insert was pretty rare, with this one being card # 22 / 25 in the print run.

On an unrelated note, the other day I mentioned that I'd looked over the upcoming Allen & Ginter's checklist to see if there was anything non-baseball I should chase. At that time I didn't really see anything of interest to me, but Cardboard Connection made a page with a rundown of all the non-sports signers and there were a few things that caught my eye. My short-list includes actor/comedian George Lopez, football coach Jen Welter, swimmer Missy Franklin, basketball coach Nancy Lieberman, and Jersey Shore cast member Vinny G. None of them are autographs I feel very strongly about, but if I am going to chase anything non-baseball from A&G this year, those would be the ones. There were a lot of sports talk folks and some Field of Dreams actors on the list, but none of that really appeals to me.

Still Chasing the Past: A Couple of 2013 Hits

The 2016 Allen & Ginter's Checklist (thanks to Crackin' Wax by way of Bubba's Bangin' Batch of Baseball Bits) is out now, so I thought it would be the perfect time to show off some 2013 A&G cards I picked up for my collection.

The first is a card I've wanted for quite a long time. It's the mini framed autograph of bodybuilder and current reigning Mr. Olympia, Phil Heath. This card has been elusive for me, and I've been chasing a copy of it since I discovered it existed. I finally found one in my price range and grabbed it up. Pretty good stuff. It looks like the 2016 Allen & Ginter non-baseball autograph checklist is heavy on broadcasters and comedians, and on a quick review of it I didn't find much in the way of autographs I absolutely have to have. Maybe that will change once I look at the checklist again more closely.

This is a card that I already had a couple copies of, but I picked one up again because it was cheap and I have some kind of problem when it comes to cardboard. This relic swatch is at least a different color than the other two I have. I don't know if it comes from a different item or just a different part of the same colorful piece of clothing. I think I'm done chasing Phil Heath cards from 2013 Allen & Ginter's, but I can't really say that for sure. There are still plenty of other cards I 'need' from the last few years of A&G, so I'll probably try to focus on acquiring them if I can.

Click Here to View Cart 13: Topps UFC Now Kicks Off with UFC 200

So I watched UFC 200 on Saturday and for the most part I thought it was decent, but there was a long dead spot right in the middle of the Main Card that started with the Aldo - Edgar fight, hit rock bottom during the Cormier - Silva Snuggle Match, and finally started picking back up with the return of Brock Lesnar to the UFC.

The thing that really interested me about UFC 200, though, was the introduction of the Topps Now program to UFC trading cards. During the week before the event, Topps opened the cards up for sale, announcing that the cards would feature the winners of the Main Card bouts, with art being revealed on Monday and sales lasting for 24 hours past that point. I ordered all five cards, one from the Topps site and the other four from eBay sellers. I don't have them in-hand yet, but I was really curious to see today what the print runs would be once sales ended. I anticipated that they would be much lower than the baseball print runs just because the UFC market isn't that big.

For the most part my expectations were accurate. The Cain Velasquez card was the lowest print run of them all, with only 87 cards ordered. I don't know how popular Velasquez is, but I know most of the people in the chat rooms pan Travis Browne cards when they get pulled. The Jose Aldo card was third out of the five when it comes to print run, although it was closer to the bottom two than it was to the top two. His card got up to 110 orders, probably because both he and Frankie Edgar have decent followings.

The Daniel Cormier - Anderson Silva fight was a real snoozer, and people in the arena booed throughout as Cormier kept taking Silva down to the ground, holding on to him and preventing any kind of striking from going on. It was probably a smart strategy for winning the fight, but it was horrible to watch. As expected, the next two cards had significantly higher print runs. Brock Lesnar's card had the highest of all at 320 cards, probably due to his celebrity reaching beyond the UFC and the fact that his return was the most exciting storyline of the event. The fight could have been more exciting, but Lesnar was at least active in his wrestling and the size of the dudes involved in the fight meant that at any point a solid punch could lay one of them out. The fight went the distance and Lesnar won in a decision, but I was entertained in spite of the lack of fireworks. His post-fight speech was a little weird, but that's okay. I think he meant well.

The Main Event (of the Evening!) was a title match between Miesha Tate and Amanda Nunes for the Women's Bantamweight title. Nunes came out fast and absolutely rocked Tate early, which led to a quick choke submission in the first round and the crowning (belting?) of a new Champion. It was pretty exciting after all the slow-moving Men's bouts, and I was happy for the early finish because I had to be up early Sunday morning for work. The Women's divisions are extremely popular among card collectors, so this card wound up with a print run of 214, which is good for second-highest among these five cards. If this were a baseball card, it would be second-lowest, just above an Evan Gattis card with a print run of 212. I think the print run might have been higher if Miesha Tate had won, but that's just speculation because she got her nose broken and looked absolutely lost before the submission that ended the fight. I thought the ref could have ended the fight a little earlier because she was clearly running away and dazed, but I guess he saw enough fight in her to let it continue.

So there are the first five Topps UFC Now cards. I am interested to see them in-hand, and also whether Topps sees fit to continue the program after these low print runs. Topps had to expect that they wouldn't sell as well as the baseball cards, but I wonder what their threshold is as far as sales needed to turn an acceptable profit? Is 100 cards enough? What about 87? The price goes down as individuals order more cards, so a 100-card print run only generates between $400 and $1000 in sales, while an 87 card print run only brings in $348 to $870. It that enough to warrant designing and producing a unique card? Anyway, I wanted to get in on the ground floor of this one. We'll see if Topps saw enough good out of it to continue the line.

Sketch Card Week: Power Girl by Josef (Joe) Rubinstein

This is the last post for Sketch Card Week, which went for an extra day because I took a break in the middle of it. I actually just received a couple mailers full of sketch cards that would allow me to extend this event by another week, but I've got a bunch of non-sketch stuff in my queue and I'll probably just post these new sketches later.

This sketch is another Power Girl sketch from Cryptozoic's DC Comics: The Women of Legend product. It was done by Josef (Joe) Rubinstein. This appears to be an older version of Power Girl, which kind of makes sense because Rubinstein came into comics in the 1970's, and his work has the look of the comic art of that era. There are probably people out there who could name his influences and artistic lineage, but I am not one of those people. I mostly can categorize the art styles as recent, old, and older with moderate accuracy. Anyhow, this is kind of a cool sketch that shows Power Girl in a different light than the usual fare. I thought it was pretty neat, and I grabbed it up for my collection.

This post will barely sneak in before midnight tonight. I was in the middle of writing the draft when we decided to go walk around town with our kids and catch Pokemon on the Pokemon Go app. It was pretty fun, and there were a lot of families, couples, individuals, and groups of friends walking around doing the same thing. Everyone was friendly and smiling, and people from all sorts of social groups were bonding over something they now have in common. Pretty cool stuff.

Sketch Card Week: Red Sonja by Danny Silva

Today artist Danny Silva gets featured for the second time during Sketch Card Week, this time with a nice sketch of famed barbarian(ess?) Red Sonja holding what appears to be an orc or goblin's severed head. Gory stuff, I suppose, but fighting goblinoids isn't clean work. This set came out a couple of years ago, but Silva recently posted a video of him working on this sketch card to his blog.

That's pretty cool stuff. It's neat to see the progression of the art from pencil to inks to colors. I'm glad I was able to find the video. This card came from Breygent's Women of Dynamite card set, which is based on the various female characters whose rights are owned by comic book publisher Dynamite Entertainment. It was a small set released in sketch card packs that were only available at the 2014 San Diego Comic Con (and later from resellers). Each pack had two sketches, 6 base cards (from an 18-card base set), and a promo card (from a 6-card promo set). I bought a pack of the cards once, but I never blogged about it here. One of the sketches was a little on the risque side and I wound up selling it on eBay for a couple hundred dollars to a person who PC's the artist. If I recall correctly I paid about $35 for that pack, so it was a pretty good deal for me.

This sketch joins my small Red Sonja PC and I'll definitely be looking for more work by Danny Silva in the future.

Sketch Card Week: Power Girl by Lin Workman

After taking a break yesterday from Sketch Card Week, I am returning with another sketch card featuring DC character Power Girl, from the Cryptozoic DC Comics: The Women of Legend set. This card features Power Girl in her short-lived New 52 costume, and the artist is Lin Workman. He's got a card with Power Girl in her more recognizable costume for sale on his website, but the asking price is a little out of my range at the moment. I am still pretty happy with this sketch card, though, as I had been wanting to get one of his sketches for a while. The right one finally popped up and I was able to acquire it for my Power Girl sketch card PC. Pretty cool stuff! Sorry for the short posts lately. I've been busy.

Sketch Card Week: A Momentary Pause

I don't have it in me to write a sketch card post tonight and I have to be up early tomorrow morning for work, so I am pausing Sketch Card Week for a day or so. My page views are way down since Sketch Card Week started, so I'm thinking people won't mind too much.