Vikings Recap: Week 14

I know I wasnt the only Vikings fan today who was more than a little worried, and still more than a little happy that they may lose to the Lions. It would have been awful to lose to the worst team in NFL history, but it would have been amazing because Childress would have surely lost his job. Either way, they won, and Childress' job is safe for another week.

Adrian Peterson



Another great game for Peterson, but no TDs to speak of because the offense was completely incompetant with Frerotte at the helm. He litterally bowled over anyone who tried to get in his way and did great with limited prospects of doing well. Its very tough to put up a good game with no first downs put on by the rest of the team, so I will give him credit for doing awesome with nothing.

Gus Frerotte

I was SOOOOOOO happy to see him hurt at the end of the second quarter. He is so awful I cant even put it into words, especially when you throw two passes DIRECTLY at LIONS defenders. Thats like losing a footrace to a child with cerebal palsy. Im sure its just him being old and playing a long season, but he just cant throw and isnt accurate anymore (not that he ever really was). Gus needs to be benched for the rest of his career.

Cedric Griffin

Could be the worst CB in the NFC north. The guy just makes mistake after mistake after mistake. Then, when he makes a tackle on an 8 yard pass play to his guy on first down, he celebrates like he just stopped the guy for a loss on 4th and 1. What an arrogant fucking piece of shit, that pisses me off to no fucking end. The 70 yarder to Johnson did not catch me by surprise, mainly because I shouted that Griffin was out of place from the beginning.

Jared Allen

Is hillarious, and awesome. Super mullet and 2 sacks, love it.

Brad Childress

Needs to be fired, NOW. Even the Lions medical staff has more creative play calling than this idiot. He is truly the only thing holding this team back other than the lack of a QB. He is so bad, that I think he could have coached the 16-0 Patriots to an 8-8 season.

UD Icons Football Introduces A Whole New Level Of Crap

On the Blowout cards forum, a user has busted a case of Icons for some god-forsaken reason. In his listing of the stuff he pulled, he mentioned that he had pulled a a "presidential campaign letter."

I just about puked on the screen, I mean, full on family guy on ipicac puke. What the fuck was Upper Deck thinking? Not only do the continue the asinine trend of Presidential Subsets in sports products, but now they are copying one of the worst ideas in the history of cards. Topps brought crap to an undiscovered limit with their inserts in the Topps baseball set, but this is crap to the nth power.

Check it out!



ITS A FUCKING REDEMPTION!!! Jokes on you, member of the idiot conglomerate! You cant even get your non-sports related presidential non-autographed manufactured letter right away! You have to wait! BWAHAHAHAHA!

Another funny thing that I found is that in the only auction for one on TWGM, it lists it as a "must have for any team or player collector!" Ha, yes, you have hit the nail on the head my stupid friend. It is a must have.

Note to Topps and Upper Deck: IF YOU ARE GOING TO MANUFACTURE THE LETTERS, YOU BETTER GET THEM FUCKING AUTOGRAPHED. That is all.

Two Unbelievable Auctions, I Cant Stop Laughing

Well, since every single person and their mother uses Beckett to sell their shit, Im not suprised that they got these two cards. Both cards are amazing, really huge pulls that have the possibility of breaking $15K. However, a few things about these auctions make me laugh really fucking hard.

The first card is one of the Hair Cut cards I discussed a few posts back, with this one being the best of the best. The cut is nice, the hair is creepy, but overall, its not suprising to see it reach the price it did because of the circumstances. The funny thing about this auction is that the card has a 5 cm piece of the hair. At least the Washington card had a good strand, this one, however, is crap - despite it being weirdly included in a baseball card set. Again, a piece of our country's history is destroyed for profit.

The second is a 1/1 Mantle Bat Barrell that was out of Topps Sterling. Besides it being sold by Beckett, this auction screams "I AM THE STUPIDEST PERSON IN THE HISTORY OF CARD COLLECTING!" about its seller. Let me elaborate: first mistake, this fucking idiot sent his prized pull to the hobby's number one source on douchebaggery. Good idea, idiot. Secondly he had them slab it in this fucking "ROZDUCKULOUS" case because its obvious the foldout cards are beyond Beckett's capabilities. Big suprise there. Lastly, Topps couldnt include some game used jersey in this card? Instead they used some stark white old timer game jersey? Cmon, that is fucking stupid. However, the funniest thing about this idiot and his card? He had them grade it.

Let me repeat that so you get the full gist of this.

HE HAD THEM GRADE HIS 1/1 MICKEY MANTLE BAT BARRELL CARD. Please, someone, tell me why he decided to do this? If the slab wasnt funny enough, his card is forever a 7.5 for all to see. Did he think it would be worth more as a 9.5? Who fucking cares! This could be the dumbest thing I have ever seen, no doubt. Just to remind you, if you grade a 1/1, you deserve to be shot.

Book Value Is The Bane Of My Universe

I really hate to devote more time to something like my crusade against "book value," but I am so angry over something that just happened, that I can barely function.

I was trading online with a guy that had a card I have been looking for FOREVER, when the unthinkable happened. I had a card he desperately wanted, as well, something that I know was not going to surface on TWGM anytime soon. Both cards are relatively valuable to everyone, but more so to us, due to the people we like. I thought a straight up deal would be great considering how rare both of the cards were, but I had no idea that he had something heinous in his repetoir. When he dropped the idiot bomb, the trade floundered and I almost did a Family Guy puke. BOOM, the I-bomb takes out my dream of owning this card.

Actual text from our conversation - SCU will be me, IBOMB will be him:

SCU - So you ready to go on this? I am so happy I found someone who was willing to trade for the card!
IBOMB - Yeah, no shit, I have been looking for this since 2 years ago. Yo, just one last thing though. My card books at $100, yours is only at $50, is there any way we could even this out?
SCU - Why, they both sell for about the same on eBay, what is the problem?
IBOMB - I trade by BV
SCU - Besides the fact that this is completely ridiculous, considering how much we both need the other's cards, go ahead and see if there is anything else I can add.
IBOMB - I don’t really see anything I need, can you throw in some paypal?
SCU - Sorry, money is tight right now, cant do it.
IBOMB - Ok, well, thanks for trying, I think Ill pass.
SCU - You are going to give up on a card you want because some book told you that yours is worth more, despite the obvious fact that it sells at similar price?
IBOMB - If I wanted to go by SV I would go on eBay
SCU - eBay is the true price guide anyway
IBOMB - whatever, it changes daily.
SCU - Yes, but the prices are still relatively similar. Its not like a 50 dollar sale turns into 600 the next day, it may go to 53 or 47, but those are still ball park.
IBOMB - Sorry, people screw each other using eBay values to trade
SCU - You know, im done with you, congrats on trashing a good trade. I hope one day you stop being such a fundamentalist. You may actually realize that eBay is the only value you should worry about.

SCU Signed off 10:16pm

Let me reinterate a few different things here. First being that book value is the worst possible way to determine the true value of a card. Last time I went over all the ways that BV is wrong, and it still pisses me off when people quote it like the bible. The general collecting public is the most asshat filled group in the history of man, only because they refuse to understand that the ways of the old are out of date. In a day where magazines and newspapers are on their way out, people still think Beckett is the end all and be all of card pricing, even though there is a free place to look where money is no good. I cant believe this douche let the card he wanted go because some guide created by people who enjoy skinning puppies told him it was worth more than it was. I even played along! I fed in to this guy's insanity!

I just wanted to tell him that creating a price guide as a monthly publication for a volitile product is like putting a price guide on stocks as a monthly publication. I mean, much like eBay is the TWGM for cards, the stock market is a similar place for the companies that are traded. Would you go by a book's value of the stocks or the true market value? I swear, don’t say eBay is fickle and it changes - that’s common for a lot of products. Smart people know that steady value of any commodity is a myth, so shove that crap up your Beckett loving ass.

Another common thing on the pulse these days is people complaining that Beckett has changed their format. Instead of once per month, they now publish bi-monthly with less info on cards. Like it fucking matters how often Tracy "Bratz" Hackler takes out his pricing hat and draws out the book values for the month. Yet, for some reason, people are pissed because they cant see how much their card is worth to some cock-spackler with a buzzcut every month. Whats even worse is that with the online price guide, Beckett actually has the tools to circulate an eBay based price guide. But, like the magazine, the OPG is only updated monthly, and it costs more money to subscribe to. Plus, those assholes are too self absorbed to even entertain the fact that they may be the idiots that we know they are.

Now, I found my trader on a message board of seemingly informed people, yet he still is one of those ass spelunkers who trades by BV instead of SV or even just need for the card. Need is all that was important to me, but the money grubber had his own monetary interests in his side. How shitty is that? Ill be sure to cite book value as one of the main reasons I stopped collecting, if and when that happens.

Your Bad Hit May Not Be So Bad! What?!?

When you pull a hit out of your favorite product, usually its going to suck, unless you work for Beckett. Yet, those hits may be the key to the future of the sports autograph collectibles industry, believe it or not.

Let me explain:

Right now, if you go to UDA or Steiner to buy a piece of memorabilia, you will have to pay for the market price of the autograph plus the market cost of the authentication name on the certificate. Usually, the authentication is worth more than the signature itself, mostly because of one cold hard fact: 80-90% of the autographs available on the internet are fake. Due to the number of scam artists out there, even PSA slabbed stuff is not safe for the average person anymore. On the other hand, despite the above fact, no one will question an auto'ed sports card as long as it was meant to be one. Thousands upon thousands of auto cards end up on the secondary market each day, and most collectors (with a few exceptions) believe that there is no question as to the authenticity of the player's signature. Due to the awful state of the market, as real autographs become harder and harder to prove as authentic, I see a growth in the worth of the standard auto cards of today. Its crazy to think about that now, but the donkey rapers out there are coming up with some fucked up ways to make money, and eventually PSA authentication will mean about as much as a scoreboard letter of authenticity. You saw that news report that said they got a fake through the JSA people, right?


This football was 100% guaranteed to pass authentication. It wont.

To tell you the truth, it really blows a goat that most people are only out there to make money, regardless of who they hurt in the process. They don’t care if the fake auto of Alex Rodriguez you bought hangs on your child's wall, because to them, all they see is $$$$$.

Just as an example, I had an autograph of Vince Carter that my dad gave me for my birthday a long time ago. Being a UNC grad, my dad got caught up in the vinsanity and it rubbed off on me too. Of course, my dad wasn’t as versed in the ways of the donkey raper as I am now, so he bought from some guy who had a cool picture signed in bold silver pen. He paid to have it framed, and it hung on my wall until last year. Around graduation from college, I went back and took a look at it. I realized right away what my dad had bought, and I was so pissed that I threw my suitcase across the room. I wasn’t mad at my dad, I was mad at the guy who felt that scamming people out of their hard earned money was more important than dignity - something that has become commonplace in the market.

People ask me why my view of humanity is inherantly bad, and the reason is quite simple. Humans only care about one thing in general and its being better than the next guy. By most societal standards that means having more money, and they will not stop until they have the maximum available. For most people, its not an issue to make money the correct way, but for others, a quick buck is more tempting than sex. These people know its easy to create and sell fake autos when you arent seeing the buyer face to face (sometimes even if you are!). They also know that its easy to pull the one color jersey out of the DLP card and put in a logo patch. They for sure have no doubt that someone will pay to buy it, because there is a sucker born every minute. Funny enough, this happens in every industry because people are never hestitant to take advantage of a simple customer with no knowledge - double if you are a woman. Whether its mechanics, car salesman, drug reps, even politicians (especially politicians), they all have their bad apples.

Because of the nature of this argument, eventually cards may be the only reliable source for autographs. That is a scary fact, ladies and gents, especially with people like Beckett and UD out there doing basically the same thing as the donkey rapers. Lets hope that somewhere down the road a great enlightenment happens and these guys take it in the ass. That would be awesome.

This is Beyond Ridiculous Pt 2: Even More Ridiculous?

After reading the second part to "For the Love of Sitting Around and Flipping Through a Price Guide" I might just stop going to baseball card shops all together, just to spite this guy. Holy fucking shit, man! The Baseball Card Blog (no link on purpose), has created a world where Baseball Cards have ceased to exist all because, wait - sit down for this, price guides have stopped their publication. It begins with the descripion of a pure utopia in collecting (my commentary, fire joe morgan style in italics):

"Here’s the situation. The list prices in price guides have been deemed useless on such a massive scale that Beckett and FW have ceased their publication. With no widely available prices, the majority of collectors now consult eBay for accurate card prices."

I love it. No longer will a douchebag ridden magazine set the prices for the 50% of uneducated idiots that still consult beckett for prices.

"Dealers do the same. And after they view the umpteenth autographed patch 1/1 card go for less than $20–pulled from a box that dealers paid a premium on to sell–they stop ordering high-end products from the manufacturers. The dealers understand that if they’re seeing these auctions on eBay, their potential customers are winning them."

Ba-what? Dealers who see the card pulled from a 500 dollar box stop ordering wax because their customers cant sell their pulls for a lot of money? How hasnt the customer part not happened already? I guarantee that the dealers will not stop ordering boxes because people are going to eBay to sell what they get. You know why? It already happens every fucking day, you arrogant ass. Dealers like Northridge Sports Cards and Santa Monica Sports Cards make their bread and butter selling boxes where people pull nothing and sell them for nothing. Do they fucking care that their customers cant sell them for shit on eBay? Sure, but only on a personal level. What they care about is that it has become more convenient for their customers to buy WAX on eBay rather than paying INFLATED prices at a shop. Once again, Im sorry that it sucks you cant spend 30 minutes bullshitting with Blowout Cards, but it is a necessary evil. Despite this trend, both the shops are doing fine. Seriously, if your shop is relying on singles to function, they NEED to go down with the ship.

"So many dealers stop ordering these cards that the manufacturers have a difficult decision to make: finally listen to dealers and put more value in each box of product, or dismiss dealers altogether and work exclusively with big box stores like Target, Kmart and Wal-Mart. It comes as no surprise when the manufacturers go with the latter choice."

This could be the worst paragraph ever written in the history of sports card blogs. Manufacturers will never go with the second choice because Target, Kmart and Wal-mart will NEVER, EVER, EEEEEEEVAAAR pay 500 bucks for a box of cards. They have flat screens and plasmas to sell rather than that bullshit. I would see UD and DLP sell to eBay directly before they do this.

Upper Deck to Target: Umm, yeah, we want to market Exquisite directly to Target.
Target: Sounds great, how much does it cost?
Upper Deck: At cost, about 400 bucks a box. You would probably want to mark it up to 599.
Target: *Click*
Upper Deck: Hello? Hello?

You dont think they have enough problems with security and shrink on their current stock? Now they gotta worry about protecting this shit, let alone SELLING it to collectors like me that would MUCH rather buy it from a trusted source without weirdo 50 year old men fondling our prized investment every 5 minutes...Ugh, it gets worse.

"Because the majority of shops deal primarily in new cards, they start to close. Collectors don’t notice right away, as most of them are tuned to eBay. And besides, the hobby’s gone through this before and survived, so what’s the big deal? Also, everybody’s got a Wal-Mart near them, so who cares if one more shop goes out of business? Shops sell off their inventory and shutter."

Again, this has already happened, but guess what? Shops are still open. Ebay is currently the hobby's biggest card shop. Other shops survive because they have found innovative ways to stay open and because they know what to sell: WAX and lots of it.

"Dealers at baseball card shows don’t feel the same pressure right away, though many of them do feel their brethren’s plight. Instead, without book prices to consult on every transaction, desperate, frenetic dealers result to using their best judgment. Collectors, fully aware of the situation dealers are in, refuse to be charged “judgment call prices.” Many dealers, citing lack of meaningful sales at shows, stop booking booths. What few shows remain shrink in attendance until they cease to exist. The National is the lone exception, chugging away, though it’s a magnet for news media to lament the hobby crisis. “Ain’t in the Card$,” is the New York Post headline."

Or better yet, dealers use eBay prices and collectors finally find a great marketplace - outside of the scam ridden internet - to buy their cards. Or even better than that, Dealers, who have paid eBay prices to get their cards, stop marking it up and decide to open shops rather than booking tables at shows and sell their cards back to the collector on ebay. Now, because the New York Post would never write such and awful headline, nor post an article on collecting with this as its subject, I wont even address it.

"Without dealers, the manufacturers are no longer in the dominant bargaining position. They’re at the whim of the big box stores. Product’s gonna be late? OK, we’re diminishing your shelf space. The manufacturers are not used to their role as ‘just another product.’ What happened to all those dealers they used to push around?"

I dont understand the point of this. So without dealers they decide to stop producing despite having a perfectly good marketplace in eBay where they can still make the same, if not more, money? This is pure dribble. I dont even know where to go. Oh, but wait, there's STILL MORE!

"If I haven’t given my critics enough fodder already, here’s some more:

• The future of the hobby most certainly will not play out the way I’ve got it, though certain aspects of it are very close to happening now."

Trust me, you have given me a gold mine of material. However, thanks for acknowledging that your above written was basically a practice in stupidity and was not worth the space it was printed on (nothing).

"• No matter how much we distrust the prices within price guides, they’re essential to the well being of the hobby. If you’ve got a plan for injecting realistic card values into the hobby without killing hobby shops and show dealers off, please, I’m all ears."

First of all, they are FAR from "essential." They are a way for a magazine to justify their worthless existence on the planet. Other than that, price guides are worth less than nothing to the hobby. As for the second part, do you enjoy paying inflated prices for your cards? Why are you set on keeping shops and dealers in this hobby if they continue to sell you cards at twice the price you can get on a true free marketplace? I love the way you support dealers and shops PAYING eBay prices to get their cards but selling them to you at double.

My plan? Hobby shops should get out of singles. Period. Then, they should focus on selling two things: guaranteed autographed memorabilia and wax. I say this because wax prices are the only thing that eBay cant guarantee as the lowest price. With shipping prices at 10 dollars plus, stores can compete with using their own mark ups. As for guaranteed memorabilia, eBay cannot compete due to scams. Fake autos are so rampant, Im weary of even buying PSA/DNA authenticated stuff anymore. Shops have the ability to get their own materials and and get them auto'ed. Buy from PSA and other authentic sources and save me the trouble of going through places I dont trust for my auto'ed stuff.

"• One last thing: I wanted to work graded cards into this somehow, but never found a good spot. If raw singles aren’t really worth their book value, what about graded cards? I know that entire price guides cater to graded specimen, but will/should these prices be combined with prices for unslabbed cards? Or would that negate the values assigned to those that have been slabbed? Also, why does it feel to me that dealing in graded cards is going to be what saves shop owners and show dealers?"

This whole "one last thing" makes no sense, but what else is new? Graded cards are pretty much one big conflict of interest to begin with. Besides, it was solely created as a mechanism for, *gasp*, eBay and the like. It protected the buyer from unforseen........oh forget it. Just look here and here.

I know its against my better judgement to take on one of the biggest blogs out there, but still, who wants to put up with this shit? I hope the sheep dont take what he says as gospel. Just to set a precedent: after this, I will not be reading his blog without a very strong bias, and I encourage you to do the same.

As collectors we are thrown to the wolves almost daily by the very sources that are sworn to be our advocates. Why is this guy supporting everyone's enemy? His platform supports paying higher prices because it keeps the good ole days in tact, it supports price guides because they supposedly provide a non-existant backbone to the hobby, and lastly it supports underhanded dealers and shops who do their best to scam you out of your hard earned money because they dont have any.

Thank you, Woody Paige of sports card collecting, you have opened my eyes!!

The Best of the BMB - Kill Me Now

I think I have encountered the worst Beckett Board thread title in the history of thread titles. Women who are pregnant or nursing should shield their eyes. Here you go:

3 packs 07/08 bowman sterling......SUPERMANJO!!!!!!!!!

Let me break this one down, because I will now have to spend the next 2 hours cleaning up my Family Guy Ipicac Puke. First off, using the word "mojo" makes you a douchebag, and it should never be used. Secondly combining the word with an excessive use of exclamation points makes you an ignorant douchebag with a death wish (there are 9 above). Thirdly, combining a player's name with Mojo and using the exclamation point like you are hitting the morphine button on your IV drip, makes you an ignorant douchebag with a death wish that may not have passed kindergarten. Lastly, combining a player's stupid ass nickname derived from a costume worn while doing an awful layup in a slam dunk competition with Mojo and using the exclamation point like you will get a 1up for every time you hit it, makes you the ignorant message board douchebag of the century. Pat your 13 year old self on the back. Congrats.

(NOTE: My respect level for Dwight Howard was zero immediately after he expressed his goal in the NBA: to have the league put a Christian cross in their logo. It went lower than zero when he put on the Superman costume in reference to the worst song in recent and non recent memory, rather than the comic character.)

Pray...for...MOJO

I swear to God, every time I see a thread with the word "MOJO" in it, I throw up a little in my mouth. In fact, it has its own sliding scale of barf:

- Plain "MOJO" = Mouth puke
- "MOJO!!!" = Brush your teeth its bad mouth puke (+1 second of brushing for each exclamation point)
- "Peterson-jo, Jordan-jo, Kurt Rambis-jo" = Full on Family Guy on ipicac puke


Superman wears Kurt Rambis pajamas to bed.

Yeah, its gotten that bad people. My normal person brain just cant function when I see "OMFG PETERSON-JO X8!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" as someone's title to their break. Have we gotten that uncreative? I mean, titling the thread "A pull that has me jumping up and down ALL DAY" is really lame, but for god's sake I would take it any day of the week over the other. In my opinion, unless you are talking about Homer Simpson's helper monkey - lets let it die people!


OH MY GOD! Mojo! WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOU!

One of my other gripes is that people use the exclamation point like it is the button that gives you more morphine in the hospital after surgery. Like more people will come into the thread the more exclamation points. Then, when you do go in, just to see if he did pull the Payton cut signature you think he did, its only a card that doesnt even cover the cost of the box! I know, Im a nitpicker. Listen, if you do pull a Payton Cut that cool, ill let it slide - ONCE.

Just to give you a better example of why this term needs to go faster than "drop it like its hot," ill cite an experience with my dear old mom a few days ago. I told her I busted a box of SPA as the last UD box I would ever break, after explaining the whole debacle with Beckett. Immediately, as if on cue, she asked, "Well, did you at least pull any MOJO?" My jaw hit the fucking floor.

Lets put this into perspective. You can either sound like an experienced collector and name your break what it should be "(Box Title) (Year) (Sport) - Great Pull!" or you can sound like a thirteen year old with a keyboard and a cell phone in each hand.

Choose wisely - ill be lurking!