PLEASE Stop Using The Payton Phone Cards As The Source For Cut Autos

Im sure you have all seen some of the wonderful Walter Payton autos that have been produced over the last 10-20 years. Luckily for us, he lived up until the auto boom in the late 1990s, so he has some great auto cards for collectors. In fact, his 1997 Legends auto may be one of the greatest autograph cards ever produced for football.

Payton also signed a ton of stuff throughout his life that could be considered source material for cut auto cards. Yet, for some reason, Donini has decided that this is all irrelevant crap to them. Since 2007, Donini has produced hundreds of Payton cuts, none of which feature worthy source material. Instead they purchased close to 500 of the Payton autographed phone cards, and used those as the cuts. These phone cards are great for people that cannot afford a normal Payton auto card, but to use them for a football card is almost as ridiculous as cutting up a Topps card to use in an upper deck cut.

There are a few reasons why I am repeating this after my post regarding last year's Classic Cuts set. First, its almost impossible to see Payton's auto on the colorful pictures. They are old, they are fading, and the pic he signed is dark. Add in that these cards DO NOT FEATURE NAMES OR PICTURES and you have a serious design problem.

Donini, I know you guys are turning out to be barrel full of stupid idiots, but you gotta stop with the phone cards. Just because they are cheaper to make, does not mean it is worth it. We see through your veiled attempt at producing a card worthy of calling a cut, and I guarantee that this will bite you square in the nuts. Count on it, because cutting corners is never worth the time of anyone.

Call This My (Photo)Bucket List

When each person enters into collecting, they have a list. Their list consists of all the cards they want before they move on or whatever the case is. For me I have a list of autos, ones that I want to have in my possession before I stop collecting/die/sell everything. Aside from the guys on the twins curtain HOF, or many of the Vikings, there are a few other non-related things I want to get. I usually wont buy before I know its display-able, and as a memorabilia collecting sports card guy, I have some standards that must be met. Whether its on a card, on a ball, or on a jersey, it has to be real beyond a shadow of a doubt. It needs to fit on my wall, my shelf, or my desk, no exceptions. It also needs to be with the team they were mostly known for, so no Unitas on the chargers. Other than that, it just has to be cool. Here is my list:

Michael Jordan

Why he is on the list is a no brainer. I have an obsession with obtaining autos of all the greatest players from the modern era of sports, and he is obviously at or near the top of the list. He has tons out there, but everything remains ridiculous - a testament to how great he actually was. I would love to get a great photo or a nice card, but the counterfeits are tough to avoid.

Wayne Gretzky

Hockey was never one of my favorite sports, but I had an admiration for Gretzky as a player. He dominated much like Jordan dominated, and his autos are quite similar in price to Jordans at points, only because there are less Hockey cards than Basketball cards. When it comes to memorabilia, his stuff is much lower, but it is an auto that the casual fan can appreciate.

Hank Aaron (obtained)

Hammerin' Hank is one of the best baseball players ever. Add in the fact that he did it in a time of racial predjudice and adversity makes it more impressive. I read his biography in second grade, and became enamored with his accomplishments. I was very sad when a juiced douche broke his records, because Hank was a good guy, Bonds was not. I was lucky enough to get an auto'ed baseball which I had authenticated, so that one is checked.

Walter Payton (obtained)

Payton is the best running back I have seen, ever. Barry Sanders was on a similar level, and so was Emmitt Smith, but even at the pinnacles of their careers, they were still compared to Payton. His autos are still relatively cheap, as football history will never rival baseball history, but his cards are ridiculous. I opted for a signed notecard with a dark and wonderful sig. It came with a JSA letter, so im good on that.

Tiger Woods

I already posted on Tiger, so you know what I am about when it comes to him. I think that I would love a nice action shot to frame and hang, but a ball would do just fine. Ill never be able to afford a card, so that’s out, and my dream of owning a signed Masters pin flag from him will cost me thousands. I have no idea how I will get this one checked. I would also like a Nicklaus sig, but that is way down the list.

Joe Montana

I have had a Montana auto in my possession, but I sold it for the money to pay bills. Montana is considered one of the best football players ever, and I was a fan of the Niners while I was growing up. I think of all the people on the list, his auto is cheapest, but for my collection it would be great.

Tom Brady

Brady is still playing but his autograph is still pretty valuable. The reason is that he doesn’t sign much for the companies from what I have seen, although Topps must have a few stickers on demand for Triple Suck every year, and he hasn’t had a UD auto for ages. Brady has already won 3 superbowls, set a single season TD record, and done a whole lot of hot ass babes. This is one I want.

Mickey Mantle

I want a Mantle auto, and I am not sure why, considering my hate for the Yankees and for less than class act players. Mantle was both, but he still has an incredible value to the hobby. The problem is that he has to be one of the most counterfitted autos in the history of collecting, so even with PSA or JSA, there is no telling if it is real or fake without some expensive provenance. Ill probably not get this one out of all the list for that reason.

So far, that is my list, and I have a long, long way to go and a lot of money to spend. Hopefully I can get somewhere close to completion. My shelves are already pretty impressive, if I do say so myself, but this would make it that much better. I know you all have your list, who is on yours?

Could This Be The Best Ever?

Holy shit. This card is the most fucking "REDYKOLOSE" card I have seen in a long time. First off, you have a Jim Thorpe cut autograph, a person whose signature sells at or around Ruth when in good shape. Turn it over and you have a cut of Payton signed as "Sweetness." In all truthfulness, the Payton cut isnt that good, but at least its not a phone card.

Right now there is a reserve on it, so I doubt it will sell, but you could maybe expect that this may break the 10K mark if it had no reserve.

After viewing this auction, Im guessing the seller is just using eBay as his glorified photobucket, but seriously, he fucming deserves it after pulling this. The question is, how much did he spend breaking Exquisite to get this? Second question, how did Beckett not end up with THIS card in their boxes?

Donruss Turns Sweetness into Splenda

Dear Donruss,

What the hell were you thinking when you decided to use the Walter Payton phone cards as the source material for your cuts from both NT and Classics? If Payton autos were rare or ungodly expensive, I could understand why you would use these awful things. But, since Payton spent most of his retired career signing autographs and because there is no shortage of his stuff available, I must deplore the idea of using these over regular cut index cards or photos.

The problem with the phone cards is pretty simple. They are overly colorful and Payton signed them with a blue marker. So, if you had the card as a piece by itself, it would be a somewhat acceptable payton auto for someone who cant afford the more expensive stuff. But, to include that card inside of another card is sensory overload. It looks awful.

As a loyal DLP supporter, I was continually disappointed with these cards and I may have even dropped some cheese on one if they were nice. In the future, I hope you guys can actually get some nice stuff to cut up, because these phone cards dont "cut" it (horrible pun intended).

Besides, who wants a fucking signed phone card anyways? If I did I could buy one for 50 bucks rather than pay 250+ for one that has been cut up and put in a card.

Signed,

Gellman

The Times, They Are A Changin'

Frequently I discuss that there is no point buying wax, especially high end, because the odds are overwhelmingly against you to make most of your money back. This got me to thinking that there might be a way to change that, but it means borrowing a page from retail stores - BLECCCH.

Over the last few years, hand packing high end products has become a commonplace occurance on the market floor, but hand packing for value has not. Sportkings Series A was the first product to promote the fact that they not only hand pack their cards, but they also try to make each $400 box contain enough value to be considered a good break. Of course this begs the question of what is actually considered valuable enough for these guys, as most of their boxes seemed less than stellar.

But, what if it was possible to pack a box to contain a certain value like the guaranteed book value packs from Target? Upper Deck, DLP, and Topps could be deciding to make sure that each box contains a good amount of value, but for some reason this isnt reality. I find this especially disturbing considering how much a box of Exquisite and Natty Treasures actually costs. I mean, this is the first time in the history of the collecting world where someone pays so much for so little in terms of quantity. Why not make it worth their while?

Assign "cash values" to each player in the set. Research a number of sources to determine a list, all the way down to the scrubbiest of rookies. People like All Day, Payton Manning, Walter Payton, Tomlinson, Emmitt Smith, and Jerry Rice would all be considered top value football, as Jordan, Kobe and Lebron would for basketball. Then, after all this research is done, start ranking and assigning a cash value (as a reference point).

As a BASIC example, last year, Peterson was the top dollar guy for football so I would say $150 bucks should be his value. Walter payton is probably the best selling retired star, so give him the $150 dollar price tag too. Emmitt Smith and Joe Montana are great sellers, but not as good as payton, so give them a $149 and a $148 respectively. I would say Tomlinson and Manning are top guys now too, so give them those numbers on the active side too.

Now, when building your box of exquisite, you should have to have at least $400 worth of players in the box. Of course a base card will be worth as much cash as a logo 1/1, so you better hope your $150 value hit is not the base version. Of course, you could easily pull some nice cards at a high rate, but of course, the box structure would be the same (1 base, 1 RC patch auto, 1 scrub rookie auto, 1 maximum jersey, 1 patch and 1 wild card). I think this would make sure you really get some nice players in your box and you wouldn’t have to worry about pulling 15 bucks worth of cards from a 500 dollar box as often.

Personally, I think ideas like this will become ESSENTIAL as the NBA and NFL continue to make the RC premieres bigger and badder. This year, for the NFL RC premiere, there were more scrubs than I could count on my fingers and toes. Those guys will be your box hits for Exquisite, National Treasures, Triple Threads and other high end products. Due to this horrible trend, wax busting has gone from bad to worse in football. Products like Classics, Threads, Limited, CoSigners, SPA, and Absolute will all suffer because the RC hits are pretty much the meat of the product. Unlike the NBA where there are only 2 rounds for the draft, the NFL has 7 PLUS unsigned free agents. At most, 5 of these guys will go on to have collection worthy careers. A lot will play in the league for a while, but will not be worth collecting for the long term (Homer collectors aside).

Please, I know this about as primitive as you can get when trying to revolutionize box busting, but its an idea. Ideas like this can be turned into something much better, and could transform the wax busting industry into a venture worth pursuing. As it stands now, forget it, ill stick to singles off eBay where I know I can get the cards I want for less than the box price, AND DEFINITELY less than the case price.

Sweetness!

Since I am not wasting my money on busting boxes these days, I am more focused on padding my auto collection. Trust me, it is so much more fufilling than pulling a Quentin Jammer Auto out of a $120 box. I feel so much better knowing that this was only 95 dollars worth of JSA certified goodness.



Who needs wax?