Multi Player Logo Cards Can Be Dangerous

Back in 2006 and 2007 a lot of people chased the quad logo auto cards that Exquisite made famous. Four NFL logos on one card with four autos, simple as that. After being absent in 2008, they are back for 2009, and the first one is up on eBay. This particular one suffers from multi-player shock syndrome as I call it, or when higher value rookies like Freeman, are paired with players like Rhett Bomar who will most likely be gone in a few years. For this reason alone, the single logo signature cards from last year were some of the best ever created, mainly because there was no M.P.S.S. anywhere to be found.

This Stafford logo is pretty much in the same boat, as you have a top value rookie on one side, and a scrub on the other. Yes they play for the same team, and yes Williams has more potential than Bomar, but its likely that Williams will never achieve enough success to live up to being on the other side of this card. Of course, that didnt stop it from being sold at a staggering 1500 bucks.

I wonder how often MPSS will strike this year with the rest of the quad and dual logos, hopefully not often.

Triple Threads and What It Says About Us

To me, triple threads is that dreaded shit after a night of Mexican food. You know its coming, you prepare yourself for the pain, but in the end, it gets you all the same. This year is no different, and really, its says a lot about what Topps thinks about the collecting base. What I mean, is that by structuring the set the way that they have, it shows how little confidence Topps has in how people view each part of the card. Instead of focusing on putting together a top notch design, they thought that jam packing needless junk and gimmicks were more important than a good looking set. From the reaction I have seen, it worked.

The most talked about part of the product is always the "OMG SIKX MOJOS!" that supposedly litter this set. They have about a thousand different 1/1s, each one more ridiculous than the next. Before this year, it was only limited to single and bifold cards, but Topps felt that two entire cards were NOT enough for the junk they had in store, thus leading to the first tri-folds. Stupidly, the tri-fold cards feature little more than a border to encompass the jumbo patches of the card, and that’s pretty much all they have to offer. Topps has basically implied that collectors only want the biggest possible patches with the most colors, and that putting a good looking card together is meaningless. This means there is only a dime-sized player pic, no autograph, and zero concept. What you have to replace that is just the biggest, gaudiest, most ridiculous looking patches that I have ever seen. Never before have I thought to myself how shitty a whole Marlin patch looks when its next to two other similar patches. Its almost like Topps said, "Well, these cards are going to look like crap, make sure there are whole patches on there to shut them up. They are like babies with shiny or glittery things, this will be like crack to them."

Moving on, the design is almost identical with previous years. There has been ZERO update to the concept of what normal people will get in each pack. You get a tri relic card with some shit spelled out in confusing die cut windows, and an auto tri relic of some guy with some shit spelled out in confusing die cut windows. Aside from the checklist being complete poop, and aside from the fact that there are very few baseball players who can carry a high end set, there isn't anything in this set that hasn’t been done before. They also went with a stupid partial medieval theme this year with scrolls and shields and crap like that. I say partial because the other cards have a completely clashing identity of linear boxes and junk. Of course, none of this means anything to the people who buy Triple Threads, mainly because they only care about how many windows are on the card. No matter that there is barely a player picture, or a cohesive thought to bring the card together, all they want is relic. Relic, relic and more relic. I say relic, because Topps doesn’t always use game pieces for this set, instead using old timer game jerseys, event jerseys, and practice jerseys. Again, none of this matters because the people who buy this junk have no concept of what should matter.

When you move away from the horrid relic cards, you see that there is still no on card autographs for this set. Even though Topps has the resources to do it, they care more about stocking their storeroom when they meet with a player rather than doing something for you the collector. Not only that, but the stickers bring your focus on the card because they are cut into the fucking design. Each auto card has a cut out spot for the sticker, instead of disguising it like it should be. Why do I want a card that blatantly shows everyone that the prized auto is just a label stuck on by someone in China? That makes no sense to me.

Triple Threads is also single handedly responsible for the parallel hell that so many of us hate. Each of the 300 or so cards has at least 10 parallels, including 5 1/1s - FOR EACH CARD. That’s 4 printing plates and a regular platinum parallel. Seriously, how does anyone think this is okay? Its worse than Panini, and I cringe each time some idiot screams "MOJOOOOOOOO!" when he pulls a Adam Lind 1/1 triple relic printing plate that he can sell for five dollars. Give me a fucking break.

Lastly, the price point continues to be a complete joke. For 170+ dollars, all you get is one autograph and one crappy one color jersey card. If you are lucky you can pull one of the hundreds of worthless players on the checklist, who have up to four cards each in some cases. Then, there is a one per case triple auto that has three players that are drawn out of a hat, and sells for ten bucks, or a 1/1 card that may or may not make you have a seizure from looking at it. The fact is, 95% of the time, you are going to pull less than 20 dollars worth of cards from your box, and even if you pull a 1/1 "REDICOLOUS MOJO" card, its going to look like poop.

I cant say enough bad things about Triple Threads and Topps Sterling, because they are like the Michael Bay movies of the card collecting world. There is a lot of needless action, but when standing alone on a concept, everything falls apart. Right, Transformers 2? Triple Threads is like that, and its an insult to my intelligence that it is always shoved down our throats for 3 sports each fucking year. In fact, my golden rule of Topps was created around this product. In the future, I would hope that collectors realize that supporting Michael Bay Threads means that more of it will come, just like every goddamn needless sequel in Hollywood. Please don’t give them that satisfaction.

Hockey Showing Em Who's Boss: Crosby Logo at 16,000

Many of us are wondering what would have been if Tom Brady or Peyton Manning had logo cards when they were rookies. What about LT? How about Albert Pujols or Michael Jordan? What would those be worth? A lot.

Well, for hockey fans, Sidney Crosby, one of the top money grabbers in the hobby does have a logo rookie card, and it is on eBay right now with more than 6 days to go. Price? Over $16,000 with 42 bids. So, its either a Honda Accord or this card, and there is still a lot of time left.

I have long mentioned the 10K cap on modern cards, and how tough it is to break that mark, but this card crossed that line and crapped on it. Personally, I dont really like the look of this card, but it is one of THE Crosby cards to own if you have the bank, or for that matter, own the bank. His RC card from the Cup sells for thousands, and that is pretty crazy by itself, but 16K+ for something like this is shocking.

Ryan 1/1 Logo Pulled On Blowout Forums

I am sorry for the long string of Exquisite posts, but damn, this was a nice fucking pull by a guy who posts on the blowout forums. Of the big rookies, this one was the biggest, and I am glad that it went to a regular guy who buys his boxes from a shop, rather than a big corporation or hobby big wig.

Also, it looks much better than the Patch Auto because of the pic change and the design for the logos. For getting rid of the Rare Materials 1/1s and making them /10 and /35, UD did an awesome job with these 1/1 logos.

Why is Change In This Hobby Always For The Worse?

In lue of a review for Icons FB and after seeing the abortion that is the product, I want to revisit a few things I have talked about before. It seems that these things are getting to the point where I can no longer look at a product like Icons or most of the other new additions to the wax lineup and not laugh at its stupidity. Now, creating card sets is NOT rocket science and I would think that its something one could become a professional at. So, with all of these professional designers, why is EPIC FAIL attached to just about every release that these people have come up with in the last two years?

Lets run down the list:

Premier: Same stuff over and over and over, no new innovations, value DID NOT HOLD
SP Chirography FB: Price point was the worst in history, autos worth less than the cardboard
SP RC Threads FB and BKB: Could be the ugliest set ever, value did not hold, no one cares about letters when they look like that.
Icons FB: Don’t get me started
SP RC Edition FB and BB: Retro themed sets suck, especially when you can only go back 15 years.
Exquisite Baseball RCs BB: Every second world collector is screaming for exquisite baseball, and this is what we get? Crap.
Topps Triple Threads FB, BB, BKB: could not be more boring, price point is terrible for an auto and a jersey, cards havent changed in 3 years. Easiest way to blow $170 and not even break 5 bucks on the box.
Topps Paradigm FB: The only cool thing about this awful ugly set is the box can be used as a candy dish.
UD Draft Edition FB: Why do we need another set that is just like fucking press poop? Find a better way to get a prospect set out.
Topps Sterling BB: So now I have to pay 350 dollars for one hit and it could be a jersey card?
Topps Letterman BKB and FB: Sticker autos on manufactured letters, nuff said.
Topps Stadium Club BKB, FB, and BB: You take a fan favorite set from back in the day and you uglify it, make it 15 times more expensive, and fill it with worthless autos and jerseys. Good job.
Fleer Ultra FB BKB and BB: So you take once cool product from 10 years ago and add worthless jerseys and autos to hike the price.
Topps Performance FB: Made Adrian Peterson autos that no one cared about, awful looking cards, worthless subsets, and horrible price point. More like paradigm jr. than a new set.
Topps TX fooball: Sticker autos on super bowl ticket stubs? Was it really that hard to get hard signed tickets? Wait, this product costs 200+ per box? Oh my god, the humanity!
UD Elements BB: So, you have three mini boxes per box and we know where the jersey auto is? Stupid. The cards are ugly? Stupid. The checklist is the worst of the worst? Stupid.
UD Spectrum BB: Spectrum of the stars? No. Spectrum of the 80s hair metal back up singers. This added to an awful checklist on ALL rainbow foil cards makes for headaches.
Topps CoSigners BB FB and BKB: Ugly cards, the most worthless dual autos ever, parallels that are unnecessary and hard to understand, this would be the fail of fails except for below.
Topps Moments and Milestones: The dumbest idea since non-autoed manufactured patch and letter cards. 10,000 cards that killed millions of trees for no reason, ugly everything, horrible price point, and single handedly made the 1/1 worthless.

Wow, that is a long fucking list, and I didn’t even think that hard about it!

So, what are we going to do about it? That part is pretty simple to break down, as it is pretty obvious what needs to happen (in no particular order):

1. All second world products need to be tinned. Drop the price and the packs full of base, we don’t care about the crap so forget it. Give us the hits and one other card so we can get our fix and be done with it.

2. No more stupid reasons for parallels unless you are a chrome set made by Topps. "So the only reason for this parallel I just pulled is to put a different serial number on it?" No, not any more. If you are going to give us parallels, see LCM from baseball and FB. Each parallel had a different reason for being a parallel. One was base, one was jersey, one was bat/shoe, one was logo, one was auto jersey, etc. Enough with serial numbered parallels for no reason other than to fill out a set, they piss the fuck out of me.

3. Put the cards in cases for high end products when you pack it out. No more dinged edges and bad corners. Because you paid 500 bucks, they should provide the supplies. It would solve a ton of problems.

4. No more sticker autos when the card is irregular. If you have a sticker auto, it needs to be on cardboard and not a ticket, jersey, or something else. Signa cuts put stickers on blank note cards - that is lazy bullshit. If you cant get the cards made, its your own fault. Plan ahead, it works for more than college homework.

5. NO MORE PRINT PLATES! I hate these things more than anything. They dont matter. They arent 1/1s, im tired of idiots thinking they are rare, every product has them, they are ugly.
6. No more event used pieces of shit. If you cant the jerseys from the league fast enough, then don’t put them in the cards. They are worthless and presents the wrong expectations for new collectors. Its time to put autos on every event used card at the very least, or at least have the player wear the jersey for more than 8 seconds. This isnt bull riding.

7. No more ball cards. I don’t care about game used balls. I care even less about event used balls. I hate balls in general.

8. No more non-autoed manufactured letters. Just don’t. Its beyond stupid and makes you look lazy.

9. If you are going to make a celebrity set, make a celebrity set. Don’t put that crap in my sports stuff. I don’t care about an auto of the understudy from Rent.

10 (AND MOST IMPORTANTLY). Give us a reason to bust your product. Guarantee good hits. Guarantee more A List autos per case. Show us why wax is better than buying a lottery ticket. If you hand pack a product there is no excuse for 20 dollars worth of cards in a 500 per pack product, or even a 100 per box product.

Like I mentioned before, all of this stuff has been said in previous posts, but it needed to be done. With more than half of the football card season to go, I am praying that someone suprises me with greatness. So far, its not looking good.

Imagine The Possibilities...

I have always wondered how close we are to a set made up of all 1/1 cards. Nothing else, just one of one everything. I know that Razor is coming out with their extreme high end cut signature set, but I am talking about a sports based set.

I would expect that this new type of set would be around exquisite prices, if not much more than the already high price, and would contain an array of cards. It wouldn’t be all logos and other special cards. Im guessing it will be an Upper Deck product, and it will cause a huge reaction, both good and bad, from collectors everywhere. Each pack, would contain a 1/1 base card, a 1/1 jersey card, a 1/1 Jersey auto card, and one other special card. I would expect it would be at least $800-900 per pack, and it would sell out in a second.

If you think about it, its not that much of a novelty anymore. I mean, each jersey they get has at least 6-15 potential patches that could be used for 1/1 purposes, such as logos, letters, team name neck patches, laundry tags, buttons, etc. Of course there is never a shortage of autos, so im sure that this would be huge. Also, with the 5-16 patches per jersey (on average, ha!) we could expect a print run of 100-200 per player, all with 1/1 serial numbers. Face it, it could be done.

I would also like to see what they could pull out for 8-10 person autograph cards, as the octographs are usually pretty stunning, and I think it was UD portraits that had the decagraphs with 10 players on one 8x10.

Now, I would never buy this in a million years, as it would be pretty obvious that my 900 bucks could be spent elsewhere, but that wouldn’t stop everyone from purchasing. I have seen people bust cases of Exquisite at once, even with the expectation that they will not make their money back. I expect this new product would be no different. However, if Topps were to get ahold of this idea first, you can kiss it goodbye, as it would just be Triple Threads with more 1/1s (as if that was possible). Personally, UD would be the only one I would want to make it, as they are the originators of the ultra high end products, and they do it the best - most of the time.

My guess is that it would be called UD White Label or UD Extravagence, so that it would seem "better" than Exquisite. But honestly, is this type of thing "better" for the hobby? My answer is a muddled gray mess, as it seems like this is the next logical step, but also its fucking crazy-go-nuts. Im hoping that when (not if) this product is created, it will be done with the collectors in mind. It has endless possibilities for cool, never before seen cards, and I think it is a pretty obvious place to screw people over with one color jerseys and awfully paired duals, triples and quads.

Either way, here's to a card that looks like this:

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.

Your Guide To eBay 1/1s

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Clean Your Plate!

Ahh, the printing plate. The hobby's runt version of a 1/1, created to lure more collectors into buying cheap products. Let me express how stupid I think inserting printing plates in packs is. Why do I want this piece of trash - literally - that you want to call a 1/1? Fine, slap an auto on it, surely it becomes more desirable but still less so to me than a normal auto'ed card.



Right now there are hundreds of printing plates listed on the world's greatest marketplace - most of which have an abundance of exclamation points in the title. These things usually sell for some cash, especially if it has an auto stickered to it. That baffles me as to why people want this colorless display of your favorite player. First off, it is not a 1/1. At best it is a 1/4, but when triple threads does it, the plates are 1/16. This is because each card requires 4 colors to generate color photography, black, yellow, cyan, and one other color (depending on the process). They use the plates, one after the other to put the colors into place on the card during the printing. Eventually after all the layers are applied, the photo is color, and everyone is happy. Funny enough, the plates you get in the packs are pretty clean considering what they are used for. Plus, as stated before, who says these things are actually used (remember, all is not what it seems).



Ebay sellers want you to think that these "cards" are the bee's knees, but in all reality, they are just another way to further the spread of the 1/1. BMB people often refer to these pulls as the m-word and I think they are fucking idiots. Printing plates arent even completed cards, and they sure as hell arent pretty. I remember UD took it a step further with 2006 Ultimate football, when they had the actual card with a cut out of the plate underneath. This was so ugly that I wouldnt touch them with someone else's 10 foot pole. What's worse is I think I even saw a Mantle cut auto printing plate out of co-signers one year that made me question why the fuck they cut up a Mantle document for this fugly piece of shit.

There really are very few times where they actually work, and I wish that companies would think twice before sending these out with the products. Why not fill the set with cards that are actually good looking, creative, and worth my time. THAT would be an idea to bank on.

Seeing More Than Double

I know I have already talked about the destruction of the 1/1's value in the hobby, but there is a whole different kind of monster that needs my attention. In today's industry you cant release a set without some kind of parallels in the product. I guarantee you that any product from 2003 on contains at least one kind of parallel. Of course, one kind of Parallel is not the problem. In fact, I support the parallels for SPA football patch autos because they are 1 of 3 levels. On the other hand, Topps CoSigners, Topps Triple Threads, Topps Moments and Milestones, Upper Deck Premier, DLP National Treasures, etc have upwards of 15 parallels per set. Do we really need 15 fucking parallels of one card? Definitely not.

Lets take a look at the Topps Triple Threads Triple Relic Auto "Rookie Card" for All Day.



For this card you have the base /99, and parallels numbered to 89, 79, 69, 49, 27, 25, 18, 10, 9, 3, 1, and 4-8 plates. This does not include the rest of the set which contains three other Peterson Triple Relic Autos with basically the same numbering. That is fucking overkill. I think if we are going to release cards, lets keep it to 2 or less parallels. It raises value, prevents confusion, and negates this whole "True RC" bullshit that no sensible person should care about.

SPA Football has 2 parallels per RC patch auto and remains the 2nd or 3rd highest valued card for a Rookie. Gee, I wonder why? Maybe because in SPA, you have a Rookie that has 399 base card auto patches, 25 gold, and a logo patch auto to 1 that no one will ever pull, and thats all there is. That is why people love this set. At 100 bucks, you get a shot at 30 or so rookie patch autos at one every other box and they arent the most accessible cards. Topps, I am beginning to wonder why I bother with your crap. ESPECIALLY when you keep putting out the abortion that is moments and milestones. I think I would rather amputate my leg with a rusty spoon than be forced to pay the price point for that paralleled to death bullshit.

The ONLY thing in this world that needs parallels is hot women. I would love 99 plus parallels of Meghan Fox. That would be worth my time.

A Cut Above III: Craziest Thing Ever Created

This auction is probably the craziest thing I have ever laid eyes on.

eBay Auction Ridiculosity

When this gets taken down, here is a picture just so you know how fucking unbelievable this thing is:



Here is a list of the cuts that are included:
Babe Ruth
Ty Cobb
Cy Young
Lou Gherig
Rogers Hornsby
Ted Williams
Pie Traynor
Honus Wagner
Roy Campanella

Yeah, try and digest that. Holy fuck. But 57k is a little much, Id rather have a Mercedes.

(Obligatory Year in Review Title) - *Cry*

Now that the 2008 season of NFL cards is upon us, I wanted to quick run through my favorites of 2007 – year of the Purple Jesus. These are not based on price or on scarcity, but rather how I feel the cards were put together. I will mostly focus on the top auto and jersey subsets of the year, but I will say that when it comes to base, Topps and Topps chrome 2007 were my favorite, just in case you were wondering (I know you were).

So, with much fanfare and hullabaloo, lets go Voltron Force!

11. Leaf Certified Materials - Freshman Fabric Mirror Blue Autos



As with most things, I turn it up to 11, this will be no exception. LCM was one of the first BIG sets of the year and they had it out in full force. I ran out and bought the Peterson right away because of how pretty these cards were. In the beginning of the card season where all the sets are usually butterfaced escorts, these are Jenna Jamison.

10. Topps – Rookie Premiere Signatures



I really liked the Topps design all around last year. It was enough for me to care about getting the base set when I bought the jumbo boxes to get the RP Sigs. They transferred their base design into these cards, only switching them to a stark white border. The autos were on card and done in blue and red ink – both of which look amazing. I would rank these higher except the pictures on them are so fucking goofy. Football players should never smile, ever! They are lean mean fighting machines, or in P-Willies’ case, big mean first born eating machines.

9. Ultimate Collection - Rookie Signatures



I liked these cards for some reason. The horizontal design and the auto space was interesting for what we normally get from the Ultimate RC autos. They had action pictures, which I liked on most of the cards, and they had a nice design to complement the pictures. Even the font was nice on these. The problem? The rest of the set was so awful I couldn’t justify even trying one pack of this shit.

8. National Treasures – All Decade Relic Autos



National Treasures was huge this year, and was the most value per break of any of the high end products. These cards which featured any number of die cut relics cut into a card that looked like granite. Granted these were stickers, which made them fall a little in my opinion, but overall I loved the cards. I bought a Montana, an Alan Page, and a few others and I am displaying them proudly.

7. National Treasures – Jumbo Patch Auto Rookies



These cards were great for their innovation compared to last year. All were hard signed and featured HUGE patches that were sure to include a lot of color. The nice photos combined with the white background made those autos pop. My sick shit-o-meter was at a 9 when I saw the sell sheet, but went to a 10 when I saw some of the patches live. Of course its all “Event Used” bullshit, so that wasn’t all that impressive. The subsets of the cards produced some of the most mind boggling awesomosity in terms of patches, but for some reason, they were stickers! Fuck that shit. Jesus!

6. Topps Chrome - Base Auto Subset



As said above, this base set rocked my socks off. To add autos to the RCs was killer, and to top it all off, the auto spots really blended in with the cards. They had really nice photography for most of the cards, and I felt like they were some of the top RC autos for a reason.

5. SP Authentic - Sign of the Times



Although I hate, hate, HATE, the name of this subset, the cards were amazing. Mixing the RC autos with vet autos made this set nice to find in any box, mainly because you were so unsure of what kind of crap you may get with the big hit of the box. Again, all hard signed, and really stunning with the vertical auto on the side. I think UD really pulled all their top designers from their lower sets and had them all focus on SPA for the year. While most of UD’s products were blown out of the water by DLP in terms of designs, SPA held its own.

4. SP Authentic - RC Patch Autos



If you had the luck of pulling one of these, WITH a good player, you hit one of the major jackpots of the year. As with a lot of UD products last year, they went with a horizontal design for the first time. I liked it a lot, especially because of the mix of the action shots with the shadowed non-action shots. 2006’s suffered in my opinion because of a lack of action shots, and because I think a lot of players look ridiculous without their helmets on.

3. Gridiron Gear – Gridiron Gems Triple Relic Autos



If you didn’t love this set, you were either living in an Afghani cave, or you didn’t collect football cards. Otherwise, you loved this set like 99% of the rest of the population. They just made you want to go out and hug someone when you pulled one, because the white background, sick patches, and black/blue sharpie looked like fucking sweet emotion for your eyes. Plus, they really used the nice ink because those colors really stood out on the well placed photos. I busted 7 boxes and pulled two – I didn’t bust more than 3 of any other box.

2. Leaf Limited – Phenoms Patch Autos



Leaf Limited was the breakout set of the year. I fucking loved every single card. If it was a woman, I wouldn’t have been able to get near her to make my move, and her sister would still be hotter than any girl you have ever seen too. That’s how great looking these cards were. The phenoms were the gems of the set, and they did not disappoint. The bright silver foil board with the full bleed photos were amazing, and the autos seemed to blend seamlessly with the card. The only problem was the number of redemptions. All the Petersons were redemptions, and I had to pay full price knowing that I may not get more than a 1 color patch once I got mine back. I got lucky, but others didn’t.

1. Exquisite – Jersey Number Autos



I think these cards may be some of the best of the entire modern age. That’s how fucking remarkable I thought these were. These were an immense shining beacon of light in a relatively drab year. Either way, they are all hard signed and color coordinated to the player’s color. The swoosh-like space for the auto looks great and fits in tremendously with the rest of the card. It features both rookie and vet autos numbered to the jersey number of the player, so you know these were scarce. PLUS, no parallels of any kind - NONE. That means for any particular card, the number on the card is the number in existence. My latest all day pickup is pictured as an example.

This is, of course, only an opinion, but I think I got a pretty good sampling of what was out there. I would have included some of the logo cards like the All Day Nike Swoosh Logo 1/1 pulled by Chris’ people at Cards Infinity, but no one will ever pull those. Same with the NT Peterson below which made me cry at its beauty.



I know I will kick myself for missing some cards that I loved, so ill just add those on as honorable mentions as I find them.

I Pulled a 1/1 and All I Got Was This Shitty Card

Over the last couple years, the 1/1 has gone from a mystical unicorn to a burro in the eyes of many collectors – myself included. It used to be that 1/1s were reserved for the cards that everyone wished they could get, a la Babe Ruth cuts, MLB and NFL logos, sick patches and other holy grails of the hobby.


It may be an NFL logo 1/1 - but its still EVENT FUCKING USED!

Although the logo cards still have the aura of that elusive unicorn, there are now sets that function solely on either printing plate 1/1s or factory numbered 1/1s like Topps Moments and Milestones that completely ruin the fun of it all. This year, Topps Triple Threads Basketball, a product that most look forward to for the whole season, seemed to have an endless supply of worthless 1/1 jersey cards and autos. Despite a lack of LeBron, Durant, Jordan, and some other key rookies, the product sold well due to the enormous amounts of plates, 1/1s and logo cards that collectors seemed to pull at an alarming rate. This continued into 2008 Moments and Milestones where the disgusting design and 10,000 card base set promised a 1/1 every other box!! People went fucking nuts over the set last year because their chances of getting their “my first 1/1” Girl Scout patch was in their favor for once. This year, the 15,000+ 1/1s didn’t have the same price sticker they did last year on eBay, but people still wanted them for some god forsaken reason.


1 of 1 of 13,000! A collectors gem!

The way I think about it: Topps is beating the 1/1 dead horse to a pink bloody mush. Thanks.

My favorite practice in 1/1 buying trends is the eBay 1/1. Any goddamned time someone pulls a card numbered to the jersey number of a player, the college jersey number of the player, the apartment number of the player growing up, or the number of hairs on his balls, it’s an eBay 1/1. Of all these – the jersey number can command quite the price tag for the more expensive Exquisites or SPAs. I think this is fucking ridiculous and only shows that collectors are sheep in this world of making a quick buck. Hallmark created the Valentines Day hype, greedy sellers helped create the jersey number 1/1 hype. At least eBay removes listings – sometimes – when they abuse the 1/1 keyword. It has even spawned the “true 1/1” lingo just because there idiots who cant figure out that just because it’s listed as a one of a kind doesn’t mean it is. Yes, despite what you think, there are literally millions of these people who love to be taken to the cleaners.