One More Push For Diabetes

For those of you who dont know, the JDRF walk is this weekend at Dodger stadium, and I have raised close to $250 thanks to the readers of SCU. I want to post the JDRF donation link one more time with the hopes we may be able to get a few more donations for a great cause. Email me if you have any questions, read the original post by clicking the button on the right.

To Sponsor me as a JDRF walker, click here.

Big thanks to GlvSv and Groat for donating, I appreciate all the support you guys bring!

These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things

I have seen a lot of nice things happening over the last six months, too bad they have been overshadowed by all the bad things. I just wanted to showcase a few things that I liked over the time I have been writing, and I think a lot would agree with me.

1. The resurgence of ON CARD AUTOS - YES! This is awesome to the tenth power. Finally some companies have gotten their shit together enough that even smaller sets are getting on card sigs. How is it done? Well, you produce the cards WELL before the release date so you can get them out to the players. Then you require them back before you pack out the cards. Its really a nice concept. I would especially like to highlight SPA and Exquisite of last year because both were completely on card. Exquisite is expected as such, but SPA is a mid end product. DLP, take note.

2. Measures against the patch faking douchebags - This time I have to give a hearty handshake to DLP for starting the process with getting these things going. Its not perfect yet, but it IS getting better. Hopefully, in the future, this will be a standard.

3. Painted "like" cards - I love UD Masterpieces, Allen and Ginter and the Gridiron Kings subsets. These cards are beautiful and really present a cool idea in a way that everyone can appreciate. I think that these cards are really done well in the fact that it focuses more on the piece itself rather than some gimmick. Thank you to the artists behind these cards. I also would like to suggest that maybe "sketch" cards would be a good idea as it would be cool to see how the best sports aritists in the game do their paintings/drawings. Basically, lets get more than Dick Perez involved.

4. The changing of redemption replacement procedures - I know, it hasn’t happened yet, but I assume it will be soon. UD has announced that users will be allowed to pick from a number of cards to replace the unmade or unfufilled redemption they have received. I like this ideas because I would be super pissed if I got crap for my cool card. In the future, lets hope that people wont have to go through this process at all, but that is a pipe dream, I understand.

5. Nice patches in every parallel instead of 1/1s- I know this can be good and bad, but I assume its mostly good. We saw that in SPA football and National Treasures, anything was possible. It used to be a 1/1 when a patch was amazing, but this time, its for everyone. Even the cards out of 225 had some really nice pieces, and although it provided fodder for the people mentioned in number two, it was a welcome addition. Lets hope this continues.*

6. DLP's language on the back of their jersey cards - see here.

*Yes, I do realize that a lot of cards were shafted this year in terms of 1 color patches on high end cards, but lets be honest, that was nothing new.

Im sure that a lot of stuff has caught your eye, so please feel free to post below if you want. This is the stuff that I liked and wanted to continue. I wont post what I didn’t like, because, well, that is way too long of a post and you have heard it all before. I know the card manufacturers are watching, so please take this stuff into consideration. I have questioned whether the companies actually know what we want, but in some respects, we are getting some stuff.

Entrapment

I have always wondered something about exquisite and national treasures - even triple threads. Why don’t the hits come in top loaders like sport kings or in uncirculated cases like box loaders? The packs are completely unsearchable and it should prevent a lot of damage to the card. Makes me wonder what kind of monkeys don’t think up this shit.



Advantages:

Prevents corner damage and other factory damage from when the people mess up the packaging.

Adds another level of complexity so that the donkey rapers would have a very tough time replicating the seals. Its still possible to fake, but it would be that much harder.

Takes business away from grading services. That’s a good one. Why send your encased card to BGS when its already in the case for good?

Easier to store the ginormously thick cards in their already primed holders. No need to figure out which point holder to buy. I hate that!!

Disadvantages:

Cases or loaders could be ugly and awful.

Raises cost of box, despite the fact that it shouldn’t. I would much rather have encased cards than an ornate box like NT and Exquisite both have.

Takes business away from people who sell supplies - still not that big of a deal.



In the end, we all just get screwed over again when we pull the box hit out of our pack and its destroyed. No one cares except for the guy who paid 500 bucks for a box that has damaged cards, right?

Personally I think all boxes should have encased hits anyways. It would save me the time with all the base and I wouldn’t have to worry about damage. I mean half the products are already going to tin form, why are they patronizing us by having us open packs inside them? Just give me my hits and shut the fuck up. I don’t need my 200 dollar box to have a pack in it (Im looking at you Exquisite Baseball and Triple threads), I just want good cards that arent damaged.

Really, is it that hard to give us what we want? Guess so, this industry is laden with ass jockeys.