Monogamy Sucks

Exclusive contracts suck in every way shape and form. Basically it prevents companies from releasing non-base cards of a player that has an exclusive contract with another company. For the company that has the contracts, it makes them money because collectors of that player will have to buy the respective products if they want the big hits. Now, not everyone is approached for exclusivity, just the bigger name guys. If you have obtained a lot of contracts, it really hurts your competitors - more than we care to accept.


Finding a non-UD Jordan auto is like finding Santa Claus - not possible.

Surprisingly, exclusivity is the biggest problem facing the Basketball card industry, in my opinion. Lebron, Jordan, Durant, and Kobe are all UD exclusives, meaning that anyone else is basically fucked when it comes to making Basketball products. Because of this fact, I will never touch a Topps basketball product because UD has all the big pulls on their side. UD has also signed a handful of the 2007-08 rookies like Horford and company, making it pretty much impossible to make any money busting a Topps product. Topps does have Oden, but that alone didn’t sway me once during the whole season. My analogy for this is like being able to date Jessica Alba, but you cant touch her - ever.


No touchy.

What's funny is that Topps Basketball is still releasing high end products like Triple Threads and Eschelon, even though I cant see a reason for anyone to take a chance on them. You know how they lure collectors in? They put thousands of "1/1s" in every case (as said before, thanks for ruining it Topps).

Baseball has exclusives too - all huge name guys as well, signed by guess who. Jeter, Griffey, Ichiro, and a few others are all UD property. Griffey has been with UD since they came on board, and he still shows no sign of breaking that. The only good thing is that baseball still has other guys that people want. The biggest thing that sucks for baseball collectors is that pretty much every HOF player has an exclusive contract which prevents a lot of collectors from getting some of their favorite guys. Biggest examples: Hank Aaron and Sandy Koufax. Both were DLP exclusives when they did baseball, and when they went the way of the Dodo, the contracts didn’t expire. That meant for Sandy, we had to wait for 2007 products before we had autos again. Hank Aaron will be under contract indefinitely with DLP and they arent giving him up, meaning no new Aaron autos from now on.

The only sport that doesn’t allow exclusives is the NFL (THANK THE FUCKING LORD.) Although All Day has a marketing deal with DLP, he can still sign for UD and Topps, which he does frequently. Same goes for Favre, Manning, and others. The only thing you cant do is put them on the display of your product. One of the reasons that football cards are such a competive market is because everyone signs for everyone. Collectors have more products to choose from, and normally designs/specs/collations are more thought out because of it. WE ALL BENEFIT.

So when Topps stops prodcuing Basketball, thank the exclusive contract for ending them. I think its fucking ridiculous, but again, the companies making the money don’t really care about us. They only think what is best for them. Thanks again for that, guys.

Mauer Saves Twins From Disgrace, Makes Love to Non-Inflatable Woman

A personal thank you to Joe Mauer for breaking up Frodo Baggins' no hitter in the 9th. I continue to hate the White Sox with every inch of my love for baseball and I would hate to have to endure the rest of the season knowing that the Twins could not put up a hit against a team known for two things - Ozzie Guillen and Blow Up Dolls.

Gardy, please come back soon.

You Tube: Cool National Treasures Video

Two things of interest about this video other than what it shows:

1. Play Where's Waldo on the Quinn 1/1 pulled by Beckett in their break of NT. Its kind of funny in a sad Special Olympics sort of way that it made it into the video.

2. These are the acutal cards depicted in the numbering. So when buying the NT 1/1s or even the other cards pictured here, consult the vid here. If it isnt the card pictured, well, its fake.

A Cut Above

Everyone wants them, they are incredibly tough to pull from packs, some are worth more than your life, but should we hate the practice of making them? The concept of a cut autograph is pretty simple, just cut ‘em, paste ‘em, and pack ‘em. It has become a staple of the collecting hobby, and has even given collectors the chance at owning ink of their favorite dead players. PSA has been slabbing cuts since the beginning, but that is all they are, pieces of paper or card in a slab. Topps and Upper Deck have taken that to a WHOLE new level.



This summer, a card will be redeemed that makes me so fucking sick of this shit that I hope the person donates it to a museum when they get it. Despite most logical ideas of obtaining rare autos, UD has produced the cut of all cuts that contains all four presidents on Mount Rushmore. The signature redemption card is available in 2008 Premier Baseball and some other products that will be released later this year, all with staggering odds.


I didnt think this was possible - I was wrong.

Now, this card is a good fucking idea if you ask me (marketing wise), but I think its sick that we are supporting the damage and destruction of at least four documents from our NATIONS history – not just the sport’s history. I think it is MUCH more important to have a George Washington letter in tact than a cut glued to a piece of cardboard. That’s just me though.

In 100 years when our children’s children are living in an era dominated by a paperless world, shouldn’t we at least try to conserve as much history as possible? I know that eventually something will be cut up that shouldn’t have been, and people will eventually get mad enough to do something. Until then we are in dire straits when cards like the Mount Rushmore card are becoming more and more frequent.

Every year thousands of documents, checks, and other historical items are destroyed because Topps, UD, DLP and every other company wants to make a buck. Hell – Tristar cuts up other sports cards and uses those for cuts! Like I have mentioned with the historical jerseys that are torn to shreds for card purposes, I am beginning to think UD and Topps should think about what they are doing. Let’s focus on helping the preservation of the sports we love and less on making money. Of course, with some companies, we know they don’t care about anything but the almighty buck. Color me angry please.

First Look: 2008 Donruss Threads

Ok, now we are looking at some of the big dogs for the first half of the card season. We have seen Classics, Prestige, and Elite, now we have our first look at Threads.

I liked Threads last year because the designs were nice, and the letters had a good color scheme. They were still manufactured, but not bad for autos in the first part of the season. Fortunately, these are really the first cards to hold their value. Unlike Press Poop and SAGE which both tank after real cards are released, these letters hold their shit together. Last year's Peterson STILL commands 250 per letter.

This year, its still pretty much the same. Similar letter concept, similar color scheme, really worth the 100 bucks you will spend on a box. Lets hope the letters are more than 3 per case this year.

(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.

Now For Something Completely Different: UDTube is Up and Running

Upper Deck Diamond Vision opened May 1 so that collectors can FINALLY have that well needed spot to post their video box breaks. I guess the 19,000 box breaking members of YouTube werent enough to convince UD that maybe this was overkill. I do give them props for offering the boxes for the winners and the grand prizes for the eventual "box break of the year(?)".

Its a nice idea, but I have to savage them for doing it so freaking late in the box breaking genre. Most film scholars will agree that the stages of a genre are primitive (documenting breaks in the monthly mags), classical (The Doc and company), experimental (Most of the YouTube breaks), and eventually Parody(See the breaks posted in response to the Exquisite Fraud). This is basically just taking all the YouTube breaks that people have done and using them as an advertising module for their products with the promise of a "premium box" as a possible prize. What the sheep may not notice is that UD takes all rights to your break when you post, and you are giving them free reign to use it as they please.

I will not be posting any breaks on the Diamond Vision site regardless of the prize due to the ban as well as the reason mentioned above. I posted my breaks for the benefit of the collector, not the benefit of UD. Also, I wouldnt put it past them to post breaks from "collectors" who get amazing stuff in their boxes and then post it on the site. So far, as of 5/5/08 at 10:26 am, I know all the vids are legit because I have interacted with the breakers before the site was active.

As for the future, who knows.

First Look: Upper Deck Icons FB

Another snoozer of a product from Upper Deck. Hopefully this replaces Chirography. 1 auto per box, 2 jersey per box, 2 manufactured non-auto letter per box, 1 auto letter per case.

I think that the inclusion of non-auto, non GU letters are fucking ridiculous. What is the freaking point of this crap? Who put the god damned green light on this re-hash of a turd? The idea of SPA By The Letter was cool ONLY because of the auto on the letter. To include NON-AUTOed ones defeats the whole purpose, though its not as bad as topps presidential letters.

Whoever runs UD's product development team needs to start coming up with something freaking cool. How about sweet spot classic football? How about legendary cuts football? Those would sell like crazy and I might consider lifting my ban for a tin of SS Classic.

To Infinity, AND BEYOND!

I just got back home to Minneapolis tonight for the first time in about six months. I sat and looked at my DVR and went through my episodes of the office and family guy and saw that I had also taped the episode of Costas Now where sports blogs were the topic of discussion.

Watch the video here

As I watched Buzz and Will face off, all I could think about is how much of a self absorbed douchebag Buzz is. He thinks that the sports writer is endangered because people are no longer turning to them for their sports news. Instead they check out deadspin and firejoemorgan to get a fan's take on things. What he failed to realize is that people go to FJM and Deadspin because the average sportswriter has become ridiculously off the pulse of the sports they are covering. People like me hate reading today's sports writers because they just arent that good any more. I have been a loyal reader of FJM for the last three years and I believe that they have more of an idea of what is going on than 95% of the guys out there. Of course, they are constantly dismissed as basement ridden geeks with keyboards, mainly because the writers who have dedicated their lives to the art are being shown up by non-professionals.

Buzz has taken his anger to a level that makes him comical - he has become the type of guy we go to deadspin to read about. I love deadspin because it is fucking hilarious 99% of the time, I usually dont go there for news. That is what Buzz had no clue about. We read deadspin because it is entertaining, not because they have the scoops. Now, if ESPN's coverage of the Draft is any clue, they dont have the scoops either.

What I think is funny is the hatred of change in the writers guild. If there is a unique idea, it has to be bad because it hasnt ever been done that way before! For God's sake, to them, Sabremetrics is the devil because it doesnt take into account all the useless junk that they have been using for ages to judge a player's worth. I know for a fact that change is good, and unlike Buzz's rant on the show, the future is definitely going to be awesome with people like Will at the helm. Or at least more entertaining.

Overall, I give a kudos to all the guys that write the sports blogs out there. Bad or good, it challenges our daily understanding of the sports world. It gives a unique perspective, and people who think more perspectives are a bad thing, really need to re-evaluate their pathetic lives.

FJM and Deadspin, keep up the good work, ill be watching.