what can a buck fifty-nine get you?

I've been dabbling in football cards as of late. With nothing left to grab in the baseball season, football has caught my attention slightly. All these new products on the local shops shelf, with stories of big pulls of guys I've heard of only in passing. I am a casual football fan, to say the least. I used to follow it a lot more in my youth. I collected baseball cards, then "graduated" to football card collecting in the mid-90's. That was around the time the sport itself grew in popularity. The baseball strike lured people to a more (seemingly) stable sport in football and it's popularity exploded. So did its trading card market. I think there may have been as many football sets released as there were baseball. Which is absolutely bananas because when looking back at the mid to late 90's card sets there were a literal ton of sets released yearly. Thats not even including basketball, hockey and non-sports releases.

Anyway. So football has my attention and I picked up some packs at the local shop. Not much, just a sampler of whats out there. Lots of Panini (more on that in a second). I worked the shop on Monday, all day, as the owner is on vacation and he has three of us watching over the store for him. I have Monday and Saturday. Monday I knew would be dead (it was) because he isn't normally open Mondays but it was the day after Christmas so there was a possibility of people. Well, like the many many baseball card boxes I went through weeks ago, I did the football this time. I missed a lot. It was almost like when I started baseball again in early 2010, I saw so much I hadn't seen before.

I ran into a set that seemed familiar but in a different way.

We know the 2008 Upper Deck Baseball Heroes right? Well, they did it for football too:

Same concept. A good set too, I'm a fan of the baseball version so this seemed appropriate. While rummaging through those boxes I came across a few of these, this card in particular caught my attention:

One of the greatest (if not THE greatest) heavy metal guitarists ever, Tony Iommi. Founding and only constant member of Black Sabbath, one of my favorite classic rock/hard rock/metal bands.

I was in Target today and I strolled over to the card aisle and found a lone pack these in their $1.59 a pack bin so I grabbed it. The scanned pack above is the pack and Tony came out of it. I was pretty psyched because it was a card I really wanted but then after Tony, was this:

Another Tony! I thought the pack felt thick but I knew that the base cards were a little thicker than basic Topps so I chalked it up to that. Nope. A relic and no slouch either. I'm no Dallas fan but I know Romo and how good he is.

A great find for a buck fifty-nine. A sweet relic and a card for the PC. Awesome.