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.

*new feature*

In continuation with what I did last Monday, I have decided to make a regular feature out of opening a pack and showing its contents. Random Pack Monday will be the new regular attraction for the time being. It'll be fun and I hope to keep it up for a while. What did we open up today (really yesterday):

2010 Topps Magic Football. I'm not a big football guy but these cards look quite fancy and would be interested to see what a baseball set could look like in this format. dayf was entirely right about the packs. The colors definitely pop right at you and they look like something from the '60s. Here is what I got:

Now, when I opened this pack, I got the assumption that this set was filled with nothing but stars, rookies and Hall of Famers. Well, its not but this pack certainly was. I actually picked up three packs total and this was by far the best of the bunch. I definitely know Franco and Troy and Brett. I've heard a lot about Colt this season and he seems to be a break-out rookie this year. I have no idea who the other two guys are but I'm sure some of you do. I don't know how much I'll buy, maybe these will be the only three packs I end up with. I do have to give kudos to Topps on how this set looks though, classy all the way. The cards could use some stats on the back though and that would be my only complaint. Well, I hope you join me every Monday for a different pack to open up (....err well, I hope you join me every time I make a post, really) and see the mystery of what awaits us in these wrappers we love ripping so much!

subconscience collecting

Apparently I am collecting 2010 Topps football. I hadn't planned on it, but I keep buying packs. When I purchased the value pack yesterday, it came home along with two packs of football. I didn't even notice! (OK, I did, but still...) I have, however decided just to collect the base set. No parallels, no inserts, nada. So if some of you have a wantlist for 2010 Topps football inserts, let me know and I'm sure we can work something out. I may (but probably not) collect the Bowman inserts (see above), but that all depends on how many I can get my hands on. I like the look of them, plus I'm a fan of all things retro.

UPDATE: I brought up the copper parallels in yesterdays post. Apparently they are Wal-Mart only, and are only series 2. There are no series 1 copper parallels (to my knowledge thus far), so I will not be finding that Wells after all.

Also- I just saw a few blogs with the picture of the 2011 Topps base cards. I am...uncertain how I feel about them. One commenter said they look like they are out of the 90's and I may have to agree. Kinda reminds me of 1996 Topps now that I think about it...

the "other" 2010 topps cards

I haven't collected football cards in an even longer time than I did baseball. I was curious to see what they did with the 2010 design so I bought a few packs. I'm not sure who's who anymore, although I did recognize Donovan McNabb, Eli Manning and Ray Lewis out of what I got. I do have to applaud Topps on the Peak Performance cards in the football set, as they are superb looking and far superior to the baseball brethren. I think the white font looks pretty good too. As for the WWE, it was something the wife and I could bust together. We watch both WWE and TNA weekly and are fans of many superstars (and not so fond of others), so its cool that we could go through these boxes together and compare what we got and so forth. We got four boxes so far, its a lot but the boxes are relatively cheap at my local shop. It also looks great in the 2010 format. Its a great set with some great hits (dual autos, jumbo relics, etc.), with a blue parallel set like they used for Opening Day. If anyone is interested in the WWE set, I have many duplicates for trade if desired. I even completed a few sets. I'll post up some of the hits I got in the coming days or so (some real cool ones).