Contest update for the 2010 Sports Card Awards and last chance to pick up an extra entry

UPDATE:  For Contest and voting details, use this link.

Here are links to see the Nominees

The Sickest Card of the Year - use this link
Fan Favorite Set - use this link
Box Most Likely to Contain Mojo - use this link

This is your last chance to get an extra entry (SORRY. ADDITIONAL COMMENTS TO THIS POST NO LONGER COUNT TOWARDS EARLY ENTRIES)  for what is shaping up to be a really nice, rather large prize package of a several hobby boxes of sports cards.  I'm not releasing the actual prize info yet, but its the kind of contest prize I would be happy to win.


All you have to do is leave a comment with your suggestion for the following three award categories that you, the collectors, will vote on;

Sickest Card of the Year
Fan Favorite Set of the Year
Box most likely to contain Mojo

But do it TODAY, because as soon as we make our announcements, this phase of the contest is over. (THIS PHASE IS NOW OVER)

Want to pick up another entry?  Spread the word about our awards and this contest.  You can post a link on your blog and for those that don't have a blog, post a topic on your favorite site of forum.  Email us the link to AllAboutCardsAwards (at) Yahoo (dot) com and if it can be verified, you'll get an additional entry.

Koufax might not have signed an exclusive with Topps, Questions abound, no answers to be found.

No, Virginia... there is no Santa Claus... or, at the very least, we can't confirm it.

In an earlier post about my gift wish list, I was giddy about the announcement that Sandy Koufax had signed an exclusive deal with Topps for autographing cards.  I decided to Google "Koufax Topps Auto" tonight in hopes of getting more details and the Beckett Blog's story on it was the first hit.  I followed this link and got to a page that said "Sorry, no posts matched your criteria."  I thought that it was odd for a story that was written a day ago to have a bad link.  I did a site search and came up with nothing on the Koufax deal.  The story had disappeared.

Then I went to the place where I got the original photo of the signed mock up and it was gone too.   Not good.  Something was up.

Well..one of our earliest followers, Night Owl, picked up on this too and did a little detective work and without giving it all away, we can neither confirm nor deny that the Sandy Koufax has signed with Topps at this time.  Use this link to get to Night Owl's post on the matter entitled "Will this card exist or not?"  Nice work Night Owl.

Thursday Night Football, Thursday night SPEED-break of Topps 2010 NFL trading cards Jumbo HTA box.

The Indianapolis Colts take on the Tennessee Titans and we take on a jumbo box of Topps 2010 NFL Trading Cards.  You can watch this at half time, take that bathroom pit stop, refresh you chips and still make it back in time for the second half.  Enjoy.


Next SPEED-break... 2010 Panini Gridiron Gear Hobby Box.

Will Baseball Card values skyrocket thanks to the winter meetings?

In a previous post I touched briefly on the Jayson Werth - Washington Nationals deal.  Now, thanks to the Boston Red Sox deals during the winter meetings, I'd like to show you two cards I ripped from packs this year.

 A Topps Tribute base card of Adrian Gonzalez and a Carl Crawford Peak Performance auto.  With apologies to the good citizens of Baltimore and Toronto, the AL East is going to be a tough division to play in next season. But as the separation in pay between your common player and your mega contract player widens, should we expect the value of there cards and common cards to widen too?  Wouldn't it be great if that Crawford auto just tripled in value overnight?

With these monster contract, is the MLB setting themselves up for the kind of bubble burst the housing market experienced recently.  Can you go into foreclosure on a player contract?

Anyway... congratulations to the Boston Red Sox, you should be a powerhouse to contend with in 2011.  But realize this does come at a cost to Boston fans as they no longer have the right to complain about the Yankees "buying" a championship team.  Red is the new Navy Blue.

Officially on my holiday wish list...autographs!

Tis' the season, so besides compiling our soon to be announced award nominees, trying to upload an old SPEED-break™ to YouTube and prepping for a brand new SPEED-break™or two and regular break of some premium cards, I found some time to gather a short wish list.  


So in no particular order here is my list.

All I can say is DAMN!!!!!  In one of my early posts I covered Koufax and the old Walmart cards.  Some of my most treasured cards are of Koufax.  This blog's logo above has a partially hidden signed baseball with Koufax's signature.  Now, Topps has signed an exclusive deal with Sandy Koufax to autograph cards for several of their products.  This 2011 Topps Heritage Baseball will be the first. Unfortunately these items wont be available in time for the holidays, but I'm willing to wait for their release.

One release that should just barely make it in time to be put under the tree is pictured above.  OK, clearly this is not a card.  It's a picture "borrowed" from Panini's incredible blog, The Knight's Lance.  After reading All About Cards every day, you should head over to Panini's site because they are truly mounting a blog that is overflowing with some of the best content a collector could ask for, including behind the scenes coverage of how cards are made.  The picture above is from a post about creating cut auto cards.  If you look closely, you'll see thats a Lefty Gomez auto.  For those who have been with this blog from the start, you'll remember my story about Lefty Gomez and Thurman Munson.  Well, I never did get Gomez's auto, so this is one that I've been chasing for a long time now.  These will be in the 2010 Panini Century Collection, which is also on my list, a case of these please. I'm planning a big post on these cards after we hand out our awards but for now you should know that the other autos included in this release that are on my list are George Brett, Pete Rose, Stan Musial, Cal Ripkin, Ben Hogan, Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, and Lou Gehrig.  Perhaps I should revise this wish to several dozen cases of these cards.

Year end Sports Card Awards and your chance to vote & win a prize package

Do you feel there are not enough awards shows, that so many important achievements go unrecognized?  Are you upset there is no longer a Grammy given for Best Polka Album?  Do you wait with bated breath for the results of the Stella Awards, given to people who file outrageous and frivolous lawsuits, or hope one day to win a Shorty, the award given for best Tweet on Twitter in over 26 categories?  Well… you are exactly the type of person we are looking for.

With extreme pride, and a considerable amount of smugness, All About Cards announces its First Annual Sports Card Awards but we need your help to make them successful.  In addition to awards for best cards in all sports, there will be three awards chosen by you, the collector.  Yes… you have just been selected to join our Blue Ribbon Panel.  You will be voting on the following three categories.

Sickest Card of the Year

Fan Favorite Set of the Year

Box most likely to contain Mojo

Of course, every awards show gives out SWAG to it participants and we are no different.  One lucky member of our Blue Ribbon Panel will walk away with a prize package.  We will let you know what that prize is as we get closer to announcing the award winners.  As always with All About Cards, we like to give “early adopters” extra chances to win, so leave us a comment with some of your thoughts on the above categories like which cards you think should be nominated and the extra entry for the prize package is yours.

Look for our nominations announcement later in this week.

Jayson Werth signs a monster seven year, $126 million contract with the... Nationals?

Jayson Werth will be wearing a familiar red uniform, but it won’t be with the Phillies.  Werth has just signed a seven year, $126 million deal with the Washington Nationals.

By today’s standards, close to $18 million is not nearly as shocking as the SEVEN YEARS that will carry Werth through to the age of 38 and the fact that he’s going from a World Series contender to a team that tends spend most of its time in the cellar. 

This lengthy contract will also set a precedent for upcoming free agent contract negotiations which I’m sure team general managers are not too happy about.

If Strasburg can bounce back from TJ surgery and Bryce Harper can live up to his hype, the Nats might now be posed to improve their profile in the league.  Either way, Jayson Werth is the real winner here, and may be the only winner, except, of course, Werth's agent.