All About Sports Cards: 3/20/11

Friday, March 25, 2011

This year Panini will include multi-card booklets in it's release of Donruss Elite Football

Opening Day for Baseball is almost here but there seems to be a lot of Football cards on the horizon. Panini has just announced details for their June 15th release of Donruss Elite Football. Coming in at about $120 for a hobby box of 20 – 5 card packs, collectors will be looking at four autograph or memorabilia cards (at least one autograph guaranteed), four Rookie Cards (#’d to 999), one Aspirations or Status parallel and seven additional inserts or parallels per box. They will come in 12 box cases.

The big news is one of the case hits. For the first time, Panini is venturing into the multi-card booklet format with Throwback Threads.

These booklets are just one of the case hits. Other include dual-signed Passing the Torch card and one or more autographs from a checklist that includes Peyton Manning, Drew Brees, Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Adrian Peterson, Cam Newton, Jake Locker and Mark Ingram among others.

Other highlights from 2011 Donruss Elite Football include:

A 200-card set with 100 base veterans and 100 rookies

NFL Shield and Team Logo on-card signatures from top 2011 rookies

Autographed RC parallels numbered to 499 or less

Aspirations and Status Die-Cuts numbered to 49 or less

A Throwback Threads checklist featuring Otto Graham, Sammy Baugh, Joe Montana, Emmitt Smith and Dan Marino

New Passing the Torch combinations such as Peyton Manning/Sam Bradford, LaDainian Tomlinson/Ryan Mathews, John Elway/Tim Tebow and Michael Irvin/Dez Bryant

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

2011 SAGE HIT Low Series Football Hobby Box Break, another All About Cards SPEED-break™

Just when you thought it was time to wrap things up for Football, here comes 2011 SAGE HIT Low Series Football Cards, the first football release for 2011.

Check out our SPEED-break to see who we pulled from this hobby box.

Direct link to the video.

Something New is About to Hit the Streets

In One Week and One Day something new will hit the streets. More details to follow...

Monday, March 21, 2011

Beware of certain eBay 2011 Topps Heritage Short Print Auctions. Not all error cards are short prints.

We reported on seeing the first 2011 Topps Heritage mirrored Alex Rodriguez card soon after it hit eBay. From a looking around at the boards, we just might have been the first site to point this out. Now we are starting to notice a bunch of other cards cropping up on eBay, claiming to be short prints. Instead of concentrating on those that could be, we would like to point out the ones that are not.

I love it when an eBay seller puts a question mark after the reason they want to charge you a premium. In answer to this question, no, it is not a super short print. It's not even a short print.

The seller is asking for a super short print premium because this San Diego Padres team card has the stats for the Cleveland Indians on the back. Let's take a look at my Padres Team Card

By the way, I have two Padres team cards and they both have Shin-Soo Choo as the batting leader and Cleveland Indian stats. So either I am one extremely lucky collector or this is the regular base card. Now whether the card is a Topps mistake or is an homage to card 22 of the 1962 set, a checklist that jumped from 31 on the front to 121 on the back remains to be seen.

Some auctions are trying to sell this card as a red tint short print which makes sense because all the other team cards have a yellow backgrounds like the Padres card above. But take a look at the same numbered card from the 1962 Topps set that happens also to be the White Sox team card.

Not looking so red tinted now, is it? Now technically the 2011 card, which is number 113, does fall within the "tinting zone." Mimicking cards 110 to 196 of the 1962 set that were "green tinted" during the first printing, the 2011 Heritage set has tinted variations in Green (general release available everywhere) Red (Target exclusive) and Blue (WalMart exclusive) for cards 110 to 196. I just don't know how you can tell if a red based card has been red tinted. This one is definitely a buy at your own risk proposition.

For comparison here are Luke Scott's cards in all variations of tints, no tint, red, green and blue tints.

Regular Base Target Red

Green Tint WalMart Blue

When ever you are in doubt about a 2011 Topps Heritage card, try to look up the same numbered card from the 1962 Topps set. Cards that appear to be errors most likely are just reproductions of the same error from the 1962 set like this one.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Mojo Flows from a Blaster and 2 - 3 Pack plus of 2011 Topps Heritage Baseball

Yesterday, with predictions for heavy rain on Sunday morning here in Southern California, I hit my local brick and mortar to pick up a blaster and two 3 Pack plus of 2011 Topps Heritage. I spent the morning listening to the rain coming down while busting packs. Short of a morning full of important NFL games to watch, it was the perfect way to spend a rainy Sunday. Since there probably wont be an NFL season this year, this might become my new Sunday ritual. Here is some of the mojo that came from these packs.

High Numbered Short Prints

No A-Rod mirrored Super Short Prints, but some nice ones none the less.