On Card Auto Buffet. First look at the cards coming out of this year’s NFL Players Rookie Premiere.

It’s looking like a banner year to come for Football card collectors.  The cards coming out of the NFL Players Rookie Premiere are sick, not only from their on-card goodness, but from a design level too.  Here is a sneak peek at the first images coming out of the signings from both Panini and Topps.  

Let’s start with Panini.

Cam Newton

Mark Ingram with what looks like a sketch card.  His twitter caption for the was "Look what I drew"

Nice triple auto of the newest Partiots, Ryan Mallett, Shane Vereen and Stevan Ridley

Newest Bengals, A.J. Green and Andy Dalton

One more autograph to go to finish this one

An now from Topps

 Mark Ingram in silver pen

 Quarterbacks Brian Mallett and Blaine Gabbert in red ink

The 8th pick in the draft, Jake Locker

 Arizona Cardinals running back, Ryan Williams

Wide Receiver for the Baltimore Ravens tweeted "This is so tough I'm hyped"

Keep checking back her for more updates as photos become available.

We have free cards looking for a new home. Can you take them?

Wont you help us?

We've taken good care of theses cards for a while now, but they need a permanent home.  One where they will be valued and well looked after.   Perhaps you can provide that home.

If you would like to house these cards, please apply by entering our Stanley Cup Playoffs contest, using this link.   But do it fast.  You have until 7:00PM EST tonight.

2010-11 Playoff Contenders Hockey looks great!

You know of our love for hockey cards here on the blog so we are very excited that 2010-11 Playoff Contenders Hockey is finally arriving.  Take that smart outline of Contenders, mix it with an exceptional rookie class, some legends of the game, stellar photography, cool inserts, on card autos and and a lot of ice and you’re looking at one awesome Hockey Card Cocktail.

Here are some of the cards.

 Rookie and Star Players

 Rookie on card autos

Legendary Contenders

Against The Glass

Lottery Winners

The Great Outdoors which cover the games of the Winter Classic

 Leather Larceny (You know how much we love Goalie cards)

Perennial Contenders

Rookie of the Year Contenders

and NHL Ink that offers dual autos like this incredible Taylor Hall/Jordan Eberle Auto card

Speaking of which, don’t forget to enter our Stanley Cup Playoffs Contest for your chance to win this Rated Rookie Auto card of Rookie of the Year Contender Jordan Eberle.

It is just one of three prizes in our contest.   But time running out.  You only have until May 19th, 2011, 7:00PM EST to enter.  So use this link to get in on the contest and make sure you check out 2010-11 Playoff Contenders Hockey.

Time is running out to get your guaranteed entry in our contest with prizes from Panini America

We are just hours away from Tampa Bay facing off with Boston.  There is even less time to get your entry in to win our Stanley Cup Playoffs contest featuring great cards from the All About Cards 2010 Sport Card Award winning set for Best Hockey Trading Cards, 2010-11 Donruss Hockey.  The Jordan Eberle Rated Rookie Auto you see above and a bunch of other cards are all up for grabs thanks to the kind folks at Panini-America who supplied them to us.

So get your entry in before 7:00PM EST tonight for at least one guaranteed entry in our contest's random drawing, because after that, only you knowlege and some god ld luck will get youn in.  Use this link to enter.

2011 Topps Gypsy Queen Baseball Hobby Box Break, another All About Cards SPEED-break™

Gypsy Queen could be my favorite Baseball Card release of the year.   These cards look great.  While collation problems have been an issue for Hobby boxes, people are still buying out these cards making them harder to find, causing hobby box prices to climb.

With fair warning, our box, like many, was missing an autograph.  Topps acknowledged the problem early and has offered an easy solution to the problem.  (Use this link to see our previous post on how to get an autograph if you are missing one in your box)  

All of this does not detract from how good these cards look and how fun it is to rip into these packs.

Here is our hobby box break of 2011 Topps Gypsy Queen Baseball cards.

Direct link to the video

Harmon Killebrew dies at the age of 74

This is the first card I acquired in a trade that preceded the start of my collecting days.   It’s a 1964 Topps Harmon Killebrew.  As I remember, I gave up much more than this card was worth at the time of the trade, but this card remains priceless to me.

A grading service would see the dinged corners, scuffed surface and bad centering, holding it in low regard.  But I see past the imperfections, to the heart of the card, the man on it, and that is perfection to me.

A gentle giant has passed.   May he rest in peace.

Have you entered our Stanley Cup Playoffs contest for a chance to win some great prizes from Panini America?

Vancouver and Tampa Bay are up one game to none in their Conference Finals series.  One is a significant number because you have one day left to get in on our Stanley Cup Playoffs Contest and get a guaranteed spot in our randomized drawing even if your hockey predicting skills are not that good.

With these great prizes courtesy of Panini America, how can you pass up this opportunity?   Make sure you enter today, before 7:00PM EST, to get your guaranteed spot.  Follow this link to enter.

Box break of 2011 Auto’s and Rookie’s Graded Footbal from Tri City Sports PL

We told you we would be receiving a box of 2011 Auto’s and Rookie’s Graded Footbal from Tri City Sports PL. Well it just arrived.

Our intention was to do a STREET-break™with these but the forecast here in Southern California is for heavy storms over the next few days and there have been extreme weather warnings issued.

Rather than wait out the weather so we decided to do a video box break of the cards.



As you can see, we got the 1 Graded Rookie and the 2 other hits of an auto and relic.

Now we didn’t pull a case hit, like our friends over at Sports Card Radio did. They pulled a Miles Austin Glove.

Tri City Sports PL has been upfront about the high risk, high reward nature of this product so you have to decide for yourself if, at $100 retail, 2011 Auto’s and Rookie’s Graded Football is right for you. Here are the scans of what came out of our box.

 There were 4 cards in our first penny sleeve, Mark Sanchez Bowman Rookie, Darren Sharper Topps Attax Code Card, Knowshon Moreno Topps Unrivaled and a Brandon Jacobs Bowman

An Edgerrin James Relic

An Aaron Hernandez Auto

 And the graded card was a Tim Tebow Score Hot Rookies BGS 9.5

2011 Topps Gypsy Queen Baseball. An All About Cards Review

Everything old is new again.   1887 N174 is now 2011 Topps Gypsy Queen Baseball Cards.  These cards look great.  Even the base cards are enticing.  And anything framed in this set is fantastic, from framed paper cards to framed mini relics to framed printing plates.   There is so much to like here.  

This set falls under our classification of trading cards.  With multiple ways of buying Gypsy Queen, if you can find it due to demand, it’s accessible to all.  You can buy them in individual packs, Value Packs of 3 -6 card packs plus a bonus pack of green framed paper cards, Blasters of 7 packs plus 1 extra pack and Hobby Boxes of 24 – 10 card packs with a box topper of 10 minis.  Hobby boxes are supposed to contain two autographs and two relic cards.   The unfortunate thing, acknowledged by Topps, is there were some real collation problems that occurred during the packaging of this set.   You might pull multiple hits from a blaster, as we did already, or you might be shorted a hit in your hobby box, which, you will find out, also happened to us.  But Topps immediately developed a hassle free way of requesting your missing hits within a day of learning of the problem.

Lets take a look at some of the cards we pulled from our hobby box.

From the Base set

Regular Base card, front and back

High Numbered Short Prints

From the inserts

 Home Run Heroes

 The Great Ones

Future Stars

Framed Paper

Minis

This is for sizing purposes.  Regular base card and its mini parallel

Minis with Gypsy Queen Backs

Here is an example of a Gypsy Queen Back

Black Border Minis

A short print mini #/10

A Gypsy Queens insert

From our Mini Box Topper

6 regular, 3 inset parallels and 1 lighter version

And our hits

Hanley Ramirez Jersey Relic

Derek Jeter Framed Mini Jersey Relic

Gio Conzalez Certified Autograph

Overall Look

These cards are really appealing. The on-card autos are some of the best we’ve seen.   As mentioned before, anything framed in this set is fantastic.  The minis and insert sets like Home Run Heroes and The Great Ones are just as nice.

Quality and Variety of Players and Subsets.

300 base and 50 SPs make for a tight checklist.   Add the excellent choices of players from the past and this set is about as good as it gets.   But it does make the Gypsy Queen inserts seem out of place, a small part of the set, but seems better suited for a release like Allen & Ginter.

Do the hits hold up?

On-card autos that look fantastic with a shot at Aaron and Koufax, Stamp Cards, Framed Mini Relics?  All great.   Manufactured gypsy jewels and gypsy autographs detract somewhat and again seem out of place.

Will you want to collect them all? 

Absolutely.  Its a great looking first release with a fantastic checklist.

Rating

4 1/2 out of 5

We are already looking forward to 2012 Gypsy Queen as we are collecting 2011 Topps Gypsy Queen.  Certainly whatever collation problems occurred will be a distant memory.   But this is an amazing first release of a product we hope will be around for a long time.


Review box provided by Topps