2 new adds to the collection

Did my last box of Leaf Rookies and Stars and pulled this nice Jamaal Charles Jersey/Auto /25. Bummed that I chose poorly since another guy at the shop pulled a Matt Ryan Jersey/Auto /25 as well. =/


Oh well, I did buy this other Matt Ryan for the PC. =)

High End Breaks

With the soon to be arrival of Topps Sterling Baseball for 2008, it's lead me to reflect back on high end breaks. My definition of high end breaks is anything that is $300 or more per box/tin. It fascinates me to no extent to watch people break high end products because of 1) the potential to see a really high end hit and 2) no financial investment of my own in case it's a bad break. Over the last year, I've done my first rounds of doing high end breaks. I've had my highs and lows but luckily mostly highs which could provde dangerous for my credit card later on if I feel cocky. I've never done a break of Topps Sterling but to me it seems to be a safer gamble than Upper Deck Exquisite. In Sterling you are guaranteed to have a memorabilia hit with the potential for a signature. The players are known and you will probably have some resale value of a little under half the cost of the break. While with Exquisite, you could hit it big or have a big loss based on breaks I've seen this year. With the economy in the crapper over the last few months and probably for another half year, I wonder if the card company's are taking this into account when they produce their product. I'd have to say that there seems to be more mid-high end products out but fewer people to break them compared to the past. I think it would be a great time for those with the funds to invest now but at the same time a bad time to gamble. Oh well, I'll rant some more depending on how I do on my one box break of Sterling.

Redemptions suck

Ok, this may change in a month or two but the one redemption that's pissing me off as well as another guy at the local card shop (LCS) is the redemption from 08 SP Legendary Cuts for the Mystery Cut auto. We both sent ours in back earlier in the year and haven't received any notice of it being redeemed yet. A bunch of people who also redeemed received theirs already and it leaves us wondering WFT??? Especially since most of the "big" cards have already been sent out as redemption. I'm "hoping" for a helluva mystery redemption but I have a feeling that I may be a grandfather by the time it shows up.

New Addition to the Personal Collection

With a glut of Sidney Crosby autos on hand I swung a deal that helped build up my PC a great deal.



I love how it's 2 HOF's who I followed growing up as their careers winded down. It's also sweet that they're both hard signed and on a good UD brand. Woohoo! First Roy and Bourque!

Review on 2008 Leaf Rookies and Stars Football

Busted my first box of the product and here's my thoughts. For the cost of the box it's a pretty good break considering it will give you 4 hits (3 jersey/patch and 1 auto) although it doesn't say anything on the box about it. The card design is pretty weak in my opinion. The white background with a plain line design seems pretty boring. The inserts go both ways. They seem to borrow from Playoff Prestige with the manufactured auto patches (which isn't a bad thing) but they also have huge one color jersey cards which make you think they forgot to get it autographed. Rookie selection is nice and it seems like each box has a decent hit. On the year's current product scale, I'd give it a 6/10.

On a side note, there were some Gridiron Kings cards stamped with the Donruss Threads as sp hits. Donruss confirmed that they inserted Brett Favre in a Jets uniform and Darren McFadden in a Raiders uniform with various levels of rarity.

Here are some scans of the notable hits from the box: