Card Swag from the 2010 San Diego Comic Con

Another Comic Con has come and gone. But like every year, there were loads of random goodies to be had, including some unique cards. While this is unlikely to be a complete list of what was available last week in San Diego (both free and for purchase), I'll see what I can do.

Breygent

Perhaps the biggest card-related splash at Comic Con came from Breygent who offered up Mystery Packs made specifically for the show. Two-card packs were selling for about $25 and included one promo card and one "hit" that was either a sketch card, autograph, costume card, prop card or autographed costume card spanning several licenses. Tons of goodies were found and I'm eagerly awaiting the one pack I ordered online. It seemed like a can't-lose proposition. If buying packs online, the one thing to watch for is that these can apparently be somewhat easy to cherry-pick because many of the costume and prop cards have a metal border, giving them a larger size and more weight.

Here's a checklist direct from Breygent of the premium cards available other than sketch cards in the Comic Con packs:

• 3 different Ghost Whisperer Metallogloss cards (costume and props)
• 4 different Dexter Metallogloss cards (costume and props)
• 1 Dexter Michael C. Hall autograph
• 1 Dexter Jimmiy Smits autograph
• 1 Ghost Whisperer Jennifer Love Hewitt autograph
• 1 Ghost Whisperer Jennifer Love Hewitt/Hilary Duff dual autograph
• 1 Dexter Camera Strap Prop Card
• 1 Dexter Crime Scene Marker Prop Card
• 1 Pananormal Activity Katie Featherston autographed costume card
• 1 Paranormal Activity Micah Sloat autographed costume card
• 1 Paranormal Activity Oren Peli autograph
• 1 Dexter 4-piece costume card
• 2 Dexter 8-piece costume cards (green front, black front)
• 1 Ghost Whisperer 9-piece costume card
• 1 Ghost Whisperer Sleeping Mask prop card
• 1 Ghost Whisperer Tooth Prop card

Breygent also offered a handful of over-sized Mystery Packs. These contained only sketch cards.

Artbox

In recent years, Artbox has gone from a major player in non-sport cards to the company that does Harry Potter and nothing else. Despite the limited number of licenses, they're still churning out some spectacular cards. They've been producing goodie bags at San Diego for years that include cards and binders from previous sets, but show-exclusive promos and cards as well.

This year's offerings include a three-card costume set limited to 550, a Matthew Lewis (Neville Longbottom) autograph, a metal card set limited to 250 and a three-card crystal "card" set limited to 80 copies. I've also seen a trio of costume cards that are extremely rare. Two were of Fleur Delacour numbered to 30 and 10. This morning I also saw a Cedric Diggory costume card that was limited to four copies. Yup - four. As in count on one hand and you've still got your thumb left. I don't know if it'll make much of a difference as master Harry Potter collectors are going to want it no matter what, but Cedric was played by Robert Pattinson, who has since gone on to become the boy face of the Twilight franchise.

Artbox also debuted the first cards for the upcoming Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows in the form of a pair of promo cards.

Rittenhouse Archives

Although Rittenhouse doesn't have a history of offering up huge offerings at ComicCon like some of their competitors, they still have some nice promos floating around. As in past years, the company didn't have a booth in San Diego, but they had a different promo card available for each day of the show offered at nearly ten dealers' booths.

Heroes Archvies CP1 (Wednesday)

Warehouse 13: Season One CP1 (Thursday)

Stargate Universe: Season One CP1 (Friday)

Marvel: Heroes and Villains CP1 (Saturday)

The Green Hornet CP1 (Sunday)

Factory Entertainment

UK-based Factory Entertainment is a relative newcomer to the non-sport scene. The company also specializes in replica props for several properties. This year at Comic Con, they offered a couple of special card sets, both focusing on the update spin on The Prisoner that aired earlier in the year.

The first package includes an exclusive 72-card base set, an autograph card from Ian McKellen, a foil facsimile autograph card of Patrick McGoohan from the original series, two promos and a sketch card. The package was limited to 400 copies.

Prop cards were the focus of the second exclusive. Limited to just 200 copies, the five-card set included prop pieces, all of which were from the new mini-series.

Factory Entertainment also had a few over-sized cards promoting their replica prop lines.

258 West Authentic

One of the licenses a lot of non-sport collectors are clamoring for is TV's True Blood. Various manufacturers have come straight out and said HBO isn't interested. But that hasn't stopped 258 West Authentic from working directly with some of the actors to produce celebrity autograph cards. Their line-up at San Diego also included cards from actors involved in Glee and Supernatural as well. Here's the autographs they had available (print runs are in brackets):

• Misha Collins - Castiel on Supernatural (400)
• Heather Morris - Brittany on Glee (258)
• Kristin Bauer - Pam on True Blood (500)
• Brit Morgan - Debbie Pelt on True Blood (500)
• Patrick Gallagher - Chow on True Blood, Coach Tanaka on Glee (500)

Miscellaneous Goodies

Card manufacturers are not only ones handing out cards at Comic Con. There's always a random and seemingly endless amount of stuff that pops up, sometimes for only limited amounts of time. Here's a couple things I've seen on eBay:

Dorothy of Oz - Nine-card set promoting an upcoming 3D feature film.

Red - Six-card set promoting an upcoming action film that has Bruce Willis and Morgan Freeman.

Non-Sport Update's Card Talk forum has lists compiled from a couple of members who attended Comic Con that include some of the more random goodies they found walking the floors. The thread can be found here.

Sportskings and Ringside Boxing National Plans

Sportskings has announced redemption plans and contests for the upcoming National show in Baltimore August 4 to 8.

A box topper redemption will give collectors an exclusive card made specifically for the show. Below are two examples featuring UFC champion Georges St-Pierre and former home run king Mark McGwire.

National VIPs will also find five cards from an exclusive Sportskings set. But building the set is going to be tricky as there's 25 cards in the set, two of which will be short printed. Here's the checklist:

1 Royce Gracie
2 Duke Snider
3 Misty May-Treanor
4 Kerri Walsh
5 Scotty Nguyen
6 Wilt Chamberlain
7 Renaldo Nehemiah
8 Dennis Rodman
9 Warren Sapp
10 Bret Hart
11 Joe Sakic
12 Muhammad Ali (SP)
13 Althea Gibson
14 Bernie Parent
15 Georges St-Pierre
16 Mark McGwire
17 Eusebio
18 Joe Greene
19 Ronnie Coleman
20 Scott Hamilton
21 Curly Neal
22 Bob Lilly
23 Bruce Lee (SP)
24 Bruno Sammartino
25 Laffit Pincay Jr.

Five cards from the set will be inserted in each VIP gift bag.

Finally, during each day of the show, the Sportkings booth will be doing draws for memorabilia featuring autographed trunks from the likes of Vinny Paz, Ray Mancini, Lennox Lewis, Hurricane Carter and more. Opening a box of Ringside Boxing KO Edition at the booth will provide two entries, while a box of TKO Edition is good for one entry. Entries are good for each day's draws.

For those going to the National, you can find them at booth #2233.

What's Kind of Old is New Again With 2010-11 Score Hockey

Score debuted as a hockey line back in 1990-91. They made quite the splash too, landing then prospect and next-big-thing Eric Lindros to appear. I fondly remember opening two boxes of the stuff at Christmas and scouring for the remaining six cards I needed for my set. I also remember a sense of wonderment when I found out about the different versions, American and Canadian, that could be discerned by the color of the logo on the front.

1990-91 Score Hockey (American) - blue logo

1990-91 Score Hockey (Canadian) - red logo

Well, Score hockey is back. Set to hit shelves October 13, it will be the second NHL set released by Panini. Here's what you can expect with the base set:

2010-11 Score Hockey

Yup, pretty much the same as it was 20 years ago. Don't get me wrong, I dig retro tributes - when they're retro. These two are pretty much in the same era. Plus, 1990-91 Score is still (sort of) popular because it was the only set that year to offer Lindros and Martin Brodeur rookie cards, not because of the way they looked.

Scanning over the promo materials for 2010-11 Score Hockey and it's easy to see that Panini is going to the throwback appeal, recycling not only designs but the old-time inserts as well. This I personally don't mind as much as it highlights that inserts can have continuity and importance rather than just being ways of getting more superstars into packs.

2010-11 Score Hockey will carry a suggested price of $0.99 per pack. Not bad for seven cards. The set is a beefy 550 cards. Fifty rookie cards will fall 1:2 packs. There will also be ten redemption cards for additional rookie cards as they debut in the early part of the season. These redemptions will be relatively easy to collect as they fall one per box.

A Glossy parallel will be inserted one per pack as well. Basic inserts such as Franchise, Net Cam and Snow-Globe Die-Cuts will fall at a combined rate of 1:3 packs. 2010-11 Score Hockey will also have autographs, including 1990-91 Buy Backs. Collectors should expect one autograph per 20-box case. Finally, rack packs will have exclusive Canada Greats and USA Greats inserts.

Gorgeous Artwork Highlights Set From TCM

Throughout the month of August Turner Classic Movies will be airing their "Summer Under the Stars" festival, showcasing a different star for each day of the month. The cable network is also offering up 500 sets of gorgeous trading cards specifically for the event.

The cards feature the stunning artwork of Michael Schwab. The back of each card includes a quote from the movie and character featured, as well as a list of the star’s other films being shown.  For a chance to win a set of cards, visit http://tcm.com/summer (although the contest doesn't seem to be live yet).  Two sweepstakes drawings will be held, with 250 winners chosen in the middle of the month and another 250 chosen at the end of the month.

Slowly Getting Back

You may or may not have noticed the slow state of affairs around here as of late. Here's a nutshell recap of my last few months:

- Wrap up my year-end duties at the day job teaching and vice principalling (a term I just coined so it's not spelled wrong).
- Wrapping up my duties and vice principalling at the same school - potentially permanently.
- Sift through several years of papers and a lifetime of "stuff" to pare it down to a point where I could move it.
- Pack up a house worth of stuff (and complete several garage sales so that we didn't have to pack as much from Alberta to BC).
- Sell our Alberta house.
- Move from Alberta to BC.
- Deal with a car that decided to break down a few hours from our final destination. This took three days to fix and added another three days afterwards for our movers to be able to deliver our stuff.
- Move into a main floor house and haul in 2000 square feet of stuff to a place that's half that.
- Look for a new job.
- Look for a new house.

Yikes. The job search looks hesitantly positive. My wife and I also just put in an offer on a house that we plan to live in for a long time and see our children grow up in. We're very excited and happy with our move from the middle of nowhere in Alberta to Vancouver Island, even if we have paid an additional $1000 in taxes already and another $5000 once we finalize a deal to buy a house. But the spare time for writing and collecting has all but evaporated.

Besides, there's not a heck of a lot going on outside of Allen and Ginter Baseball and the ongoing saga of that Strasburg kid. It sounds like one of the releases I was most looking forward to, Avatar 3-D, has been cancelled, but I haven't confirmed (or even tried to confirm) this yet. Plus, it looks like there was some cool things to be found at the San Diego Comic Con and more upcoming at the National.

I'm also in the process of finishing up my transition over to my new site. I've got enough there that I'm okay showing it now: http://www.tradercracks.com/blog. The plan is to make that my main site for news, info and discussion. This site will remain for posterity and will continue but as a trading site where I'll have my trade lists and wantlists posted. This will keep the informational stuff and the strictly personal stuff separate, a vision I've had for a decade or more but haven't had the time or expertise to be able to do it properly. Stay tuned. In the meantime, things are as normal.

I'm not sure why I'm posting this. But thanks for your continued patience. I've noticed that people are still stopping by, which I greatly appreciate and take as a tremendous compliment. For those who participated in the set trade-off, I'm starting to hear of sets trickling in. If you haven't received your cards yet, you should soon.

Thanks again and enjoy the baseball trade deadline.

Lady Death Sketch Card Series Coming from 5finity

Today 5finity announced they'd be producing a sketch card series based on the buxom comic book character Lady Death.

Lady Death is a creation of Brian Pulido. She rose to prominence in the 1990s as one of the major indie comic characters. I haven't read any of the comics as I felt dirty taking one up to the counter to buy so I'm not sure if it's like a copy of Playboy where some say they buy it for the stellar writing or if it's all about where one's eyes naturally go to on the character.

This isn't the first time Lady Death has appeared in comics. In fact, she's been featured in ten sets since 1994, most coming from Comic Images.

Lady Death Sketch Card Series is scheduled for release on January 15, 2011.

Road Trip

The moving truck will be here shortly. In a few days I'll have a new short-term place to live while my wife and I look for a house. It's very exciting, busy and scary all at once. I'm still without a job but things are looking good on that front. Without getting into boring details, it was time for us to move back to family and that's on the beautiful west coast (high taxes and all).

I'll likely (continue to) be quiet for a while yet as we settle and get organized in our new digs. In the meantime, if you want to see a bit of Canada, a friend of mine who is joining us on our journey West has started a travel blog to document the trip. I told him that I'd pass on the link. So here it is. He's just starting out on this blogging thing so be a little patient.

Thanks to all who participated in the 24-Hour Trade Off. All packages have been sent and I have a cramp in my hand from not only addressing all of the packages but redoing it for the customs forms and then redoing it again for one that was sent differently.

So take care and see everyone shortly.

The 24-Hour Complete Set Trade-Off

So, a big move is upcoming on Tuesday. My family and I are heading back to British Columbia because we LOVE to pay more taxes ; ) And Alberta's like one big 'ole Old West town that you see in the movies and Waxoholic and his scantily-clad game-day minions have run me out of the province. The house is well on its way to being packed but I need to free up a little space. Namely, I'd love to pass on some extra non-sport base sets that I've amassed.

Here's the details:

• The sets I have are listed below.
• If you see one or several that give you at least a passing interest, please email me with your mailing address to lay claim. You must email me as I might not catch a comment.
• I send you the cards.
• If you wish, you could send me something from my wantlist. Or you could just send me an email to let me know that you got them all right. All I'm hoping for, if anything, is a little something to off-set some of the shipping costs. But it must be sent after you receive your set(s).This way you can try something a little different without any real commitment. Allen and Ginter may be the bee`s knees and the cat`s pajamas all rolled into one, but does the brand have lenticular Wiggle cards like Pee Wee`s PlayhouseÉ I didn`t think so.
• This offer is available for about 24 hours. After that I`m sealing up the box.
• Set claims will be taken on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Here`s the sets I`ve got:

Alf: Series One - 47 cards, 22 Bouillabaseball (Topps, 1987)
Alias: Season Two - 81 cards (Inkworks, 2003)
Alias: Season Three - 81 (Inkworks, 2004) (2)
Beverly Hills 90210 Stickers - 11 cards (Topps, 1991)
Charmed: Connections - 72 cards (Inkworks, 2004)
Dexter - 72 cards (Breygent, 2009)
Disneyland: 50th Anniversary - 60 cards (no SPs) (Upper Deck, 2005)
Donkey Kong - 32 cards (Topps, 1982) (2)
Farscape: Season Three - 72 cards (Rittenhouse Archives, 2002)
Heroes: Volume 2 Foil - 10 cards (Topps, 2008)
Hollywood Zombies - 72 cards (Topps, 2008)
Indiana Jones Heritage - 90 cards (Topps, 2008)
It's a Wonderful Life - 72 cards (DuoCards, 1996)
King Kong - 80 cards (Topps, 2005)
Lord of the Rings: Evolution - 72 cards (Topps, 2006) (9)
Lord of the Rings: Evolution Stained Glass - 10 cards (Topps, 2006)
Marvel: The Silver Age - 100 cards (Fleer/SkyBox, 1998)
The Mummy Returns - 81 cards (Inkworks, 2001)
New Kids on the Block - 88 cards (Topps, 1989)
The Osbournes - 72 cards (Inkworks, 2002) (3)
The Outer Limits: Sex, Cyborgs and Science Fiction - 81 cards (Rittenhouse Archives, 2003)
Pee Wee's Playhouse - 33 cards (Topps, 1988) (3)
Pee Wee's Playhouse Tattoos - 12 sheets (Topps, 1988) (2)
Pee Wee's Playhouse Wiggle Cards (Lenticular) - 12 cards (Topps, 1988) (2)
The Sopranos: Season One - 72 cards (Inkworks, 2005) (2)
Scooby-Doo: Mysteries and Monsters Stickers - 9 cards (Inkworks, 2003)
The Spirit - 72 cards (Inkworks, 2008) (3)
Star Wars Heritage - 120 cards (Topps, 2004) (2)
Star Wars Heritage Etched-Foil (Wave 1) - 6 cards (Topps, 2004) (2)
Superman Returns - 90 cards (Topps, 2006) (2)
Terminator 2: Judgement Day Filmcardz - 72 cards (Artbox, 2003) (2)
Terminator 2: Judgement Day Filmcardz CyberEtch - 24 cards (Artbox, 2003)
Twilight Zone: Shadows and Substance (Rittenhouse Archives, 2002)
Veronica Mars: Season One - 72 cards (Inkworks, 2006)
Wacky Package: All-New Series 3 - 55 cards (Topps, 2006)
Wacky Package: All-New Series 3 Foil Stickers - 10 cards (Topps, 2006)
Weird Wheels - 55 Stickers (Topps, 1980)

Famous Fabrics Second Edition Offers First Card Featuring LeBron James, Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh (Sort Of)

Less than 24 hours after LeBron James made the emotionless announcement that he was signing with the Miami Heat to join Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh, Creative Cardboard Concepts has announced they'll have a triple jersey card of the trio in Famous Fabrics Second Edition.

Famous Fabrics Second Edition Triple Memorabilia LeBron James, Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh

 Because Famous Fabrics is not a licensed set, it does not feature player photos.

Here's a link to the final checklist. The set consists of 5,000 one-pack boxes.

Topps Steven Strasburg #661 to Be Included in Packs of 2010 Topps Update

Beckett just posted an early preview of 2010 Topps Update Baseball. They mention that the 661 card on the checklist will indeed be Steven Strasburg. The card will feature a different photo of the one on the Million Card Giveaway, however I think it should go a ways in satisfying the many ticked off folks who thought the promotion was about old cards, not gimmicked ones that take a spot in our regular sets.

Source: Beckett

Also of note are player drawn sketch cards done by Major Leaguers, kind of like Topps did with 2009 Topps WWE. However, judging by the sample Topps provided, I think I'd rather have them stick to the game on the field.

Source: Beckett

Topps Statement Regarding Allen and Ginter Strasburg Minis

Topps has confirmed that the 2010 Allen and Ginter Steven Strasburg mini card is not short printed. However, they also said there is only the one basic version of the card, so no black borders or A&G backs. There's also no regular-sized version of the card either.

The real insanity will begin when folks start uncovering autograph redemptions. There's currently one on eBay and the price is approaching that magical $1000 mark.

To further clear things up (or to fuel the Strasburg fire), the pitcher's minis and autographs are available in both hobby and retail packs.

2010 Topps Allen and Ginter Mini 401. Steven Strasburg