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Friday, September 29, 2017

My town has one full
service post office and they only have three windows, usually only one manned, so I have a feeling if I
were to walk in with this stack of outgoing mail there would be some very unhappy
people waiting behind me so I decided to ship half of the stack today and the other half on Monday.

This isn’t everything,
this is part eBay sales, trades and contest winners. I
still have two more contest winner’s envelopes I need to get addresses for
(JediJeff and Richard Nebe Jr.) plus I am waiting for some items for Jeff’s Door
#3 prize.

Thursday, September 28, 2017

I think one of the more unique cards to collect are test proof
cards, cards that were printed out prior to the printing of the cards to be packed out to ensure everything is
aligned and proper coloring. Most of the cards were destroyed, they were often
incomplete so there was no reason to keep them around, but they are actually
pretty easy to find.

Given they aren’t like a packed out card so some collectors
may not like having them in their collection but I do. I find that
having a collection that includes cards with blank backs, missing foil or text
or are just cut to an odd size makes me feel like I have something different to
offer with my collection.

A couple of recent pickups are from the 1999 Stadium Club
Never Compromise insert set. The first card has a blank back and is missing the
foil (top) while the second card is significantly oversized, blank back, no foil and
with some of the printer’s codes along the bottom (Below).

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Tom/The Angels In Order has selected the 1993 Ted Williams Buck Leonard autograph with the 1st pickCaptain Canuck has selected the Dave Prowse Darth Vader autograph with the 2nd pick.Brett Alan has selected the 2004 Topps All-Time Fan Favorites Monte Irvin autograph with the 3rd pick.JediJeff has selected the Door #3 gambler prize with the 4th pick.Matt has selected the 1982 Fleer Cal Ripken Jr rookie card with the 5th pick.I do not have Richard Nebe Jr.'s email address to let him know that he is getting the 2009-10 Panini National Treasure Mikan printing plate. If anyone has his email address or if Richard sees this, please contact me using the email address in the right column.

The way that this draft will work is after I post the winners and the prizes the winners will be able to select which prize they would like. So, the first winner will select their prize, the second winner will select their prize from the remaining pool, winner three will select their prize from the remaining pools, winner four, five and six will continue the process.

Tuesday, September 26, 2017

EDIT- Tom/The Angels In Order has selected the 1993 Ted Williams Buck Leonard autograph with the 1st pickCaptain Canuck has selected the Dave Prowse Darth Vader autograph with the 2nd pick.I don't have Brett Alan's email address to contact him for the #3 pick, if anyone has it or if Brett sees this please send me an email using the link in the right column.

The prize winners have
been selected and now is time for the draft. I have decided to include a total
of 6 prizes, the first 4 I have already posted but I am adding a 2009-10 Panini
National Treasures George Mikan Cyan Printing Plate and a “Door #3” prize,
which is unknown.

The way that this draft
will work is after I post the winners and the prizes the winners will be able
to select which prize they would like. So, the first winner will select their
prize, the second winner will select their prize from the remaining pool,
winner three will select their prize from the remaining pools, winner four, five
and six will continue the process.

Now on to the winners:

First pick winner:

The Angels In Order (Sorry, I accidently called you Angels in the Outfield in the video)

Second pick winner:

Captain Canuck

Third pick winner:

Brett Alan

Fourth pick winner:

JediJeff

Fifth pick winner:

Matt from Diamond
Jesters

Sixth pick winner:

Richard Nebe Jr.

The four remaining prizes:

1982 Fleer Cal Ripken
Jr. rookie card

2004 Topps All-Time Fan
Favorite Monte Irvin

2009-10 Panini National Treasures
George Mikan Cyan Printing Plate

Door #3 prize- This
prize is unknown but will include at least 2 cards, may be autographs, relics,
vintage, rookie cards, non-sports or other. The cards will be collectible (so
no base cards, dupes or a dump of junk wax), but other than that you will have to be
a gambler to find out.

I will reach out to each
of the winners to let them know that they have won and we will then begin the
draft. Once all winners have made their selection and I have gotten their
address I will mail out the card in bubble mailers over the next week,

Monday, September 25, 2017

Thank you all for joining my 2,000-post contest. There
are 33 people who joined and I tonight I will be running the list through
random.org and I will post the winners tomorrow.

The process will be the top sport on the first
randomizer will select what they want from the prize pool, the first person on
the second randomizer will select what they want from the remaining prizes and
so on until all the prizes have been selected.

Sunday, September 24, 2017

My #2000 post contest
ends tonight at 11:59 pm PST. If you have not posted that you are interested in
taking part of the contest you can go to the original poste <HERE> and
say you are interested in the comments section.

EDIT- 5:00 PM PST
We just hit 31 people signing up for the contest so here is another prize. If we get to 40 people signing up I will add another prize.

This David Prowse Darth Vader autograph is now part of the prize pool along with the 3 prizes I originally posted.

Saturday, September 23, 2017

Last night my daughter’s
choir was part of a group of middle school choirs who sung the national anthem
at the Diamondback’s game. She got in free and parents got tickets at half
price (first level outfield bleachers) through the school.

The game was a barn
burner of a game and ended with the Diamondbacks winning 13-11 and it seemed
like everyone hit a homerun except for the one guy I wanted to see hit a homer,
Giancarlo Stanton. There were 7 homeruns (3 Miami and 4 Arizona) with Miami’s
Marcell Ozuna knocking two and Arizona’s Chris Iannetta also knocking two with
one of those being a grand slam in the 6th that put the D-Backs
ahead 12-9. It was definitely an entertaining game that I got to enjoy with my
baby girl.

Wallet card Griffey made
a couple of appearances but because we were sitting in the outfield I didn't get the best pictures, here he is with Stanton at bat.

Friday, September 22, 2017

This month’s Art Gallery display comes from the amazing
artist Jay Pangan III; who has worked with most of the major companies from
Topps to Leaf, Cryptozoic and Unstoppable Cards. His work is amazing and I
would say his work is up there with some of the best illustrators.

Pangan has a couple of different styles with his pencil
sketches being the most common but I am a much bigger fan of his color work.
The card is of President Ford and his wife Betty and is done in ink and colored
pencil for the 2014 SBay Super Break release. SBay is best known for putting
anything and everything in their high end boxes with some running well over
$5,000 each. The sketch cards were just an extra card and was not included in
the item count in each box.

I picked up the card because any time I can get a pretty
cool President card for under $7 I am happy to include it in my collection.

Thursday, September 21, 2017

It has taken 8 years, 3
months and 12 days but today is my 2,000th post on Pack War.

My first post was on
June 6, 2009 and I started with a simple post about some ideas that I had for
the blog, I honestly did not even consider the future of the blog. When I started
I had been reading a couple of blogs regularly and I liked the way that
collectors were interacting with each other and I wanted to be able to share my
story too.

I hadn’t even realized I
was this close to 2,000 posts until I was writing up a couple of Question Day
posts that I save as drafts and looked over and saw I was at 1,991 published
posts and I started wondering if I should just post #2,000 and not make a
mention about it, just add it at the end of a regular post or should I do
something special? I decided to do
something, a giveaway. Nothing big but I wanted to make it special.

Here is what you need to
do to be part of the giveaway:

1.Post
here by Sunday 9/24/17 at 11:59 pm PST

That’s it

The prizes:

1982 Fleer Cal Ripken
Jr. rookie card

1993 Ted Williams Buck
Leonard autograph

2004 Topps All-Time Fan
Favorites Monte Irvin autograph

Awarding of the prizes:

When the contest closes on
Sunday 9/24/17 at 11:59pm PST I will run the entire list through Random.org three times with
the #1 person on each randomization winning a prize.

The person in the #1
position on the first randomization gets first choice

The person in the #1
position on the second randomization gets the second choice

The person in the #1
position on the third randomization gets the remaining card

Additional:

If it reaches 50 people
joining I will add at least 2 additional prizes in which case I will follow the
same rules with the awarding of the prizes but with two additional
randomizations with the person in the #1 position on each of those
randomizations being the winner of a prize.

I close with thanking everyone who has visited Pack War and read my posts. I really do appreciate it.

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

Forty years ago on September 20, 1977
during the 5th season of Happy Days in the episode Hollywood: Part 3,
Fonzie jumped a shark during a water skiing competition. The episode did extremely
well but many years later during a discussion of television shows on the
decline, some college students at the University of Michigan, including John
Hein, brought up this specific episode as the one where Happy Days was no
longer original and fresh.

The term “jump the shark” was born as a description of when
something popular begins to no longer be popular. Typically, the expression is used
for television or movie sequels but can be used in describing almost anything
in pop culture, among other things collecting too.

I know today is not a
normal question day but what sets would you say jumped the shark? This isn’t
limited to modern sets but any set/series/product ever made.

I know there are more,
but the only one coming to mind is 2011 Topps Triple Threads when they created
manufactured relics for John Henry, Leif Ericson and Pecos Bill. Not only did
that bring attention to Topps rehashing Triple Threads designs over and over
but unleashed manufactured relics as a “hit” in products.

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

Before companies took variations to the extreme you had to
have a keen eye to catch the differences and in 1991 Donruss did some slight
differences with the borders for the factory sets. Packed out cards had one
border and factory sets had a different border, the cards were the same
otherwise.

You wouldn’t think that a card that costs a quarter could
cause so much frustration to a buyer. The biggest problem is that most sellers
don’t notice the difference and don’t list the card as a factory set/border
variation card or even worse are the sellers that just grab an image and toss
it up assuming all the cards are the same.

Monday, September 18, 2017

A simple question today, I am just wondering what other people do in regards to feedback on eBay. As the seller I leave feedback as soon as the buyer pays and as a buyer I leave feedback after I get the item and have a chance to look at it closely.

Friday, September 15, 2017

There is a web site called Sketch Collectors.com that allows
you to load up your sketch card collection for others to see. I had joined the
site a while back but never added anything until recently.

I scanned in all of my cards, the fronts only, researched
all of the artists and posted them all on the site. When I was done I found that
I have 99 sketch cards, I never sat down to count so I figured it would be
somewhere around 50 cards or so. This makes sketch cards my fourth largest PC
behind Griffey, Bader & Buhner.

I haven’t purchased a sketch card in many months so I am not
sure when card #100 will enter my collection but I will make sure to post the accomplishment when it happens.

Since I didn’t know I had 99 cards I wasn’t paying attention
to the order that I picked up the cards but this is one of my last couple of cards, an ACEO
from Buckshot. I like his style and this Joker is just badass. His official sketch
cards tend to run $25 or more so I am fine with getting a personal sketch card.
I am guessing this was a commission card and seeing that he has his MySpace
listed I will say it was probably a decade or more ago that this card was done.

Thursday, September 14, 2017

This morning I started another series of spinal cortisone
injections and I am in a lot of pain so today is a one-card post. Each series
is three rounds of injections over a five-week period, so I got one round today
and will go back in two weeks and then the final round will be two weeks after
that. Each round is 3-5 individual injections, today was three injections. This
is my 6th series in a little over 3 years with a spinal surgery in the summer of 2015 so this has become a part of my life that while temporarily painful gives
me some relief from the spinal degeneration pain for a couple of weeks
afterwards.

The card of the day

I am not a fan of most manufactured relics and I keep away
from them usually but when it comes to Griffey I will often open my mind when
building a collection. I picked this up in July and it is pretty cool, the card
is extremely heavy because the medallion is metal and I like that so I decided
to add manufactured relics to my Griffey Want List.

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Normally I don’t consider buying custom cards that I can
make but this one is an exception. The card is the cover of the PS4 The Show 17
game but it is a refractor so I thought it was cool. While I could make a card
sized cover of the game I have never made a refractor custom card, I haven’t
even tried yet, so that is how I ended up with this one in my collection.
Eventually I would like to pick up one of the code cards too, I don’t play the
game so if I ever come across a used code card I would be happy.

Tuesday, September 12, 2017

I have cards listed on COMC and I keep up with the pricing, changing them about once a week depending on the market. I have a 2015 Contenders autograph card listed at $1.15, there is only one card cheaper. I got an offer last night of .63 cents, I countered with .85 cents, probably more than fair and considering I paid .60 cents to have it processed by COMC so I was being reasonable. The guy came back with .63 cents again.

Who they hell does that? I mean come up a penny or two but to come back with the same offer I just countered what did he expect? Needless to say I just declined it outright, I probably should have come back with $1.25 just to be an ass.

Monday, September 11, 2017

It has been 16 years and the world has changed greatly since 9/11/01 but one thing will never pass and that is the respectful memory of those who lost their lives that day and the families that have been affected.

Friday, September 8, 2017

With
having quite a few medical bills (I am digging out of this hole slowly) I have cut my collecting purchases to a
minimum and it has led me to re-evaluate my collection. Over the past few years
I have made some changes, both large and small, and I have found that
eliminating some of the things I collected made life easier. Since I began the
blog in 2009 I have stopped working on set building, cut out a large portion of
my non-discretionary purchases, stopped buying boxes/blasters/packs, donated a
couple thousand cards and decided to set up primary and secondary collecting
goals to keep my collection focused.

I
think one thing that has helped greatly was that I set up a Want List in a Word
document and if a card is not on that list I normally don’t purchase it. The
list is fluid and does change, often, when I purchase a card or find a new card
with the occasionally deduction. This list has helped me stay focused on my
primary and secondary collections, which have also changed over the year.

The
last few days I have been considering the future of my collection, it has been
on my mind the last few months really. I had started “secret” PCs, these are
personal collections I have not posted much about for whatever reason. For example,
my Mariner Moose collection, I picked up a card or two here and there and
before I realized it I had became a super collector purely by accident. Over the
last year I had started PCing the 2013 Chrome Marshawn Lynch rainbow, Sheamus
and Becky Lynch (Irish wrestlers), UFC Conor McGregor (Irish fighter), comic
characters Rocket Raccoon, Ant-Man and Radioactive Man (The Simpsons guy).

I just
sat down and whittled down my Want List and removed many of those secret PC
collections. I will keep what I already have in binders or whatever is
currently sitting in my COMC account but I removed any cards from the list that I was on the fence about. It
felt good to delete card after card, shortening my list.

My
primary PC is now only three athletes; Ken Griffey Jr., Jay Buhner and Ryan
Bader in addition to Manfred von Richthofen and sketch cards. Vintage cards
(sports and non-sports), movie/comic autographs & relics, Mariner Moose and
Rocket Raccoon are all secondary and everything else on my Want List is now “only
if it is real cheap” type of cards. This means Steve Largent, Steve Kerr, Randy
Couture, Seattle teams and University of Arizona team cards become a third
level of collecting.

My
Wants List is sitting at 2,049 cards but 1,517 are my Griffey wants, 172 Buhner
wants and 93 Ryan Bader wants. So out of that 2,049 total cards 1,782 cards are
for my PC guys so I think I have gotten the list under control. Plus with Bader moving to Bellator MMA Topps will not be including him in any future UFC releases which helps keep my list limited to just his past cards.

In
the future, I would also like to work out some trades to clear out some of the
cards I have sitting in 5,000-ct boxes. I have roughly 20,000 cards in my
collection and probably 15,000 are players, teams and sets that I do not
collect. I am selling what I can on eBay and I also just sent my first
submission to COMC so that clears out some cards but I have plenty more to go.

Since I can not close a post this long without showing something on cardboard here you go, a recent Griffey pickup:

Wednesday, September 6, 2017

This
month’s VCoM comes from one of Topps earliest oddball sets, the 1948 Topps
Magic release. The 1948 set was made up of 252 cards from sports and non-sports
categories and were quite unique in the fact that the card fronts were blank
and you got to “develop” the card yourself in a similar fashion to Polaroid film.

After
you opened your pack of Hocus Bubble Gum you took your tiny, stamp sized card
and dipped it in water. You then laid the wrapper across the blank front of the
card, pressed for 10 seconds and then lifted and voila the card had a picture.

This
Billy the Kid card is card #7 on the category “S” checklist, which is the
Figures of the Wild West portion of the set. Each category was given a letter
or number designation and then the cards were numbered based upon that specific
checklist. Category “A” checklist was basketball players, category “B” was
football players and this ran through Category “T" for general sports athletes.
You never knew who you got until you opened the pack but some of the big names
in the set were Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Charles Lindberg, George Patton and this
guy Billy the Kid.

These
cards are very condition sensitive with many of the images fading over the
years but my card is very bold and the details are very clear. I really am not
a fan of mini cards and these cards are not much bigger than a US stamp but I
will make an exception from time to time and this is one of those exceptions.

Tuesday, September 5, 2017

A one card post today, a Simpsons glow-in-the-dark
card. I always enjoy adding new Simpsons cards to my collection and even better
when they glow. I believe there are four different glow-in-the-dark cards in
the 1993 Skybox Simpsons set and this one I picked up for under $1 plus
shipping.

Monday, September 4, 2017

Mine was in either late 2006 or
early 2007 when I bought my White Whale 1933 Goudey Lou Gehrig #92 for just
under $1,200. Sadly, this is the same White Whale that I sold earlier this
year to help with medical bills.

Friday, September 1, 2017

One of my favorite
movies is Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. The movie was made in 1954 and takes
place in 1586 in a small farming village that is plagued by bandits. The farmers meet Kambei, a ronin, and they ask
him for help with the bandits and eventually agrees. He collects together a group
of six other ronin and spoiler, they defeat the bandits but four of the samurai
die during the ensuing battles.

Kurosawa’s is considered
one of the top directors and his films are so popular that script writers and
directors have emulated his success many times over the past 60+ years. If the
plot seems familiar then you have probably seen The Magnificent Seven or Battle
Beyond The Stars. If not, then maybe Pixar A Bug’s Life? George Lucas said he even
based the original Star Wars trilogy on three of Kurosawa’s movies and there are
similarities between Seven Samurai and A New Hope, seven unassuming characters (Luke,
Leia, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Han Solo, Chewbacca, C-3PO and R2-D2) meet up to fight
the Empire.

This set is a custom set
that I found from a guy in the U.K. and in all it cost less than $10 for the
set including shipping. The cards are pretty lightweight cardboard stock but I think he did a nice job with the front design and a nice write up on the card backs.

About Me

I started collecting as a kid but by the time I hit my teens my interests were elsewhere. I returned to the hobby in 1992, just in time to see the junk wax era go in to full swing. My collecting interests have changed over the past 25 years and I prefer to focus on just a couple of players.

My collection is very specific now because I want to keep it controlled and organized, I now focus mainly on my Ken Griffey Jr. & Jay Buhner collections.