08.31
Join Beckett Media’s Chris Olds and Bryan Hornbeck as they rip into a box of 2011 The Complete Star Trek: The Next Generation First Series cards from Rittenhouse Archives in this latest edition of Box Busters.
What four autographs will they find inside? Watch and find out …
08.31
Beckett Baseball‘s Chris Olds shows you one scam that recently got a Beckett employee when he bought a box at retail.
Inside his box of 2010 Topps Allen & Ginter baseball cards he finds … 1991 Stadium Club.
Needless to say, it didn’t come this way from Topps.
Watch it so it doesn’t happen to you …
08.30
By Chris Olds | Beckett Baseball Editor
Topps unveiled its first high-end product of the 2012 baseball card season Tuesday evening, and it’s the newest edition of the product that might have been the runaway hit of the high-end offerings this year.
It’s Topps Tribute.
Back for its fourth straight year, Tribute will include an autograph or Relic card in every $50 pack with every six-pack box of this hobby-only line including three on-card autographs. Every autograph and Relic card will be limited to 99 or fewer copies, and there will be a parallel card also found in every pack when it arrives on Feb. 7.
The base set will consist of 100 cards mixed between active and retired players with seven parallels and printing plates for each card, while seven Relic insert sets and an additional set of autograph cards — Tribute to the Stars (signed on stickers) will also be found.
Read More »
08.30
By Andrew Tolentino | Hockey Editor
Tomorrow is Aug. 31.
And?
As any puck-inclined collector can tell you, tomorrow is a special day for the hockey hobby. Wednesday marks the official release date for Upper Deck‘s yearly opus — 2010-11 The Cup.
Built for whale-chasers and spectators alike, the manufacturer’s top-of-the-line brand needs no introduction. Since its inception, it’s been a self-fueled steam engine — barreling toward the hobby year after year with some of the most coveted cards of the season.
In the coming days, we’ll surely see box breaking, case cracking and other online banter about the latest incarnation, but we wanted to give readers one last chance to comment on what they’ve seen so far. Read More »
08.30
By Chris Olds | Beckett Baseball Editor
The postseason will be here before we know it, meaning that the MLB awards voting will be, too, but there’s another vote that’s perhaps as red-hot as the trio of Boston Red Sox on the cover of the latest issue of Beckett Baseball.
And that’s the voting for “The Showdown” taking place in advance of the arrival of the Nicktoons MLB video game, which you can have a chance to win a copy of if you pick up the magazine thanks to 2K Sports — or if you keep reading. (Click the link above for a look at our recent sneak peek at the game.)
As part of the video game’s promotion — and an overall push by MLB to get kids more involved with the game and its merchandise (sound familiar, card collectors?) — fans online can vote until Sept. 7 on which 11 MLB stars they want to see in The Showdown as well as which park and, of course, which Nicktoons they want to see take them on in a simulated game on Sept. 13, the day the game arrives.
The current voting (click here) looks like a who’s who of MLB All-Stars right now with Albert Pujols, Jose Bautista and Roy Halladay in the mix but it’s also a world where the done-for-the-year Buster Posey can play injury-free, too. (He’s the leading vote-getter at catcher.)
How can you win a copy of the game? Pick up the magazine for instructions on how to win one — and leave a comment below to a chance to win another.
We’ll give one of our games to one of you at random once they arrive.
Chris Olds is the editor of Beckett Basketball magazine. Have a comment, question or idea? Send an email to him at colds@beckett.com. Follow him on Twitter by clicking here.
08.29
Posted on August 29, 2011 – 8:35 am | Author: chrisolds
Baseball | baseball cards, Bowman, Donruss, featured, Fleer, Leaf, MLB, Score, Sportflics, Topps, Upper Deck | Comments (55)
This Jim Kavourias 2002 Bowman card just barely gets Chris Olds' nod as perhaps the worst single card ever for some rather-forced Photoshop work. What's yours?
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By Chris Olds | Baseball Editor
You may have seen the Your Turn page in nearly every issue of Beckett Baseball where we showcase stuff that is all about you. You can see your comments on hobby topics and get chances to win cool stuff in contests all on one page.
Here’s the next Your Turn question for the November issue:
What one single (real) card is, in your mind, the worst ever made — and why? (BASEBALL ONLY)
Please include your name and location with your comment below — we will only run items with that information. A selection of your answers will appear in the next issue along with our next batch of contests and giveaways found only in the magazine.
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My three leading candidates — though there would be others if given more time — are:
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08.26
By Chris Olds | Beckett Basketball Editor | Commentary
The silence is deafening … and it says plenty so far.
While the NFL’s lockout robbed us of some meaningless training camp reports while the football card printing presses kept on a rolling with all the veterans and the newest rookies, the NBA is quite a different story.
How different? There have been zero officially licensed 2011-12 NBA products offered for pre-sale by Panini America, the league’s exclusive trading card licensee.
That shouldn’t be surprising considering that NBA.com has stripped players of their ability to appear on their own profile pages but it might be to some. It’s looking like the labor woes also could mean that collectors – fans – could be stripped of those same players’ appearances on NBA-approved basketball cards, too.
It’s all a bit circumstantial right now, obviously, but consider that a nearly 12 months ago, Prestige arrived on Sept. 29, 2010. It’s almost September. One should also consider that some of us were eagerly awaiting the return of NBA Hoops, a long-running staple of the basketball card market’s revival in 1989 and into the 1990s that hasn’t been around recently. That nostalgia kick housed in mylar had been teased for a late-September release.
Read More »
