Join Beckett Sports Card Monthly‘s Bryan Hornbeck and Chris Olds as they rip into boxes of 2013 Upper Deck Iron Man 3 in this latest edition of Box Busters.

What will they find inside? Watch and find out …

By Chris Olds | Beckett Sports Card Monthly Editor

Our annual look at art’s place in the sports card and memorabilia world is coming in the next issue of Beckett Sports Card Monthly and, simply put, we want to know what you think about many a thing in the hobby.

From non-sports and sketch cards to Diamond Kings, toys, photography and more, there’s plenty to explore in the world of art as it’s seen on our collectibles.

Here’s the latest 20 Questions where we seek your take on it all.

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See the rest of the questions … after the jump.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

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Chris Olds is the editor of Beckett Sports Card Monthly magazine. Have a comment, question or idea? Send an email to him at colds@beckett.com. Follow him on Twitter by clicking here.

By Susan Lulgjuraj | Beckett Sports Card Monthly Editor

Some of Marvel Comics’ most intense battles are coming to cards.

Rittenhouse Archives is putting together set featuring infamous fights between characters such as Thor and Loki or Iron Man against Mandarin in its upcoming Marvel Greatest Battles Trading Cards.

The set will feature 90 base cards, but collectors will definitely be on the lookout for the sketch cards. Each box will contain a two-card sketch puzzle with a different character on each side. When put together, you get one amazing scene drawn by one of the artists for the set.

Battle scenes include Spider-Man vs. Green Goblin, Hulk vs. Wolverine, Spider-Man vs. Venom, Rogue vs. Ms. Marvel, Fantastic Four vs. Dr. Doom, Captain America vs. Red Skull and more.

Artists include Mick Glebe, Matt Glebe, Rhiannon Owens, Matias Streb, Pablo Marcos, Anthony Tan, Andy Price, Cezar Razek, Charles Hall, John Haun, Joshua Flower, Studio Mia, Jon Hughes, Adam Cline, Joe Pekar and others.

There is an assortment of chase cards in each box
- Avengers vs. X-Men (1:12 packs)
- Battle Scars (1:12)
- Gold Plastic (1:24)
- Red parallel (1:3)
- Gold parallel (1:24, numbered to 75)

Those who get cards in volume are in for a treat from Rittenhouse. The company is offering three levels of incentives.

A six-case order will yield a two-card puzzle sketch featuring the work of Meghan Hetrik.
Nine-case order: a four-card puzzle sketch featuring the work of Warren Martinek
18-case order: 10 two-card sketch puzzles, red parallel set, and Avengers vs. X-Men, Battle Scars and Gold Plastic chase sets.

Each box costs $120 from Rittenhouse’s website and is scheduled to be released April 17.

The base set consists of 90 foil-embossed cards. Each hobby box will contain 24 five-card packs.

Susan Lulgjuraj is an editor of Beckett Sports Card Monthly. You can email her here with questions, comments or ideas. Follow her on Twitter here. Follow Beckett Media on Facebook.

Join Beckett Sports Card Monthly‘s Chris Olds as he rips into a hobby box of 2000 Topps X-Men The Movie cards in this latest retro edition of Box Busters.

What will he find inside beyond one autograph and memorabilia card? Watch and find out …

Need a checklist or Online Price Guide for this product? Click here.

Join Beckett Sports Card Monthly‘s Bryan Hornbeck and Chris Olds as they rip into a box of 2012 Marvel Premier from Upper Deck in this latest edition of Box Busters.

What will they find inside? Watch and find out …

By Susan Lulgjuraj | Beckett Sports Card Monthly Editor

Rittenhouse is looking at Marvel Comics from the early 1970s to the mid-80s. Comic fans recognize this period as the Bronze Age.

This time for Marvel Comics involved all of the big superheroes, but it seemed as though their lives got infinitely harder with darker plots than previously seen.

The Bronze Age marks the rise of Wolverine, a new team of X-Men, and first appearances for Punisher and Swamp Thing.

Marvel Bronze Age Trading Cards will feature an 81-card set highlight key comics, characters and events between 1970-1985.

Collectors can find one color sketch card in every box that could be from a variety of artists (see a full list on Rittenhouse’s site). Rittenhouse is included hot boxes in cases where there will be randomly inserted sketch card puzzles.

There are other chase elements in Marvel Bronze Age including a Classic Heroes insert set.

Boxes will have 24 five-card packs and will cost $84 a box. The set comes out Dec. 5.

Check out the gallery of selected sketch cards.

Susan Lulgjuraj is an editor of Beckett Sports Card Monthly. You can email her here with questions, comments or ideas. Follow her on Twitter here.

By Susan Lulgjuraj | Beckett Sports Card Monthly Editor

The time is almost here for Upper Deck’s Marvel Premier.

A $200 a pack product with just four cards.

One of the cards in the pack is a multi-hinged sketch card. Sketch cards are popular in non-sports cards, especially among cards dedicated to comics or graphic novels.

Related post: Upper Deck announces Marvel Premier

Collectors get a chance to own original art from popular artists of even those who have had a hand in creating the originals.

Upper Deck released preview images of the multi-panel sketch cards. Some of them include three or pieces, which gives the artist a bigger canvas. The artists seemed to have taken advantage of the new dimensions by adding more detail in backgrounds of cards and simply being able to tell a story.

Take a look at these preview images and let us know what you think.

Susan Lulgjuraj is the editor of Beckett Sports Card Monthly magazine. You can email Susan here with ideas, comments and questions. Follow her on Twitter here.

By Chris Olds | Beckett Sports Card Monthly Editor

Oscar-nominated actor Michael Clarke Duncan died Monday in a Los Angeles hospital while receiving treatment for a July heart attack. He was 54.

A star with more than 90 credited television and movie roles in his career, collectors might best remember him as Lucius Washington in Talladega Nights with Will Ferrell or as Kingpin in Daredevil alongside Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner. His breakthrough role, which won him a Best Supporting Actor nomination at the Academy Awards, came in The Green Mile, a Stephen King adaptation that starred Tom Hanks.

On cardboard, Duncan did not sign for the 2003 Topps Daredevil set, nor were there any Talladega Nights cards for NASCAR fans, leaving his only certified autographs in the Beckett.com database to come from the 2012 Pop Century set made by Leaf. There, collectors can find 16 different certified autograph cards. (Need a checklist or OPG? Click here.)

Before the news, these cards typically sold for $50 or less.

A few of the 6-foot-5, 300-pound actor’s other notable roles came in Armageddon, The Scorpion King, Planet of the Apes and Sin City. While he never signed for sets for any of his movies, he does appear on cards in a few releases, though specific cards are not checklisted in the Beckett.com database.

Chris Olds is the editor of Beckett Sports Card Monthly magazine. Have a comment, question or idea? Send an email to him at colds@beckett.com. Follow him on Twitter by clicking here.

By Susan Lulgjuraj | Contributing Editor

Upper Deck is changing the way it does entertainment cards – at least for one release.

The company is releasing a $200 pack product, Marvel Premier, which is set to be released on October 2, UD announced today at the San Diego Comic-Con.

This probably comes as a surprise for many comic fans. Perhaps they’re used to shelling out lots of money for rare and old comic books.

However, Upper Deck thinks it has something special on its hands with a set that will feature many of Marvel’s top artists.

One card in the pack will be a premium base card on thick card stock numbered to just 99. There are 50 cards in the base set. The second card will be a 1/1 sketch card from a Marvel artist.

The third is one of the more unique cards in the product. It could be a dual-, triple- or quadruple-hinged sketch card. UD said it will be releasing images of these cards soon.

The fourth card could be one of three types: “Classic Corners” card (which pays homage to some of the greatest Marvel comic corners of all-time in a premium patch), a Shadowbox card or an “Emotion” booklet card by artists Jason Adams and NAR!

“For years we’ve seen die-hard Marvel fans pay big bucks for some of the premium inserts in our Marvel trading card lines,” said Jason Brenner, Upper Deck’s Marvel brand manager in a press release. “This is our first opportunity to provide them with a set of Marvel cards that are all high-end insert quality. This is certainly not a product for everyone which is why we are not making very much of it, but the fans it is targeted for are going to love it!”

Susan Lulgjuraj is a contributing editor for Beckett Media. You can email Susan here. Follow her on Twitter here.

Join Beckett Media’s Bryan Hornbeck and Andrew Tolentino as they rip into a box of 2012 Upper Deck Marvel Super Hero Squad gaming cards in this latest edition of Box Busters.

What will they find inside? Watch and find out …