What is the square root of "my?"

Only Vernand Morency knows for sure...

AMERICA

FUCK YEAH

On-card autos vs. Sticker autos

I will sum up my feelings on this issue with a couple pictures and some more words.


Here's a 2005 Topps Marquise Hill autograph. And I hate to use the card of the dead guy as an example here, but it was the best one to use for aesthetic purposes, so what can you do. But just look at this thing. The sticker is all crooked, it doesn't really fit the design of the card, and the ink itself is all screwed up, with the autograph getting cut off by the restricting border of the sticker itself. And look at that autograph. I tried to find something that looked like a letter in there, but none could be found. But let's give the guy the benefit of the doubt here. Here's another copy of this card I found on Ebay:


And another, that also showcases the most spectacular Ebay salesmanship photography ever:


These cards, to me, illustrate two things: The guy clearly started out signing the stickers with a fully-formed "MH" signature, and while that is sort of lazy, it's at least something identifiable. What happened here in all likelihood is that someone threw a big ass sheet of stickers in front of the guy, and the guy started going to town on them. And did you ever misbehave in school badly enough to to get a "here, copy this a billion times" punishment? And how did that work out? The first few looked perfect, but as boredom, frustration, the urge to hurry, and physical soreness set in, the copies toward the end got sloppy. And that same process led to the vague scribble on the sticker of the card I pulled. Second, take a look at that sticker on the second card, coming from the same year's Topps Total set. It's the exact same sticker. (and the exact same photo, too, which is a whole different kind of card company laziness) Probably from the same sticker sheet that the regular Topps version came from, too. And that shows just how impersonal and meaningless a sticker auto can be. The player has no idea what kind of card this is going on, where it's going on the card, what it looks like, how expensive a product it's going into, nothing. Why should a guy take extra care to have a nice looking autograph when writing his name a hundred times on a shiny silver sheet? What's that, you say? Maybe Marquise Hill just had a lazy autograph? Well, take a look at this other Ebay find, toward the right side of the helmet:

Why look, it's an actual signature where he actually wrote his name, lined up just right to look nice on somebody's helmet. Hell, he even added the extra touch of class that "Geaux Tigers!" adds. See, that's what happens when a guy knows what he's signing.
Now, take a look at this beauty:

Now, that's a much nicer-looking autographed card. Not the neatest handwriting, but hey, all his autographs look like that, so it probably wasn't the result of a guy's hand turning into a twisted claw from signing a thousand stickers in ten minutes. He signed his whole name, added the jersey number inscription, and lined it up real nice on the card, seemingly even working it around the Topps Pristine logo on the bottom. Because, you see, he knew what he was signing. I mean, which would you take more pride in? The signing of a sticker or the signing of a chromed-up card with a Pro Bowl jersey swatch glued to it that even someone who knew nothing about cards would automatically know was something special? And with the sticker autos, the player himself never actually touched the card. He just wrote his name a bunch of times, followed by some intern slapping them on a huge stack of cards, possibly while cursing God in the process. But with this one, man, he actually held that card in his hand and looked at it with his own two eyes. Do you understand what I am saying here? Olin Kreutz actually picked this card up before.

The hand that broke Fred Miller's jaw actually held this card.

And that sort of amazing awesomeness simply cannot be had with a sticker auto.

Armageddon is Nigh.

Upper Deck trying to buy Topps
Man, this would not be good at all. Even if Press Pass, SAGE, and Donruss/Playoff all merged, Upper Deck would still end up with basically a monopoly, and they'd end up forcing the other guys out sooner or later. So if this happens, get ready for more and more sets with packs that have a triple-digit suggested retail price, where the best stuff is all redemption cards that take three years for the company to respond to, often with, "sorry, we never actually made the Reggie Bush card you were supposed to get, so here's this Broderick Bunkley as a replacement."

Crazy to think that there was a time when there were about twenty companies making cards, and soon, we could be down to four, with only two real major companies. Seriously, this could be the beginning of the end.

One of the Smartest Ideas in Football Trading Card History

Wild Card "Wild Stripes"



In addition to being one of the smartest ideas anyone ever had in trading cards, these were also probably the most underrated. By itself, the idea seems almost stupid, honestly. Get a card that looks like the guy's normal card, but it has a stripe with a number on it, in values of 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, or 1,000. And if you wish, you can mail that card in, and recieve however many of that card is represented by the number on the stripe. So if you got a Joe Montana with a 1,000 stripe, you could mail it in and get 1,000 of the regular version of that card. Okay, that is kind of dumb, because who would want a thousand copies of one card? Ah, but you're missing the big picture here. Although their values decreased by the time Wild Card declared bankruptcy and cards could no longer be redeemed, that one Montana 1,000 was worth - in one card - as much a 1,000 of the normal version, and even today that Montana is still worth about about $200, which is amazing, considering that this was in an era where a card worth $2.50 was still something to get excited about. A card made greatly more valuable by a simple design change to the base card... Why, that sounds an awful lot like something done in -



EVERY SINGLE FUCKING TRADING CARD BRAND BEING PRODUCED TODAY.
Yup, Wild Stripe were the first ever parallel set of inserts ever made. (Overall, parallel sets could go back to some of those, "oops, we ran out of red ink, let's use blue" sets from the 20s or whatever, and Topps Tiffany was around in the 80s, but the old stuff was more of an error, and Tiffany was more of a separate set kind of deal, like Topps Chrome or Score Select now) Within just a couple years, parallels would be a standard thing (Topps Gold, Skybox Impact Colors, Upper Deck Electric, Topps Finest Refractors, Stadium Club First Day of Production, Score Artist's Proofs, Wild Card Superchrome, Pro Set Power Gold, etc.) and today, there seems to be at least six million different parallels in every set, ranging from a different color border to cards with jersey swatches and autographed cards made from the actual printing plates. Parallels are a total hobby juggernaut now, and it's all thanks to Wild Card.

I'll do more of these eventually, too, but as you can see, they're not as fun or as easy to do as the Stupid Idea ones, so they won't be as big.

Some of the Stupidest Ideas in Football Trading Card History

1993 Wild Card Regional Inserts

Hey, did you live in South Bend, Indiana, where Jerome Bettis's alma mater, Notre Dame, is located? Or did you live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he'd have the finest moments of his career?



Well, then you couldn't get this card.
During their short existence, Wild Card lived up to their name, coming up with all sorts of crazy-ass ideas. Sometimes, they had good ones, like their trademark Wild Stripes, which not only meant that you could conceivably find a card worth over $100 in any pack of any product they made, but was also the first ever parallel insert, which is something included in basically every card set made today. But then, they also had bad ideas, and this one in 1993 was one of their worst. One of the things Wild Card was known for was to have a ton of inserts, which was another part of what made them so cool, after the stripes and other redemption cards. But in 1993, they decided to up the number from a ton to a metric fuck-ton. Okay, that's not so bad. But they also decided to split them up by region. As in states in the western U.S. only got packs that contained inserts from western division teams, central states only got central division inserts, etc. This was already a stupid-assed idea in that it cut two-thirds of the country out of certain cards. For example, if you lived in California, you had no hope of getting a special insert of players like Barry Sanders, Emmit Smith, or big time rookies like Drew Bledsoe. Add the complication of the retarded way the NFL split up the divisions at the time, and it got worse. Like if you were crazy and/or stupid enough to be a Phoenix (that's what they were called still) Cardinals fan, those cards were only way the hell over on the East Coast. One possible motivation for this was the idea that hardcore collectors and dealers would spend three times as much money, taking the mail order route to bring in boxes from other regions. But seriously, who would be that stupid?



Oh yeah, me. But fuck you guys, I got special cards of Jerome Bettis AND Drew Bledsoe.

Topps Finest Protectors:



Well, on one hand, chrome cards are prone to getting scuffed up, so it is a good idea to stick an extra layer of plastic over the fronts to keep that from happening. But... Um... Hey Topps? You know, Score did the same thing with the Select Certified set one year, but here's the thing: That extra plastic stuff that's all static-clinged to the front? Theirs didn't have writing on it. You know, you guys could have just left a note on the outside of the pack or something to tell us about the glory of the Finest Protector, instead of making the cards look like shit. What we're left with is this eyesore, and we can't peel the thing off, because then, the card won't be worth anything anymore. Good job, guys.

Pacific Card Supials:

Hey look, I got a special insert card of Michael Westbrook!



Ah, but I didn't get the entire card, you see.



See, this card is an idea Pacific first got somewhere in the late 1990s called a (get ready for this) "Card Supial." You know, like "marsupial," like a kangaroo, with a pocket and all. Real clever. So you'd get a card that would be relatively hard to find, but to get the full effect, you'd have to get another card, which would also be hard to find, and slide it into that little slit cut in the back. So if you only found the little one, you'd have this tiny card that would be easy to lose, and once you found two of them, you risked damage to both cards by squeezing it in that pocket, which left little room on either side. But it's not just the stupidity of this idea that gets me; it's the sheer randomness of it all. What could possibly lead to an idea like the Card Supial? Well, after much deliberation, I have found the answer:


WEED.
Lots and lots of weed. Think about it. Imagine this statement in your head, which is where stuff tends to be imagined: "Okay, here's an idea. We're gonna make these cards, right? Except they'll be like TWO cards. And one is all tiny and goes INSIDE the other card!" Any sane person would have then imagined this statement being immediately followed by a "pppffffttttt" sound and a dude trying desperately not bust out laughing, while going "riiiight on, duuuuuuuude," which would then be followed by everyone in the room laughing for like three minutes, which would then be followed by one of them pointing to the first guy and going "you are so HIGH, dude," and more group laughter. This is the secret of the Pacific Trading Card Company.

Early Collector's Edge Serial Numbers



When Collector's Edge first burst onto the scene in 1992, they were a company with big ideas. First of all, they had one of the best ideas ever in that instead of paper, they would make the cards out of plastic, ensuring that rounded off corners would be a thing of the past. (Unfortunately, this idea didn't catch on, and even Edge themselves eventually quit using plastic card stock around '97 or so) Second of all, in the wake of perceived high print runs sucking any value out of brands like Pacific and Pro Set, they were hell-bent on keeping the print runs low, including ad campaigns focusing on how they shred the printing plates, ensuring only one printing. Also, in a bold, crazy-ass move, each card would be given a unique serial number. On one hand, this sounds like a great idea to emphasize the low print runs they talked about in the magazine ads. But you see, something having a serial number doesn't mean that there isn't many of that particular item. Hell, a one dollar bill has a serial number, and there are hundreds of those. So instead of making it seem as though each Collector's Edge card was a unique treasure, these serial numbers had a very different effect:



They let you know that there were ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND of the card you had just gotten. Granted, that was probably way less than what just about any other set at the time had, but notice that I said "probably." That's because all the other brands were smart enough to keep the available numbers a secret. And that's why the '92 Collector's Edge Emmitt Smith that there are only a hundred thousand of is only worth a buck more than the 1992 Pinnacle one that there are like seventy trillion of.

1996 Pacific "The Zone" Inserts:



Like I've alluded to many times here, the 90s were a time of crazy-ass ideas, and one of the most popular was the die-cut card. They were different and neat-looking, but they've been mostly abandoned by now, because they usually just meant more corners to get all screwed up. But like I said, they looked cool, so I can't consider die-cut cards in general to be a stupid idea. But these. Oh man, these fucking things. Just in case you don't understand what's going on with these, take a look at that card up there. Those white areas above the arched Robert Brooks picture aren't part of the card; they're the white underside of the lid of my scanner. Okay. Now, with that in mind, look at the white areas above the black/gold foil Pacific Logo and underneath the yellow goal posts. Yeah, that's just my scanner, too. So what you have here is an entire set of fairly rare, fairly valuable (that Robert Brooks is worth 4 bucks, and he's not exactly Emmitt Smith or Brett Favre in terms of card value) set of cards, where the middle of the card is seriously about a centimeter across. And I understand that as card collectors over the age of five, we're expected to handle these damn things with some level of care, but god damn, just sliding one of those things into a top-loader without destroying the thing in horrible ways is like wrestling with the fucking devil. What the hell was Pacific thinking when they designed these? Oh, that's right:


"Duuuude, these new The Zone cards are kinda... Wait... Whoa, your head is HUGE."

Phone Cards



This was another early 90s "innovation" that was a pretty good idea until you thought about it for more than thirty seconds. You see, back before everyone on Earth had a cell phone and could call Guam for three cents a minute, people without actual long distance could by phone cards. These cards had either a set number of minutes or amount of money on them, and you could dial whatever number was on the card to use that until the card had been used up, at which point you tossed it and bought a new card. So somebody (I can't remember who was first, but I'm thinking it was either Classic or Upper Deck) got the idea of combining them with sports cards. On one hand this was cool, because it gave the cards a "real" value, as opposed to some imaginary one you looked up in a price guide. So finding that one Emmitt Smith phone card with $1500 worth of long distance on it was basically like finding a $1500 trading card. Ah, but that's where the conflict begins: Phone cards had expiration dates on them. So what do you do? Scratch off the silvery stuff on the back to expose the PIN number and use that $1500 of phone calls to Guam? Or just say fuck Guam and preserve the card, but lose that "real" value once the card expires? The aforementioned '95 Classic $1500 Emmitt Smith is worth $500 now, a net loss of $1000 in potential calls to grandma. It's a moot point anyway, I suppose, because they were hard as hell to find, and if you did find one, so chances are, it was going to be a $1-5 one, which basically meant like a minute and a half of talk time, tops. Which is also stupid.

1997 Playoff Absolute Chip Shots




These were a creative idea for an insert in packs of '97 Absolute that were unique in that they weren't cards at all. They were plastic poker chips with NFL players on them, and that's almost not a stupid idea. If they had waited a few years for the Texas Hold 'Em craze to take off, they could have really had something. Also, if they hadn't decided to make a one-per-pack insert into a set that included about two hundred chips, which meant that your chances of getting some shitty backup tight end were just as great as landing a superstar, and it would be effectively impossible for any sane person to collect a complete set, because even if you had the outlandish luck of never finding a duplicate, you'd still need to buy about two hundred packs of something that carried a price of about three bucks a pack. But the biggest reason these were fucking retarded was simple: They were fucking-ass poker chips. They were thick pieces of plastic packed in with thin pieces of cardboard. They made round indentations on whichever card was unfortunate enough to be directly underneath them in a pack, and they did the same to any other card they were around if you bothered to integrate them into your collection in any meaningful way. And you can't throw them away, because they're worth like seventy-five cents, and just having one means you're a dork who can't bear to throw something away that's "collectible" anyway. Chip Shots ruined my life, and if they had been around when I was younger, I'm certain that they would have raped my childhood.

I'll think of more of these eventually. Pacific existed as a company for more than a decade, so I've got plenty of material to work with.

Review: 1991 Fleer

"Well the way I used to love you baby; baby, that's the way I hate you now." - B.B. King

Well, before I start this trip down Memory Lane, I'd just like you to take a good, close look at that pack of cards up there. 53 cards for a buck ninety-nine. Holy fucking fuck. Today, $1.99 gets you six cards of something shitty. Back in 1991, it got you FIFTY THREE CARDS... Of something shitty.

In 1991, much like 1990, the first new cards of the season that we came into contact with were the new Fleer set. And riding high on fumes from the previous year's set, I decided before I even opened the pack that this would by MY set for the year. I'd buy it, and buy it, and buy it, until I had the full set, inserts and all. The problem was, the things were horrid. The colors were dull, the design was boring, (is that Times New Roman?) and what the Christ was up with with all the green? Topps had put out an all-green set in 1986, and I don't care if there was a zillion-dollar Jerry Rice or semi-rookies of all those USFL guys, that set was ugly as hell, too. But at least in '86, it looked like they were at least trying. This was just... Green box, white box, blah.

The card backs were almost decent, with a nice-sized headshot and graphics beyond colored boxes, but the dull green just ruined it again. But as far as boring card design goes, these might have been the ugliest cards I ever saw. Of course, as far as overall ugliness goes, the title would probably go to one of those nine thousand "let's see how much gimmicky bullshit we can cram onto a card" sets Pacific put out every year that eventually put them out of business, but that's a tale for another day. But yeah, the base card set sucked.

There were also some other subsets, like one for League Leaders and a nearly-identical one for "Hitters," which as you could have guessed, were some of the top defensive players. Buy yeah, those sucked ass, too. Rookies? Did Fleer possibly learn the lesson from 1990 and include more than four? Well, yeah. Ten of the fuckers. Yes, just ten. But surely, they'd be good right? Well, it's the 1991 draft class, so obviously no, but they'd at least have players people thought would be good, like first-rounders and stuff, right? Well... Russell Maryland was the first overall pick, and eventually made a Pro Bowl or two, so that'll do. Kenny Walker never amounted to much in the NFL, but he was deaf, and a big story as a result, so everyone wanted his cards. Derrick Walker was a sixth-round tight end, making his inclusion somewhat inexplicable, but he had a relatively productive career, starting most of the time. Nick Bell was an actual hot rookie card for a while, before fizzling out like all the other non-Favres of 1991. Eric Bienemy was a superstar at Colorado, and had a decent little NFL career. Okay, those will do, but then, it gets bad. Mike Dumas was a career journeyman who had a staggering seven interceptions in eight years. Derek Russell, a fourth round pick, had a decent year in 1993, but might as well have not existed otherwise. Okay, those two weren't horrible, but after the bad, it goes straight down to ugly, though. Michael Stonebreaker, a ninth round pick, only played in 18 games in four years, and wasn't in the NFL for two of those. But he did a helluva lot better than eighth round pick Patrick Tyrance and Motherfucking Eleventh round pick Chris Smith, neither of whom ever playing a single down in the NFL. Holy Christmas Jew, what the fuck were they thinking when they decided on those guys? "Okay, we got Maryland, Bell, and Bienemy... Should we put in Eric Turner, Herman Moore, or maybe that Favre guy? Eh, screw the first two rounds! PAT FUCKING TYRANCE! YEEEEAAAAAAHHHH!" Seriously, what the hell.


After the base set, things get a little better, though. The Fleer All Pro insert set returned, with us still being too ignorant of the way things were to understand that they were almost worthless, so they were still awesome. And making things way more awesome for me was that with four guys represented, (Neal Anderson, Mike Singletary, Mark Carrier, and Mark Bortz) my Bears had more players in the set than any other team, edging the three that the Bills and 49ers contributed. Hells yeah. A new addition, though, was the Pro Visions insert set, borrowing a design from '91 Fleer baseball, and featuring crazy-ass paintings of nine of the top dudes in the NFL. They were harder to find than All Pros, so we had way bigger boners for these than anything else in the '91 Fleer set, but it turns out that they were usually like thirty cents apiece, just like the All Pros. But hey, the Singletary looked like he was burning in hell, so there was at least a surrealism bonus there.


1991 Fleer fucked me, man, and it fucked me hard. I spent so much money on pack after pack of those things, trying to complete the set, and despite the coolness of the All Pros and Pro Visions, it was all a big, steaming pile of dog crap. And dog crap from a dog I didn't like, even. Nowadays, the full 432-card set runs you about eight bucks, at an average of about two cents a card. In 1991, that same eight bucks would get you four jumbo packs, totaling 212 cards. That's roughly four cents a card. So even with the price of a pack being insanely cheap compared to today, in the sixteen years that have passed, not only did these not skyrocket in value, but they're worth half the original retail price. Nice job, guys, seriously.