Be A Winner, Enter My Sketch Card Contest

Be a winner like the 1987 Minnesota Twins and enter my Mars Attacks Heritage Sketch Card Giveaway.  To enter, go to the original post HERE and leave a comment:

While I was at my mother-in-law's house she asked, "Matt would you like this old Wheaties box?"...um, yes please!

The Contest Four Months In The Making: Win A 1-Of-1 Sketch Card

For the background on this contest, read more HERE.  

Basically if you want this card leave me a comment on this post by the end of the day on Friday, December 21st.  I already have a bunch of entries from the first time I tried to give away this card so if you find your name/username below then you are already entered into the contest.

Greg Zakwin
The Dimwit
Fuji
Richard Nebe Jr.
unclemoe
Skroeker
Mr. Kelsey
Jeff Wilk
Kazi
Alfredo Ortega
Matt Pederson
Commishbob
Captain Canuck
Mini Groover
The Diamond King
Skott Jimenez
Play At The Plate
Jasonvorhees
Jafronius
Robert Frongillo
Hackenbush
Spankee
Sean Woods

If you've got a blog or Twitter account I would really appreciate any promotion you can give the contest.  Remember to enter by the end of the day on Friday and good luck! If you

The Lawrence Public Library Banned Book Week Cards

Earlier this year, you may have seen an article floating around the interwebs [or on Beckett News] about a short series of cards honoring some of the most famous banned books put out by the Lawrence Public Library in my home of Lawrence, Kansas.  Packs of cards are $7 [and you can still buy a pack if you are interested] and they feature original art honoring a selection from Banned Book Week.  I bought mine when the cards first came out but with me being out of the country I've only been able to enjoy them until now.

Checklist [the cards are not numbered on the card itself]:
1984 by George Orwell [Art by Dale Martin]
Animal Farm by George Orwell [Art by Barry Fitzgerald]
The Call of the Wild by Jack London [Art by Heather Martin]
Little Red Riding Hood [Art by Lindsey Yankey]
On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin [Art by Ashton Martin]
Rabbit, Run by John Updike [Art by Webmocker]
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut [Art by Kent Smith]

   

My Favorite Teams Are The Packers And Whoever Is Playing The Bears

It's was so nice to be able to watch the Packers play and even more sweet that they beat the Bears to win the NFC North.  If they don't already have the NFC Champs shirts out at our local Shopko I'm sure they will be there this week.  They will fit nicely with these other shelves of Packers items: 

During the COMC.com Black Friday sales I picked up a lot of dirt cheap Packers relics.  I'm happy to have picked up this Ryan Grant jersey with Ryan being back on the Packers for the remainder of the season.  I hope he's able to help them make another run deep into the playoffs.

2009 Donruss Elite #1 Ryan Grant Jersey Relic #060/299

The other three relics of of slightly older players including the Packers all-time leading rusher Ahman Green.  Every time I hear announcers mention "Green" on the Packers after a run referencing Alex Green my mind always goes to Ahman Green.  My other Packers cards aren't easily accessible at the moment but I think these are my first Robert Ferguson and Javon Walker relics.  

2005 Donruss Elite #CB-22 Javon Walker Jersey Relic #095/175

2005 Donruss Throwback Threads #58 Robert Ferguson Jersey Relic

2004 Fleer Sweet Sigs #EZK/AG Ahman Green Jersey Relic

Opening Some Packs Of Doctor Who Figurines

I'm back in American for a few weeks and so I'm taking advantage by ripping as many of the awesome products I've missed in the past four months...[cue the crickets]...so instead of products made by Topps and Panini I turn to some Doctor Who Micro-Figurines. I bough these for $3.99 each from BAM! which is a bookstore chain that took over a lot of the recently closed Borders stores.  These are imported from England and put out by a company called Character Building.

Obviously I'm looking for a Dalek or an Ood.  Without being familiar with this particular product I assumed that these were like The Avengers figures I opened this past summer.  Instead, when you open these packs you get figures that resemble Lego characters and so it's a little unclear what you've received until you put everything together.

 My characters were a Cyberman [which is probably the second most important villain in the Doctor Who series] and a blue masked Sontaran.  While these are pretty neat I think I will try to track down an Ood on eBay and pass on any more packs.

UPDATE: This Is About As Close As You Can Get To An Andy Pafko One-Of-One

UPDATE:  After years of card blogging, I should know by now to never make a declarative statement about something without doing enough research.  Thanks for AdamE of Thoughts and Sox he reminded me that Andy has cards in the recent TriStar SignaCuts products and does in fact have at least one 1-of-1 floating around out there.  Thanks Adam!  

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

As best I can tell from my research on my master checklist of Andy Pafko cards, there have been no one-of-one cards produced.  Meaning, no printing plates have been issued or super rare cut autographs and so if I was to ever get this sort of super rare Pafko card I would have to turn to something like this card:

This color variation card from the 1949 Leaf set is missing blue ink from the card.  Consequently, Andy's Cubs hat is gray and the background is bright yellow instead of green.  This card is available on eBay currently for $7,900 and the auction house that is selling claims that they have only seen one other variation from the 1949 set that is missing the blue color [and that card wasn't of Pafko].

I have two copies of Andy's Leaf rookie card and you can see the difference the lack of blue ink makes on the card.  As I learned in elementary school, yellow + blue = green!  And now that my attention is drawn to it I had never really noticed how bright yellow Andy's bat was in the card.

1949 Leaf #125 Andy Pafko

Wil Wheaton Runs Into A Problem eBay Card Sellers Face Often

Wil Wheaton recently auctioned off one of his personally autographed Star Trek: The Next Generation cards for charity and got bids of over a thousand dollars for it!  But then he experienced a common problem faced by the eBay card seller: the non-payer!  Here are the tweets of the situation:

The Andrew Luck Superfractor...Let's Have A Look

The Andrew Luck Chrome Superfractor has been found...let's have a look:

UPDATE: Certainly The Most Expensive Star Trek Card Ever

UPDATE:  In the end, the card went for $1035...or about 2.5 RGIII autographs...or a really nice graded Andy Pafko 1952 Topps #1.  

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wil Wheaton, who played Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation and appears regularly as himself on The Big Bang Theory, recently cleaned out his garage and found a lot of amazing things that have been unseen for more than a decade.  Among his treasures he unearthed was an autographed card that he had signed for a fan in he made an error while signing.  When he crossed the "t" in his name he went across most of his face and so to correct the error he drew a pair of sunglasses on Wesley and wrote "YEEAAHH!!" across the top.  The card ended up not being used and collected dust until now.  After Wheaton tweeted a picture of the card there was a huge amount of interest in it and so he decided to list the item on eBay and give the precedes to the Pasadena Humane Society and SPCA.  

The card in question is from the 1992 Star Trek: The Next Generation set put out by Impel.  Wesley is card #12 and you can find a copy for 50 cents.  As I write this now, the card is at a price of nearly $1000 with a day and a half left.  I'll update the post with the final results in a couple days.