My First UEFA Game

Last night I went to a UEFA Europa League match between Kharkov Metalist and Newcastle United here in Kharkov. It was my first UEFA game and it was an experience to remember to say the least if for no other reason than the experience of being in the stands with 40,000 yelling Ukrainians.  I made a video of some of the chants the home town fans were shouting through the match.  



The game got me in the football mood so I finally ripped a pack of my Ukrainian stickers and I'll have the results tomorrow.

I Finally Found Some Sports Cards In Ukraine

Since moving here to Ukraine in September I've found exactly zero packs of sports cards or stickers in my travels.  I've been surprised by this because last summer my home city of Kharkiv was a host site for the 2012 Euro Cup and you can still find memorabilia from the event in stores...but still no cards to be found.

That was until today.

I've been traveling around the middle part of Ukraine [south of Kiev] this week and was just randomly walking by a small store in Zhytomyr and there right in front of me were Panini 2012/2013 UEFA Champions League booklets and stickers.

So I finally get to rip open some semi-new products.  I'm going to saver this as who knows when I'll find some more of these so I'll wait until I'm back home and really write some detailed posts [and learn something about the Champions League as I know next to nothing about soccer]. 

Interesting [To Me] Andy Pafko Item On eBay

Back in 2011, I wrote about visiting Andy Pafko Athletic Park in his hometown of Boyceville, WI.  It was a lot of fun and a nice little crowning glory to my Andy Pafko collection.  I was reminded of this trip recently when a unique item showed up on eBay.  It is a poster for the ceremony that dedicated the park to Andy.  The seller is asking $29.99 for it which is about $10 more than I would pay for it and unfortunately there isn't a "make an offer" option on it currently.

A Pack To Be Named Later: 1981 Fleer Baseball Stickers

Today [well, back in September] I ripped a pack of my favorite baseball sticker pack: 1981 Fleer Stickers.

My 1966 Topps Batman Pickups From Black Friday

The road to somewhere is paved with good intentions and one of my key intentions while I was back in America was to scan as many cards as I could to set me up for posts for majority of 2013.  It didn't turn out so well as I only scanned about a quarter of what I hoped to and most of those cards where from my Black Friday purchases on COMC.com.  

My overall favorites are these Batman cards from 1966 that were put out by Topps.  Not only are they the first trading cards featuring Batman these were also drawn by Norman Saunders who famously drew the original Mars Attacks cards.  Because these cards were so popular Topps issued five sets of them [including one with live action shots from the TV show].  The key difference between the sets was in the color of the Batman logo on the front of each card.  The four cards that I picked up were the "Black Bat" versions which are the most common.  The other main types are the "A" and "B" Series:   

A Series = Red Bat on the front of the card and a red border

B Series = Blue Bat on the front of the card and a blue border

Black Bat Series = Black Bat on the front of the card and no additional border 

This first card is my overall favorite...even with the pencil marks.  

#4 Midnight Conference

As you would guess, the cards featuring The Joker are the most expensive but this great Riddler was dirt cheap.  

#45 Trap For The Riddler

These last two don't feature a well established villain and so you can find these for just a few dollars.

#48 Monstrous Illusion

#54 Whirpool

The New Topps Website

I received a message from Topps today letting me know that they are going to have a super awesome new web page next week.  I would say I'm excited but I'm sure it will be infrequently updated and just overall not very helpful for card collectors as their webpage currently is now.  Beyond that though, I'm troubled that "Trading Cards" is the fourth thing listed of the four categories that the web site will be focused on.  Am I making something out of nothing?