1999 Topps Star Wars Episode 1 Widevision Series 2

Greetings!

Well, I wasn't able to do a double post, but that does not matter as it's enough to get us past 200 posts for 2011, which is good enough for me!  Hopefully we can get to 200 posts for 2012 as well, as I'm sure there are still many packs out there to open up.

I posted some Episode 1 Widevision cards yesterday.  Nowhere on the package did it say it was Series 1.  Is it a surprise that there was a Series 2?

Good thing there wasn't a Series 3; they can't fit a third character on the wrapper.  This is still an 80 card set, with a couple of Chase Card subsets.  Let's see what we get:

#73 – The Menace Of Maul

#16 - Watto (back)

The front of the Watto card is a picture of  Qui-Ron Jinn and Watto in his junkyard.  While the Series 1 cards followed the movie plot, the backs of the Series 2 cards were more on general or behind the scenes information.

#76 – Battle To The Death

#2 - Qui-Ron Jinn

The first few cards in the set were reserved for the major characters in the movie (#1 was a Title Card).  Again, the base cards from Series 1 followed the movie, so there were no base cards there dedicated to the characters.

#66 – Palace Attack

#34 - Courageous Astromech Droid

The cards are glossy and follow the established Topps Widevision format.  Series 1 had red borders while Series 2 has blue borders. 

#3 – Obi-Wan Kenobi

#63 – “Get To Your Ships!”

That's the pack.  Another bummer that I didn't grab one with a Chase card in it.

I hope everyone has fun tonight and that you all have a Happy New Year!  Keep up the great work on the blogs and keep posting here!  Thanks for reading!

2011-12 Pinnacle Hockey

NHL Winter Classic coming up signaling spending Sunday afternoons on NBC watching hockey. Panini unleashes another year of Pinnacle with 8 cards in a pack. When it comes to Pinnacle the designs are usually hit or miss with good photography.

100 - Ville Leino - decent design on the front of the card since all the photo cards printed horizontally. The back have no stats, just talks about the player's highlights.

95 - Justin Williams - good shot of him trying get near the goal hoping to deflect a shot

198 - Criag Anderson - the tried behind the net shot of the goalie still works

156 - James Wisniewski - enforcer known for his hard checks, head shot, taunting Sean Avery, and hotel commercial when he played for Chicago.

258 - Erik Condra - icebreaker card which runs 1:6 packs featuring rookies. I like the "nufex" design making the rookies looking like a future star.

123 - Dustin Brown - awful shot and print of a card just showing his back side. Couldn't Panini pick a better shot of him?

137 - Ryan O'Reilly - must be taken in practice as he's taping up the blade of his stick.

180 - Andrew Ladd - likely wristing the puck

This pack is a miss but I do like the simple design.

1999 Topps Star Wars Episode 1 Widevision

Greetings!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and are looking forward to New Year's festivities.  For me, Christmas seems to come and go very quickly, but that's probably what happens when you have two little boys running around. 

Here's another crawlspace pack.  Those Toys R Us Star Wars repack boxes had a lot of these as filler too.  Here's some Star Wars Episode 1 Widevision cards for you all to enjoy!

Earlier in the 1990's, Topps released the original trilogy in its Widevision format, and they were pretty popular if I remember correctly.  They were released right in the middle of my collecting heyday, so I was all over those cards.  The pain was finding the pages that held 6 cards per page.

This was an 80 card set, with 16 sticker cards and 10 foil insert cards.  Let's see what we got:

#19 – An Emergency Escape

#48 – He’s on the Leader

The cards are glossy and the images are pretty sharp.  The borders used followed the original trilogy's format.  I would have preferred a whole-card image, but at least they are consistent.

#33 – Hit By A Sandstorm (back)

#25 – Bargaining With Watto

The backs have a brief description of the scene on the front.  They also have a second image with a quick summary of that scene as well.  Again, the original trilogy set was set up the same way.

#59 – Judgement Of The Jedi

#78 – The Lightsaber Duel

#23 – Refueling And Repairing

#54 – Qui-Gon And The Jedi Council

That's the pack.  Not a bad set to try to complete.  Too bad the pack I grabbed didn't have any inserts in it.

One more to 200 for the year!  Perhaps a double post is in order.

Thanks for reading!

2005-06 Topps 1952 Style Basketball

With the NBA finally kicking off this week, I thought I'd show off a random basketball pack that I got from my girlfriend as stocking stuffer material. The 1952 Topps baseball design has been rehashed and reused many, many times over the years, but I haven't really been exposed to it in another sport until now.

62 - Kirk Hinrich (Hinrich took over as the Hawks starting point guard last season and set career low marks in points per game and assists per game. He's currently injured.)

36 - Al Jefferson (Jefferson is the focal point of the "rebuild mode" Jazz offense.)

38 - Al Harrington (Harrington comes off the bench these days in Denver.)

102 - Tyson Chandler (Chandler was one of the cap casualties of last year's championship winning Mavericks team. He's with the Knicks now.)

96 - Mehmet Okur (Okur recently was moved to New Jersey where his role is still an uncertain one. This makes five active players out of five in the pack - not bad for a set that's nearly six years old at this point.)

2011 Topps American Pie

Topps puts out another nostalgic set featuring actors, actresses, movies, cars, and other various stuff throughout the decades. Price tag of $2.99 sounds a risk on these cards.

14 - First Instant Camera. Remember Polaroid instant film cameras? Who once owned one? Introduced in 1948 for the holiday season.

6 - Jimmy Stewart. Notice a trend? Best known for his starring role of Christmas classic, "It's a Wonderful Life."

35 - First Corvette Released. A Chevy classic that first appeared in 1953.

121 - John Belushi. It's a foil card of Bluto from Saturday Night Live and Animal House fame.

129 - Saturday Night Fever. To this day I still have not seen the movie.

111 - Pong. The game that started video game trend.

2003 Fleer Transformers Armada

Greetings!

Here's another crawlspace pack...just what you all wanted for Christmas!  I believe this was a $.99 pack in the Target bin, and you all know my love for all things Transformers...here's some 2003 Fleer Transformers Armada!

Five cards per pack, 122 cards in the set, with various inserts.  You can see the full checklist here.

Armada is the first series of the so-called "Unicron Trilogy" (the other series being Energon and Cybertron), because Unicron, the planet-munching Transformer, plays some sort of role through all three series.  The animation and writing is very Japanese.  At this point in the show's overall history, I'm not paying much attention to it.  Here's the pack:

#64 – Smokescreen

#31 – High Wire

I seem to remember some controversy for the Smokescreen character, just because of the name...in the original series, Smokescreen was a race car.  It fit, because Smokescreen's ability in the old show involved blowing smoke out of his tailpipe to confuse and divert the Decepticons.  Here, Smokescreen's a crane.  The name does not fit the character.  Now again, I did not watch the show that closely, so maybe he did distract the Decepticons by puffing smoke out of his tailpipes or something.  Anyway, Hasbro's later use of the name associated it with race cars again, and all is well.

I was planning to show the back of High Wire, but I guess I messed up.  Nothing exciting, though, it's just a brief description of the character.

8 of 10AP - Armada Poster Card / The Star Saber

These cards came 1 in 9 packs.  It is pretty shiny, too bad the scan did not turn out so well. 

8 of 10AP - Armada Poster Card / The Star Saber (back)

#117 – Puzzle:  D / Piece:  6

Here's the back of the Poster Card , for those who are interested.  The 4 puzzles are each made up of 9 cards.

#117 – Puzzle:  D / Piece:  6 (back)

#55 – Skywarp

And here's the back of the Puzzle Card.  Yes, the Puzzle Card I got is part of the same image as the Poster Card.  The Decepticon Skywarp ends the pack...at least he's still a jet here and not a minivan or something.

That's the pack.  Merry Christmas to all; more next week.  Thanks for reading!

2002 Topps Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones

Greetings!

A long time ago, in the same galaxy, the Toys R Us in town used to have large repack theme boxes.  There were Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh boxes, but what caught my attention were the Star Wars boxes.  It was something like ten bucks for 20 packs.  The focus of my purchases were the old Star Wars CCG packs (and if you're all good little boys and girls, I'll get around to posting some of those packs), but they filled out the box with other packs as well, like these...2002 Topps Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones!

According to the interweb, there were 100 base cards, 10 silver foil cards, 8 prismatic cards, and 5 panoramic cards.  They came 7 cards in a pack, and the packs were graced with several characters from the movie (this pack has Jango Fett staring me down).  Let's see what we get:

#77 – The Jedi’s Last Words

#78 - Padme’s Rescue Plan

#60 – Reporting To Mace And Yoda

The front of the card has a scene / behind the scene from the movie and the back has a brief write up of the scene / behind the scene.

#3 of 10 Anakin Skywalker Silver Foil

The Silver Foil has a ratio of 1:2, so not very exciting.  Less exciting is the back, so I didn't even bother to scan it.  It just gave the name of the character and the subset number.  It is shiny, though.

#79 -  The Capture of Kenobi (back)

#47 – Young Heroes In Disguise

#99 – Jedi Tall And Jedi Small

The front of the Kenobi card is the scene where Obi-Wan is suspended in mid-air with Count Dooku interrogating / taunting him.

That's the pack.  The card quality is good, with decent pictures and enough info on the back.  In my younger days, this would definitely be something I would be trying to complete.  Who knows, I may already have the whole set, based on the number of packs they used as filler.  More later...thanks for reading!

2007 Wizards of the Coast Transformers: 3D Battle-Card Game

Greetings!

Here's another pack from the crawlspace.   I remember being curious enough about it to pick a pack up from the Target $0.99 bin.  I am long past my card game phase, but never outgrew my Transformers phase.  We've seen the post on the expansion set Energon Wars, here's the premiere set...Transformers:  3D Battle-Card Game!

You can view more info on the release here, and info on the overall product here.  Alas, I didn't do as a complete of a scan as Colbey did with the Energon Wars set (I didn't get the backs of the character cards), but too late, the pack is back in the crawlspace, and I ain't going back in there until it's time to put all the Christmas stuff away.  Besides, it's scary and dark down there.  Here's what I got:

Here's the token card and the cover of the Game Rules.  Colbey did a good job recapping the rules, so no need to put them here again.

The Autobot I picked up is Mirage, a common card.

The Decepticon I got is Protoform Starscream, an uncommon.  That's good, I guess.  The rare cards are the main characters from the first movie, in case anyone was curious.

That's the pack.  If the voting follows the Energon Wars pack, this will make the Hall of Shame...oh well.  More later...thanks for reading!

2003 Fleer Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Series 1

Greetings!

A couple of weeks ago, I was in the crawlspace getting the Christmas decorations out when I came across several boxes of my non-sports cards.  Looks like I'll have something to add to the site after I'm done with the sports posts.  Anyway, I grabbed a few I knew wasn't on here for scanning and will be posting them for all to enjoy.

Not sure specifically where I got this pack.  I know I didn't buy it, so I believe it was a giveaway at one of the several conventions I went to during my carefree youth.  Good thing too, because it would have sucked if I spent good money on this one.  Here's a pack of 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cards!

By the way, this is the third TMNT set we have on the site, all from Fleer and all from 2003.  Fleer was really milking it back then.

You see the odds of getting a couple of the inserts listed on the pack.  Several interweb searches finally led me to discover that there were 125 cards in the base set.  Here's what I got:

#19 – Donatello:  Weaknesses

#39 - Michelangelo:  Weapon

Not sure if the images are from the cartoon.  I would image the Donatello one was.  I am impressed with the Mikey image.

#122 - Checklist

#19 – Donatello:  Weaknesses (back)

#111 - Puzzle:  C / Piece:  9

Showing you the back of the Donatello card, because, yes, it's a duplicate.  I would have thought that this travesty was a characteristic of the old wax packs, but oh well, at least the pack was free.

Here's the back of the checklist and the Puzzle card, for those who are interested.

Well, that's the pack.  It appeared the set has some potential, if the Mikey artwork as any indication.  My next few posts will have some robots, as well as a Trek to a Galaxy Far, Far Away...

Thanks for reading!

2008 Playoff Absolute Memorabilia

Wasn't 2008 the last year that Donruss/Playoff were in existence?  It's a shame we lost another card manufacturer.  Oh well let's take a look at another cheap-o football card pack.

#131 Julius Jones

I don't mind the top half of the card's design, but the bottom is ugly.  It's 2008 (or least it was) - why is there so much of the gaudy gold foil on the card?

#42 Marion Barber

These Spectrum parallels come in red, blue and black variations.  I have no idea which color is "rarer" since the pack lists no odds.

#33 Kenny Watson

#90 Wes Welker

#48 Tony Scheffler

Shut out from pulling a Panthers card.  Boo.  Anyone want any of these?