It's a Christmas Miracle!

This wrapping paper is simply... Marvelous.

Me. Me posting to the blog is the Christmas miracle. Sorry I've been away so long. It uh... It has been a year. But in catching with the Card Blogger Secret Santa at the last minute, I vowed to our fearless leader Jon that I would at least get my haul on the blog. I had hoped to do more, since I also had a 300 card (precisely 258 of which were for myself) monster COMC haul featuring 30 sketch cards and tons & tons of non-sport & multi-sport items. But of course, I screwed that up pretty quickly. Oh well, maybe next year. January will be another massive shipment that will be mostly major sports cards, so I will need to at least get December's scanned & filed away, even if I don't do anymore bloggin'.

The tin will get lots of non-trading card use..

But anyway! The Secret Santa haul! I only had the time & (not even really the) energy for photos for this post, unfortunately. Getting the post up was the most important thing though, so... Here goes!

Mainly for haulin' art supplies places..

My goodness, Collecting Cutch did such an amazing job with this in every way. The presentation was magnificent, and not cheap. I don't have the box handy, but I believe shipping was something like $8? Then there was the appropriately treasure chest shaped Christmas tin they came in, wrapped in that delightful Marvel Comics wrapping paper at the top of the post. Inside the tin, the cards themselves were even wrapped in small lots. I wish I'd had the money & energy to put that kind of care into mine, tbh. It *felt* like a Christmas gift. So cool!

Now for some cards!

All I could muster was what looked like a pretty typical trade package. I did repurpose a bit of the wrapping paper to partially cover the lot and wrote a lil note of holiday wishes, but it badly pales in comparison. Bryan went all out, and I am so not worthy of that level of effort.

More base Cubs..

As for the package itself, as you can see, there were a handful of random Cubbies. I think I had everything but the Heritage in these first couple pics, but these were mostly filler anyway.

Buntybois..

I think the Bunt cards may be entirely new to me though. I only ever bought a pack or two, and I believe my only Cub was a blue Lester parallel. Anyway, the design is really nice. Floaty ball pics are also cool.

More Buntybois & Schwarbers..

The black & White Schwarber may well go straight to his binder page & stay there. It just looks good. Hendricks could also make it in as temporary filler, at least. I like my single pages to be blingier, but I still don't have much in the way of fancier (#'ed, hits, tougher inserts, etc) stuff of The Professor yet.

Bryzzo..

Finishing the Cub run with a nice blue Walmart blaster parallel of Rizz & one last Bunt of KB. Good stuff. Happy to see there was plenty of useful filler in there. But now onto the meat of the package.

McCutchen!

Before we move on from the baseball, a little McCutchen-y goodness from the supercollector himself. The tree is an on-card painting! And given how thematically on-point everything else in this package was, the thought balloon being on the penny sleeve functions as a nice subtle homage to our host Jon as well. 😁

Brad Utterstrom Prints!

Apologies for the terrible pics on these rad Brad Utterstrom promos & prints. I didn't realize how badly they came out until I transferred them from my phone to the computer.

More promo/prints..

Adequately capturing the sheer quality would've been nigh impossible anyway, I guess. These things belong in a museum. I am making the these two cards available to whoever wants them, however. I like to spread the love around when I feel I've been treated far too kindly anyway, but also, zombie stuff just ain't my thing. And the Wampa should probably be in the hands of a more serious Star Wars fan than myself as well. So go ahead & claim them in the comments & email me your address and I'll send it your way PWE style sometime early next year. One per person. First come, first served.

Last of the prints..

I was initially confizzled as to whether or not this incredible Mickey Mantle and the landscape above were prints or real because this one felt like it had actually been drawn on, but Bryan confirmed they were prints over on the Twitters. It was mainly just so I knew which binder to put them in, because they are rad as heck regardless.

WWE Superstar "The Outlaw" Jane Russell..

Moving away from the art prints but still keepin' it artsy with some Breygent movie posters. They are kinda glittery! I dunno if these are parallels or just base cards or what, since I've never had anything but sketch cards from this run of sets. They're pretty cool though!

That growth on the side of his head ain't messin' around..

And one more for good measure. The hand growing out of ol' Stagger Lee's face is packin' heat! And now you'll never be able see or think about him without the vision of his massive gun-totin' face boil haunting the very depths of your soul ever again! Christmas!

Front..

Back.. 

Heading down the stretch with this AWESOME Carddass (really?) Street Fighter card of underrated G1 (or would it be Gen 2?) combatant Edmond Honda! Gotta find one of these of my girl Chun-Li now.

Thank you so much for sticking with me this long. Now comes the reward for your patience. It's hit time!

Careful Ems, there's a snake in that sand trap!

Outside the top tier names, Goodwin Champions are always pretty cheap hits, so Emily making is an easy choice for a smol budget Secret Santa event like this, but from what I can find, a Jessica Henwick auto would probably more than break the $10 limit all on her own! Aside from her role on GoT, she can also be found in the Star Wars & MCU franchises in somewhat similarly situated roles as pilot Jess "Testor" Pava and Colleen Wing, long saving grace of the lamentable Iron Fist series on Netflix.

If you didn't see why I felt extremely spoiled & felt the need to spread the love around, well...  We haven't even gotten to the sketch cards yet!

Multiple Man by Dave Strong..

First up, one of my fave underutilized X-Men dudes from the early serieseseses of Upper Deck's revival of the ol' Fleer/Skybox Marvel Masterpieces line. This is dated 2008 on the back, which makes this series two or three, I believe. So yeah, it's from a time long before the brand name went high end in the mid-2010s. This is also cool because I'm a huge sucker for multi-character sketches, even when they're just of the same one three times, lol (my favorite amongst my suddenly expansive Wasp sketch card collection is also like that).

Witchblade by Jon Racimo..

And Bobby Lastly but not Bobby Leastly (shoutout to the dude Tom Campbell), we have a Witchblade sketch card. Racimo is on the lower end, and I do have a couple by him from this set already from the massive 57 card lot I picked up a few years back. But I like this one way better than the ones I already had, so this will be the one that gets the binder spot!

That's it! What a haul. Thank you again, Cutchmaster B. You are a legend. I don't know when exactly it will be, but a thank you sketch of your dude has been dialed up in my art queue. May the force

Thanks everyone for stopping by. I hope you have a wonderful holiday & rest of the year, and a pleasant 2020. Live long & prosper/May The Force be with you/May the odds be ever in your favor/etc/so forth.

Until our next...

My Unofficial Goodwin Champions Collection Vol. 5: Goudey Greats!

Time for the final installment in my Goodwin Champions PC series!  This one is all about that Goudey goodness.

CP Munk (look it up)!

Starting things off with my third most expensive card from Goodwin Champions, CM Punk at his most Wolverine-est!  I want to say WolverPunk was right around $9.

Some race car man..

Goudey was Upper Deck's first answer to Topps' Allen & Ginter.  It ran as its own brand from 2007-2009 and it was... mostly good.  Year one were entirely the small square size of original 1930s Goudey, and had a weird duality gimmick to them.  2008 was the best version, though like with any artsy set, there were a few Dick Perez specials.  2009 had a serious flaw in that much of the set looked like horrifying waxy, plasticy abominations of nature, but if you can get past it, it was still as fun a rip as any other.

Later years used the original Goudey/Sport Kings size for minis.  I don't know for sure if they were one-per-pack in 2008, but I vaguely recall them being every other pack in the blaster of 2009 I picked up a few years back.  I dunno though.  I'd love to bust some more of the original run someday, but I haven't come across any since that blaster.

Former Blackhawk great Jeremy Roenick..

Goudey likely would have continued as its own brand had Topps not ruined the entire card industry forevermore by nabbing an exclusive license to lord their boring garbage products over the rest of us with.  Now pretty much every sport except soccer (& maybe hockey still?) are exclusively produced by a single company and, pardon my language, but well... it fucking sucks.

Non-autos? So that's just like inserts then..

Fortunately, UD was eventually able to find a place for the brand within Goodwin Champions line.  I'm not sure, but I might not actually have that Miesha "Flukiest Champion in the History of Sports" Tate anymore.  I might have sent it to the currently hiatusing(?) Raz in the package I sent him in July.  If not, and I can find it, it'll go to him next time.  I think it's fair to say I don't think much of her as a fighter.

One more 2016 insert..

And a 2017..

While I like the simplicity and colorfulness of 2016's Goudey inserts, I love the look of 2017's.  It's better to me in every way.  This looks like it could be the base set design for a standalone Goudey product, and I am feeling it.

So much MMA!

Here it is in autographed form, with professional asskicker Amanda Nunes.  I like that the brand/nameplate and space for the autograph take up considerably less room, and that they used fuller body photographs in this iteration.

Mo' 'Manda..

Finally, an important aspect of the original Upper Deck Goudey run was the Sport Royalty subset, which was a part of the run of shortprints.  As the name implies, it featured stars from other sports.  I tried to complete the 2008 set, but I didn't make it too far.

Presidents, certain base legends, black & white photos, and Heads Up cards made up the rest of the shortprint run over the brand's lifespan, but I think Sport Royalty may have been the only consistent SP'd subset across all three years.  You could also pull the SPs in mini form in all the various hues of parallel.  I'm not sure about relics, but I'm certain it was possible to pull autos of at least some of the subjects.

That puts a bow on this series for now.  But once September's shipment arrives and gets scanned & edited into bite-sized chunks, I will likely have the means to produce at least two more installments in this series.  So look forward to that.  Or don't.  The flake-out is inevitable, after all.  Thanks for stopping by though.  I really do appreciate it.

Until our next...

My Unofficial Goodwin Champions Collection Vol. 2: Red vs. Blue

2016 Royal Red Aly Raisman & Stefanie Johnson..

The second part of my unofficial Goodwin Champions PC series is all about the parallels.  There isn't much extra going on with the base set, but 2016 & 2017 featured photo variations, shortprinted black & white high numbers, and the red and blue parallels I'm here to give you the good word on today.  So strap in because, the formatting is about to get hella wonky! 😆

Royal Blue Xue Chen, Carla Esparza, & Wu Minxia..

Told ya!  There wasn't much rhyme or reason to the direction of how I scanned things, and there won't be much rhyme or reason to where they go in this post.

Paige Selenski horizontal...

...and vertical!

Because of my editorial laziness, I don't even have enough blues to switch the colors on & off.  Oh well...

Royal Blue Quincy Davis B&W & color, and Eugenie Bouchard..

I do like the blues a lot more than the reds though.  The reds are actually kind of painful to look at, while the blues are much more welcoming, despite still being a fairly bright shade.  Also, Eugenie is in Allen & Ginter this year, after being in Goodwin Champions in 2017.  Topps got scooped!

Royal Red Kaylyn Kyle & Melissa Baker..

But why are they all women, you seem to be asking.  And to that I would answer, why not?

Vertical Aly & Melissa..

Most of these ladies are world class women of sport, but Melissa Baker is a model.  Thus is the mystery and wonder of Goodwin Champions.

CLB..

You can find all manner of athletes, celebrities, historical figures, politicians, random animals... It's one of those sets, and I am grateful for its delightfully strange and borderline incoherent existence.

2016 Royal Red Haley Anderson..

I hope to have a supplemental installment of a page worth of the aforementioned random animals to show you somewhere on down the line.  Athletic beauties and exotic animals are pretty much all anyone need in life, tbh.

2017 Royal Blue Felice Herrig..

One last blue to close it out, and that does it for episode two of my Goodwin Champions collections series.  Thanks for stopping by!

Until our next...

My Unofficial Goodwin Champions PC Vol. 1: Older Hits

2009 Goodwin Champions Evelyn Ng Autograph..

After picking up things on COMC here & there over the years, it finally clicked with me sometime last year just how incredibly cheaply you can score a lot of great hits from Upper Deck's long-running Goodwin Champions brand.  Not only that, many of the subjects are hard (and usually much more expensive), if not impossible, to find anywhere else.

I've accumulated enough from the brand for it to almost qualify as a collection unto itself, and I am going to treat it as such here.  So strap in and enjoy.  This is the first in an at least five part series documenting everything I have scanned from the Upper Deck Goodwin Champions brand in my collection so far.

Most of what I've accumulated so far is from 2016 & 2017, but there are a few things from older sets, and that's what the first post will be about.  I know I have a blaster or two and a bunch of older base I won in a contest back in the day floating around here somewhere as well, but none of it seems to be scanned (or they died along with an old computer, I dunno which), so yeah, just the hits right now.

2012 Goodwin Champions Sonya Thomas Autograph..

Goodwin Champions started out as a baseball product in 2009 (the Evelyn Ng at the top of the post is from the OG set), essentially Upper Deck's answer to Topps' offbeat ultra old school brand Allen & Ginter.  It wasn't until UD lost their MLB license that it was eventually retooled into the even more offbeat than Allen & Ginter multi-sport/non-sport hybrid we know & mostly love today.

2011 Goodwin Champions Natalie Gulbis Relic..

I think I have an absolutely terrible looking Warren Moon relic from one of the earlier sets too, but I don't have a scan of it handy either.  This Natalie Gulbis from 2011 looks fantastic though!  She appears to radiating energy with the force of a thousand suns.

2013 Goodwin Champions Mimi Knoop Autograph..

I don't really collect any minis at all anymore (though I'm seriously considering a page of those magnificent Thor: Ragnarok minis you get out of the Dyson Cards), so I don't really have any from any year of Goodwin Champions to show.  They often have cooler and more diverse (& attainable, despite being technically rarer) parallels than A&G can usually muster, but very few, if any, mini inserts to offer.  They aren't typically one-per-pack either (usually 1:2-1:4, iirc). Win some, lose some.

2015 Goodwin Champions Miki Sudo autograph..

Closing out episode one with a trio of autos from 2015.  Like I said, I don't have a ton of pre-2016 stuff, but there will almost certainly be more in the future.  I'm especially fond of the design of these 2015's autos.

2015 Goodwin Champions Alana Beard Autograph..

Alana Beard is a name I knew, as is the final card in this episode (which is why I got them).  But for whatever reason, Goodwin Champions hits are exceptionally inexpensive.  The checklist is usually pretty quirky, but it's pretty much all on-card, and some years you aren't even guaranteed an auto in every box.  Crazy.  I think the Evelyn Ng up top might've been around $5, but I don't think anything in the rest in this post cost me over $2.

2015 Goodwin Champions "Ironman" Ivan Stewart Inscribed Autograph #'ed 4/298..

Much like A&G, you don't tend to find a whole lot of numbered stuff in Goodwin Champions, but a lot of it will be hand-numbered when you do.  The inscribed autos are usually much rarer (often /50 or less), but some signers just naturally have the inscription as part of their signature, and most of them get counted as count as part of the Inscription parallel.  I have two others like this numbered much higher in later episodes, and also a couple of the normal, much rarer variety.

That's it for part one.  I hope to be able to open a box myself someday, but they are typically well out of my price range.  I'm going to keep getting singles whenever I can though.  Thanks for stopping by!

Until our next...