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...

Summer of Sketch Vol. 2: Legends of Lucasfilm Lore

Today's edition of the Summer of Sketch is an impromptu celebration of George Lucas and the folks at Disney carrying his legacy forward & putting up with the asshole unpleasable fanbase he cultivated, while he gets to enjoy his retirement by rolling around naked in the numerous piles of money and cocaine he got for selling out.  Enjoy that mental image!

Four of today's five-spot of cardboard curiosities hail from a galaxy far, far away, and the fifth belongs in a museum (of bad art).

My beloved Hera... 😍

Rebels came after Lucas sold out, but it's probably my favorite tale from the entire history of the franchise, and Hera is probably my favorite character.  I couldn't pass this up, though even being marked down a decent amount, it was still a lot more than I would normally pay for anyone not named Raven.

George "Mac" McHale by Zack Giallongo..

I was probably being a too harsh with that museum of bad art line for this.  It's very simple & couldn't possibly have taken more than a few minutes to do, but the Indiana Jones sets (and the rest of Topps non-sport lineup from around that time) were infamously overloaded with much, much worse than this.  And seriously, I only paid $2.25 for it, so I can't complain.

Mac (as portrayed by the great Ray Winstone) is also arguably the best character in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, so that's cool.  I may catch hell for this, but I watched this movie almost exactly a year ago, and I genuinely enjoyed it.  Having seen all four Indy movies, it probably ranks as my second favorite after Temple of Doom.

I don't know who this is..

Yeah, no idea.  I thought it could be Hera.  Rebels was on the air by this point and I've seen sketches of other characters from the show in this set.  But no goggles, so I dunno.  I've never been all that into Star Wars, if we're still being honest.  I think the quartet in this post came pretty close to doubling the size of my Star Wars sketch card collection.  Couple cheap Ahsokas, the Phasma I hit in a blaster, Luminara, and a forgettable Padme from forever ago was about all I had before, so yeah.

But anyway, whatever.  This was pretty cheap, it's the only High Tek sketch I own, and it's easily my favorite card I've ever come across by Bruce Gerlach.  I'm just not typically a fan of his style.

Battle Droid by Jessica Hickman..

Here's another kind of whatever sketch card.  I only care very much about a select few Star Wars characters (pretty much just the crew of the Ghost, Ahsoka, Rey, Finn, and Rose), so a random battle droid doesn't do much for me.  But this was under $5, is very nicely detailed as Star Wars pencil sketches go, and Jessica Hickman is an artist I like & I feel fortunate to already have a couple other sketch cards by her.  Anyway, this & Mac might be available for trade if you have something I might like better.

Zoinks! Yung Obi-Wan by Carla Rodrigues..

Finally, I also lucked into this phenomenal sketch for under $5 as well!  I love the somewhat cartoony art style.  It sort of reminds me of the classic Scooby-Doo art style a little bit, and that is a wonderful thing.  I wasn't sure until I got into my saucy little mitts, but this one is definitely staying in my collection.  It is fantastic.

And that wraps up the second volume in my Summer of Sketch series.  Hope you enjoyed it, and thank you for stopping by!

Until our next...

COMC Miscellany Vol. 1

Captain Marvel & Absorbing Man 2-piece puzzle card..

It's been at least a couple shipments since the first bunch from COMC (newest batch just came in on the 18th!) I'd originally intended to post about, so I guess I'll just throw it all together into a series of random 5-10 card posts when I feel like it.  Some will have a theme tying them together, making them less miscellaneous than others, but this is not one of those posts.

Up top is a Captain Marvel/Absorbing Man sketch card puzzle.  I feel like I should know the artist, but I can't quite place it, and I'm absolutely terrible with signatures.  I probably don't know who close to half of the artists are on the 250-ish sketch cards I own.  Also, holy crap I own 250-ish sketch cards!  How insane is that?!  I really like the look of this though, and while both pieces came from different sellers, I only ended paying a shade below $7 between them.  Captain Marvel was only $2(!) and several months later, Absorbing Man weighed in a lil under $5.  Great addition to the puzzle binder!

Apex Orange #'ed 14/25..

I'm pretty sure most soccer autos are out of my league, so this low numbered orange parallel of 2014 US World Cup standout Jermaine Jones will likely end up serving as his page's centerpiece.  I don't think it even cost me $3.

Fergie Jenkins/Terry Puhl dual jersey..

I picked up a jumbo Fergie jersey from this interesting set sometime back.  It reads as an Americana-type set for Canada, but it's higher end, which makes it more like a contemporary of the (also originally ITG-produced) Sport Kings.  In practice, the randomness, yet still heavy emphasis on athletes, makes it feel more like Goodwin Champions than anything else.  Regardless, I like it a lot, and I couldn't pass up a copy featuring that glorious old school Astros swatch on Puhl's side once it dropped just within the upper edge of what I'm willing to pay for a relic card.

2015 Panini Cooperstown Crown Royale Silver /75..

Another Fergie, this time a shiny, die-cut numbered insert from a higher end, Hall of Famer-exclusive Panini offering.  Amongst many others, I also have an odd fondness for the juxtaposition of old school players on cards featuring blingy modern technology.  Cooperstown, and the previous year's even more explicitly-titled Hall of Fame, deliver on that particular craving in spades.

2016 Marvel Masterpieces Shanna th She-Devil..

The back..

How about some high end Marvel Masterpieces?  I guess this set is all about Joe Jusko's art, which calling fantastic would be an understatement.  The higher and/or un-#'ed cards are pretty cheap though, so I'll probably be picking up a few more.  I already grabbed one for the Rogue PC that will be coming in next month's shipment.

Get a room...

Speaking of Rogue, I picked up another of these weird Embrace inserts (and sometimes case toppers), the second I have of the four she's represented on.  The other Gambit one and Wolverine are both out of my price range, so this and Magneto *audible shudders* will have to suffice for now.  This and Shanna are from the August shipment.

Padma Lakshmi auto!

We'll close it out on an awesomely random autographical note with this sweet Padma Lakshmi signature.  Not quite a Penmanship Hall of Fame candidate, but her entire name is present and accounted for.  That's always nice, and far too rare.  Pretty cheap for what I consider one of the better names in the set too.  I wanna say it set me back less than $5.  A very nice addition to my random cheap (mainly) celebrity autograph collection, which is surprisingly not all nonsensically beautiful women.  There are some dudes in there as well.  Ed Asner, Jonathan Frakes, Common, Eddie Pope... Okay, so I don't have a bunch of guys.  There are couple more male additions I'd like to make in the relatively near future, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Thanks for stopping by!

Until our next...