My Unofficial Goodwin Champions Collection Vol. 4: The Hottest Hits of 2017

Back to the series posts! Here's part four of my Goodwin Champions collection!  We're getting into the home stretch of... oh, let's call it "season one" of this series (I will have the stuff for at least three more episodes on down the line).  This post is all about my hits from last year's set.  Here we go.

Scooped! Suck it, Topps!

This is the second most expensive card in Goodwin Champions collection, weighing in at a cool $9.49.  That is the cheapest I've seen Bouchard sell for, so I admittedly got very lucky with her (heh).  It's nice that I won't have to fret over never being able to afford her Allen & Ginter auto from this year's set.

Quincy returns..

The photo selection seems to have gotten better over the years, but sometimes the backgrounds are super distracting.  They sorta remind me of driving scenes in old movies & cop shows with obvious fake footage scrolling in the background.

Xue Chen x2..

I got two of these when they at were way below what they typically are on the site.  One was for me, and the other was for a certain volleyball collector I've been needing to send stuff since the Obama administration, which was, if my calculations are correct, 139 years ago.  But anyway, it turned out they were likely so cheap because they both had dinged corners.  They're still plenty presentable, but that was a bummer.  There was no condition notification on them (I've mentioned on multiple occasions elsewhere about how wildly inconsistent they are about that on COMC).

Seeing double..

I mentioned in the previous Goodwin Champions post that pink swatches don't happen enough, and the same goes for purple.  They are less important to me, but more solid orange and green swatches would be cool too.  And for as many teams that wear it, I don't feel like I see enough solid blue swatches either.  It's always pinstripes.  Ugh...

Still seeing double..

Here is the other hilariously high-numbered, hand-numbered inscription auto.  I am happy to have it.  This is another one with a very distracting background.

Cookie Monster..

It's all MMA for the rest of this post.  For the nice little collection of MMA ladies I've built up, you'd think I'd have watched more fights, but alas, you'd be very wrong.

Seeing double again..

Honestly, I've barely even watched any of the major team sports the past couple years.  I haven't had a TV in years, I can't afford to pony up for a season pass to anything, and I've never found any sustainably reliable illegal streams, so I've mostly gone without.  I feel occasionally feel a mighty need to get back into to it, but honestly, I don't often find myself missing it all that much.  It's just... the best background noise you can get most of the time.

Okay I'm done..

It says model on Chrissy Blair's cards, which is true.  But if you know her name at all, you'd likely know it due because she's an Octagon Girl with UFC.

Sick-ish patch, bro..

I'm not exactly sure what this "Premium Series" relic is from, but despite the card itself being super thicc, the swatch itself just feels like a regular swatch of average thickness.  It's probably just a piece of shirt that happened to have lettering on it.  Still a nice addition though.

Base auto..

Winding it down with this sweet trio of my girl Felice.  The background on these are quite distracting too, but also kinda... relaxing?  Odd...

And the inscription..

Seriously, I have picked up so many Felice Herrig's from this set, you guys!  This ain't even all of them.  Check back in October if I haven't flaked out by then, because there's still one more of note in my collection worth posting about.

That's all for now.  Just one more post left in this series (though there could be more later)!

Until our next...

My Unofficial Goodwin Champions Collection Vol. 3: The Hottest Hits of 2016

Time for the third installment in Goodwin Champions collection breakdown.  We're getting back to the hits in this one.  As the title implies, today is about my hits from the 2016 set.  There's a lot to get through, so let's jump right in!

The Hitman!

This is arguably my best hit from Goodwin Champions period.  Crazy to be able to get an on-card auto of one of the five greatest wrestlers of all-time for $9.99 (insert WWE Network joke here).  This is the most expensive Goodwin Champions card I've bought to this point, so I managed to amass the huge mess of stuff in this series without ever paying double digits for any of it.  I didn't even realize that, but it's a pretty cool stat.  Oddly, this is one that could have qualified as one of those high-numbered inscription autos, but for some reason it didn't get the hand-numbered treatment.

Inscriptions!

This one did though.  I mentioned I had a couple of the other super high numbered inscription, and this is one of them.  I love the arrow in her signature.  That's a great little personal touch.

Not enough licensed SI swimsuit issue model autos out there..

Melissa Baker makes her return from the previous episode, this time in autographed form...

...as does Kaylyn Kyle.  There will be a lot of repeats from the red & blue post.  The six in her signature being at the same odd angle as the one on her shorts is amusing the heck out of me for some reason.

One of the cooler cards you'll see in the whole series..

It's not all autographs, I have a couple relics too!  There aren't enough pink swatches in this world.  Also, what a kickass photo choice!

This may look like an ordinary plain white swatch, but I assure you, it's so much better.  I'm not exactly sure what it is, but it has a rubbery feel to it.  That was a super exciting revelation back when I was organizing the shipment it came in for scanning.  I'd consider doing a whole page of this relic (and the DiGiulian in all its forms cuz the photo) if I can find 'em cheap enough.

Haley Anderson auto..

x2!

Back to the autos.  I have two of Haley, because I can I guess.  I suppose one could be available for trade if anybody has a mighty need.

More Inscriptions!

I have two of Paige Selenski too, but I need them both, because the latter is another inscription!  This one is more representative of the typical rarity for inscriptions in this product.

And that does it.  I have a few more from 2016, but they'll be showing up in a later installment.  You'll understand why then.  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...