I, for one, am usually against manufactured patches. However, one card in Topps Series 2 Baseball really caught my eye. It’s a manufactured patch card of Alex Rodriguez that features a replica of the commemorative Yankee Stadium Patch that all Yankees are wearing on their sleeves for the last season in Yankee Stadium.

I think its a neat looking card, and would be a great idea for a set. Manufactured patches of commemorative patches of different teams would be pretty awesome. I guess the more successful manufactured patch cards are replicas of patches that actually exist on authentic uniforms. Once card companies start making up random stuff to plunk down on cards, the manufactured patches go from cool, to just annoying space fillers.

Click here to see Auction

The owner of the card apparently disagreed with Topps’ inclusion of a Castro cut auto in its product, and covered the front and back of the card with his own social commentary towards the Cuban Dictator.

In most cases, drawing on the surface of a card will completely devalue it, but I’m not sure that holds up in the case of the Castro cut signature. As far as I know, it’s the only certified Fidel Castro cut signature to be released, making it truly one-of-kind.

Some people will probably consider this card “ruined” and worthless. Personally I think the inscriptions on the card make add to its uniqueness, and I’m sure that it will fetch top dollar.

According to the Auction text, all proceeds from the auction will be donated to the Center for a Free Cuba.

These cards should fetch super high premiums from mad scientists hoping to extract DNA from the cards in order to build an army of clones. For the full story check out the Upper Deck’s News Release.

2008 Topps Co-Signers Baseball came out a while back, and it didn’t really excite me. I think the story with this product is that the really big hits are super mega awesome, but 95% of the boxes probably won’t get you your value back. Here are a few interesting cards from the set that I managed to dig up:

Here’s a dual cut of President Harry Truman and the man who ran against him, Thomas Dewey.

If you were paying attention in history class in elementary school, you may remember the story of the Truman/Dewey election. In 1948, the Chicago Tribune mistakenly projected Dewey as the winner of the Presidential election and printed “Dewey Defeats Truman” on its front page. The iconic picture of Truman holding a copy of the newspaper can be seen on the card. I love Presidential cuts and this one is particularly interesting, in that it features both candidates from an election that will be remembered forever.

So there’s the good. As for the bad….

Topps continues its tradition of turning cards that should be awesome into ugly abominations.

This dual cut signature is taken from two bats of the two best hitters in the game: Alex Rodriguez and Albert Pujols. Unfortunately the signatures are too big for the card windows and both are significantly cut off. I would definitely have prefered a card with just one player, but showing the entire signature. Its always a shame when card companies cram things onto a card:

Sometimes less is more!

Well thats it for now. I still need some time to get back into the swing of things and then its full steam ahead!

Card #1: Base Card

Card #2: Rookie Signature

Card #3: Rookie Signature Patch

Card #4: Maximum Jersey

Card #5: Patch Card

Card #6: Random Autographed Card

The order may be different in each box but you are guaranteed to get 1 card from each slot.
Now let’s get down to the nitty gritty of each card slot.

As a baseline for this breakdown, I’m assuming that there are 8,725 total boxes of Exquisite that were produced. This is based on the number of Rookie Signature Patches, which of course come one per box.

This doesn’t account for cards held out of circulation for NPNs or other reasons, but I think its a close enough estimate for purposes of this analysis. The full checklist is available at the Upper Deck website.

Card #1: Base Card - There’s no avoiding it, you are getting a base card.

60 Players
Hope to get: Tom Brady, Brett Favre
Hope not to get: Ronald Curry, Rex Grossman, Jon Kitna

Print Runs
Regular Cards #’d to 150 (9,000 total cards)
Parallel #’d to 1 (60 total cards)

You have about a 1 in 145 shot of getting a 1/1 parallel base card. Not too good.

Verdict: Expect to lose money on Card #1. The regular base cards can go for as little as a dollar up to around $15-$20 for a Tom Brady or Brett Favre. The 1/1 parallels can fetch at least $100 for the less popular players and even more for stars, but odds are way against you pulling one.

Card # 2: Rookie Signature - Also guaranteed one per box. This card is also close to a throwaway. The rookies on this checklist include mostly defensive players and late round draft choices.

42 players
Hope to get: Ahmad Bradshaw
Hope not to get: Anyone else, unless you are a player/team collector

Print Runs
Regular Cards #’d to 150 (6,300 total cards)
Parallel #’d to 60 (2,520 total cards)
Parallel #’d to 1 (42 total cards)

#’d to 60 = 1 in 3.5 boxes
#’d to 1 = 1 in 208 boxes

Verdict: Again, this slot is probably a money loser. The regular cards go from $2-$10 for most of the players. The best hit is RB Ahmad Bradshaw of the Giants who had a decent season for the Superbowl Champs and has some upside.

Regular versions of Bradshaw started at around $200 but are now are fetching between $75-$100. The /60 version will get you a bit more. Again, Ahmad Bradshaw is the absolute best you can hope for here. Odds of pulling an Ahmad Bradshaw: 211/8,725 or about 1 in 43.

Card # 3: Rookie Signature Patch - Also guaranteed one per box. This card will hopefully be one of your money cards. Score a decent rookie and you can make back a good chunk of the cost of a box. Score a great rookie and you can pay for your next three boxes.

33 players broken into two Tiers

Tier I - 23 Players including Patrick Willis, John Beck, Trent Edwards, Kevin Kolb, Drew Stanton
Regular Cards #’d to 225 (5,175 total cards)
Parallel #’d to 99 (2,277 total cards)
Parallel #’d to 1 (23 total cards)

Tier II - 10 Players including Adrian Peterson, Brady Quinn, JaMarcus Russell, Marshawn Lynch, Dwayne Bowe
Regular Cards #’d to 99 (990 total cards)
Parallel #’d to 25 (250 total cards)
Parallel #’d to 1 (10 total cards)

86% chance of getting a Tier I Rookie and 14% chance (About 1 in 7) of getting a Tier II Rookie

Verdict: You are most likely to hit a Tier I rookie. Worst case scenario, you get about $20-$30 for it (Antonio Pittman, Brian Leonard, Yamon Figurs, Paul Williams, Tony Hunt, Chris Henry). The Tier I QB’s (Edwards, Kolb, Beck, Stanton) can fetch $100 and up.

Only a 1 in 7 chance of hitting a Tier II Rookie, but the payoff can be big. Other than Dwayne Jarrett and Robert Meachem, who sell for around $60-$70, the other Tier II Rookies all sell for over $100. The big hits like Peterson, Quinn, and Russell will more than pay for your box alone. Unfortunately, you are much much more likely to hit a Tier I rookie.

Card #4: Maximum Jersey - Nothing too exciting here. And also guaranteed one per pack

100 players
Hope to get: Adrian Peterson, Joe Montana, Walter Payton, Tom Brady
Hope not to get: Johnnie Lee Higgins, Byron Leftwich, a whole bunch of defensive players

Print Runs
Regular Cards #’d to 75 (7,500 total cards)
Parallel #’d to 15 (1,500 total cards)
Parallel #’d to 1 (100 total cards)

Verdict: No chance at a patch here. Absolute best case scenario here would be a low numbered parallel of a good player with different colored jersey swatches. Unfortunately, most of the breaks I’ve seen have 4 swatches that are the same color. Again, hard to get good value out of this slot too.

There is an autographed version of the Maximum Jersey cards #’d to 5, but they don’t come in this slot. They count as your other auto that would fall in slot #6. So in other words if you get an auto’d Maximum Jersey you are still going to get the non-auto’d version in the same box. There’s just no avoiding it.

Card #5: Patch Card - A couple options here. Most of them mediocre at best…

Here are the possibilities for the Patch slot, starting with the most common.

Exquisite Patch - 100 Players, #’d to 50 (5,000 total cards)
Exquisite Patch Parallel - 100 Players, #’d to 15 (1,500 total cards)
Maximum Patch - 42 Players, #’d to 25 (1,025 total cards)
Exquisite Combo Patch - 28 cards, #’d to 25 (700 total cards)
Exquisite Trio Patch - 15 cards, #’d to 15 (225 total cards)
Exquisite Quad Patch - 10 cards #’d to 15 (150 total cards)
Maximum Patch Parallel - 42 Players, #’d to 1 (42 total cards)

Verdict: You have an overwhelming chance (about 75%) of getting an Exquisite Patch card. The patch window is small (smaller than a postage stamp), but they do squeeze some three color patches in on some of the cards. In this slot, you just have to hope for lots of colors in your patch, no matter which type of patch card you get.

Card #6: Random Autograph - Here is where it gets interesting. In this slot you can pull any sort of autograph, from the mundane to the extraordinary. However you can’t pull another Base Rookie signature (thankfully) or Rookie Signature Patch. There are 23 different sets that you can pull from. I won’t go over them all, but I’ll try to give you an idea of what you can hope for.

Most Common
Signature Jersey Numbers (#’d to Player’s Jersey Number, 1,344 total cards)
Signature Patch (#’d to 25, 1,050 total cards)
Exquisite Endorsements (#’d to 20, 720 total cards)

Multi-Signature Cards - about 1 in 3 boxes
Combo Signatures (#’d to 25, 750 total cards)
Ticket Matchups (#’d to 30, 600 total cards)
Trio Signatures (#’d to 20, 600 total cards)
Quad Signature Swatch (#’d to 10, 420 total cards)
Quad Signature Patch (#’d to 5, 210 total cards)
Quad Signatures (#’d to 10, 200 total cards)
Dual Signature Swatch (#’d to 15, 150 total cards)
Dual Signature Patch (#’d to 10, 100 total cards)

Super 1/1 Big Hits - about 1 in 91 boxes
Rare Materials Signatures (#’d to 1, 42 total cards)
Dual Logo Signatures (#’d to 1, 21 total cards)
Quad Logo Signatures (#’d to 1, 21 total cards)
Dual Legendary Cuts (#’d to 1, 8 total cards)
Quad Legendary Cuts (#’d to 1, 4 total cards)

Verdict: If you get a dud for your rookie patch auto, you can still score big time in slot #6. Obviously the Shield Logos and Cut Autos will sell for huge amounts, but even if you don’t hit one of those, you still have about a 1 in 3 chance of getting a multi-signature card. Unfortunately, that still gives you a 2 in 3 chance of just getting a single auto.

Player Selection

In all, 227 different players appear in the set in some way, shape or form, which is a huge number.

The 10 Players that appear on the most cards are:

1. Ted Ginn Jr. (814 cards)
2. Marshawn Lynch (813 cards)
3. Dwayne Bowe (763 cards)
4. Peyton Manning (761 cards)
5. Vince Young (729 cards)
6. Brady Quinn (719 cards)
7. Adrian Peterson (718 cards)
8. JaMarcus Russell (712 cards)
9. Dwayne Jarrett (702 cards)
10. Calvin Johnson (677 cards)

Not too shabby right? Unfortunately, you still have to wade through 52,755 cards of the other 217 players, so don’t count on pulling one of the top guys.

One of One’s

There are 473 total 1/1’s in the set, 90 of which are hidden in serial numbered Gold Boxes. If you watch the Exquisite Box Break Videos on youtube, you’ll notice almost everyone saying “no gold box.” These boxes are serial #’d to 15, and all six cards in the box will be a 1/1. You have about a 1 in 582 shot at scoring a Gold Box.

If you aren’t lucky enough to get a Gold Box, you still have about a 1 in 23 chance of getting a 1/1. Unless you work for Beckett, of course.

Adrian Peterson

This guy is so important, he gets his own section. As you can see from above, he appears on 718 cards. No Base Card and no Rookie Signature, but his Rookie Signature Patch card is probably the most important in the set.

Odds of hitting the Rookie Patch are about 1 in 70. Odds of hitting any AP auto are about 1 in 21 boxes.

Final Thoughts

Like any other high-end product, Exquisite is all about high risk/high reward. The Base Card, Rookie Signature, and Maximum Jersey Card slots are very hard to get value out of, and the Patch slot is only slightly better.

In all reality, only two cards can possibly yield big hits. If you miss on your rookie patch and random auto, you could find yourself in a deep hole. If you are looking for value, stay away from Exquisite. If you want to chase the dream, crack open your piggy bank and take a shot.

If you are a player collector, chasing the rainbow can be lots of fun, and completing it (almost) is quite satisfying. Now I need to find something else to hunt…

Recently he put up a signed photo of himself on eBay to ease the pain of his latest Exquisite Box Break and it sold for $25!!!! I guess this guy has a real following of sympathetic viewers.

It’s even numbered 1/1. Anyways, check out his vids for a good laugh and if you are feeling sorry for him paypal him some spare change.

I must say, I feel the urge to go out and get one of these boxes even though I got burned by UD Black Baseball. The Basketball version looks slightly better, even though its still loaded with no-name rookies and semi-scrubs.

Sportscardsraffles - 1

Chucklers - 1, 2 (Case Break, Not a great view on these)

FoxSportsCards - 1 (Mega hit, but redemption)

davidmaghe - 1

ZcoseSportsMarketing - 1, 2
ZcoseSportsMarketing’s eBay Auctions

mrnyceguy168 - 1 (Nyce hit!)

UntouchableSport - 1 (Pulled a card that I showcased in a different post)

Mainlyrookies - 1 (3 box break)
Mainlyrookies eBay Auctions (Most of the basketball has been sold)

emmitt22catch - 1 (Sweeeet Dual)

chri5784 - 1, 2, 3
chri5784 eBay Auctions

artyman60 - 1

Brian Leonard 2007 Exquisite Rare Materials Signatures 1/1

I collect high-end Brian Leonard Cards, but there is no way I would pay anything near the $549.99 BIN price for this card. The NFL Shield Patch and Laundry Tag are squished into the smallest possible window and the picture of Leonard makes him look like a some sort of chicken-legged dwarf.

Needless to say, I’m not a fan of the card design for this set. Seems like a waste of an NFL Shield to me.

I understand that UD wants to create buzz and show off their cooler cards, but is it really necessary to make it so blatant?? For those keeping track at home thats three 1 of 1’s, a quad patch auto, and a dual cut signature in two boxes…

Now Topps is also guilty of sending loaded boxes to Beckett to open on their box breaks. A while back they busted 2007 Topps Sterling Baseball and pulled a Joe Dimaggio Cut Auto.

Leave some hits for the collectors!!!!

There are a couple of dual autos in the set that I thought were interesting because they feature a rookie paired with a non-basketball player.

Here’s Kevin Durant and Vince Young, two guys from the University of Texas.

And Mr. Cub, Ernie Banks and Acie Law IV. Banks is the great-uncle of Law.

And another Cross-Sport Dual Auto I ran into recently: Shaq and A-Rod

Being an A-Rod fan I thought this was an awesome card and I was interested in bidding but the price was just too high.

I still have some doubts that this is a fake patch. There are two sets of Ortiz Jumbo Swatches in 2007 Topps Sterling, each #’d to ten. Example:

However, as you’ll notice the pictures on the cards are different in the two sets. Now is it possible that Topps mistakenly used the same card template in both of the 10/10 cards? Well, we’ve already seen their quality control in this set. So the jury is still out in my eyes. I don’t want to jump to any conclusions. What do you guys think?

chri5784 - 1, 2
chri5784’s eBay Auctions

meng5 - 1

speedlegg - 1
speedlegg’s eBay Auctions

swjedi2000 - 1, 2, 3
swjedi2000’s eBay Auctions

rookiesandpros - 1, 2

maggettefan - 1, 2, 3, 4
maggettefan’s eBay Auctions

Mainlyrookies - 1, 2
Mainlyrookies’ eBay Auctions

bigvick1077 - 1, 2
bigvick1077’s eBay Auctions

marcelbilak - 1, 2
marcelbilak’s eBay Auctions

Updated 3/18/08:

WhacksPacks - 1

BoxBREAKING - 1

jandjsportscard - 1, 2

We don’t waste our time here with exit polls, or delegate counts, or facts, or any of those annoying little tidbits to track the progress of the Election. We have a much more reliable source of information: eBay. Lets see who the almighty market thinks will be our next leader.

Bolstered by an early hype machine funded by speculators, Hillary Clinton surged to an early lead with a strong showing of $1,325 in mid-February with this sale:

A week later, her momentum was stopped after losing much of her ground in the next primary. However the results of that vote have been thrown out because of poor scans and the way that Clinton’s name appeared on the ballot.

$601

Perhaps voters mistook Hillary for Hillary?

Meanwhile on the other side of the Democratic Ticket, Barack Obama blew away the competition with a strong first effort:

$3,122.88

Perhaps this strong showing led to some slight over-optimism. The same card is up for resale with a BIN of $5,999.99. Still, Obama has opened up a huge lead over rival Hillary.

Over on the Republican side, the numbers aren’t in on John McCain yet, but he has come out in a flurry of activity.

13/13

4/13

1/13

Only Time will tell whether McCain can surpass Obama. Perhaps having so many cards up for auction at once hurts his chances.

One thing is for sure though: If you are paying $1K+ for a cut auto of a presidential candidate you better think that they have a good chance to win. There wouldn’t be much interest in a Howard Dean or John Kerry Cut Auto today, and likewise, whoever fails to make it to the White House will experience a sharp decline in value.

Just ask Bob Dole.

I cannot imagine anyone sitting in prison signing autographs while on trial for murder….

Thanks to aceecards for sharing this card. If you have a chunk of time check out his collection on this post at Trading Card Central. He has some really nice cards from all sports, and some great stories to go along with them.

Expecting some more pickups this weekend so check back!

Obviously, the Yankees/Mets patches got switched in the Chien-Ming Wang Jumbo Swatch #’d 6/10 and Tom Seaver Jumbo Swatch #8/10. Sorry I couldn’t get a clearer pic of the Wang (teehee). The Wang still ended up selling for $124.08, even though it has a Mets patch instead of the correct Yankees patch.

Unfortunately this has led to a large number of Fake Patches. Unscrupulous patch fakers will insert nicer looking patches into cards in order to jack up the prices. This is especially common with cards with large patch windows, such as the Absolute Memorabilia Jumbo Patches.

If a patch looks too good to be true, it probably is. You want to be careful, so here are some things to watch out for:

This is a screenshot of a recent auction by photoking0313, one of eBay’s most notorious patch fakers. AVOID EVERYTHING THAT THIS GUY SELLS. The card is of Albert Pujols from 2005 Playoff Absolute Memorabilia #’d to 50.

Notice how the User ID of the High Bidder is kept private? That’s a definite red flag. Patch Fakers hide the User ID of the high bidder so that people can’t contact the bidder to tell them that the patch is fake. You also might want to look into the seller’s selling history. If he is selling crazy patch cards every week, chances are he is manufacturing them out of his basement.

Another thing to look at is how the card is labeled. Notice the “Game Worn Jersey” on the side? If it says Jersey they mean Jersey. An authentic patch from this set would say “Game Worn Jersey Prime.” Different sets have different labelling systems. A good idea would be to search for completed auctions of similar cards to see how they differentiate Jerseys and Patches.

For Comparison a Real Patch:

Another thing to be mindful of is the serial number on the card. The fake Pujols card is #’d to 50. This is a pretty high number for a prime logo patch. Generally, card companies put the better patch pieces into lower numbered cards.

Also you want to take a good look at the patch itself. Don’t be seduced by lots of pretty colors and breaks and take a second to think about where the patch actually comes from. For example take a look at the Fake Pujols patch. It appears to be from the Cardinals World Series patch:

But the Cardinals won the World Series in 2006. Obviously there’s no way a game used patch from 2006 could make it into a card issued in 2005.

Now its very unfair to assume that all crazy logo patches are fake. Just do your homework and keep an eye out for some of these red flags and hopefully you can avoid shelling out big bucks on a fake patch.

For more information on fake patches and an archive of known fake patch cards check out The Fake Patch Report.

It ended up selling for $100.03!!! Now I’m not too familiar with Terry O’Reilly, but I’m pretty sure his other letter patches aren’t selling for that much. Must be lots of Irishmen wanting to spell out their last names that drove up the price.

Some of the 1/1 Rookie Jumbo Patches have really nice pieces. If you collect any of the guys from the 2007 rookie class, keep an eye out for them. Here’s the few really awesome ones that I’ve seen: