Quarter Box Bounty - Part 1 Football

Last Thursday was a bummer for me. I had an eye exam and learned my eyes might be getting worse than they already are. I wasted most of the morning with the eye exam and hanging out in Borders because I couldn't drive with my eyes dilated. When I could finally see in the sun again, I went to get lunch at a pizza place I liked only to find it had closed. In the same shopping center was a card shop, but I had never been there because I thought it was an overpriced one that had moved from another location. I had nothing better to do and an hour and a half left to kill so I checked the place out.

The place is called JT's and it's located in the Publix shopping center on Piedmont and Upper Roswell. If you're from Cobb county you might know where that is, everyone else don't worry 'bout it. It wasn't what I expected at all, probably 80% of the store was sports merchandise and collectibles. Mugs, mini helmets, pictures, that sort of stuff. There was a bargain table with a bunch of discounted autographed baseballs, I remember Mickey Tettleton was one of the autos. There was also a set of napkins with old timey cards on them like a '33 Goudey Lou Gehrig. In the back were a bunch of autographed photos, a shelf full of of autographed balls and a few cards in a display case. There was also a bin of packs for a dollar (including this one), the quarter boxes and a few other assorted cards here and there. The only new wax I saw was some 2009 Topps, 2009 UD First Edition and a Box of Football SP.

The case of cards was not too shabby, most of it was vintage cards, gotta love that. Prices weren't outrageous either from what I remember. The pack bin had a few gems in it, I picked up another pack I plan to rip in a video next week. The boxes of loose cards intrigued me. There were quite a few cards in there in sleeves or top loaders with a price on them. Most in the sleeves didn't interest me, the prices seemed a little too 'hi Beckett' for my tastes. There were loose cards galore though and it finally dawned on me that there were a bunch of 25 cent stickers all over the boxes. I asked the proprietor and he did confirm that if it wasn't marked, then it was a quarter. Another quarter box! Filled with decent stuff! On this side of town! My luck had changed! I had no lists and was relying on pure instinct, but I found ten bucks worth of quarter cards that were so good, I felt like I was ripping the guy off. Since I always have to drag things out (and I need something that will give me enough posts for the week in case things get hectic life-wise) I'm breaking down the goods into seven posts. I'm starting with the football since this is Sunday.

There was almost as much football in the boxes as baseball, a lot of it older stuff from the '80s. The bit that caught my eye was the Topps Magic. There was almost a full box worth of Magic in there, as if the guy busted a box, took out the cards he wanted and dumped the rest. Actually, that's probably what he did do. There were minis and inserts galore, and I bet if I went back with a checklist I could find a few SPs as well. I got no minis as the best one there was an Elway. I'm not a fan for obvious reasons. I limited myself to 4 Magic cards because I was bedazzled by all the baseball. I did pick up a few inserts and a base card.

1955 All American Peyton Manning

The next time I go back I'm cleaning 'em out of these. The '55 All American set is my favorite from vintage football. Peyton was the first one of these inserts that I found and was really the key to my understanding that I had found a really awesome quarter box.

1948 Magic Bo Jackson

Bo knows retro homages to obscure experimental trading card sets.

 #248 Jim Brown

Greatest running back ever. AND in The Dirty Dozen. Every football set produced should have a Jim Brown card in it.

1948 Magic 2006 Sugar Bowl

This was the only Bulldog or Falcons card I found in the box, I guess all those got swooped up along with the autos. This was a helluva game, even if Georgia ended up losing 35-38. This was also the Sugar Bowl that had to be played in the Georgia Dome due to Hurricane Katrina.

The rest of the week is all baseball, I promise. Up next is some good 'ol A&G.

2009 Topps Magic Short Prints

My poor XP box is very sick. It's very possible it caught another virus in its weakened condition but I'm not sure about that yet. It might just be old. It's been running pretty hard for over three years now and has accumulated a lot of junk on it. I'm doing some diagnostics and depending on what I find it might be time for a backup and wipe. As fun as that may be, I'd rather not do it right now with all the other stuff I need to get done. Thankfully my dual-boot Ubuntu / CentOS box is happy and thriving. I like Ubuntu a lot better so far but I need to start messing around the guts of CentOS and figuring out what makes it tick one of these days.

Oh yeah, cards. Sorry, I geeked out a little there. So um, basically what all this has to do with cards is that my scanner is currently installed on the XP box. I'm typing this post on the Ubuntu box. I've also got the XP box quarantined off the network until I make sure it's not contagious. What I'm trying to say is posts with scans are going to be a pain in the keister for me right now, and after messing about the Cisco lab configuring routers this afternoon and nursing a geriatric XP box back to health in the evening I'm not really in the mood to sneakernet all the images from one box to the other. I'm about done with computers for tonight I think. Why not just install the scanner onto the Ubuntu box, you well may ask. Well, the Linux box is sort of a test system for the time being that will very likely get wiped a few times in the coming months and I simply don't want to make any drastic changes to my setup quite yet. Besides, the scanner is also my printer and it is shared on the network to the other computers in my house. Moving it would create a whole mess of problems. VISTA problems. I ain't dealing with Vista problems this weekend. Hell naw.

So instead of the $5 contest answer (you people are lousy guessers by the way) I'm posting the Magic Short Print list. I know Beckett did it already, but it's formatted stupidly and the SP's are at the bottom of a huge list of autographs. It's like the base cards JUST DON'T MATTER ya know? So here it is again for my own amusement.

2 Brodie Croyle
6 DeMeco Ryans
18 Kenny Irons
21 Ben Obomanu
26 Robert Meachem
27 Isaiah Stanback
34 John Beck
35 Justin Forsett
36 Lavelle Hawkins
44 Tye Hill
46 Chris Simms
47 Chris Brown
52 Dave Thomas
55 Derrick Harvey
58 Fred Taylor
60 Lorenzo Booker
63 Sebastian Janikowski
66 Ernie Sims
75 Sean Jones
79 Leonard Pope
82 P.J. Daniels
86 Kevin Kolb
98 Yamon Figurs
105 Terry Bradshaw
111 Kolby Smith
125 Ahmad Bradshaw
130 Shawne Merriman
131 DeAngelo Williams
136 Greg Olsen
138 Antrel Rolle
154 Marlin Jackson
165 Deuce McAllister
172 Brad Smith
174 Brandon Jackson
176 Alvin Pearman
178 Matt Schaub
180 Ronald Curry
185 DaJuan Morgan
193 Julius Jones
195 Maurice Stovall
199 Vernon Gholston
206 Marc Bulger
207 Mark Bradley
208 Owen Schmitt
211 Allen Patrick
222 Reggie Williams
224 Derrick Williams
233 Kyle Orton
236 Brian Leonard
239 Lee Evans

Imagine in your mind the Terry Bradshaw and Ben Obomanu SP card images that would be decorating this post if they weren't currently trapped on my sick PC's hard drive. And make better guesses on my contest! You've got hints, people!

2009 Topps Magic Football

All right, I'm finally ready to post that pack of Magic two weeks after I first bought the thing. Was it worth the wait?

First though, I have the winner of the poll and the

OFFICIAL SONG OF 2009 TOPPS MAGIC FEETSBALL:

Magic Carpet Ride with bonus Magic Eye pictures. Huzzah!

Ok, enough of that, now to the cards. So here's an original 1951 Magic Football card of Wildcat Arnold Burwitz.

Why he's wearing pink pants I do not know. Paul Posluzny does not appear to be wearing pink anything.


Oh yeah, before we go any further, here's one cards special for Gellman:

Yes, those are trees behind Vinnie Drake. TREEEES. There's a duck back there too somewhere. You can kind of see the perforations on the bottom of the card, these were sold in strips of two much like the 1951 Baseball Red back and Blue back cards. Speaking of backs:

Steve Slaton got back. No stats on the back but there is the normal height/weight/age stuff, a short bio, a college seal and a trivia question on there. Also for some unknown reason a stylized map of West Virginia.

Here's the back of a Wolverine. The two backs are very similar except the oldie ones used a nice black and white picture of the college campus instead of a goofy looking map. The trivia questions are handled slightly differently also. the old ones had a silver scratch off material like a lottery ticket covering the picture that you would scratch off with a coin. The new ones also have a coin scratch gimmick, but with some invisible ink that shows up when scratched supposedly. I haven't scratched any of my cards, should I? If so, which one?

Here's a Hokie card. As you can see this set is very college oriented. Almost like a Press Pass set from the '50s. Well, Topps Magic kind of was the Press Pass set from the '50s, except that college ball was much more popular than the pros. The Magic Design turned out to not be the only one Topps recycled for this set:

This Donald Brown II card (who are these people??) is based on the 1955 Topps All-American design. This is one of my favorite football sets of all time so I'm happy to see this pop out of a pack. I'm not sure if it's a parallel or insert set though. Ok, now for the good stuff:

Here's a vintage Bill Wade card compared to a '09 mini card of Donnie Avery. The size is just about right, there's obviously no perforation on the new one. The font is slightly off (I'm a stickler for fonts) but overall it's a good job by Topps on retroizing this set.

Here is the exact moment I realized "oh mah gawd, this isn't a rookie college set". Basically, I haven't followed the draft class all that closely and since none of the guys in the pack so far were anyone who ever showed up on one of my fantasy teams, I assumed they were all rookies in their college unis. NOPE. Pennington ain't no rookie. Now I'm wondering if they had the playters all dress up in their college digs or if the photochoppers were working overtime.

Chase Coffman. No clue who this guy is. Am I really this far out of touch with football??

Last card in the pack, Kellen Clemens of the Ducks. I know there's a collector out there who likes Oregon, I just can't remember who they are. the truly odd thing about this set is there is no mention of the NFL team the player is associated with on the card at all. Great for college fans, but I'm sure any die hard NFL fanatic would go insane if they ripped a box of this stuff. It would make a good trivia game for halftime though,

There are also legends and rookies in this set somewhere and I'm assuming like every other retro product under the sun there's also SPs. I'm too busy trying to figure out my Gint-a-Cuffs scoring to wrap my head around that right now. Maybe once I break down and pick up a blaster.

I've been waiting for this...

2009 Topps Magic Short Print List.

I don't care that you don't care, I care. Don't care that I care? See if I care.

Actually, I don't care much for 50 short prints in a 250 card set. Don't care for skip number short prints either.