SoCal Autograph Odysses

 I mentioned in my last post that when doing Fanatics Live, it is smart to look around and find good prices because you can really get some deals when breakers are trying to close out and run a break. One such instance happened for me recently when I was waiting for a case of Topps 2025-26 UCC soccer to be opened but the breakers still had 12 teams left. They said that if someone bought Juventus, then they would assign all eleven other teams to that person. I jumped on that chance and ended up with the following list of teams for $75; Juventus Napoli Roma Monaco Frankfurt Strasbourg Bayer Leverkusen Porto Sporting de Portugal Benfica That means every card hit in twelve hobby boxes for any of the above teams would be my cards. Needless to say, I hit a lot of cool stuff. I ended up with 18 numbered cards plus four hits. Oddly enough, three of the cards were the same player, Frankfurt forward Ansgar Knauff. I hit a base autograph, a memorabilia card /99, plus an autographed mem dual c...

Breakers have become a huge part of the sports collecting hobby, and a hugely polarizing one. Essentially, breakers are companies or individuals that will buy a bunch of product and then sell off spots in their breaks for individual teams or players. So if they are opening a case of soccer hobby boxes, for example, they will sell each team in that product individually. If you want Barcelona, then you have to pay for that spot. Subsequently, every Barcelona card that then gets pulled out of that case is yours and the breaker will then ship the cards to you. For many, this has become a big blight on the hobby as breakers can be awfully obnoxious and people don't appreciate what can be price gouging at times. For a lot of these products, breakers are making multiple times more than what they spent to acquire the product in the first place. That being said, if you know what product to look like and scour the different breakers on Fanatics Live (personally I've not been impressed by...

 Yesterday, I attended my third Front Row Card show down in San Diego. The previous two times lead to me selling cards to end up with autographs like a Jude Bellingham /99 rookie auto, a Vinicius Jr auto /99, a Steph Curry auto, as well as a Kylian Mbappe autograph. Needless to say, I've come back every time with some massive cards. This time was no different as I added yet another soccer icon to my collection by finding a card of Ronaldo Nazario, aka Ronaldo, fka R9. Even better, this autograph is numbered only to five!  To get the funds necessary to make this acquisition, I ended up trading some cards I'd had in my collection for a couple of years. None of them are autographed, but it was sad to part with five Lamine Yamal rookie cards. The good news is, I still have about 40 Yamal rookies so I could afford it. I've been wanting to add more and more soccer icons to my collection and I know I had to give up stuff to get it. I also ended up selling a bunch of soccer and foo...

 Two more autographs have been added to my soccer collection over the last week. The first is an absolutely beautiful blue shimmer Prizm auto of Arsenal and France legend Thierry Henry. I have mentioned this many times, but I absolutely love blue shimmer autos. This is another one that was originally only available in First off the Line prints runs of 2024/25 Premier League Prizm, thus is extremely short printed. I just really like this card and am happy to add Henry to my collection. The other autograph is a card I acquired at a collectible card exchange that happened over the weekend here in Oceanside for the first time. There was unfortunately not much in the way of sports cards there but when I saw the above auto /149, I wanted to get it. The vendor gave me a good deal and it's cool because I am a Liverpool supporter and don't see many Alisson autographs out there. He is arguably the best keeper in Liverpool history. 

 For my birthday, I went to my local card store and bought a single. One thing I have noticed recently is that the prices of sealed product at this LCS are getting higher and higher but that they also seem to have fewer and fewer boxes for which to purchase. That has lead me to just finding a card or two here and there to buy instead, and I ended up getting this on card Howie Long auto numbered /75 for less than the price of a sealed blaster box. To me, that is just dumb.  Again, this is an on-card autograph of a football Hall of Famer numbered to a decently low number of 75 from a product that is considered high end. Meanwhile, a rookie auto of some very bad player that will never pan out will go for multiple times more than this card. It just will never make any sense to me from a value standpoint, but I'm definitely going to take advantage of it and add these legends to my collection when I see fit. A good example of what I am talking about is actually the next add I am goi...

 I got my first big card in 2026 back from a signing today. The signing was held in late December and it was one in which I'd sent a Shaquille O'Neal rookie card into a signing he was doing. I met Shaq along with Dr J back in 2012 and got him to sign a photo but this time I just sent a card in because it is easier. I'm happy with how this one came out and it's a real contender to be seen in my 2026 recap at the end of the year.