SoCal Autograph Odysses

 A couple of weeks ago, a new Topps soccer product came out so of course I joined into some breaks that happened on release day. Here's a secret for anyone trying to get into breaks for the first time as well. If you buy break spots on release day, the spots will be cheaper than they will be at any other point in time for a couple of reasons. One, competition. All the breakers have the same product and want to open it on the same day, so you will have multiple options to shop around on and find the best price on a team. No one breaker will charge exorbitant prices because no one will buy their spots. The supply drives the pricing down. Second, there is a lot of supply when the product comes out so the scarcity and the FOMO doesn't kick in. Breakers will 100% take advantage of FOMO a couple weeks later and they are the only one opening a specific product. People will want to jump in on those last breaks before the product is hard to find. Lastly, breakers have no idea what is re...

 2025-26 Topps Chrome Premier League came out a few months ago and I have to say, it is probably to date my all-time favorite set. The quality of the cards, the big auto checklist, the nice parallels, I liked all of it. I have been jumping into breaks with this stuff for the entirety of those few months and participated in what is probably my final break of the stuff last week. I pretty much ran the gamut of all the releases of the product, from Chrome, to Sapphire, to LogoFractor. You can look back at my posts and see what I came away with overall. I just got the shipment in from my last break, and here are the results. I took Newcastle, Nottingham Forest, and the Manchester City Rookies spot in this case. Anthony Gordon Superstar Sensations auto /50. This is the only time in all my breaks I hit one of these insert autos. They are case hit autos, so kind of tough to pull.  Anthony Gordon Aqua /199 Jacob Ramsey gold /50  Nikola Milenkovic base auto Anthony Gordon Black Wa...

 I made my way down to the Front Row Card show over this past weekend to see whether I could make another acquisition or two for my collection. One observation I made was there was much more soccer at the show than in previous iterations of it. I found a Fernando Torres Topps Chrome Premier Logofractor auto /25, which coincidentally is an autograph I've been keeping an eye on for some time on eBay. I had also brought a handful of cards and a few signed baseballs to see if I could accumulate any funds to add to my coffers and make another big addition. As a reminder, previous trips to these shows have netted me some big cards, like the Ronaldo auto /5, the Kylian Mbappe, Steph Curry, and Jude Bellingham rookie auto. I was able to sell one card and combine it with what I brought to purchase the Torres card.  The Topps Chrome Premier League set has really been one of my all-time favorite sets and I've added an awful lot of autographs to my collection from this set. This Torres is...

 I will be posting a catch up soon about some new Premier League autos I've added to my collection from Topps Chrome, but today I wanted to post a few autographs I have added recently. The first three got pulled for me in a recent break of 2025-26 La Liga Select. As usual, I stayed away from the high priced teams and instead made a couple value plays. I took Sevilla for around $20 and within the first two packs, was rewarded. It worked out relatively well for me, as I hit a cool autograph of Italian star forward Ciro Immobile. This auto is the purple refractor /49. Sevilla also hit a gold field level /10 non-auto.  The other two cheap teams were Valencia and Elche, and as you can see above, both ended up with autographs. The Rafa Mir was also /49 while the Pepelu was a base auto. Neither are huge autographs to get but when you go for the low to middle tiered teams price wise, that is usually going to be the case. A cool autograph I actually bought in an auction off of What Not...

 This week I received a couple more signed cards in the mail from some breaks on Fanatics live. Both of these hits were from a moderately priced Nottingham Forest spot. The first is Callum Hudson Odoi green /99 from Topps Chrome Premier League and the other was a rookie autograph of Zach Abbott from the Topps Chrome Premier League logofractor set. Per people in the know, only 950 cases or so of Logofractor was made and they were only distributed in the UK, so I was happy to get in on a few of these breaks and get stuff out of them. I know I say it all the time, but this Premier League Chrome stuff was so fun to rip and collect. They are gorgeous cards.

I need to do a bit of housekeeping and catch up on some recent autograph additions to my collection. First up is another Marks of Excellence on card soccer auto. This time it's former Roma defender and Brazil international Aldair. This card is numbered to 50 and again, I believe these on card soccer autos are going to go up in value over time.   The second autograph is a cool hit from a product that was only available in England, so I had to participate in a break to have access to these cards. This is the 2025-26 Topps Chrome Premier League Logofractor set, so every card comes with the Lion logo on it. The autographs are all numbered to /25 or lower, and I ended up taking West Ham as one of my teams and got this Jarrod Bowen orange auto /25.  My third autograph is another EPL Chrome auto, this time of Sunderland rookie forward Chris Rigg. This break was a bit different as the breaker actually assigned hits rather than teams, so I ended up with the green wave auto spot an...