SoCal Autograph Odysses

 I wanted to pick up another big soccer auto, so I recently added soccer legend Zlatan Ibrahimovic to my collection. He was a guy I'd been wanting to add for some time so I was happy to find a price on a relatively low numbered Zlatan than I was happy with. As you can see, the autograph is numbered 11 of 25. You can also probably see that his actual signature leaves a lot to be desired but this is how he signs for everything. 

 It may be getting redundant, but the sheer number of cool cards I'm getting from these Fanatics Live warrants multiple posts. Spoiler alert, this won't be the last one.  The latest additions to my collection came from yet another Liverpool spot in a Topps Chrome EPL break. One thing to keep in mind is that as breakers get their product in, they launch a lot of streams for the product releasing. Once that inventory wears off, there are far fewer breaks to choose from. This also seems to push the spots up in value so I'm starting to glean the best approach is to have money ready to get into many breaks when the product first releases. There are some conspiracy theorists that also believe the biggest product hits tend to come in the first couple of days as Topps and Panini like people to get hyped. Anyhow, my Liverpool spot only hit had three hits, and overall I feel that Liverpool has been relatively a tough spot to hit from. The good news is that my three hits were really n...

 This will be a Liverpool exclusive post because Topps Chrome Premier League came out last week and the set is amazing, so I've been buying some spots in breaks recently. As I'm a Liverpool supporter, most of my spots have been the Liverpool spots. Two of the autographs I hit recently are big enough to where I'm not sure even which one to start with, so I'll go with an autograph that I have never hit in any of my time collecting. The following is a Topps Chrome dual autograph 05/25 of Cody Gakpo and Dirk Kuyt. This autograph is awesome in person and to hit a dual auto in my Liverpool spot in the release day break was exciting. I actually hit four autographs in that break, three of which I'll get to later.  Another absolute nuke I hit actually was from a couple weeks in the last Flagship break I did. Flagship was extremely good to me this year so I bought back-to-back Liverpool spots in the last one I saw run before Chrome EPL came out. I actually ended up hitting th...

 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...