Posts

Andriy Shevchenko and Luis Figo Marks of Excellence Autos

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 I've discussed at length already about my infatuation with on card soccer autographs and where I think the long-term value will be in collecting them. To recap quickly, they are essentially scarce in the soccer market since it's harder to coordinate in person signings with athletes overseas and logistically more of a pain to ship cards back and forth in these scenarios. It's much easier for Topps and Panini to ship the player a sheet of stockers that they sign and then place signed stickers onto cards. In the other major sports, sticker autos take a bit of a hit in the value game whereas in soccer they take less of a hit due to the acknowledgement that sticker autos have to be more prevalent due to the aforementioned logistics involved. However, that means that the rare cards that do  actually have hard signed autographs on them, like the Marks of Excellence subset that Topps has been inserting into various soccer products, have a very high premium placed on them. I also j...

Massive Break Haul and I went to the World Cup!

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 The last ten days is probably the best luck I've had yet in terms of hitting really good autographs multiple times and without spending ridiculous sums of money. While celebrating my wife and I's anniversary, we were having really good luck at a casino and I wanted to see if that would translate into my breaks luck. Spoiler alert: It did. I hit a Marks of Excellence on card autograph of Andriy Shevchecnko /50 in one break where I took AC Milan for like $35. I don't have that card in hand yet so will post it whyen I do. I also took Liverpool in a break where they were auctioned off and I got them for $47. I hit two massive autographs for my collection, one a red refractor autograph numbered 4/5 of Liverpool legend Fernando Torres. This card is worth likely over $800. In that same break, I hit long time chase and top three Liverpool legend Kenny Dalglish in an orange /25. Dalglish is a rare autograph to hit and I don't think I've ever seen his autograph come out of a...

Paul Scholes

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 One of the Premier League greats that I had yet to add to my autograph collection was former England and Manchester United midfielder Paul Scholes. Scholes' autograph itself is all over the place, so believe it or not, the below example is one of the better ones I have seen on Topps Chrome products. 

More Topps Merlin and a Couple Autos I Forgot to Post

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 Topps Merlin Premier League ended up being okay for me though not as lucrative as Topps Chrome Premier League was.  There were a few breaks where I got completely skunked and just ended up with a solitary numbered card or two. There was also a break or two where I got a bunch of stuff. My last batch of autograph hits from the product were delivered and are listed as below. Funny enough, all three players are guys I've already got autographs of in the past, so will likely be posted up on eBay to recoup some of the money spent on the breaks. The first two cards were Newcastle midfielder Bruno Guimaraes. For those of you watching the World Cup, he also starts for Brazil. The gold is numbered 36/50 and the green is 56/99. I hit a pretty cool color match(ish) purple refractor of West Ham forward Jarrod Bowen. Unfortunately for Jarrod, West Ham got relegated this season so we will see if he stays and tried to help West Ham get back to the Premier League or leaves for a better team....

Frank Lampard Marks of Excellence

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 My fifth autograph from Topps Marks of Excellence set just arrived in my mailbox yesterday, in the form of former Chelsea legend and England international Frank Lampard. As a reminder, what makes this set so coveted is that the autographs are all on card, which is rare in the soccer world as most of the athletes are overseas and therefore more difficult to make signing arrangements with. The below card is the gold version numbered 48/50. I have mentioned it before, but I think these on card soccer autographs hold a lot of potential long-term value as the soccer market grows.

Topps Merlin Premier League

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 The inaugural set of Topps Merlin Premier League dropped last week, and as has been my norm, I jumped into some breaks on release day. I ended up hitting six autos, all listed below. The biggest autograph was a Carlos Tevez Merlin's Ink gold autograph /50. The funny thing about getting this card from a break was that I just purchased a dual autograph with Tevez on it last week since I didn't have any of his autographs yet. Well, now I have two and the one below is quite cool looking in person. As I tend to do, I also took Burnley in a few breaks because I got them for $10 in one case, plus free in two other cases since I had store credit. I ended up getting two Kyle Walker gold autographs /50, which brings my Walker autograph haul to five over the last couple of months. I will likely sell a few off to recoup some money to put towards something else.  I also took Liverpool in one case and ended up hitting two Conor Bradley autographs to throw into my Liverpool collection. The ...

Recent Additions to the PC

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 I wanted to do a quick overview and show some of the recent additions to my collection that have been coming in, as it has been pretty consistent lately.  The above card is a dual Prizm scope autograph of two former Argentine legends Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano. Since it's a Premier League Prizm set, they are in their West Ham kit, which is a bit weird. Nonetheless, I really like this card as it's a dual and they are hard to come by.  The below card is a Panini Select purple Prizm /49 of AC Milan and Dutch legend Marco Van Basten. I picked this exact card because the signature is as clean as one could ask for. This card really pops in person. I've mentioned before that I really like to add the Topps 'Marks of Excellence' autograph set to my PC when I get the opportunity to, as these are low printed and feature signatures that are actually on card and not on stickers. I think long term as the soccer card market grows and catches up to the other sports (as is ...