Skins from Kim

Posted by cardboard hogs on February 2, 2015

… careful…

Now that football season is finally over, we can all start to focus on the upcoming baseball season. Spring is my favorite season and we are getting a small taste of some phenomenal weather up here in the great northwest. That light jacket and slight drizzle in the morning kinda weather that makes me happy that i live here and not some place that is buried in snow or is simply 80degrees year round. There is something to be said about seasons and the changing of the weather and surrounding foliage (what other blogger uses foliage in a post?) I love it all to pieces. It’s wonderful. You know what else is wonderful, football cards…i know, i know…i was leading you down the path to baseball cards and then dropped a steel hammer and made a lane change. I LOVE baseball cards, i really do and i LOVE baseball, i really do, but my love for the Redskins far exceeds any sport…so please bear with me and another post football post. Baseball will be on its way soon enough.

Kim’s table. He’s my favorite dealer at the Portland shows. Great guy with tons of great pieces of cardboard like this lovely Orakpo auto card. ‘Rak has been a bit of a disappointment to most Redskin fans…but I still love him, as long as he’s wearing the Burgundy and Gold of course. I don’t think he will be on the team next year, but i’ve enjoyed watching him play and i’ve been a fan of his autograph. It’s super simple but with a nice variation of pen strokes that are appealing to the eye.

His pending replacement at LB is this kid, who as luck would have it is also a Longhorn. Keenan Robinson. This auto is what mine would look like if i was signing cards that you wanted to purchase. 3 Letters. Boom. Robinson is a minimalist. De Stijl. What’s up with the fleur-de-lis anyways? Is Leaf a French Canadian company? Do non French, French people like the fleur-de-lis?

Hey, does your football franchise need a solid QB? The Redskins have a couple. Cousins and RGIII will be duking it out next preseason, well, i assume they will. The loser may end up finding a new franchise to sling it for on Sundays. My bet is that Cousins makes his way to Cleveland or Buffalo next season…no reason other than pure guessing.

Refractor, shiny Prizm, wavy Griffin! If this card were issued in 2012 it would have it’s own blog post but life comes at you fast when your knees explode. I still believe in RGIII but am losing faith…i gotta have faith!

$14 PP Robert Griffin III Refractor 99:99$

This card is sexy. Plus it’s a little intense. Why is the ‘L’ so skinny? That’s a mighty big gap between the ‘F’ and the ‘L’.

Do you like Pizza? Do you live in the DMV? Well then, lemme tell you about Spinfire…actually I can’t really do that since i don’t live in the DMV. I do love me some pizza though. My wife has taken it upon herself to master the art of the homemade pizza from our oven and is killing it! Seriously, there isn’t another pizza in town i would want over the ones the wifey makes for us. I gotta give Topps some credit on this card. The on-sticker auto is placed so precisely and over the integrated box in the card design that makes the sticker nearly disappear. WOW!

This is the part of the blog where most bloggers post their biggest, baddest cards. Me? I’m going with some run of the mill running backs. Jawan (not Japan, Jawan autocorrect!) Jamison and Silas Redd Jr. Now, I had high hopes for JJ and thought he would have a nice impact on the team once he was healthy, but that day did not come for him and he’s seem to have bounced around the league a bit and i think he was on the Steelers practice squad at the end of the year, but could be wrong.

Silas Redd can be a nice little free agent find for next season. Maybe even replacing Roy Helu as the 3rd down guy or someone that can be blended in with Morris on Sundays.

Rickey goes to a card show!

Posted by cardboard hogs on February 1, 2015

It’s been a very long week over here. I’ve been fighting this sinus infection and dealing with all the fun things that come with that…lots of drugs and kleenex. Lots of coughing and sneezing. Lots of uncomfortable days and bad nights of sleep…but i had something to look forward to this week. A card show, not just any card show, but the first one of the year! We are quite lucky here in Portland to have a show or two each month, but it’s become more and more difficult to make each one with family responsibilities calling. We almost had a scheduling conflict that would have made it impossible for me to attend the show but nana stepped up and took care of the kid for a couple of hours. Good on you Nana!

When i got to the show, i had a plan to take a wallet card photo at each table i visited but then chickened out…or maybe got distracted once i got there. I did manage to get one photo taken while at Tom’s table and pulling a bunch of 2014 Redskin cards.

his was a pretty good show. My favorites were there, Kim and Tom. Both had some great items pulled aside for me…as well as another dealer that always pulls items aside for me although his name escapes me now. He’s become my go to guy for knocking out a ton of my common Redskins especially the years during my non collecting time between the mid 90’s to the early 2000’s. Lots of commons but great checklist items. I will be posting them later this week…hopefully.

Today’s post though, is about Kim’s table. Kim has tons of great relic, auto and serial numbered cards for every sports team in every sport. He also has great prices for the cardboard. The kind of deals you really can’t get anywhere else. He’s often thrown in items at the end of our deals…you know…just to keep me coming back. Since i picked up quite a few items at his table i wanted to focus on the landscape collection. These are the landscape cards from Kim!

This card was essentially a toss in as it’s neither a relic nor an auto…but it is numbered to 99.

Next up is the Roy Helu Jr. card which Kim was extremely excited to show me and REALY wanted me to take it home with me. So I did…i was a little worried that i already have this one but after double checking when i got home i was happy to see that i had not picked this one up yet.

Malcolm Kelly. A very sad bust. Actually probably someone that should not have been drafted as high as he was by the Redskins…but those days are gone and there is no sense in looking at the past. One of the difficult things about obtaining EVERY SINGLE Redskin card made is that you have to make these kinds of pickups. A pretty short print autograph (albeit a sticker) with a game worn jersey that books much more than it should. This is a card show though and the book doesn’t work here…or if it does, you probably won’t have much business at your table. Honestly can’t remember what this one cost but the sticker had it at $18 which i’m certain is not what it cost when the deal was done…maybe $5?

Next in line is this really lovely London Fletcher game worn jersey card from last years Spectra set. I love the burgundy jersey swatch here with a slightly unbound thread coming out of the card…not sure how visible it is, but it’s a nice touch to the card. The shiny blue (purple?) card is pretty sweet too.

Last one and the card that was one of my favorites from Kim is the Jordan Reed Bowman Sterling player worn refractor jersey card. It’s always nice to get a card that has a portion of the number or nameplate in the swatch portion of the cardboard. This one was number 41 of 75.

Groovy Spurs

Posted by cardboard hogs on January 31, 2015

Today was an extraordinarily beautiful day in Portland. The weather was warm and the sun was out…and luckily for me there was a card show that i could spend a couple of hours inside a suburban strip mall…diggin through some lovely dirty boxes. During the week i’ll have a few posts showing off some of the great pickups i had today. Mostly Redskins, but i did manage to pick up a few Nats cards and…some SPURS!

I’ve decided i don’t collect enough things, so the San Antonio Spurs collection is slowly building momentum…slowly. My goal today was to get a couple Gervin cards and maybe a few others if they peaked my interest. This card did some interest peaking. The smoothness of the Ice Man is this beautifully documented in this lovely piece of cardboard.

78 TO George Gervin

Growing up in San Antonio during the 80’s and being a Spurs fan wasn’t the easiest thing in the world. The team was mediocre at best for most years although they had one of the smoothest shooters in the game rockin’ the silver and black.

It wasn’t until the Admiral David Robinson was drafted that things really started to change. But for me, my first favorite Spur was Gervin.

One of the last cards i picked up at the show was this acetate auto of Cory Joseph. I got this one from Kim’s table. One of my favorite table stops at the shows because of his more than fair priced high end cards. This one set me back about $3.