Farewell, and Hello Again!

It’s been 22 months, and over 22,000 hits, and I’ve come to a conclusion I originally made in February of 2008.  ’Houston Collector’, as a blog name, simply does not do what I want it to do.  It has no pop.  It’s too narrow in focus, too niche when there’s so many blogs out there. [...]

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First, I would like to take a moment to welcome Upper Deck as an advertising sponsor for Houston Collector.  If you look in the lower right side of your screen, you’ll see an ad for Upper Deck.  I would like to thank the folks at Upper Deck for entering into this partnership, and I see [...]

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(Again, thanks to Check Out My Cards for the image.  Hard to find some of these.)

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(Thank you to Check Out My Cards for the image)

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More news to follow soon…..

Continue reading about An Entirely New View is Coming…. »

Last week, I was able to put up a preview of the upcoming 2010 Topps Pro Debut Series One baseball, due out in March.  Today, we have a more in-depth preview, now that I have more details on the product.
This product will ship in 12-box cases, with each box having 24 packs of 8 cards [...]

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Thanks to Topps via Twitter, we have some images of 2010 Topps Pro Debut Minor League Baseball.  These pictures are presumably mockups, and showing more of the hits from the product (case hits, at that, if I’m forced to guess).

As we all know I really don’t like the foldout cards, so we’ll [...]

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Today marks an important day in the growth of Houston Collector.  I am pleased to announce that starting today, Blowout Cards is a sponsor of Houston Collector, and we will be working together going forward.  Currently, there is a picture on the left side of the screen which will take you to their site, and [...]

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One of the first sportscard blogs I read when I got back into collecting was Mario’s blog, Wax Heaven, along with a few others.  This was probably somewhere back in 2007, but I can’t recall exactly.  He wrote about what he knew, the love for the cards he was collecting.  He also wrote about his [...]

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That was fast, Topps has already released information on 2010 Topps Finest baseball, and it’s time for another in-depth preview here at Houston Collector.
It appears that in 2010, Finest will be similar to 2009 with a few wrinkles. You’ll still get 2 mini-boxes per master box, with 2 numbered autographed rookie patch cards, all [...]

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With 2010 coming closer, we have another in-depth preview of an upcoming product, this time 2010 Topps Heritage. Generally, Heritage is consider ‘Base Set 2′ because it’s more of a set-collector’s set than anything else, with the vintage style. To be really honest, I think Heritage has worn out its welcome, but it [...]

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Box breaks are an important thing to a lot of us.  Not only the bloggers, but Beckett, forum readers, people on uStream and Youtube….even people who just sit at home or go to the hobby shop.  We all love busting boxes of wax, and seeing what nifty nuggest of sweet sweet awesome we can find.
Well, [...]

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In a bit of news that … isn’t as surprising as I might have thought originally, Topps has announced that they’ve received the exclusive rights to produce baseball cards for Minor League Baseball.  They’ll have the rights to the team names and logos, as well as the Pro Debut logo, with the first set going [...]

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I don’t normally bring up other sites much, and there’s a good reason behind it, especially given the sites in question.
However, with this being Black Friday, no matter my personal opinion, it’s only fair that I give a shout out to Blowout Cards as well as the Beckett Blog for their efforts today.  Blowout, for [...]

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I don’t follow the Lions, or Matthew Stafford, but I saw a video clip put together by NFL Films …. I’m not ashamed to say that I’m still a bit teary-eyed from this. This kid….he’s got stone balls, that’s all I can say. Watch this video.

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Get your gambling shoes ready!  The gambling products are starting to come out, with 2009 UD Black football first, followed by Triple Threads, Ultimate Collection and presumably Topps Sterling, Exquisite and National Treasures down the line.  While the cards themselves look very nice, and there are some I want, I have some issues with some [...]

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2009.
The season of shoulda been, woulda been, coulda been….
But wasn’t.
But for 2 fumbles, 2 missed extra points, and a stop, we’re possibly 9-1.
But we’re not.  We’re 5-5.  Staring down the barrel of Indy and Jacksonville, then a faint breather against Seattle and St. Louis, then Miami and New England.  We pretty much have to go [...]

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So, another week is done, and University of Houston beat 2-win Memphis by the score of 55 to 14.  In the process, Case Keenum threw for over 400 yards and 5 TDs, without any interceptions.  Houston’s reward?  To drop in the AP rankings from 24 to 25.
Stanford lost for the 4th time, and dropped from [...]

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While this won’t even be out for another five to six months, we’ve already got an early preview thanks to the folks at Upper Deck of 2010 Upper Deck NFL Draft.  The set will consist of 150 base cards, and four different inserts, each with 25 cards (Tood McShay Scouting Report, Draft Edition Magazine, Alumni [...]

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With the release of 2009 Topps T-206 coming out on the 25th, it’s time to take an in-depth look at the product, especially how it concerns me, as a Houston Collector. First, we’re looking at a 300 card base set, in the visual style of the T-206 cards which originally came out in 1909-1911. [...]

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With 2009 almost over, and only a handful of products left to come out (other than basketball and hockey, which I don’t collect), it’s time to look towards 2010. Personally, I have a challenge for Topps, Panini, Upper Deck, and the rest.
1) Innovate: For the past few years, there’s been a lot [...]

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Here’s the video breaks!

more about "2002 Baseball Box Breaks", posted with vodpod

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Okay, I have on my site a list of what I have currently.  I want to fill my holes.  I have boxes and boxes and boxes of cards, both base, parallels, numbered cards, inserts, rookies, game-used and autographs for both baseball and football.  I want to be rid of them.  I’m trying to unload them [...]

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We have more information today on 2010 Topps Baseball, including the numbering on some of the parallels, as well as pull ratios.  Presumably, all of these are hobby, of course.
Gold Parallels are #’d to 2010, Black are #’d to 59 and are Hobby and HTA only, Platinum are 1/1 and are not limited to hobby [...]

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For those who haven’t paid attention, Topps’ annual Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects baseball product comes out in December.  I wanted to take a moment and comb over the checklist and look a bit deeper into what’s in this set.  Personally, I’ve always viewed this set as Bowman Series II.  It’ll feature all the minor [...]

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I just picked up a couple of boxes from eBay from ‘way back’ in 2002.  I’ll be breaking these baseball boxes live once I figure out how to use uStream, and then will post it here.   I’m not saying what boxes they are yet, as I want to leave it a bit of a [...]

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By my records, I am currently at just under 20,000 hits (somewhere around 19,600 or so). I average about 40-60 hits a day, so I should hit 20,000 within the next week.
Here’s the deal. If you can take a screenshot of your browser window, showing that you are hit 20,000, post [...]

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The college football season isn’t over, but as far as I’m concerned, the choice for 2009 Heisman should be pretty much decided. Yes, it’s a bit of a homer choice, but in my mind, it’s entirely justified.
Case Keenum should win the 2009 Heisman trophy going away. Do you want reasons? Well, let’s [...]

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I’m taking a slight detour today, to talk about something that I take very personally. While I may not always agree with our government or policies, and quite often may be very vocal about it, I have and will continue to have the utmost respect for those who serve and have served in our [...]

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While we’ve seen photos and information on 2010 Topps Baseball, now we have the checklist (Excel required), which includes much more information on what will be involved, as well as checklists for all of the insert sets.  For me, there’s a Classic Combos card featuring Lance Berkman and Mike Hampton.  Um….okay…..  Personally, a more classic [...]

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Thanks to Guru on Blowout Cards Forum, we’ve got some looks at the just-released 2009 Topps Finest Football.  He also was lucky enough to pull what is probably the best hit out of the entire set, a Mark Sanchez patch auto superfractor 1/1.

I’d like to say, first, congratulations on the pull.  Beyond that, though, I [...]

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I know, I routinely pimp things I find on eBay. I can’t help it. Considering the options right now, I’d much rather spend $100 on cards on eBay, and get things I actually want for a reasonable price.  What I generally do is go through the list of players I collect, and look [...]

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