The Football Card Blog

While I don't post much these days, the news that Topps lost their NFL Players Inc. license to publish football cards was clearly big enough to warrant a post.

I first saw the news at Cardboard Junkie (although he apparently thinks that baseball is all that matters...I hope he's kidding), and then found the news at Wax Heaven and a couple of other sites.  I even noticed this morning that ProFootballTalk had the news on their site--albeit with his rather unsupported claim that "the trading-card industry has diminished over the past two decades, possibly due to the inherently low-tech nature of it."

My take on it?  Like most people blogging about the card industry, I do tend to think it's too bad that all sports appear to be heading down a more exclusive path.  While the NFL is still granting licenses to Upper Deck and Panini, rather than a single card company, I do tend to think that in all cases less competition amongst card companies ill simply mean that the card companies will have less incentive to put out product that is truly the best it could be.

While I don't share the level of angst some in the card blogging community have towards...seemingly all manufacturers, and in fact have largely gotten out of collecting (although I am taking part in mini-card show next month--was supposed to happen last spring, but never did...more on that in a later post), I do tend to agree that the card companies have not been putting out their best work in recent times.

Personally, if I was the NFL/MLB/NBA/etc, rather than restrict the licenses completely, I would spend some time coming up with better guidelines for the card companies in using their logos/names in products--more restrictions on the number of sets, better quality control, better controls around forgeries, and making sure that there is value in card collecting for everyone--from the companies to the leagues to the actual collecters.

But that's just me--what do I know.  What about everyone else?

I'm very fortunate in my current job, I occasionally have the chance to go on some interesting web surfing tangents, which often lead me to finding out random information about things that I never knew about things & people that interest me.

Today, my surfing led me to the Wikipedia page for Pat McInally, who played for the Cincinnati Bengals from 1975 to 1985.  The reason his name jumped out at me when I saw it on another Wiki page (I believe I was looking at the 1975 draft), was that when I was younger, McInally's cards would always fascinate me--I'd heard of guys playing multiple positions, but how often do you see a guy that split time between wide receiver and punter?  And later in his career, a punter wearing #87 on his jersey?

(And yes, I know Danny White was often listed as QB-P--but for some reason, that never seemed quite as unusual to me).

Beyond the oddity of his WR/P position, I had never looked much into McInally's career--what I found was actually kind of interesting:
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Well, after more than 3 months, I'm finally going to post again.  No promises this time about regularity, but I'm hoping that I will be back with some regularity.

So where have I been, that has prevented me from posting on my football card blog during the football season?

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OK, it's been almost a month, and no action here on The Football Card Blog.  So what's up with that?  A whole bunch of things have basically led me to just not really "feel it" over the last few weeks--from the Favre fiasco, to the disappointing rookie class this year, to some of the stuff I've been reading in the hobby blogosphere.

But, I saw some of the game Sunday night, and I'm starting to get back into it.  I've got my first fantasy draft coming up, I think the first set of 2008 cards that I might actually buy a couple boxes of comes out soon, and I've got a couple of other site related projects that are underway.

So, hopefully moving forward things will get a little more regular around here again.  If not, I promise a full refund!

Been cleaning for a party tomorrow, which means I've got to put some cards away, and thought I should note a few things:

* Got my 8th box of 2007 Bowman Chrome last weekend for my birthday, and after 8 boxes, a few retail packs, and numerous email purchases, I finally completed the base set--well, the cards BC56 and above.  I still hate that they split the set like that, and making it a different design was even dumber.  I think they had to for baseball due to new rules from the Players Association around rookie cards, but why use a format forced upon you for baseball for football?  It's not like more people were buying the baseball because of the switch--they were buying them because they still wanted the rookie cards.  And after my 2007 Baseball Bowman purchases, I doubt I'll be going back in 2008, which may mean I'm done with baseball cards altogether.

* Downside to the box--no printing plates, the autograph was just a Chansi Stuckey, and I already had every refractor that I got in the pack (and none of them were rookies).  So I'm still in need of a lot (roughly 87) refractors to get that set completed.  If anyone has any and would be interested in trading, drop me a line at tony(at)thefootballcardblog.com, or post in the comments below.  I don't think I need any of the big name rookies (other than maybe a Brady Quinn), so we can work something out.

* Werid Collecting Habit #1--I actually save all of the hobby boxes I buy.  I think I even have a few in storage from when I was a kid somewhere, but since I've been back in the hobby (and they've started splitting hobby & retail into different models), I think I've saved every empty hobby box.  Not the retail boxes, those go right in the trash (although I've learned to at least wait until I confirm that I got all the inserts I was supposed to).  Am I the only one?

* Weird Collecting Habit #2--You know the blank white thick cards they put into packs so people can't search through the box and pull the hot packs?  I save those too.  I have almost a full 800 count box of them now.  Anyone else do that?  I think I may have finally found a use for them--I came across a post at Wax Heaven about Custom Made Cards, and I was thinking maybe I would get some cards designed of my Great Uncle Howie Schultz, and see if he would autograph them for the family.  But before that, I have no idea why I saved them.  I did NOT, however, save the contest inserts that make me register to try to win a trip somewhere.  If anyone collects those, maybe we can trade contest forms for blank inserts <GRIN>.

Like I said, just some random thoughts for the night.  I'm hoping I might get a chance to run over to the local card shop this weekend, as I haven't been in for a while, but I'd be surprised if anything came out of it, since I'm not into baseball as much, and last time I was in he was still trying to convince Upper Deck that he was legit (so he probably doesn't have any SP that I could grab).  Might check out a couple of Web sites that I've seen recently, though, to get something--I'm thinking I might try to do a video box break with the new web came I recently got...