2014 Upper Deck SP Authentic Football Box Break

Here's the 2014 Upper Deck SP Authentic Football box that I purchased a few weeks ago at a card show.

The guy at the card show was selling the box for only $85.  I felt like that was a pretty good deal since Blowout Cards is selling hobby boxes for $100.

I admit that it was a little sketchy buying sealed hobby boxes from a random guy at a card show.  In every case of 2014 SP Authentic, three of the boxes have those Super FX bonus packs.  This guy probably bought a case of this product for himself, opened some of the boxes, hit the three boxes which contained the Super FX bonus packs, and then decided to sell the rest of the sealed boxes.

I knew that when I was buying the box that there was a very high chance that it wasn't going to contain a Super FX pack.  But since the guy was asking only $85 for the box, I was willing to take that risk.  After all, there were still three autographs in the box, and those autographs could be awesome autographs too.

Sure enough, when I opened up the box, it didn't have a Super FX bonus pack sitting on top.  That didn't really bother me because only a few packs into the box I hit an awesome Odell Beckham, Jr. Future Watch insert numbered to 99.

I felt like regardless of what the three autographs were in this box, that this one card made the entire box worth it.  I felt even luckier when a few packs later I hit a Johnny Manziel Future Watch insert numbered to 999.

If only Johnny Manziel were a good NFL QB...

My first autograph was Chris Borland which is quite timely considering that this guy just retired after one season in the NFL due to brain trauma concerns.

The second autograph was David Fales, backup QB for the Chicago Bears.

And the autograph patch was Logan Thomas.  (Barf)

The card itself is gorgeous.  The cards look much better in person than they do in pictures and scans.  The patch autograph card is so nice that I might actually keep this card... maybe.

I really like how Upper Deck pays attention to the back of the card, and puts effort into making the back of the card just as important as the front.  Panini could learn a lesson from this.

Not a terrible hobby box.  The Odell Beckham, Jr. Future Watch insert is probably the hit of the break.   

BGS Surface Subgrade

I found another card which has a final grade more than 0.5 higher than the lowest subgrade.

Remember, the general rule is that your final grade can only be 0.5 higher than your lowest subgrade except when your lowest subgrade is surface.  When your lowest subgrade is surface, and all your other subgrades are significantly higher than the surface subgrade (such as 1.0 or more), then your final grade can be 1.0 higher than the surface subgrade.

In this dual relic card of Aaron Rodgers and Jason Campbell, you can see that the surface subgrade of 7 is the lowest subgrade on the card.  The other subgrades are all significantly higher than the surface subgrade by at least 2.5 points.  This brings the card's final score up from what would normally be a 7.5 to a 8.0.

Be sure to this previous blog post, and this one too, for more information on BGS grading.

2014 Topps Inception Football Box Break

I picked up three hobby boxes from a local card show.  I ended up buying 2014 Topps Inception, 2014 Upper Deck SP Authentic, and 2014 Topps Platinum.

Here's the Inception box.

This Inception box was only $65.  I think that was a pretty good deal considering that Blowout Cards is selling Inception boxes for $82 right now.  What's crazy is that another guy at the card show was also selling Inception boxes and he wanted $95 per box!  Um, no.

I really like Inception.  The cards are high quality.  Can't complain about getting this nice looking Tom Savage patch autograph.

When I was looking at the back of the card I noticed that the little biography talks about him playing for UCLA.  This is obviously a mistake since Tom Savage played his last year at Pittsburgh.  The biography information is for UCLA's quarterback Brett Hundley.  How could Topps make this mistake?  Hudley was still in college in 2014.  He hadn't even turned pro yet!

Even though this is an error card, the error will not impact the card's value.  I can only see this card being worth more than usual due to its error if Tom Savage some day becomes a star.

The other autograph in the pack was Terrance West.  I like the on-card autograph, but geez what a lazy signature.

The final hit was a De'Anthony Thomas patch card.  You can barely see three colors in the patch window.

The parallel card was a Julius Thomas magenta numbered to 75.

Four Packs of 2014 SP Authentic Football

I picked up four packs of 2014 Upper Deck SP Authentic Football from my local LCS.  I wanted to get a box, but they were all out so I just bought their remaining loose packs.

This is my first time seeing these cards in person.  I've been dying to get my hands on these since they came out but I've been busy spending all my money on other products that I just never got around to it.

Geez, Upper Deck does a really nice job with these cards.  The base cards are gorgeous.

It really is a shame that Upper Deck is losing its college license to Panini.  Upper Deck has some of the most timeless, classic, and clean designs of all the major card companies.

Didn't hit any autographs in the four packs, but I did hit two Future Watch inserts.  I remember this design from when I was a kid.  Such a classic and awesome design.

The original 2000 SP Authentic Football cards were stamped along the left and right edges.  The 2014 cards aren't stamped; however, Upper Deck put a gloss on the card in those areas to simulate the stamp.  You can't see it on the scans, but it's there.

Even the back of the cards are well designed.  Panini, on the other hand, practically ignores the back of cards and doesn't make the back informative and worth reading.

Sigh.  I'm going to miss Upper Deck's college stuff.  I guess I better buy up as much of this as possible before it's all gone.