Ever Closer... 2010 World Cup Edition...

If you've never seen these cards in person, you're missing out. By far one of the greatest sets to be put out in the last 30 years. 2010 Panini World Cup.
These cards, IF you can ever find them, aren't cheap. Thankfully I don't need too many more, having tackled it back in 2010 until the pack supply dried up. I was soooooooo hoping for another go for the 2014 World Cup, but Panini crapped the bed by putting out Prizm instead. Prizm is probably Panini's ugliest set across all sports. And the feetsball was no exception.

These country cards are so shiny. You could signal aircraft with these things.

 Cameroon

 North Korea

and Paraguay. My crappy scans don't show it well, but the country name is ghosted on the left side going from bottom to top.

 These next two are clear acetate cards. Two of the bigger stars I was missing. Thankfully Rooney, Ronaldo, and Messi are already tucked safely into my binder...

 I always wanted a son named Yaya.

 Wrapping up with two more base cards...

I was grateful to find a single seller with eight cards I needed. And even more grateful that he was having a sale. These set me back just under $9. His normal price was around $27. Yay sales!

I now need #'s 15, 27, 32, 34, 35, 46, 56, 88, 119, 153,

When I finish it, I'm scanning every page for posterity.

The 2010 World Cup is NOT over... Stickie edition.

Let your minds wander back to last summer.... okay, not the one that ended a couple of weeks ago, the one before that. It was World Cup Frenzy! People who never watched soccer before or since were all of a sudden experts. Games were watched. And discussed. The U.S got beaten, and all was forgotten.

Except for those few of you, who like me, were addicted to stickers. World Cup stickers. We were a small, but determined bunch. Most of us finished our sticker books as well as our online sticker books.

Or did we???

Like you, once I put the last sticker into my book, I let out a satisfied sigh and closed the cover. Until a few weeks ago.

I found out some disturbing news.

The bastards Panini had put out an UPDATE SET! ACK!!!

Are you kidding me?!???! No pigeon had come to my door telling me this. I MUST complete my sticker book!

So I did what any normal OCD set collector would do. I scoured the internet until 3am looking for these elusive unstuck stickers.

And after a few sleepless nights, I found them. All of them.

Behold.

 The reason for the update set was of course because not all of the players in the initail release actually played, so stickers had to be made up for those that did.

 Germany did fairly well considering that apparently they had no idea who their Keepers were going to be going in. 0/2 on that one.

 I guess I should show you the backs..... they are numbered according to who they replace in the book, with an "x" annotation. At the bottom, it also tells you by name the 'substitution' that needs to be made.

 The stickers are a bit longer than the original stickers, as the new information about the player needs to cover up the old pplayer's information that was pre-printed into the book.

 Team France added 5 new members, and still imploded.

 Not much to say about most of these guys....

 like any of you are still reading at this point anyways...

 that was a boring sheet... all white kits.

 The lone new American.

 all in all they were 80 new stickers made up for this update set

 and as a reward for actually scrolling through all that, may I present 6 members of Canada's womens soccer team. They never win any games, but we don't care.

Sorry there's no ponies... but it's best to stick with what you know.
(see what I did there?)

It's over! It's finally over!!!

thanks to dayf, Morgan "Mr Happy' Gould has found a home in my 2010 Panini World Cup Sticker Book. And then it was done! Complete!

The joy of a completed sticker book!!!

Thanks to all the bloggers in Canada and the U.S who traded with me, as well as those in Serbia, Finland, Australia, and France. Of course, a big shout out to John in England who always helps with these types of things.

Now, who wants to see scans of their favourite team??? Speak now. If no one speaks, I may just show you the whole damn book. Threat or a promise, your choice.

Trade Night Success! and an update....

My 'local' card shop has a trade night every month. Nothing too special, just a bunch of guys getting together to generally belittle each other's choice in sports teams, with pizza and pack wars thrown in. Surprisingly, very little trading occurs. But a lot of wax gets busted.

This time, there was a lot of trading. Usually when someone comes up to me around here and says; 'You're that Braves fan, right?' It isn't a good thing. This time it turned out to be.

I was able to trade a couple of Martin Brodeur inserts for this baby....

 On card /99. Doesn't get much better than that. Thanks for the swap Mike.
I also traded for a bunch of hockey stuff, but you can see that on Just A Bit Offside when I get around to it. Maybe tonite. Maybe.

Also a small envelope from Darkship arrived. Todd had one of the last two stickers I needed for the 2010 Panini World Cup Sticker Book.

 Shiny!

Chris Harris had sent me two of the last four I needed....

So now I'm just down to #36. From what I hear, dayf has it on the way. I can't wait. I just might finish this sucker in 2010. Awesome.

closer.... closer.... ever so close now....

You all remember the World Cup. I still miss it. Most of you probably don't. But it's still not quite over. Not until I finish that damn Panini 2010 FIFA World Cup Sticker Book. I will finish it. I promise. I'm a little bit closer now due to a trade arriving in the mail a few days back. From Serbia.

 Yes. Serbia. I'm going to the ends of the Earth to finish this damn book before the end of 2010. Nice of them to stop the war long enough to swap stickers.
Some of the stickers that came trans-Atlantic were Brasil,

 one of the greats to ever play the game, now sadly past his prime, Ronaldinho..

 Mr Higuain, looking more Greek than Argentinian...

 and German keeper Rene Adler. I post Mr Adler for the oddity that in the 2010 World Cup, Germany played two keepers. Panini oddly put two keepers in the German team set, when most countries only got one.

But the two keepers Panini included did not play at all. So we ended up with stickers of two keepers who didn't play, and no stickers of the two that did.
What are the odds?

Now with the help of my LCS (four stickers) and after a trade arrives from a fellow blogger, giving me two more stickers towards my goal, I will be down to needing TWO stickers to complete this set.

#36 and #259.

Somebody, anybody, please help.

Sticker Swap

Yes, I'm still working on my World Cup sticker book as well as the last two season's worth of the Premier League. John from Pursuit of Red Sox sent over a package about a month ago (I'm sooo behind in my posting) that contained stickers from all three sets.

Thanks again John.

And if anyone else is collecting these, my wantlists are up to date... please take a look at them, link on the side bar.
Thanks.

I've got Kaka!!!

it's odd how some phrases can mean totally different things depending on their context. This is one of those.
When I jumped up at my dining room table and yelled, "I've got Kaka!!!", at least a dozen of you would know instantly what I was talking about and been happy for me.
My wife, on the otherhand, took my jubulant phrase in a different direction, and gave me an according look.
Those of you who tried to build Panini's Virtual Sticker Book online during the World Cup know of what I speak. I can think of at least 9 guys who needed the Brazillian star as the LAST player to complete their make believe sticker book, myself included.
Fast forward to the real world, and Voila!
In fact, not only did I receive Kaka, I ended up with double Kaka. So if any of you still collecting need Kaka, I'm your guy.
I wonder if I just set the record for most mention of the name Kaka in one post.....


Kaka.

No Ball? No Problem.

Just what the title says... Germany's Mesut Ozil shows us how.

The Joy of a Completed Page and a trade plea

Just because the World Cup is over for another four years... doesn't mean the collecting and trading should stop.
Check out my wantlists, I'm down to just over 200 needed for this set, and I'm not giving up.
I've got doubles... let's swap.

The Red, White, and Blue are through!

The Nederlands are through to the semi-finals after defeating Brazil 2-1 earlier today. The Dutch were full marks for the win... taking the play to Brazil the entire second half, scoring twice.

Brazil showed their temper in the second half... and a rather classless ending as they and their coach declined to shake hands after the match. They've been watching the Italians apparently.

And what a pleasure it is to be able to watch entire matches without poor officiating. Since the end of the knockout round, top notch officiating with no controversy. Amazing.

Kudos to the Japanese referee in today's match, who kept control while NOT issuing 32 yellow cards as we saw in the preliminaries. Good thing for Brazil as well, or they might've finished the match with 5 or 6 players with all of the fouls they committed.

Uraguay vs Ghana in the afternoon match...

Woot!

Japan is through to the round of 16!!! Thanks in large part to this dude with the funny hair...
Suck it fellow JD's Cards World Cup Contest contestants! The Blue Samurai are unstoppable!

btw, I have my stickers sorted, so if anyone is up for trading, lmk...

Offside Part 2

So the U.S. is through to the round of 16. On a goal where they were three feet offside.

I guess if you whine and moan enough, people will take pity on you. Either that or they'll be afraid of making the call the next time.

Do you think the North American media will carry any of the Algerian complaints on air? HA!

England also advanced, beating Slovenia 1-0.

Somewhere Irish Eyes Are Smiling

Somewhere the leprechauns are smiling as France was eliminated from 2010 World Cup action. The defending champions ended up finishing at the bottom of Pool A with a single point.
For those of you not familiar with the situation, during qualifying for the 2010 World Cup, it came down to a tie-breaking game between Ireland and France to see who advanced to the Big Show.
In extra time, French striker Thierry Henry emulated the biggest cheater of all, Diego Maradonna, and used a handball in the penalty area to put the ball in the back of the net. And on top of that, two French players were offside. Let's just say that it came close to war. Seriously. LINK to a news story.

I went to the World Cup and a box break broke out...

At the last trade night at my lcs, one of the main reasons I went was to grab some more sticker packs of Panini's 2010 World Cup set. Aside from the 10 packs of those, I also grabbed a box of this...
Not stickers, actual cards. I wasn't going to do it... I had resisted it the last time I was there... but someone else bought a box and broke it right then and there. After seeing all those cards, I was hooked.

The details - 36 packs per box. 6 cards per pack. 4 base cards and 2 sp's. Now the sp's come in four different forms. The first is a shiny foilboard team logo found one per pack. The sixth card of the pack could be one of three varieties, all featuring star players. A shiny foilboard version, a glitzy, 3D relief style card, or a clear acetate card.

Unfortunately, my scanner does not do any of these cards justice. they are amazing looking cards.
Card #1 - The Header card
What it's all about....

one of the foilboard logo cards. There are 32 different ones of these....

The regular base cards, 100 of these...

Stadium cards... 10 different to choose from.

here is one of the shiny foilboard player cards....

and a clear acetate card, that really did not scan well.... it also happens to be that round headed boy.

and finally, the bumpy, foily, glitzy player cards. These are awesome in person, each card matching the player's team colours.

I'm really happy with the design and quality of the cards. What I am not happy with is collation. Absolutely horrible. How did I do out of one box?

Base Cards - 4 per pack - 71/100 with 70 duplicates. Yes. 70.

Foilboard team logos - one per pack - 21/32 with 5 duplicates.

Foilboard Player cards - one per 3 1/2 packs - 7/25 with 3 duplicates. How hard would it be to make all 10 different????

Acetate Player cards - one per 2 packs - 18/48 - NO duplicates. thank you

Glitzy metallically shiny bumpy player cards - 15/25 with NO duplicates.

I have to find someone to trade with.... it'll be impossible to put together by busting packs.

Final score - 4/5

Amazing cards, but Panini screwed the pooch by not having someone with at least a Grade 12 education write them a basic algorithm to give them proper collation.

OR

They did it on purpose. In which case they're douchebags.

Nippon!

There's a World Cup contest going on over at JD's Cards. And I ended up with Japan. *sigh* I'm going to do about as well as I did in his Olympic contest.

But nevermind that. Time to introduce you to these young fellas. At least most of them. I haven't bought any stickers in almost two weeks, so this is all I have.
Keeper Eiji

this guy is all business...

Monsieu Honda. No relation. I checked.

and my favourite of all... love the tuft of hair up top....

Go Japan! Beat Cameroon! Now excuse me as kickoff is in 3 minutes.

Yeah, I know I phoned this one in, but kickoff is in 3 minutes!