Niche PC 002: Playing The Name Game Football Style

Niche PC 002: Playing The Name Game Football Style

Kurt Warner

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Niche Collections | Last Niche PC Post: 001

Every once in a while I will pick up cards for the oddball section of my PC. Specifically the Niche section of the collection. I have already briefly mentioned the categories of my Niches. Should I continue with this series, as I hope I will, the Niche Collections link above gives the general briefing of my Niche categories. The "Last Niche PC Post" link will be a link to the previous "episode" post of the series.

So for this semi quick and dirty end of the year post a few days ago I decided to go with showing off a small lot of cards I got from Sportlots of one of my longtime PC football players that happens to also be a Name Niche player plus a few other cards I had of him. Even before I decided to go with the Name Niche hunting/sourcing I collected this player because he played on a fave team and also because he had an excellent career.

As the subtitle says the featured player is Kurt Warner a Quarterback who had a fantastic career in the NFL. Kurt was originally drafted by the Green Bay Packers in 1994 but was released before the season began he was competing with Bret Favre, Mark Brunell, and Ty Detmer. The Next year he got his pro football career started in the Arena Football League with the Iowa Barnstormers. In Dec 1997 he signed a futures contract with the St. Louis Rams and for the 1998 season played for the NFL Europe team Amsterdam Admirals and spent the regular NFL 1998 season as the Rams 3rd String QB.

OK enough back story here are some Warner cards to show:

Now here are a few in more detail:

2012 Topps Quarterback Immortals QI-KW Kurt Warner St. Louis Rams

2001 Fleer Authority Football 53 Kurt Warner St. Louis Rams

2001 Upper Deck Victory 280 Kurt Warner St. Louis Rams

2001 Fleer Tradition 67 Kurt Warner St. Louis Rams

2001 Topps Stadium Club 60 Kurt Warner St. Louis Rams

2001 Topps133 Kurt Warner St. Louis Rams

2001 Upper Deck Vintage 139 Kurt Warner St. Louis Rams

2000 Topps Season Opener 176 Kurt Warner St. Louis Rams

So there we have it. Oh wait The St. Louis Rams had another QB named Kirk actually Kirk this time not just the close Kurt. So here is one of the cards I have of the other Kirk Ram QB Kirk Farmer:

2003 Bowman Football 228 Kirk Farmer St. Louis Rams

Schwoooh that took some time to do with the new way to add photos to posts. Hard to do multiple photos in any sort of order or when uploading. They don't do the same thing where your uploading from the computer holds some of the photos you haven't added to the posts yet.

My First Listia Win

I got my first Listia.com auction win about a week ago. It was only 1 credit but I had to pay $2.99 for shipping. I wasn't sure if I already had this card or not as my Football card collection is an absolute mess, at least my Baseball card collection is a little more organized.

I heard about listia from some card bloggers probably first from Christopher of Nachos Grande blog fame when he mentioned some real good free haul he had gotten from there. It took me a couple of visits and browsing to decide if I want to try it or not and to understand it. I'm getting the hang of it, I wish some of the categories had more sub-categories and that the search function was a little better. If it can't find what you are looking for it indicates that "0 items found" of whatever you were looking for, but still shows a bunch of things that are unrelated to what you were looking for making it look like it made a sucessful search.

Anyway the card that represents my first win/purchase with Listia is:

2000 Topps Football

321 Season Highlights Kurt Warner Rams

2000 Topps Football 321 Season Highlights Kurt Warner Rams

(Front and Back)

My "Graded" Collection

For the record I am not thrilled about graded cards. I think my main reason is it seemed to be originally developed as another way to rob the poor card collector out of his/her hard earned money. OK from a preservation stand point they are probably the best thing for cards, especially fragile perforated cards like stand-ups and sticker/stamp pages/strips, and also they insure authenticity, but from a practical stand point and a financial stand point they suck. They are expensive first for the cost of having the grading company do their thing of grading them and slabbing them, or "entombing" them as some collectors say. Also those who do sell the things try to squeeze out as much money from you as possible for them.

Here are some things I said about the reasons I had been avoiding getting graded stuff:

*I thought they are a pain to store, you have to keep them in separate areas from your ungraded cards due to the case they are in.

*The cost of sending your cards to a company to get graded vs. the grade they will come back as. etc..
 

*The confusion of which company to use. There are about a dozen companies and only 3 or 4 are worth using, depending on who you talk to.
 

*The distance between you and the card through the plastic tomb. It's like looking at your new born kid through the glass window at the hospital.

I still think that way about graded cards somewhat. Although now I won't ban them like I had before having any in hand. Of course there are techniques to "free" your card from it's "Tomb" some work better than others, I think probably the best way to do it without damaging the card is to use a flathead screwdriver and at the top where the paper label is wedge the screwdriver into the seam and then pry a little and then slide it along the edge like opening an envelope. I think you need to hit both top corners loose a little first. Anyway enough about how to free them you can find many videos on YouTube on how to do that.

OK so lets get to discussing the slabbed cards I've got OK.

This first one was the first graded card I ever received in May of 2009. I had never bought one and this one I didn't buy It was in a package from a fellow collector at TCC it was just a "Random Act of Cardness" (My own original saying) from the forum's "Time To Give Something Back!" thread. In the package I had received several other things including a boat-load of Marshall Faulk cards.

Anyway the graded card is a 1997 Topps Basketball Kevin Garnett Graded by FGS (Finest Grading Service) Gem Mint 10. Yowzers. (I jokingly said on the forum he was probably "some loser rookie guy.") I will either trade it for some high-value vintage, or try to sell it.

1997-98 Topps Basketball 148 Kevin Garnett - Timberwolves

Graded by FGS Gem Mint 10

This next card also came from TCC a different user on 24 March 2011. This time from a post called "The Chain" where a package with an assortment of cards is sent around to collectors in a set order and upon receiving the package each collector chooses one card to keep, then replaces that card with a similar type of card and sends the package on to the next collector or "link" in the "chain". There is an option to add another card in a new category to make the selection more interesting. The big problem the experiment had is some people started sending big memorabilia and someone else sent a couple card sets all of which increased the size of the package to a medium flat-rate sized box thus increasing the postage necessary to send on to the next person. That is just a bit of a related tangent to this card, because this graded card was a special "bonus" that the collector who sent me the package sent specifically to me since he knew some of my tastes.

So the second graded card I have is a 2000 Fleer E-X football card # 54 Kurt Warner - Rams graded by Beckett Collectors Club Grading (BCCG) grade a 9 Near Mint or Better.

2000 Fleer E-X Football 54 Kurt Warner - Rams

Graded by BCCG Near-Mint or Better 9

This final graded card was actually my first purchased graded card (received 15 December 2009 for $10.00), well it's more card plus memorabilia because it is a 1971 Milk Duds Baseball FULL BOX Frank Howard Washington Senators Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA) Graded EX-5 The Milk Duds set is unnumbered. Alphabetically this is card #9 (69 in the set)- PSA slab has it marked #1 - the # 1 on the box is for the box code not the card number as all the boxes seem to be numbered 1.

1971 Milk Duds Baseball Complete Box - Frank Howard - Senators

Graded by PSA EX 5

When I was a Kid I had some of the Milk Duds cards, I don't recall which ones. I probably got rid of them because they were "hand cut" and thus "destroyed", or my mom did the stereotypical "threw them out". She did that more so with my oldest brother. Little did I know back then, whenever that was, that I would later like to get some more of these in the Complete Box. Not necessarily graded versions. Due to prices of these things, especially the big stars I can't afford to get all of them in graded form.

I really need to blog here more.

Back in March. I had received a package from TCC member Josh who goes by the handle jwman92 he is a super collector of NFL player Brian Leonard. There is a "giveaway" thread called The Chain there which in a nut shell there is a package of cards going around the people who signed up to be in "the chain". The package has a grouping of cards with each one representing some kind of card (GU, Auto, Insert, serial numbered parallel etc...). When someone receives the package they choose one card from the batch and replace it with a card that is similar and then send the package to the next person "link" in the chain. When it came to my turn I had a time deciding what to take so here is my decision process for The Chain. It also shows what I put into the chain. Anyway this is the card I chose from that package:

2005 Playoff Contenders

RN-2 Jason Campbell and Carlos Rogers Dual Auto.

As a bonus Josh included this card since he knows I like the Rams and collect Kurt Warner.

2000 Fleer E-X #54 Kurt Warner Rams

I'm not big on graded cards for their being so pricey, especially if you pay to get them graded. After they have been graded they are still pretty expensive. My biggest beef with them I guess is you have to store them separate from the rest of your collection. If you want to store them in boxes you need to get the slightly larger/taller ones that are designed to also handle graded cards. I also don't like the "entombed" feeling they give off. When I first saw them I thought from a preservation perspective they are cool, but then that "How do you store them?" question comes up. OK you either display them in some way or you put them in a box that is designed to hold them. I've got way too many cards to have all of them graded, plus for newer cards it is pretty ridiculous to have them graded for preservation since the cost of grading them is more than what they are worth. At one time I said to myself I would never own one, I also said that about game used cards, but I have a few of those. When you are involved with other collectors you tend to be given some stuff you don't really want. So I have learned to accept a few things I can't change.