Topps 2013 Football Stickers

The biggest number of views that I have on this blog are always related to posts about stickers, in particular football stickers. While other posts get maybe 80 views, football, whether it be Match Attax, Topps stickers or Panini stickers, get in excess of 300 views. Compared to many other blogs this is not many, but I have 30 followers-not 200+.

This years sticker book is free, yes free. You purchase 4 packs of stickers for £2 and receive the sticker book gratis. A clever ploy or marketing technique, either way it works for me.

There are 352 stickers to collect, which includes 16 stickers per team- 2 of which make a squad picture plus a sparkly star player, 20 kit stickers- half size stickers as per last year and 20 international players.

Topps do stickers well, so there is no real change this year, (Why fix something that isn't broken?), thankfully they dropped the 3D stickers from a few years back.

I have 5 packs to showcase, purchased from Tesco supermarket in Broadstairs.

 



 

Pack 1:

#61 Darron Gibson Everton

#137 Steven Taylor Newcastle

#252 Matthew Etherington Stoke

#258 Simon Mignolet Sunderland

#301 Gareth Bale Tottenham star player

 

Pack 2:

#148 John Ruddy Norwich

#200 Alejandro Faurlin QPR

#212 Reading team part 1

#223 Pavel Pogrebnyah Reading

#345 Antolin Alcaraz Wigan

 

Pack 3:

#7 Arsenal team part 2

#49 Oscar Chelsea

#82 Hugo Rodallega Fulham

#308 West Bromwich Albion team part 1

#319 Peter Odemwingie West Bromwich

 

Pack 4:

#14 Theo Walcott Arsenal

#93 Joe Allen Liverpool

#113 Mario Balotelli Manchester City

#237 Richie Lambert Southampton star player

#281Jonathan De Guzman Swansea

 

Pack 5:

#44 Frank Lampard Chelsea

#54 Everton team part 1

#174 Karim El Ahmadi Morocco international star

#170 Sunderland/Swansea kit

#259 John O'Shea Sunderland

 

So there you have it, 5 packs of 2013 Topps football. A cross section of the stickers available but no Manchester United and one Manchester City- the most hated man in football.

Contact me if you would like an album some stickers,

Big B I have already posted yours.

2012-2013 Match Attax Football

 For those of you who are interested 2012-2013 Match Attax Football go on sale on Thursday 27th September. These cards are from a preview pack available with Match of the Day magazine.

There are over 500 cards to collect including new Stadium cards, Super Skills, Star Signings, plus Legends, 100 club and Man of the Match cards.
There will also be some Limited Edition cards available in magazines and various accessories but are yet to be revealed.

2012 Topps Premier League stickers- apologies to Waxaholic

I only seems like yesterday that I was apologising for starting him towards the 2011 Premier league Album.
A Premier league album and stickers will be winging their way to him in Canada again in 2012.This year I intend to collect the whole album as well, so we will be collecting alongside each other.
There are no fancy 3D cards this year, just 462 stickers with the odd shiny club emblem and Star Player shiny plus Special 20th anniversary 'History of ' superstar stickers.

 There are 5 stickers per packet at a reasonably priced 50p per packet.

 There are 23 stickers per team, which includes 18 players, a club emblem shiny, two home and away kit stickers, a first team squad sticker and a star player shiny.

Let the adventure begin. Follow my progress at Pursuit of Red Sox.

Trade with The Cardboard Junkie

One of the many quirks I have developed in collecting baseball cards is keeping the wrappers. Not just the wrappers but the boxes also. Before blogging came about I wrote the players pulled from packs and kept the wrappers along with the scrawling in a notebook.

Fast forward a few years and I still do this but in the guise of Pursuit of Red Sox. An attempt to keep an accurate record of the cards pulled from packs and an easier way of keeping track of the Red Sox pulled from packs.

To further the cause Dayf recently proposed a intriguing hostage relocation program. English football (soccer) packs for American baseball packs. Serious transatlantic negotiations began and finally winging their way to Georgia were some packs of 2010 Adrenalyn XL World Cup cards. Luckily my local newsagents still carried some stock. So I bought what was left and the hostages were released from English tyranny.

Relocating to England these former abductees were sent by Dayf:

2 packs of 2011 Gypsy Queen,

1 pack 2011 Allen & Ginter's,

1 pack 2011 Topps Opening Day,

1 pack 2011 Topps Attax,

1 pack 2011 Topps baseball Series 2,

1 pack 2008 Donruss Playoff Extra edition.

All of which I intend to open at Pursuit of Red Sox.
Wait a minute. I call foul. Two of the packs have been tampered with. Get Ban Ki-Moon on the phone quickly. Relax......Unclench.......Slow down. The hostages have been treated in accordance with United Nations guidelines.
On further inspection both packs were chock full of Gypsy Queen Red Sox and Topps Red Sox. 
Please forgive my accusations. The packs were brilliant.

Thank you Dayf. Hopefully we can negotiate additional transactions. 

Topps 2011 Premier League Football Stickers

Firstly an apology directed towards Mr Waxaholic. Stickers are like a catnip to this poor man and I have started him on many a journey towards a completed album and desperately tried to help complete one before starting another.

I have noted the completed World Cup post, so its time to start another. What better way to tempt than to show a sticker I pulled from the first pack. None other than young Edwin...

There are 449 stickers to collect including 3D stickers.
In past sticker sets, Topps tried to include a variation on the sticker theme such as autographs and chase stickers, so this year it is a 3D sticker. The sticker albums include a pair of 3D glasses, the cardboard variety with one red lens and one blue lens. Not really breakthrough technology for a HD TV generation. There is a possibility that Topps has more of an understanding of the demographics for this product than I realised - men like myself, who love a sticker book and think that 3D glasses (and digital watches), although amazingly primitive are a pretty neat idea.
I purchased 6 packets from my local shop and here they are:

Pack 1:
#13 Manchester City Kit
#66 Scott Dann Birmingham
#93 Morten Gamst Pedersen Blackburn
#219 Alex Chelsea 3D
#251 Adam Johnson Manchester City
#262 EdwinVan Der Sar Manchester United

Pack 2:
#20 West Ham Kit
#99 Blackpool Logo
#230 Freddie Piquionne West Ham 3D
#252 Nigel de Long Machester City
#263 Jonny Evans Machester United
#386 Kieron Dyer West Ham
Pack 3:
#10 Everton Kit
#15 Newcastle Kit
#115 Brett Ormerod Blackpool
#223 Adam Johnson Machester City 3D
#381 Luis Boa Morte Westham
#388 Freddie Piquionne West Ham
Pack 4:
#40 Robin Van Persie Arsenal
#65 Stephen Carr Birmingham
#152 Didier Drogba Chelsea
#260 Manchester United Team
#261 Wayne Rooney Manchester United 3D
#302 Andy Wilkinson Stoke
Pack 5:
#12 Liverpool Kit
#129 Chung-Young Lee Bolton
#146 Florent Malouda Chelsea
#192 Bobby Zamora Fulham
#299 Matthew Etherington Stoke 3D
#382 Radoslav Kovac West Ham
#432 Enric Valles Birmingham
Pack 6:
#81 Blackburn Team
#100 Blackpool Team
#102 Matt Giles Blackpool
#150 Michael Essien Chelsea
#408 Mauro Boselli Wigan
#417 Stephen Ward Wolves
#444 David Meyler Sunderland

So Big B interested?

Match Attax World Cup Edition

There are only 60 days until the start of the Football World Cup in South Africa. The World Cup fever that descends across England has already started; predictions of raising the FIFA trophy as winning finalists, concerns that England have some great players just not a great squad, player infidelity/injuries, will the girlfriends/wives be allowed to attend and so on. However all English football fans look towards the first game of Group C on the 12th June, that just happens to be England verses the USA.
At present there are 3 different 'World Cup' card/sticker sets available to collect. Topps foray into the football market continues with Match Attax World Cup Edition.
A unique feature for this set, which is not unusual to US collectors, but almost unheard of this side of the pond, is a supermarket special edition pack. The supermarket that has secured this exclusive is TESCO's, who appear to have their fingers in almost every single pie - mobile phones, Internet, insurance, clothing, food! and now collectable trading cards. No extra publicity however, these packs will be referred to as 'International Legend packs'.
I purchased 5 packs on a recent shopping trip. They weren't hard to miss, a massive display as you entered the store. Each of the International Legend packs has 7 cards, the regular packs contain 6 cards. What did the five 'Legend' packs reveal...

Pack 1:

Sir Geoff Hurst England International Legend

Rafael Van Der Vaart Holland

William Gallas France

Nikola Zigic Serbia

Vincente Del Bosque Spanish Manager

Carlos Pavon Honduras

Aaron Lennon England

Pack 2:

Marco Van Basten Holland Star Legend

Fabio Capello England manager

Theofanis Gekas Greece

Waldo Ponce Chile

Carlton Cole England

Wes Brown England

Wayne Rooney England MOM

Pack 3:

Marcel Desailly France International Legend

Jong Tae-Se Korea DPR

Karim Ziani Algeria

Mark Schwarzer Australia

Arthur Boka Ivory Coast

Marcus Tulio Tanaka Japan

Clint Dempsey USA Star Player

Pack 4:

Zico Brazil International Legend

Micheal Ballack Germany

Eduardo Portugal

Fabio Grosso Italy

Iker Casillas Spain

Bakary Sagna France

Park Si-Jung Korea Republic Star Player

Pack 5:

Franz Beckenbauer Germany International Master

Gilberto Silva Brazil

Jean Makoun II Cameroon

Dunga Brazilian Manager

Wayne Bridge England

MacBeth Sibaya South Africa

Stephen Appiah Ghana Star Player

I must admit to liking these special inserts, some brilliant names from the World of football past. I did purchase 1 additional (non-special insert) pack containing 6 cards.

Park Ji-Sung Korea Rebublic Star Player

Robert Koren Slovenia

Marek Hamsik Slovakia

Ramon Nunez Honduras

Serdar Tasci Germany

Arien Robben Holland

If I do decide to purchase any further packs, they will be the International Legend packs. For some reason, I'm sure it is psychological, the packs appear to be lacking without the legend insert. As always if your interested in any packs or packs just e-mail.

Cards from the Alley family

Recently when I posted about the huge UK phenomenon that is Match Attax Football, I was contacted by a reader in the US of A who asked if I wouldn't mind sending her son some cards. He is a big Evertonian and Premiership Football fan. They would be happy to send some baseball back my way. I have no absolutely no problem with this, in fact this is the sort of trade I was trying to encourage. I sent a Match Attax magazine, some other football magazines that had promotion packs attached and a number of Match Attax packs.
The Alley family were more than generous in their return package, five packs of baseball cards, and a Sweet Spot tin filled with roughly 50 Red Sox cards, including the Papelbon Jersey card. I will crack the packs in Pursuit of Red Sox but here is a selection of the cards they sent my way;

2007 SP Authentic #59 Jonathan Papelbon
2007 Fleer Ultra #22 Josh Beckett
2008 Sweet Spot #29 Daisuke Matsuzaka
2008 Sweet Spot #50 Jason Bay
2008 Bowman Chrome #147 Kevin Youkilis
2008 Bowman Chrome #189 Jacoby Ellsbury
2008 Goudey #206 Fred Lynn
2008 Topps Co-signers #19 Curt Schilling
2009 Bowman #BP6 Stolmy Pimentel
2009 Bowman #26 Tyler Yockey
2009 Bowman Chrome #BDPP25 Christian Vazquez
2009 Bowman Chrome #BDPP35 Tim Federowicz
2009 Goudey #24 Justin Masterson
2009 SP Authentic #15 Dustin Pedroia
2009 SP Authentic #31 Jon Lester
2009 SP Legendary Cuts #111 Carlton Fisk #345/550

A huge thanks to the Alley family as they went all out to send some great Red Sox stuff. I have collected a few more Everton items (and Match Attax cards) for their son and they are keeping an eye out for Jacoby Ellsbury cards at their local card shop. Sounds like another trade in the making.

Trade with Big B from Waxaholic

With the 2009/2010 football (soccer) season now in full swing, how can I deny a request Football stickers? Brian from Waxaholic and I share a liking of stickers as well as cards. So I am happy to contribute to his completion of the Topps Total sticker album.
Brian sent me some great '71 Red Sox and a pack of O-Pee-Chee baseball cards, which I will share in my Pursuit of Red Sox.

Brian sent:
1971 Topps #58 Bill Lee
1971 Topps #159 Javis Tatum
1971 Topps #225 Gary Peters
1971 Topps #254 Cal Koonce
1971 Topps #302 Phil Gagliano
1987 Donruss Opening Day #180 Bob Stanley
1987 Donruss Opening Day #181 Wade Boggs
1987 Donruss Opening Day #182 Jim Rice
1987 Donruss Opening Day #183 Bill Buckner
1987 Donruss Opening Day #184 Dwight Evans
1987 Donruss Opening Day #185 Spike Owen
1987 Donruss Opening Day #186 Don Baylor
1987 Donruss Opening Day #187 Marc Sulivan
1987 Donruss Opening Day #188 Marty Barrett
1987 Donruss Opening Day #189 Dave Henderson
1987 Donruss Opening Day #266 Red Sox
2004 Donruss Diamond Kings #90 Pedro Martinez
2009 Topps Finest #46 Jacoby Ellsbury

Thanks Brian. I hope we can continue to placate our shared dilemma of collecting a sport that is played on foreign shores.

Trade with Chuck from Chuck's Used Cards

Someone who had become a friend and a good trading buddy is Chuck at Chuck's Used Cards. We are in a unique position of trading cards that we have easy access to. In my case it is football cards. Chuck collects, amongst other things, Champions League Football cards.
For those of you who are unaware,(even not bothered), the Champions League is a competition between the clubs who win the domestic competitions through-out Europe. It is in reality a competition between the biggest and richest clubs in Europe. The fact that they play against each other makes them bigger and richer, so teams are desperate to qualify for the Champions League. The most powerful clubs in football in Europe have talked many times about creating an European 'Super' League, but it never eventuates. There was a group called 'G-14', which consisted of 18? of the most powerful clubs in Europe. They voiced concerns about the amount of money that the governing bodies, FIFA and UEFA take from the gate receipts, television rights, merchandise plus other money related issues. Naturally clubs wanted their fair share of that particular cash cow. With the formation of the 'G-14' , most pundits thought the next logical step was to form the European 'Super' League. UEFA and G-14 agreed on some points and the latter was disbanded. The Champions League is still the Number 1 European competition and, the most powerful clubs in Europe continue to get richer and therefore even more powerful.
Luckily I was able to find some of these cards for Chuck in my local newsagents and a deal was struck.
Chuck sent in return:
1985 Topps #606 Rich Gale
1986 Topps #529 Marc Sullivan
1987 Donruss #153 Rich Gedman
1987 Donruss #647 Dave Sax
1988 Topps BIG #54 Marty Barrett
1988 Topps BIG #80 Ellis Burks
1990 Bowman #282 Marty Barrett
1992 Donruss #87 Danny Darwin
1992 Stadium Club #732 Mike Gardiner
1992 Stadium Club #839 Bob Zupcic
1993 Topps #323 Mike Greenwell
1994 Donruss #644 Paul Quantrill
1995 Stadium Club #386 Mike Greenwell
1995 Stadium Club #404 Ken Ryan
1995 Stadium Club #407 Greg Harris
1995 Studio #161 Andre Dawson
1995 Upper Deck #24 Frank Rodriguez
1995 Upper Deck #83 Jeff Suppan
1995 Upper Deck #187 Bill Selby
1996 Topps #377 Luis Alicea
2000 Fleer Gamers #32 Pedro Martinez
2001 Donruss #47 Hideo Nomo
2006 Topps #BOS6 Mark Loretta
2006 Topps #146 Matt Clement

Thank you Chuck. My nice newsagents has purchased another box of the Champions League Cards, so there is now a fresh supply if you want to trade again.

Trade with Chuck from Chuck's Used Cards

Its a beauty. Card Number 1 from the 1980 Topps set. The last 1979 highlights I needed.
Chuck from Chuck's Used Cards sent this plus many others in exchange for Football packs.
The package arrived yesterday from Fernandina Beach in Florida.

Here are the cards Chuck enclosed:

1974 Topps #204 Stolen base leaders (Tommy Harper)
1978 Topps #320 Fred Lynn
1980 Topps #1 Carl Yastrzemski
1980 Topps #210 Steve Carlton
1980 Topps #232 Alan Trammell
1980 Topps #290 Steve Garvey
1980 Topps #335 Willie McCovey
1980 Topps #450 George Brett
1980 Topps #600 Reggie Jackson
1981 Fleer #223 Fred Lynn
1981 Topps #575 Tony Perez
1982 Topps Stickers #132 Jerry Remy
1982 Topps Stickers #134 Rick Burleson
1984 Topps #82 Doug Bird
1984 Topps #344 Rick Miller
1984 Topps #381 Ralph Houk
1984 Topps #628 Ed Jurak
1985 Fleer #156 Steve Carlton
1985 Donruss #112 Tony Armas
1986 Fleer #358 Jim Rice
1988 Topps Mini #3 Dwight Evans
1989 Donruss #140 Wade Boggs
1989 Score #660 Red Sox
1991 Fleer #97 Greg Harris
1991 Fleer #101 Dennis Lamp
1991 Fleer #108 Carlos Quintana
1991 Fleer #110 Jerry Reed
1992 Donruss #720 Bob Zupcic
1992 Leaf #366 Jack Clark
1992 Pinnacle #131 Mike Greenwell
1992 Score #660 Wade Boggs
1992 Upper Deck #110 Tom Bolton
1993 Donruss #297 Tony Pena
1993 Tripple Play #252 Mike Greenwell
2007 Goudey #214 Carl Yastrzemski
2007 Goudey #217 Jim Rice
2008 Topps Heritage #6 Jacoby Ellsbury
2008 Topps Heritage #73 Dustin Pedroia
2008 Topps Heritage #600 Manny Ramirez

Thanks to Chuck for the excellent cards, a real cross section. The selection of 1980 Topps he sent was amazing, the 1980 George Brett a real highlight! We have another trade in the pipeline and I am looking forward to seeing what he can dig up next.

2009 Baseball Attax

Back in December I caught this post from bdj610bbcblog and Wax Heaven about Topps Attax baseball and have had a post waiting in the dashboard.
Match Attax Football and Slam Attax Wrestling have been pretty big in the UK. If you didn't catch them. Chris from Stale Gum has busted a few packs of football (soccer) and reviewed them on You Tube and Mario did this post on the Slam Attax cards.

I think the popularity caught Topps by surprise. We are well behind the US when it comes to quantity and quality of cards about 'Our National Pastime' and the game used soccer cards are a out there but it appears primarily for the American market.

I don't know whether the newest stickers available called Topps Total Football have been in the pipeline for a while and they (being Topps) have slowly led us down the memorabilia path but they have gone all out with colour supplements in magazines and a pretty impressive television ad campaign.

Included in 2009 are 20,000 signed stickers, one player from each of the 20 Premiership clubs, signing 1,000 sticker. There are a few big names to whet the appetite. A redemption card is included in the pack to send away for the signed sticker. Sounds familiar.

Back to the reason for the post - Baseball Attax. The reason why Match Attax and Slam Attax were so popular was the price. 40pence for football and 50pence for wrestling. Boxes of the football cards, going for a reasonable £30.00 were being whipped off the shelves. These were not 1 pack, 1 card packs or even 10 pack, 10 card boxes, but 100 packs of 6card football packs. Maybe it isn't in the same league as Sweet Spot or Sterling. It did however get adults into collecting more than they had before and drew children by their 1o,ooo's into the collecting market.
What will Topps charge for the Baseball Attax cards? 99c for 4 card booster pack and $7.99 for a 34 starer pack. This is a potential product to draw NEW young collectors back into a hobby, which needs them. Why not charge 99c for 10 cards? If you have some doubles, trade them or here's an old concept 'flip them'. They only cost 99cents.

Wants Lists

It has been quiet over Christmas in the trade department. I sent out a few packages, which I hope will be arriving soon.
I have taken about 10 days to look through the wants lists on different Blogs to try and start some more trades. It is very time consuming and I realised that I had neglected my own blog.
I was contacted by a couple of collectors interested in Football (soccer) cards, which has been interesting. These are easier to obtain than baseball so I sent off a selection of packs and I am hoping that some baseball cards will arrive in Westgate in return.
A fellow collector here in the UK decided it was time to pack up the card collecting hobby, sighting money and time as the factors. He put his entire collection up on e-bay. A little drastic but assured us that he kept some of his better cards. He was primarily a Hockey collector, in particular Jeff Carter, but had amassed cards in football, basketball and baseball. Luckily for me I bid and won his baseball collection which include some fine game used and auto cards. He was not very detailed in his description, but knowing him they will be great cards in excellent condition. As I have said before quality baseball cards do not come up very often on e-bayUK and I always bid.
I cannot wait for them to come. It is like being a child at Christmas again.