Jon

We immediately started snapping pictures for live photoblogging that I announced an several forums that morning. Unfortunately the WordPress application wasn’t working It looked like it was supposed to be working, but it wouldn’t actually show any of the pictures that we uploaded. After about an hour of messing around with settings and things we gave up on live blogging (although multiple additional failed attempts were made throughout the day). I will process our pics and get them uploaded in a gallery on webjon soon.

We noticed the Captain America Movie prop display right away when we walked in the room, it was very, very cool, but we didn’t stop long as I wanted to get around the dealer area before it got too busy. Unfortunately it was already exceptionally busy. The nicest word I can use to describe navigating the crowd would be unpleasant. Some of the aisles in the convention were very wide, but most were narrow — far too narrow — perhaps wide enough for 4 people shoulder to shoulder to comfortably walk (maybe it was wider than that, but it didn’t feel it if it was). Unfortunately that meant if anyone stopped to look around on one side or the other it created a bottle neck. Navigating the main show floor was painful, and a number of people were quite rude about pushing through, running in to other people, stopping right in front of everyone, or blocking an entire aisle for a photo op. Oddly about 1/4 of the room was entirely empty, so I am not sure why they couldn’t have expanded all of the rows to a comfortable width.

Due to the crowds it took a long time to simply walk through the hall, in fact I only made it through the dealer floor once. I always make a point to walk through the show floor at least twice in different directions, but after the first trip through I decided to take a targeted approach and seek out specific booths I may have missed. There seemed to be a lot of random stuff at this convention — lots of T-Shirt vendors, comedians on stage, of course tattooing, there seemed to be a nice selection of comics, and a ton of gaming cards, but non-sport cards were few and far between. Juniors Collectibles was the only real non-sport dealer. There were 2 other dealers with ‘Card’ in their name that I found on the C2E2 search, one didn’t have any cards the other sold gaming cards. Another dealer had a few cards, some 90s wax as well as some vintage wax. The vintage (60s) wax was cool to look at, but the newer 90s wax wasn’t interesting. I spent quite a bit of time at Juniors booth, they always have a really good selection and I enjoy working with Henry. Unfortunately they were on a narrow aisle, so even looking at this was unpleasant, but I managed, and I picked up a ton of fun stuff to open, including some $3 Walking Dead packs (sadly no hits, but I didn’t expect any).

We made our way through back to the Profiles display and really enjoyed looking at the props, there were some incredibly neat things on display from Thor weapons to Stark Industries bombs to an incredible line up of costumes — the main Captain America costume sold for $237,000! We also noticed the autograph area was jammed with people, which is great it certainly seemed like the celebrities were kept busy. The artist alley wasn’t busy like the rest of the floor, which made it far more pleasant to walk through. I really wanted to pick up a painting from Sara Richard, but I just didn’t find any pieces that I both loved and worked with my budget. Anna spied the ‘I Want to Draw a Cat For You’ guy that we had seen on Shark Tank, and she was thrilled to get a cat sketch from him. He was very cool and easy to talk to, so we chatted about the show and working with Mark Cuban a bit as well. This certainly was the highlight of the show for Anna, and we are going out today to find a frame for her ‘Pickle King’ cat. We also chatted with Jason Keith Phillips, who is always good to catch up with. Nathan Ohlendorf was missed, hopefully we’ll see him at conventions again soon, although rumor is that he may be moving on to other things.

Our next stop was the Cryptozoic booth, which while small did have boxes of Vampire Diaries, The Guild and Comic Book Legal Defense fund available, I spoke with an exceptionally nice representative from Cryptozoic. Unfortunately my conversation with her was cut very short by my cell phone. My mom was calling me. . . Despite the fact that I speak with her frequently she never calls me, so I knew it was important to take her call, and in fact there was (is) a tragedy in our family. I immediately (abruptly, and in a bit of shock) excused myself from the Cryptozoic booth, and went to the hall where it was marginally quieter so I could talk. That essentially closed out our day at C2E2. We were in a somber mood as we did return to the show floor briefly to tie up a couple of loose ends. I have to apologize to the rep at Cryptozoic, I don’t even recall how I ended that conversation. Hopefully I have her business card so I can drop her a note.

Again, it probably isn’t fair to C2E2 for me to write this review. I certainly would have seen more if I would have stuck around longer — there was A LOT of stuff going on, and I am sure I only scratched the surface. That said the crowds were very unpleasant to navigate, and unfortunately there was only one non-sport card dealer. Hopefully Juniors had a great show and will return next year. I really wanted to stick around for the Captain America auction — it certainly would have been a highlight for me, but after the phone calls I just didn’t have it in me to stick around. . .

Jon

Jon

It is slightly puzzling that someone would counterfeit a redemption card like this since it is one of a kind and obviously even if the buyer didn’t figure it would Cryptozic would have when they received it for redemption.

I hope this counterfeiter gets jail time. . . but somehow I doubt it.

Jon

My first thought was that the box was too small to hold all the packs I ordered, after opening the box my second thought was holy crap those packs are small! Efficient and practical are probably better words, the packs for this release are simply envelopes with a Nevermore Alice sticker covering the flap. I thought it was a creative way to solve the wrapper issue, and the sticker is very nice. . . knowing that there are several more Nevermore sets in the wings it would have been nice to have something on the wrapper denoting which release it was, and perhaps what the pack contents were. Not an issue for me as all my packs are opened, but if you were reselling packs that could definitely be a nice feature. Thankfully the sketches are in penny sleeves inside the envelope. The base cards are floating around naked.

Speaking of the base set. . . it is 10 cards plus a header card. Each card features a Nevermore character done by artists who have sketch cards in the set. The artwork on these is really nice. The pack features a quote about the art — or perhaps the title of the art and the artist’s name. Since these are new characters I would have liked to see the character name as well as a brief description on the cards. . . it’s clear there is a story here, I just don’t know what it is. Base card collation was perfect.

The sketch cards in this set are really nice, I’ve picked out 9 here and went for a variety of artists as well as characters, to be honest it was difficult to pick out 9 as there were many more that I could have picked. The artist roster for this set features 31 ink-slingers, and while not every piece I pulled is a style I typically collect they are all well done, there is an abundance of great art in this set. . . just look at the scan:

One in every ten of my packs contained two sketch cards, which was a great bonus.

While base card collation was perfect it felt like I should have had a different mix of artists in the cards I pulled, I have no idea what the rarity of any given artist is so it makes it difficult to know what I should have pulled, but I wound up with 55 sketch cards, since there were only 31 artists it would seem I should be pulling one of each and doubles of others. . . turns out I didn’t pull any sketches from about a third of the artists, which was a bummer — also 24 out of my 55 cards came from just 5 artists. Again that could just be how the collation is if certain artists did fewer cards than others. . . anyway, here is the list of artists and the number of cards I pulled from each artist.

Danielle Soloud 0
Dave Reynolds 0
Dennis Budd 0
EISU 0
Fer Galacia 0
Kristen Allen 0
Noah Whyler 0
Randy Kintz 0
Tim Shay 0
Ashleigh Popplewell 1
Bianca Thompson 1
Lak Lim 1
Marlo Lodrigueza 1
Patrick Finch 1
Rusty Gilligan 1
Water Rice 1
George Webber 2
Jim Kyle 2
Kat Laurange 2
Luke Smarto 2
Mel Uran 2
Vince Sunico 2
Elfie 3
Francois Chartier 3
Pablo Diaz 3
Tim Proctor 3
Thor 4
William Kunkle 4
Boo 5
Dan Gorman 5
Russ Platt 6

Overall Nevermore Alice is a great set, the sketch card work is very high and the base set is excellent, I just wish I would have pulled more of the artists. I guess we’ll see how I did compared to the overall artist numbers if they are published.

Until next set!

Jon

We have two sellers here. . . both with massive amounts of feedback. . . 8088edge boasts 17778 ratings with a feedback rating of 99.8% positive! They have appeared on webjon before, and have sold a number of questionable cards. . . And these are more than questionable. Seller number two is gamesandcards.com with a whopping 37795 feedback and a 99.9% positive rating! These guys posted a huge scan that showed this counterfeit in all its glory. . . It is entirely possible that these guys had no idea there was an issue. . .

Here is part of that beautiful scan courtesy of gamesandcards.com and ebay!

I love this scan. . . It shows that the card is BGS graded. . . Another counterfeit Beckett Grading Service card. But how can I tell it’s fake. First, the signature is a copy of the signature in the other card. Second the signature is clearly mechanically reproduced (dots at the end of the lines, no feathering, constant line weight, etc). . . but that’s not all, and that is why I love this scan.

For some reason there are still skeptics out there. . . People suggest that the star themselves may have used an autopen, or that maybe they just have a very consistent signature. . . a significant number of people don’t want to believe that there are counterfeit cards floating around.

But this scan may change some minds. . . Look at that foil stamp. . . it’s terrible! Multiple letters are touching . . . areas of the stamp aren’t clear . . . Letters aren’t consistent . . . the inkblot above the ‘i’ in Inkworks looks nothing like a legitimate one, the ‘s’ in Inkworks is barely legible. . . Obviously this card is a counterfeit. Go ahead, grab your Small Soldiers autos and take a look. . . all of ‘em have clear crisp authentication stamps. I don’t know if it’s enough to sway non-believers, but if that won’t nothing will.

Hopefully the buyer can get their money back. . .

Jon

PS. . . If you go to gamesandcards.com you get redirected to their Beckett.com marketplace site. . . Irony!

Congratulations! I’m looking forwards to my packs!

Jon

THIS WEEKEND is the Chicago Non-Sport Card show. This is Ed and Kevin’s version of Paul’s CECE shows, read more about it on www.nonsportcardshows.com. . . if you come to the show stop by and say hi — I’m having a bit of a garage sale to free up some space! Admission is free and they have some really nice promos for attendees!

C2E2 (c2e2.com) is in less than a month already. . . I was a bit concerned about the non-sport presence at the show when I heard that Ed and Kevin weren’t going to be back, but I see at least 2 card dealers at the show including Juniors! AWESOME. Also, Sara Richard’s table is a must see for me this year, I still am bummed I didn’t pick anything up from her at last year’s Wizard World. . . and of course the Captain America auction. Profiles in History says they have something special planned to make sure everyone can afford to take home a piece of the movie. . . not sure what it is, but I’m going to check it out. . . I don’t see Nathan Ohlendorf of the list. . . he just had a baby, but I hope he makes it to Chicago this year — I always love the Sad Littles / Sketch Card Studios Products. . . Ohh, and speaking of manufacturers – Cryptozoic will be in attendance. I’m looking forward to see what non-sport product they bring to the show.

Happy Show Season!

Jon

Here are some scans of some of the iffy cards including the Affleck, an Angelina Jolie Tomb Raider from Inkworks and a Johnny Depp Charlie and the Chocolate Factory autograph from Artbox. Note that all of the cards are encapsulated by Beckett Grading Service. When Beckett was contacted about the Affleck they said that the manufacturer guarantees the autograph — not them, basically washing their hands of it.

Also note the scans on the Jolie and Depp are terrible. NEVER buy a high end card based on a poor scan. It is difficult to tell if a card is legitimate base on a real scan, a poor scan like these is a warning sign in itself. Hopefully the buyers get their money back.