First off, Happy Holidays! December has been a slow month for posts on Webjon, and for that I apologize. If anyone is interested in stretching out their writing fingers and has something to say drop me a line. . . I’d love to get another writer or two on board.

This holiday season has been busier than most for me, but I’ve found time to grab some blaster boxes of Topps new release American Pie. . . What a fun release. . . The base cards are really interesting, the chase cards are fun, the retail blasters and packs have nice hits (although the packs are crazy easy to cherry pick to buyer beware on loose packs). This is a cool set, and is great for set builders, probably not awesome for rip and flippers, but there are quite a few cards I’ll be chasing in this release. I think Topps found a winning formula, and I can see them expanding this into an ‘American Pie Decades’ release where they do an American Pie release a year covering a decade, much like the MTv ‘I Love the 80s’ type shows. So nice job Topps. . . although I still want to know why there isn’t a Mr. T or Mary Lou Retton autograph out there. . .

Ohh, and if they do another set they can embed arcade tokens into the cards much like they are doing with coins for this release. . . how great would that be? A set based on the 80s with a Mr. T autograph and arcade tokens in the cards. . . Also, they could get animation cels — you know the ones that have a little tiny figure on the huge cel. . . while I’m not for destroying stuff to make cards these have little value as it is, and some of the images are small enough to easily be embedded into a card without cutting in to the art. . .

Speaking of cutting in to the good stuff. . . did you see the recent post on Panini’s blog. . . it’s for some upcoming Donruss cut signature set. They’ve got tons of great signatures in the set, but a bunch of ‘em are cut off like this:

I know, I know this is an old story, but seriously. . . they’ve been doing cut signature sets for far too long to not be able to fit a signature properly. . . this is really sad.

Cryptozoic’s new set The Walking Dead seems to be a hit in most respects. . . Seems like they may have to tweak their collation, but other than that people seem to dig the set, which is awesome. I hope they have great success in the Non-Sport Card world. . . I recently watched a box of their CBLDF release sell for under $30, which hopefully is just an indication of a learning curve and nothing more. . . From what I’ve seen the set looks well done.

A Non-Sport Card Forum poster has a goal to post 100 box break downs in the following year, he’s posted a bunch so far, and the reviews are really interesting. If you haven’t seem ‘em you should check it out. It is a bit sobering to see how frequently the contents aren’t worth the box price.

Speaking of box price. . . with the exception of mass merchants I no longer can buy cards locally. . . I was buying from a comic shop that is about 45 minutes from my house, but I ‘fired’ them when their pack price hit $3, between that price and the price of gas I just couldn’t justify it anymore. . . I have to say, it sucked for a while, but I no longer even miss being able to run out and buy cards. That got me thinking. . . between the dwindling number of comic shops and other non-sport outlets and the advent of premium packs, as well as Rittenhouse offering their new super premium set at a price that seems directed at consumers rather than dealers. . . are dealers being squeezed out of the hobby? And if they are is that a bad thing? I dunno. . .

Anyway. . . hope you all have a great holiday, and finish up the year with great presents and great pulls!

Jon