Like many collectors, Buzz is a fan of grading ... so here's this month's grading diary.

MY EARLY INK FOR A BREAK-OUT STAR
The Card: Pete Crow-Armstrong 2018 Panini Elite Extra Edition 18U National Team Signatures Red (from 2019 USA Baseball Stars & Stripes rack sets)(/100)
The Reason Graded: I landed this ink for the Chicago Cubs star in a rack set -- that's a set and then some bonus cards in pack form direct from USA Baseball back in the day -- and he was one of a number of good names I found there for a low price. They all sat with my stuff for a few years before his breakout 2024 season got this one put into a grading order. Why? So I could get some ink in a slab and cross him off my list of key names needed. Crow-Armstrong joined the 30-30 Club this season, won his first Gold Glove and was an All-Star, too. The cool part? I added his ink from a two-auto set for just $9.99. (Other colors of this card are in standard EEE boxes ... the Reds are only in the sets I bought.)
The Grade: CGC 9.5 (10 auto)

Reality Check: The stock on these is the standard Donruss cardboard that can't decide if its chippy or soft -- it's generally pretty clean but a bottom corner could be soft here on the card backs where there's some color to make fuzz really obvious. This one was cleaner than other grading-worthy names but I'll likely slab others I found over time as more than a few here are in MLB now. He was the highest-profile name who needed to be graded now.

Keep reading for more of this month's pick-ups and new slabs for Buzz.

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Like many collectors, Buzz is a fan of grading ... so here's this month's grading diary.

MY LONE AUTO ...
The Card: Aaron Judge 2015 Bowman Inception Prospect Autographs Gold (/50)
The Reason Graded: Back when I could open a lot of boxes, I'd actually also do some group breaks as well -- as long as they were sure things where an affordable spot would guarantee a hit or had a volume of actual hits inside (auto or mem cards) the case that was high enough to make the odds close to that. This is my lone Aaron Judge auto left from back in those days. I landed it in a spot somewhere around just $60 -- and I actually got two other Yankees autos in the break to make my cost for this particular card even lower. I only ever pulled one other Judge auto and I think I let it go in a trade long, long ago so this last one standing for me was always a candidate for grading -- and it finally made the cut with his monster year.
The Grade: CGC 8.5 (10 auto)

Reality Check: The thick stock here made this one feel like a safe pick and it is -- the front is perfect -- but the back corners also count and some light fuzzing there is likely what dropped this one down. Otherwise, it definitely presents as a crisp card and a perfect card on the front. I was aiming for a nine, so this mark was a slight bummer -- but it's still a big card. Mine is the only Gold graded by CGC and among the 12 graded in all colors nothing checks in higher than a nine.

Keep reading for more of this month's pick-ups and new slabs for Buzz.

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Like many collectors, Buzz is a fan of grading ... so here's this month's grading diary.

STARTING ON A SERIOUS NOTE ...
The Card: Will Ferrell 2015 Topps Archives Will Ferrell Inserts
The Reason Graded: Back in 2015 this comedy legend took to the field for 10 MLB teams and played 10 positions in a single day of real spring training action -- you can see his stats here -- as part of a project with a charity component called Ferrell Takes The Field. Collectors ended up chasing his autographs on 10 different cards in Archives that year -- roughly one per hobby case if I remember correctly -- but, alas, I went 0-for-1 there before those boxes got too pricy and/or vanished ... but I did hit the blasters. There, the regular Ferrell inserts were found one per box -- at least until all of those boxes disappeared, too. It's been a decade since this publicity stunt took place (March 12, 2015), so I figured we could start this new MLB season here on a serious note. These aren't his only cards -- he popped up a few times that year -- but this was the first set and this was the first card -- and one for my team.
The Grade: CGC 10

Reality Check: There's a small volume of stuff slabbed for this card -- roughly all cards here have no more than 10 slabbed copies across the entire set -- and this is among the top marks. This card has full-bleed back edges in bright blue just like in 1965 Topps and when I saw how clean this card was, well, it was a no-brainer. I previously slabbed one elsewhere years ago and this copy will go well with that and a slab of the same photo used on a magazine cover that ended up on a show promo card. A lot of those who likely weren't collecting back then seem to be interested here as asking prices can be steep -- raw or graded -- for Ferrell stuff.

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Update (Feb. 16) -- Pre-ordered copies of this one are shipping today.

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It's almost time for a ThunderCats reboot ... and it's one that will include BlowoutCards.com.

Set to arrive next week, Dynamite Entertainment's first issue of the legendary series is set to arrive with a number of variant covers in play (see some of the others here) as part of a launch that's already pre-sold more than 170,000 copies. That's the biggest-selling new arrival for the comics industry in years.

Blowout will be part of that array of arresting artistic odes to the heroes of the lair with a limited series of ThunderCats No. 1 exclusives that are an homage to not just one but two iconic and best-selling comic books from the early 1990s all rolled into one -- with exclusive artwork from an iconic creator of that era, too.

There will be four single covers and a fifth collecting them all -- and if you weren't around in 1991 to collect 'em all and to already know what that means, we'll reveal them all right here, right now.

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