A personal thanks!

[NonSportsCardForum]

To those all over that busted boxes, cases, of Heroes and instead of selling them to collectors outside of ebay, to go directly to ebay.

There have been several cards I wanted and people were more interested in ebay and I got the cards much cheaper on ebay than I would have easily paid otherwise:)!

[VinnyH]

I forget if it was you but someone asked about my Mike Duron "Future Hiro" sketch. Since I thought it had a few things going for it (artist, character, a little color) I felt I had to post it on ebay. I didn't ask a price to buy it outright but I probably would have turned down 30-40 dollars.

Well was I surprised to get $22. and change. I would have rather kept it, it was so nice, but it went to the winner. I don't know who bid on it but I told the person here it would be on eBay that night. Someone got a deal.

Luckily it's not life & death,
Vinny :)
PS: just checked my receipt, hopefully you're William

[NonSportsCardForum]

I forget if it was you but someone asked about my Mike Duron "Future Hiro" sketch. Since I thought it had a few things going for it (artist, character, a little color) I felt I had to post it on ebay. I didn't ask a price to buy it outright but I probably would have turned down 30-40 dollars.

Well was I surprised to get $22. and change. I would have rather kept it, it was so nice, but it went to the winner. I don't know who bid on it but I told the person here it would be on eBay that night. Someone got a deal.

Luckily it's not life & death,
Vinny :)
PS: just checked my receipt, hopefully you're William

Indeed it is me :)!

I would have gladly paid 50.00+. Just know its going to a very nice PC and not for re-sale etc!

Not just this site but others, I can understand people needing to recoup their money but ebay is a tough gamble.

[VinnyH]

I'm glad you got it and glad you said 50 bucks. At least I wasn't appraising it high myself.

I think a lot of these sketches are nice and I bought 2 different artists in the $20. range that I liked. Being new to non-sport sketches I guess certain artists just don't command the same respect and some artists have name recognition.

I see some "Top" artists sell high and can't believe how off the character sketch is. Reminds me of all the sports artists who would paint players for autographed poster deals and they would look nothing like the player. I'm a little picky I guess, I want Mantle to look like himself.

Best Always,
Vinny

[NonSportsCardForum]

There are some sketches comming out of this release that make me wonder wtf the artist was thinking.

I like some that took a cartoon route with em and there are some that make me wonder how they got approved when some artists that submitted work 10x better got the axe.

[Cubfan86]

I was one of the lucky ones to pull a Sean Pence Claire Sketch. I had had someone on ebay bug me over and over until I finally sold it to him for $300 which I was hoping was not to low.
I now see he has it relisted for a $500 BIN/BO and I am wondering if he will even get the $300 for it. I do not think that even some of the nicer sketches are selling as high as they should. Considering the odds of pulling a sketch are pretty tough I do not think some are selling for enough to make up for getting killed with Costume cards.
Some of the sketch artist should be ashamed of themselves. Some of the Albrecht and others are just plain PATHETIC. An average artist could knock some of those type out in 10 minutes.

[VinnyH]

He seems to have done nice work on early sketches but then was asked to pop them out. There must be a hundred Peter Petrelli sketches like this...

http://www.vinnyh.com/heroes3.jpg

The average artist hovered around 150 sketches but some guys like Gould just mass produced images to get higher numbers. I believe he's in for 500 sketches. I'll bet the first 100 are decent then the massive scam amount when Topps asked for more.

Best to All,
Vinny

[Incarnadine]

He seems to have done nice work on early sketches but then was asked to pop them out. There must be a hundred Peter Petrelli sketches like this...

http://www.vinnyh.com/heroes3.jpg

The average artist hovered around 150 sketches but some guys like Gould just mass produced images to get higher numbers. I believe he's in for 500 sketches. I'll bet the first 100 are decent then the massive scam amount when Topps asked for more.

Best to All,
Vinny

The problem with the Gould sketches is he originally signed on for just 50, and looking at the early samples he posted they were decent enough (his style isn't to my tastes but some people like it) but then he was asked to do more and signed on for 500 more sketches. Most of the artists who signed on for more still kept to a reasonable amount, 50, 100 or 150 more. Too many sketches in too short a time. There are a couple of his sketches that I've seen literally dozens of the same sketch.

I'm having fun hunting on ebay for sketches and even more fun securing some of the artists returned sketches from the artists themselves. Only 1 ebay win so far but I have bought 5 Heroes sketches directly from the artists now, money much better spent than buying more boxes.

Here are the 2 cards I purchased from Kevin Doyle today. I was actually only going after the first one but the price he was asking was just too much of a bargain not to get both. (each of these was only a wee bit higher than the current price of a box)

http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/7016/9back6nh6.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/6351/9back2en8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[NonSportsCardForum]

I wont blame Grant 100%.

Topps fell short because of NBC being such a hardass on the approval process where some artists complete runs were destroyed.

I like some of Albrechts cartoon styled sketch cards. He's by far not anywhere near being on my "most offensive" artist for this set. I dont want to offend any of the artists but there are some sketch cards that had no business being submitted to this set yet Ive seen cards sold on ebay that were submitted to Topps to get in on this set that were denied yet look 10x better than some of what we are getting.

I got these artist returns from Grant because of how hard it was gonna be to get any of his good ones-

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/CkyTx/Non%20Sports/Personal%20Collection/Heroes/GrantGould1.jpg
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/CkyTx/Non%20Sports/Personal%20Collection/Heroes/GrantGould.jpg

I also bought one from Rich Molinelli, one from Otto Diffenbach?SP?, and Im on the fence about one from Amy Provost because she isnt sure if the one I want is one she's getting back.

[Incarnadine]

I wont blame Grant 100%.

Topps fell short because of NBC being such a hardass on the approval process where some artists complete runs were destroyed.


I think that was only a small part of it, only 4 artists we know of for sure had their runs declined, although a 5th seems likely as I still haven't seen a Canion sketch turn up yet but they added nearly 20 artists after the first list was posted at TOPPS as well as getting additional sketches from the artists. The total sketch card number is over 7000, more than double the 3000 TOPPS stated was their goal. This tells me they planned well ahead that they were going to crank production up and were trying to get enough cards to fill the additional boxes. Rough estimates have Heroes hobby boxes at 20000+, and god knows how many retail boxes. So much for "limited".

[NonSportsCardForum]

No doubt. Topps tricked us to a certain extent.

I called today to ask about the missing autograph signer. I didnt question why he didnt sign but I questioned their ability to inform people about it and said the NS community had to find out through box breaks instead of the card company themselves.

I was extremely polite about the question and the person I spoke with seemed offended as if I was attacking Topps.