TCI Product Review & Box Break - 2011 Leaf Legends of Sport

Leaf has just released another autograph only product. This time it is a high-end heavy stock product with an emphasis on some of the best athletes past and present. As they did with their Pop Century product, a lot of attention went into the actual checklist. While not every subject is necessarily a big money autograph hit, there is no question that they are all legends within their respective sports. Some of the bigger names include Ichiro, Mike Tyson, Cam Newton, Willie Mays, Stan Musial, Bill Russell, Oscar Robertson, Alistar Overeem, to name a few. There are also plenty of Olympic/Team USA legends as well as some Charlie Sheen autographed cards on which he has been depicted as Ricky 'Wild Thing' Vaughn (Major League) and Oscar 'Hap' Felsch (Eight Men Out). As with their Pop Century product, there are a number of strong subset themes such as Moments of Greatness, Award Winners, Remembering the Games, Numeration, Perennial All-Stars, and Dual Signatures. Seeded within the boxes are also some cut signatures from Goliaths of the sporting world Babe Ruth, Roberto Clemente, Sandy Koufax, Hank Aaron, and more. With every card numbered to 50 or less, every box of this product is pretty much a winner. between the low numbering and the strong checklist, it is card to see anyone not able to make at least half their money back on even the worst box at the current going price ($155-180).

I didn't take a video of my box break since it was only 3 cards, but here are my results. The first card was a Kerri Strug Moments of Greatness highlighting her 1996 Olympic Vault Completion which she accomplished with a broken ankle to guarantee another gold medal for the USA. Her performance also landed her on the Wheaties boxes all across the nation. This card was numbered 6 of 20. Next in the box was an Award Winners Mark Ingram marking his 2009 Heisman Trophy win. I like that the picture shows him standing with his trophy. This card was numbered 6 of 50, which I guess would make it a common in this product. The final card in the box was an autographed printing plate of Brooks Robinson. It is the yellow plate from his Numeration cards, so there is a large 5 in the background for his uniform number.

As with all printing plates that the manufacturers release, this one is a 1 of 1. Although I didn't necessarily hit it out of the park with my box, it was still a very good box which should break about even. All the cards are packed in a nice box with a foam interior holding the top-loaded cards in place. I've seen other breaks and it appears once again that the boxes have been hand-packed for maximum value as you are usually guaranteed one very low-numbered card per box. This product has been limited to 250 cases with only 12 boxes per case. That means that there should only be 3000 boxes, so supply should dry up rather quickly. At the current price, this product is probably one of the only products you can bust with full confidence that you won't feel totally ripped off.