PC Battle 4 - Round 1 - Group D

It’s back and it’s loaded with talent!

Heaps of new competitors and some of the old hats going head to head for the coveted prize of being crowned Ozcardtrader PC Battle Champion!


There will be 3 rounds where I will randomly group together the competitors and have them each submit 2 cards to be ogled and voted on by the Ozcards public.


Round 1 will be 4 groups with 4 competitors in each. The top 2 vote getters from each round will progress to the next round until we have only 1 champion remaining. I will personally donate a nice prize to the winner and will also create a unique Sig or avatar that the winner can post on their profile to boast for as long as they want.


Voting will be open for 1 week each round to allow the seasonal visitors enough time to come in and have their say.

Let’s get it started!




@kobe81foo - Kobe Bryant
@Holdendazz - Rodrigue Beaubois
@kiwi_in_melb - Dwight Howard
@nichj99 - Kenneth Faried




Kobe81foo - Kobe Bryant

Topps Chrome Youthquake


East/West Dual GU




Holdendazz - Rodrigue Beaubois

Totally Certified Green Patch /5


Preferred Choice Green /5





kiwi_in_melb - Dwight Howard

UD Black Inscriptions



Timeless Treasures Tag




nichj99 - Kenneth Faried


Flawless diamond base /20



Immaculate Tag /3



Now we just sit back, bask in their greatness and wait for the impeccably accurate commentary from Ozcards' own @skip20 to tell us what we should have seen the first time we looked!

Good luck everyone!

Kiwi kiwi kiwi
Oi oi oi

Close one. Voted.

Just parking a spot for the commentary of the century....

Nice cards there lads.... This is going to be fun!!!!!

Might as well post a new message and bump this up!

Let's get it on!

Kobe81foo has gone with a unique apparoach and not featured any autos or patches........and I'll tell you why! The Topps Chrome Youthquake is straight from the golden years of basketball card innovation and design. Smack dab in the mid 90s when I suspect most of us fell in love with the hobby, the Bulls were winning titles left,right and centre and a young pup from high school entered the league named Kobe Bryant. Back in the day you had clearly beaten the odds if you owned a great insert like a Youthquake, even better if it was a start like Kobe Bryant! ....and if it was the Topps Chrme version on top of that, well, you must have been a very good boy because all your Christmases had come at once! We're spoiled these days with all sorts of cards with special finishes and surfaces back this brings us all back to a time when a simple refractor and chrome finish was one of the most impressive and spectacular things we had ever seen. Those bright colours just seemed to jump out at you and grab your undivided attention. So this card may appear out of place in this showdown but I can understand why it is here, it has the same effect of turning up a Hot Rod show with a pristine Model T..... The humble dual GU isn't as humble as it fist appears! I can't recall ever seeing one of these UD cards before, but I guess that's testament to how hard they are to track down, especially when every Bron or Kobe collector wants it! Nice large contrasting swatches and one of the last years when we saw No. 8 Kobe Bryant in action. One the downside that dal GU also reminds of all the things Lebron does which Kobe doesn't..............like passing the ball. lol You can't help but want to see some auto or patchy goodness which is what we've come to expect in these PC battles (look at his avatar pic!), but this first round pair definitely offers more than meets the eye. It was a refreshing throwback to see some old school Topps and UD action. One for 90s insert fan boys!

Holdendazz drops the suited connectors / matching pair / emerald earrings or whatever you want to call them. Either way it's bloody impressive! Firstly, let me point out that this offering is made even more impressive because for small time player collectors it's a lot harder to land the impressive Flawless, Immaculate and Exquisite offerings because quite simply lots of role players aren't featured in such high end products (as a Q-Pon collector I'm all too familiar with this phenomenon an am sympathetic to the cause!). Life must be even harder as a Roddy B collector because he hasn't even suited up for a game in the last two years! What that means is when the rarer PC cards are offered you have to go all out to get them and be all over it like white on rice. That's why the two greens are impressive! The Certified patch is an ebay 1/1 has a nice 3 colour team patch. The thing I like about Certified is that they go all out with their colouring scheme, no beating around the bush with a bit of green foil or a different logo - bang - the whole effing card is metallic green, looks sensational and stands out in a crowd (probably better looking than the Black imo). If I could achieve the same metallic effect and colour on my car I'd be a happy man! The second card also has a 60% (3/5) chance of being an ebay 1/1 (first serial, last serial or jersey #d) so I'll have to award bonus points on that pro-rata basis.... :-P Love or hate these triangle die cut offerings you have to appreciate the big on card auto which in this case is so ridiculously large it's spilling off of the designated white signing area. I love it when an auto is unfurled in all it's glory! For me the Panini's Choice Awards make for one of the nicest possible rainbow combinations to look at - literally like a little row of trophies that belongs in the display cabinet. "Straight to the Pool Room"! Big props for the big additions for a small time player PC collector!

Now for the Kiwi, who apparently is in Melbourne. I'm not sure if he knows this is the first round because he's swinging for the fences pretty early on! The UD Black series is always one of the better releases and the silver sharpie with the black background is one of the best sure fire recipes for success. The on card auto is massive but the most impressive feature on this card is the two, count them, TWO, on card inscriptions! The thing I like most about these inscriptions is that it isn't what we normally expect to see like the semi-forced inscriptions about their favourite food, car or artist or the generic ones we'd expect like "DH-12", "Go Magic", "#1 Draft Pick" or even "Superman". These inscriptions are straight from the player and means something to him personally, we know this because I've never heard anyone refer to him as 'Thundercat' before and to me 'Manchild' will always be Shawn Kemp but I do liek the real personal touch this card seem to provide. Proximity to the athlete is what it's all about! On the downside Black is always known for chipping (this one is in pretty good nick) and the silver sarpie seems to have been bogged down and pooled up in places which gives it more of a streaky effect but it;s also kinda neat because in this case you can trace over Dwights writing style and see that he doesn't start his 'd's with the endorsed 'ball and stick' methodology taught to us in primary school... I would have also liked a beast mode pic to accompany the fearsome 'Thundercat' and 'Manchild' inscriptions, not one of him palming the ball one handed on an uncontested rebound with his jersey neatly tucked into his shorts! I;m not sure of the numbering on the tag but surely has to be /10 or so because it isn't just prime, that's superfine prime! That's what I'm talkin' about! Straight off the logo like an absolute boss! On the down side the end of Haley's comet is nowhere to be seen (maybe the Thundercat got hold of it?) and if we photoshopped Dwight's face for my own that could well be a pic of me posting up on my way to another lack-lustre turnover. Nobody wants to see a guy backing someone down for an eternity and pounding the air out of the ball during a game, so why would we want to see it on a card? A superfine prime patch deserves a prime pic of the big man making his way to the hoop like a shooting star - too big, too fast, too strong! Thundercat 1 and Shooting Star off toa great launch in round 1!

Nichj99 just released a couple of nasty Manimals on this competition! OCT's manimal rookie year aficionado has displayed some of his PC's finest. I think we all know what is nice about the Flawless base /20.........that ain't no Cubic Zirconia fellas! Diamonds, that's what we're talking about! The great thing about these cards is that they can be dinged up (not that this one is) and it still has some value. You can buy these cards and let your missus have the diamond and she'll probably be happy that you thought of her (just don't tell her what it cost!) so these cards are real crowd pleasers! Even a non card collector can look at this and know it isn't some run of the mill scrub player in a low end product. I.e. this card screams "QUALITY!" It's sheer decadence, it's kind of like those crazy sheikhs with too much oil money who aren't content with a bog standard Lamborghini, they have to have it jewel encrusted! Case in point with this card! However, having said all that I can't help but feel that I'd rather have a bog standard Lamborghini than something covered in diamonds, know what I mean? For me, the Flawless gems just seemed like a bit of a knee jerk reaction to the favourable reception Gold Standard got with its 24k and 14k offerings. From gemstones we move to the laundry tag -and what a tag it is! The Adi-logo-clima tag is really, really cool (it even says so on the card)! Any appearance of that little red, white and blue silhouette is an absolute game changer, stick that one card in your PC and be happy if you never acquired another PC card again! The fade to white wooden floorboard background is very nice as is the overall design which places the emphasis right on the tag. I;m not sure how they got 3 tags of that quality in the one product relase, but you;d have to say this one is the pick of the bunch because it's an ebay 1/1 to boot! Not a lot of downside for either card, both probably would have looked nicer without the RC logo, especially the Flawless base which went with the bright red RC logo on a very white card with a guy in blue team uniform - weird. That's like asking Ronald McDonald to blend in amongst a Casper the Ghost fancy dress gathering! Manimal off to a great start in round 1!

Well that's the final round done - get voting and good luck to all!

skip20 said:

Might as well post a new message and bump this up!

Let's get it on!

Kobe81foo has gone with a unique apparoach and not featured any autos or patches........and I'll tell you why! The Topps Chrome Youthquake is straight from the golden years of basketball card innovation and design. Smack dab in the mid 90s when I suspect most of us fell in love with the hobby, the Bulls were winning titles left,right and centre and a young pup from high school entered the league named Kobe Bryant. Back in the day you had clearly beaten the odds if you owned a great insert like a Youthquake, even better if it was a start like Kobe Bryant! ....and if it was the Topps Chrme version on top of that, well, you must have been a very good boy because all your Christmases had come at once! We're spoiled these days with all sorts of cards with special finishes and surfaces back this brings us all back to a time when a simple refractor and chrome finish was one of the most impressive and spectacular things we had ever seen. Those bright colours just seemed to jump out at you and grab your undivided attention. So this card may appear out of place in this showdown but I can understand why it is here, it has the same effect of turning up a Hot Rod show with a pristine Model T..... The humble dual GU isn't as humble as it fist appears! I can't recall ever seeing one of these UD cards before, but I guess that's testament to how hard they are to track down, especially when every Bron or Kobe collector wants it! Nice large contrasting swatches and one of the last years when we saw No. 8 Kobe Bryant in action. One the downside that dal GU also reminds of all the things Lebron does which Kobe doesn't..............like passing the ball. lol You can't help but want to see some auto or patchy goodness which is what we've come to expect in these PC battles (look at his avatar pic!), but this first round pair definitely offers more than meets the eye. It was a refreshing throwback to see some old school Topps and UD action. One for 90s insert fan boys!

Click to expand...

i'm never winning this one. that's a jordan auto and some crazy lebron stuff they're putting out. lol. but skip's commentary is epic. some consolation for not winning. haha.

@kiwi_in_melb and @nichj99

Prepare for battle R2!

Well done @kiwi_in_melb (Bru) and @nichj99 on the wins! Get your snaps done for R2 Stat!!

Thanks to @kobe81foo and @Holdendazz for jumping on board too!