Box Break: 2008 Topps Series 1 Jumbo

Sorry for the lapse in posting.  Right now we’re living in a house that is for sale and that makes it tough to work on projects since I have to clean everything up at the end of the day even if I’m in the middle of scanning or sorting.  Combine that with the normal day-to-day life or work and a young child and it can lead to posting droughts.  Time to get back on the horse.

Other than a few packs here and there, I never purchased any 2008 Topps Baseball.  Reading all about the Alex Gordon card that slipped out, the photoshopped Jeter card and fake phenom Kazuo Uzuki was enough to keep me away.  For a while there it seemed like Topps wanted to use gimmicky cards and Keith Olberman’s bank account to get publicity for their cards.

While checking BlowoutCards, I saw that 2008 Series One Jumbos were ridiculously cheap.  With a Trading Card History insert in every pack, I figured that I would give it a shot.  I was happy with 99% of what I got, but Topps flipped me a retroactive bird with a Kazuo Uzuki card.  I’m not sure why they thought this card was a good idea, but hopefully in the future they don’t play April Fools pranks on their customers.

Topps came so close to having a really nice base card design with this set.  Get rid of the little dip with the Topps logo and the set looks ten times better.  Check out that year’s basketball set for a good example.  The design also looks better with team colored boarders and the team name done in its own font.  Check out this card from a ten card set that came with the Team Baby: Red Sox DVD.  Personally, I like this card a lot and would have loved a complete set that was done in this style.  Yellow Pirates cards with the team name done in their font.  Something like that would probably be a little more difficult to design, but I think the end result would look beautiful.

I’ll start off with the parallels.  No need for a scan.  I got gold bordered parallels, numbered to 2008, of Scott Hatteberg, Yovani Gallardo and Chad Tracy.  There are two gold foil parallels per pack and some of the notable ones that I pulled were Terry Francona, Clay Buchholz, Joey Votto and Mike Lowell.  This box was heavy on Red Sox so any Yankees fans reading this may want to look away.

The Mickey Mantle Home Run History cards come one per pack.  All 10 that I had featured the same picture.  I now know a lot more about home runs 526 – 535.  More Topps consecutive inserts for you.  I got 4 of the Mickey Mantle Story cards.  At least these have different pictures on the front.  If the first card that I got was 46, you can probably guess what the other three numbers were.  I didn’t feel like scanning the politician cards either.  I got an Obama which was nice, but when all is said and done that card will probably go to my daughter and the other cards will go away in a monster box never to be seen again.

Let’s get to the good stuff!  There’s one Own the Game insert in every pack.  They’re shiny and as always feature league leaders from the previous season.  I got A-Rod, Prince Fielder, Carlos Pena, Matt Holliday, Lance Berkman, Ryan Howard, Mike Lowell, Brandon Webb, Brad Penny and Fausto Carmona.  I’ll keep the Lowell and the rest will be set aside for future trades.

There is also a Year in Review card in each jumbo pack.  I’d rather see a larger set like this that highlights the previous year than something like Documentary that covers every game.  YR48 – YR57 are now mine and they feature Andrew Miller, Ortiz/Lowell, Verlander, Sabathia, Felipe Lopez, Oliver Perez, Smoltz, Mark Reynolds, Jeremy Accardo and Helton.  I won’t be finishing this set either.

This insert set is one that I like a lot.  Topps had fans vote on the all-time all-rookie team.  Every collector is familiar with the little gold cup that would show up on the cards of player named to the previous year’s Topps All-Rookie team.  This is a set that I might try and put together, but it is a little large.  I like the design and it is full of great players.  It depends on what the singles are going for.  My box contained “The Hawk” Andre Dawson, Dave Johnson, Dan Johnson, Alfonso Soriano, Prince Fielder, Mark Teixeira, Andruw Jones, Brian McCann, Albert Pujols and C.C. Sabathia.

Next up are my favorite cards in the box, Trading Card History.  I definitely want to try and finish off this set.  It is full of stars on cards featuring classic designs from the past.  I started off my collection with Ellsbury (69 Topps), Joba Chamberlain (55 Bowman), Dice-K (T-206), Prince Fielder (34 Baseball Card), Justin Upton (62 Topps), Alfonso Soriano (58 Baseball Card), Pedro Martinez (51 Bowman), Chien-Ming Wang (75 Topps), Ichiro (Japanese Baseball Card) and Grady Sizemore (1948 Baseball Card).

There were a trio of hits in the box if you include the Uzuki card.  If I had pulled that when the set was released, I would have been a happy eBayer, but these days no one really wants it.

The next hit was an autographed 2007 Highlights card of Carlos Villanueva.  The card celebrates Villanueva coming up and bolstering the Brewers rotation in September, 2006.  Unfortunately, he hasn’t been as successful since then.  Unless someone is looking to trade for it, it’ll most likely go in my pile of relics and autos that will get shipped off to BlowoutCards once I have 50 of them.

I know that recently there has been backlash against manufactured patched, but I think that a lot of that results from the fact that manufactured letters have been done to death.  The manufactured logos in this year’s Topps blasters were very nice and I like these cards as well.  My only complaint is that every card looks the same if you block out the tiny picture of the player along with his name.  I’ll enjoy adding this card to my collection, but I wouldn’t need to collect the whole set.  They’re numbered to 499 on the back, but I don’t see them having too much value outside of Boston.  You see tons of them if you head out to any card shows here though.

To recap, I got a full set out of the box which I love.  I got all the cards that I should have and they cost me a whopping seven cents a piece.  You really can’t complain at all at that price point.  The thing is though, there really wasn’t anything to complain about.  I could have gotten a better autograph, but at the time this was release Villanueva looked like he could be one of the next young stars.  I got a bunch of Red Sox which is always nice.  I pulled a bunch of stars and even got a lame April Fools joke gone awry.  Without being lucky enough to get one of the big hits, there aren’t many ways that this box could have been better.  Now I’ve got to track down a jumbo box of series 2 and hope it is just as fun.

Technorati Tags: box break,2008 Topps Baseball

Box Break: 2008 TriStar Projections: Red Sox Edition

I didn’t know a whole lot about this set before buying it, but I’ve always had a soft spot for minor league cards.  This box looked like a blaster, only contained Red Sox prospects and promised one autographed card.  I’m sold.  Let’s see what I got.

Fireballer Daniel Bard finally got the call up to the big show.  He’s been mostly lights out, but has had a couple of rookie struggles.  Many look at him as insurance in case Papelbon wants too much money once his arbitration years are done.  With the way Papelbon keeps talking about record setting contracts for a closer, I’m all in favor of trading him in his final arbitration year if Bard continues to look good.  There will be less dancing and fewer historic World Series baseballs turned into dog chew toys, but I think that the Sox will survive.

Michael Bowden is one of the names that keeps coming up in trade talks along with Clay Buchholz.  The Sox have a bit of a log jam in the rotation at the moment, but you figure that both Smoltz and Penny will only be with the team this season.  They may both get a chance in the bigs next season.  Until then, fans in Pawtucket are seeing some great pitching.

Jed Lowrie showed signs of being ready for the majors last season and was ready to build upon that until he was sidelined with an injury.  Supposedly this injury first occurred last season and had a lot to do with his late season slump.  He’s on his way back now and hopefully will cement the Red Sox shortstop position which has been in flux ever since Nomar Garciaparra left.  Strange that trading away the face of the franchise led to the team winning it all, but it did and it also led to David Ortiz becoming the new face of the team.  Nomar returned to Boston tonight for the first time since leaving and got a well deserved standing ovation.

My autograph was of Ryan Kalish and I’m pretty happy with that.  Kalish is one of the top 10 Red Sox prospects and should arrive in Boston in another year or two.

This box contained 5 packs with seven cards in each.  The cost per card was .28 which seems a little pricey to me, but with a lower production run it’s to be expected.  I’m glad that I purchased this box on sale though.

The design is nice.  It’s not too busy and focuses on the players.  I don’t think I’d buy any more boxes of this, but I am happy with what I got out of this one.

Technorati Tags: 2008 TriStar,box break

Box Break: 2006-07 Topps Basketball

Next up is 2006-07 Topps Basketball.  I don’t think that I had seen any cards from this set before breaking open this box.  It’s not a spectacular design, but it is growing on me.  It bears some slight similarities to this year’s O-Pee-Chee baseball set except the info isn’t all at the bottom and the area with the name is a little larger.  The Chrome versions of these cards are better looking due to the fact that the giant area of foil surrounding the name has been replaced with a nice team color.  These cards actually scan better than they look.  The foil ruins the cards in real life.

As a Celtics fan, this box was a lot of fun to break.  You’ve got rookie cards of Rajon Rondo and Leon Powe (who looks to be a former Celtic at this point, but could re-sign with the team once healthy) along with such memorable names as Allan Ray (strike that, reverse it and you’ve got an NBA Championship) and Kevin Pittsnogle.  This set also focused on Celtics Legend Larry Bird and if you are a fan then this set doesn’t disappoint.

I’m not going to post pictures of the parallels.  Strangely, I got just one gold parallel which is numbered to 500 (Andre Iguodala) and two black parallels numbered to 99 (Danny Granger and Denham Brown).

In traditional Topps fashion, there are a ton of insert sets.  Most of them are fun and they’re all loaded with stars.  Here’s Marcus Camby from the Own the Game insert set which is a Topps staple.  These cards highlight league leaders.  I pulled 4th and 5th in assists (Billups and J-Kidd) and the top 4 in blocks (Camby, Kirilenko, Mourning and Josh Smith).  They run in order and getting the top 5 scorers in one box would be nice.

Both Tim Duncan and David Robinson have been players that I’ve enjoyed watching play.  I enjoy big men with finesse a lot more than guys like Shaq who just lower a shoulder and knock guys out of the way to score.  I could sit all day and watch guys like Duncan, Garnett, etc. who score off of the glass, use the hook shot and are smart players.

This Duncan is from the Hobby Masters insert set.  These cards talk about why these players are popular with collectors.  Again, these ran in order and I got 5 – 9 (McGrady, D-Wade, Vinsanity, Duncan and Garnett).

Next up is Chauncey Billups from the Clutch City Stars set.  These cards are of players who played in the 2006 All-Star Game in Houston.  I guess being popular with the fans makes you clutch.  I won’t go off on a rant about my thoughts on fan based All-Star voting right now.  These ran in order as well.  I got numbers 10-14 who were Rip Hamilton, Arenas, Billups, Kobe and Nash.

They also play a rookie/sophomore game during All-Star weekend and these cards highlight those players.  I only got 4 of these and something went terribly wrong at the Topps factory because they weren’t all consecutive.  I pulled 4, 5, 17 and 18.  That would be Danny Granger, Chris Paul (pictured), Andres Nocioni and former Celtic Delonte West.

These Pride of the Program cards are kind of strange.  None of the trios on these cards are all that impressive.  Dwayne Wade, Shaq and… Antoine Walker?  I loved Walker when he was in Boston, but he was a cry baby and a hugely bad influence on Paul Pierce.  Look at how much Pierce has changed on his own and then playing with Garnett and Allen.

They could do this set now, limit it to 4 – 6 teams such as the Celtics, Cavs, Lakers and Orlando who actually have three legitimate stars.

Every now and then, video game related cards will pop up in products.  The first that I remember were the EA cards in NBA Hoops back in the 90s.  This was when Sega Genesis ruled supreme and tons of people played hockey video games whether or not they actually watched the real sport.  Madden wasn’t all that great back then, but the NHL games were great even being immortalized in Kevin Smith’s classic Mallrats.

This card features virtual LeBron James and has a code for NBA 2K7 on the back.  These days, video games and exclusivity are as ridiculous as baseball cards.  EA got exclusive rights to football and a few other sports so now if you want to play a better game made by another company, you have to do so with retired or fake players.  I also pulled Dwight Howard from this set.

For those who don’t know, Topps stopped making basketball cards for most of the 80s.  For most of that time, Fleer was the only game in town and many superstars only had Fleer rookie cards.

Topps has played the “what if” card a few times with various basketball sets.  In 1992-93, Topps released Topps Archives Basketball.  Unlike their baseball counterpart, this was not a reprint set.  This set used the baseball designs from each year to show what various rookie cards may have looked like if Topps were producing cards back then.  It was a fun set and a favorite of scammer trying to sell cheap cards for higher prices as “rookie” cards.  Topps has also revisited this idea with Bill Russell and Larry Bird.  They’re fun cards and are nice inserts.  I put together the Russell set and will be tracking down the other 8 Birds that I need for this set.

Finally, Topps also did something to honor Larry Bird in the base set.  Similar to the 20 different Ken Griffey Jr. cards in 2009 Upper Deck series 2, Topps produced 33 different Larry Bird cards which were numbered 33.  Unlike the Griffey cards whose backs reflect the year pictured on the front, the Bird cards all have identical backs which makes it a little difficult keeping track of which ones you have and which you need.  I’m going to try and track all of these down as well and have already picked up a few more with store credit that I had at CheckOutMyCards.com.


I don’t think I could have been happier with this box.  Sure, I could have pulled an autograph or relic, but for $32 you don’t have to.  I got a full set, but sadly no second Rondo rookie.  I got one more Bird base card than I should have and best of all, each card only cost a whopping seven cents a piece.  There’s absolutely nothing to complain about here.

 

Technorati Tags: box break,2006-07 Topps Basketball,Rajon Rondo,Larry Bird

Box Break: 2007 Upper Deck Masterpieces Baseball

I’ll be posting my box breaks in an order similar to last time.  I’ll start off with the boxes that I was least impressed with and then finish strong.  I’m starting off with 2007 Masterpieces.

This is a set that I really want to like.  The cards both look and feel great.  There are rookies of Dice-K and Lincecum and plenty of Red Sox.  The only road block to pack breaking bliss was the fact that the word “average” seems to have a different definition to Upper Deck.  They also don’t seem to know how to count.

There are 4 cards per pack of Masterpieces and 18 packs per box for a total of 72 cards that should be in a box.  I ended up with 75 cards.  I had one pack with 4 cards plus a “hit” and then another pack with just three base cards.  There was no rhyme or reason to how these cards were packed.  Some packs have decoys and others don’t.  I don’t understand the reasoning behind that.  When all was said and done, for the price that I paid, each card cost fifty-nine cents.

From my box, I got 54 cards towards the set which is 60%.  There were 10 doubles which is 16% of the base cards that I got in the box.  That’s piss poor collation in my opinion.  I don’t understand why there should be doubles when you only get about two thirds of the set in a box.

I received 6 green framed cards.  My favorite being the 2004 World Series Champion Boston Red Sox.  2003 was crushing and it made 2004 even sweeter.  The World Series was a little anticlimactic after the amazing comeback against the Yankees, but that’s alright.  Fans everywhere rejoiced, history was made and lots of people got free furniture in a promotion from Jordan’s Furniture.  I also pulled Alex Gordon, Derek Jeter, Stephen Drew, Chase Utley and Vlad Guerrero.

I pulled one black bordered card of Roberto Clemente that is numbered to 99.  He just may be the most popular Pirate of all time.  It’s a shame that his life was taken tragically while helping out others.

I pulled one blue bordered card of Sandy Koufax numbered to 50.  This is one of two cards that Koufax has in the set.  For a small set consisting of 90 cards, a lot of players have multiple cards.  There are at least two cards of Albert Pujols and three of Cal Ripken.  A little more diversity might have been nice.



My autograph was of Jeremy Sowers.  Sowers has a decent rookie season and has been terrible ever since.  At least I got an autograph in the box this time unlike the last two boxes of Upper Deck products that I’ve opened.  Oh wait, I just jinxed myself, didn’t I?

 

Here are Captured on Canvas jersey cards of Chase Utley and Todd Helton.  My third card is…  oh that’s right, I didn’t get a third jersey card.  I must have gotten an extra Upper Deck Store discount code.  Lucky me.  One of these days I’ll get a box that falls on the other side of “average".”

I like the Helton card a lot due to the purple swatch.  Neither one is a dull, plain, boring, white swatch which is a relief.  I can do without pulling any more of those cards ever.

Last, but not least, I’ll finish with the box topper.  I like it, but I know that I’ve got some fans so if you’re interested in a trade, drop me a line.  I’d definitely like to get some trading going and help people get rid of their extra Piazzas, Red Sox and cards that I need for my sets.

Technorati Tags: box break,2007 Masterpieces,Upper Deck,Cal Ripken,Sandy Koufax,Roberto Clemente

An update

Hi everyone.  Moving didn’t go as planned at all and I’m still catching up.  I’ll be working all weekend to get things the way that they should be.  I did take a break to open up my order from Blowout Cards and that was a lot of fun.  The contents of the boxes were made for a Red Sox fan and so I was very happy.  I also opened another box of Upper Deck product and of course that means I got screwed again and since it was a 2007 product, I don’t ever get dinner first.

I think my favorite break was 2008 Allen & Ginter.  A huge bargain at $50 a box.  I can now see how people got all kinds of rip cards from this stuff.  I didn’t pull one, but I did beat the odds stated on the box by a lot.

2006-07 Topps Basketball was a lot of fun as well.  I love both the Larry Bird missing years cards and the 33 different cards of his in the regular set.  Only pulled one Rondo rookie so that’s going into the set.

2008 Topps Series 1 HTA jumbos were a lot of fun as well.  The Baseball History cards are great and I got a couple of nice “hits” out of this box.

I even had fun with the TriStar Boston Prospects cards.  I think I made out very well with that box as well.

Then there’s Upper Deck.  Masterpieces is still a great set, but as usual I didn’t get what is stated to be the average on the box.  I’ll talk more about that and some other Upper Deck stuff as time allows.

I hope that everyone reading is doing well, pulling great cards and will have a great holiday weekend.  The new Allen & Ginter is right around the corner.