Box Break - 2007 Upper Deck SP Rookie Edition

This wasn't the first box that I opened, but I thought it was one that was relevant to current baseball playoff events.  I love busting cheap, older Upper Deck products, but you'll rarely see me buying anything from them when it's brand new.

Congrats Big Papi

Wow, what a show put on by David Ortiz in the home run derby.  It’s great to see him do this on a National stage after people wanted to write him off for the second season in a row.

They really have to do something about the derby though.  At the scheduled two hours, with my current favorite player in the running, it still borders on too long.  Once it goes over by 30 minutes with Berman “back”ing and making terrible jokes and Joe Morgan oozing bitter all over everything, it starts to get brutal.  Maybe drop the field to six batters, then three and then the top two slug it out.  Something has to be done though.  Homeruns start to look the same after a while.  This isn’t the dunk contest where there’s some variety and even the dunk contest has gotten stale in recent years.

Congrats again Big Papi.

Technorati Tags: David Ortiz,Home Run Derby

11 and 34

It’s funny how certain numbers can pop up again and again in your life.  I’m not talking anything as severe as Hurley’s 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42, but since sports are full of numbers it’s bound to happen.

I was born on the 11th of September and those two numbers correspond with my current favorite players on the Celtics: Glen “Big Baby” Davis and Rajon Rondo.

I’ve been collecting Big Baby since his rookie season.  I was still bumming over the departure of “Big Al” Jefferson and Davis seemed like a fun rookie to root for.  He’s exactly the type of player that I love.  He’s got a natural instinct to be around the ball, battles hard on the offensive boards and is always hustling.  The biggest hole in his game is his lack of any vertical leap to speak of, but hopefully as he slims down and continues to work that will improve a little.

I haven’t fully committed to collecting Rondo yet because I’m already collecting a lot of players and it’s never a good idea to dive into a collection when a player is red hot.  I do have a handful or Rondo rookies, autographs and relics though.  I complete forgot to nominate Rondo for the terrible autograph tournament.  Some of his early autos have his full name, but he quickly switched to just signing “RR.”

Rondo has improved dramatically by leaps and bounds every year in the league.  This was a guy who “Boston Sports Guy” Bill Simmons crapped all over when the Celtics acquired him, jumped on the bandwagon after the Summer League and then resumed pooping for most of his rookie season.  To be fair, Rondo couldn’t shoot coming into the league.  Once he learned how to use his superior speed to get to the basket almost at will, it caused defenders to respect his speed and opened up room for his jumper which started going in more frequently.

Where Rondo has really shined is in the playoffs.  People were afraid that he might be a liability when the Celtics won it all in 2007-08, but that wasn’t the case.  Rondo really shined last season in the playoffs, but the Celtics couldn’t overcome the loss of Kevin Garnett on the defensive end of the floor even with Big Baby stepping up offensively in Garnett’s place.  This year, Rondo has been phenomenal.  Forget the new “Big Three,” right now in Boston there’s just a “Big One.”  Rondo’s triple-double today against the Cavaliers will go down as one of the all-time great Celtics playoff performances and that’s saying a lot when you’re wearing the jersey of a team that has won 17 Championships and could have their own wing of the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Another player that I haven’t really chased as far as a collection goes is Clay Buchholz.  I hadn’t noticed until two starts ago that Buchholz is now wearing 11 on his jersey this season.  It’s the number that he wore all through his childhood and on school teams.

I already had a connection with Buchholz due to being at his no-hitter.  My Buchholz collection started with all of the cards that mentioned the no-hitter and then grew from there.  I now have a couple of autographs and relic cards.  I’ve been eyeing an autographed rookie, but the majority that I see are slabbed and I’m not too big on that.  The prices on those cards always seem to be through the roof.  I will make sure that I track down all of Buchholz’s cards once they start depicting him with his new jersey number. 

I turned 34 on my last birthday and I currently collect two players with that jersey number.  I’ve been collecting Paul Pierce ever since I returned to the hobby casually around 2001 or so.  At that time, Pierce was one of the best clutch players in the game and also one of the most underrated.  He played with some terrible teams and chose to stay in Boston when he had chances to leave.  That decision was rewarded when Danny Ainge added Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett to the mix along with a great supporting cast and Pierce led the Celtics to their 17th NBA Championship winning NBA Finals MVP in the process.  Pierce has been struggling this year in the playoffs due to age and nagging injuries, but once he retires his 34 will be raised to the rafters in the Garden and he’ll take his place in the Hall of Fame.

The other 34 is Red Sox Slugger David Ortiz.  One thing that I liked a lot about the 2004 World Series Championship team was that it was built with the addition of two of my fantasy baseball favorites: David Ortiz and Billy Mueller.  Both of these guys seemed to annually be on the verge of their breakout season only to lose large parts of the season to injury.  Both of these guys were great, low-risk/high-reward free agent signings by Theo Epstein that looked brilliant in retrospect.

It’s tough not to like Ortiz.  He’s got an infectious smile, seemed to be well-liked by his teammates and under the tutelage of hitting coach Papa Jack became one of the most fearsome hitters in all of baseball.  He cemented his place in Boston Sports History with his clutch hitting during the 2004 championship run.  He struggled at the beginning of last season before leading the league in home runs from the middle of June to the end of the season.  It looks like he’s struggling again at the start of this season, but a platoon with Mike Lowell at DH will hopefully rejuvenate him like the platoon at catcher has done to Jason Varitek.  If not, it just means that Ortiz cards might be cheaper for me to acquire for my collection.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to buy a lottery ticket.

 

Technorati Tags: Glen Davis,Big Baby,Boston Celtics,Paul Pierce,Clay Buchholz,Boston Red Sox,David Ortiz,Big Papi

Mail Day: Digging out

I forgot to include this card when I posted about my Jorge Garcia through the mail autograph success.  I also included a card to be signed which came out nicely as well.

Now that I’ve seen them, I’m wishing that I had one of the Rittenhouse cards signed and I may still try to get one signed, but I don’t want to be greedy.  Also, things are ramping up with the filming of the Lost finale supposedly and Mr. Garcia may be busy with other things after that and not have time to spend answering fan mail.

Here’s a Big Baby rookie green refractor.  If you’re going to get any Celtics refractors from this set, why wouldn’t you go with the green parallels?  They’re a perfect match for the Celtics uniforms and are numbered to 149 which is rare, but not too rare.

Big Baby seems to be the only guy on the Celtics who grabs any offensive rebounds at times.  The one thing that does seem to hold him back is his maturity level.  He earned a spot in Doc Rivers’ doghouse a few games ago after committing a stupid flagrant foul.  Hopefully he can overcome these maturity issues by the time Boston is looking for him to step into a starting role or it may never happen.

The black parallel is sharp as well and is numbered to just 75 copies.  The white outline around the player gives this card a little bit of a different look.

I think that I’ve been having the most fun with my Glen Davis collection because I’m able to pick up some cool cards at great prices.  That’s not the case with Paul Pierce, Mike Piazza or David Ortiz.  Piazza cards especially climb way out of my price range quickly.  I don’t have any Piazza autos while I have multiple autos of Davis and Pierce and now one autograph of Ortiz.

In typical eBay ridiculousness, I ended up paying less for the black refractor than I did the green and this one is rarer.

I’ve got a couple of Dee Brown cards that I got signed in person as well as an NBA Jam strategy guide that he was promoting.  So, why would I pick up a sticker autograph card?  Well, winning it for a dollar may have had something to do with it.  I also don’t really have many pack inserted autographs for the former Slam Dunk Champ so I figured that I would pick this up.

Brown is now coaching the NBA D-League team in Springfield.  I don’t know if the team was on the road, but it would have been cool for Panini to get this Celtics fan favorite to be a part of their Adrenalyn promotion in Springfield.


There’s no way that I could pass up this lot for a dollar.  I’ve been coveting the Larry Bird from this set ever since I bought one for my wife at a card show last year and this lot contains the refractor.  I would have paid a dollar just for that card, but I also got the regular Pierce and Parish cards from that set, a Pierce Finest rookie, a Garnett Finest card and three other Pierce cards.

The first thing that I did after trading away my Babe Ruth Yankees hat logo card was to start searching eBay for Red Sox players that I could add to my collection.  I got this Ortiz for a great price.  My auction closed at $5.50 when most others were ending in the $10 - $15 price range.

I know many collectors hate manufactured patches on principle.  These are great looking cards though.  I don’t mind at all that the B in this card wasn’t ever touched by David Ortiz.  Somewhere down the line, nice looking cards started taking a backseat to ugly cards with bits of crap in them or a random serial number printed on them.  These are great looking cards.  ‘Nuff said.

I picked up one Clay Buchholz autographed card for my collection prior to this just to have one.  I was at the no-hitter and have a mini collection of Buchholz cards.  Buchholz has a terrible autograph and I never saw myself picking up another one of his scribbles.  Seeing this card changed my mind.  First off, this is signed on-card while my other autograph was on a sticker.  Second, Allen & Ginter autograph cards are beautiful.  Third, Buchholz’s autograph doesn’t look quite as bad on the little mini card.  Next up, for the Buchholz collection: one or two of his 2005 rookies.  From there, I’d love to get something nice framed with the ticket stub and a signed photo.  Maybe not something this elaborate, but I would love that as a gift some day.

I’ve picked up these cards before, but I haven’t had the best of luck getting these cards in good condition.  I win the auctions cheaply and always seem to find people that think shipping cards wrapped in paper towels actually does something to protect them.  These cards aren’t necessarily damaged, but they don’t look at that great either.  One day I’ll just buy one of each of the stamped factory sets from my Rockies and Marlins inaugural year collections.

I love the Lumberjacks inserts and was holding on to the one that I pulled from a box back when these first came out even thought it wasn’t of a player that I collected.  Now that I have this Piazza in my collection, I can trade away that other card.

The Lumberjacks card is numbered to 5000 and the Great American Heroes card is numbered to 2500.  Big deal back when they were released, high print run by today’s standards.

The good thing about that is that I can now pick up insert cards that sold for $20 back when they were first released for a fraction of the cost.  There were a lot of cool Donruss/Leaf and Fleer Ultra inserts that I couldn’t pick up then that I can now add to my collection.

I never would have known about the Topps Tek set if it weren’t for card blogs.  Now it is safe to say that I’m officially hooked on this set.  I’ve picked up a few Piazza lots here and there and am slowly growing my collection.  Some of the designs are ugly, but the majority of them look nice.  The backgrounds with the various team logos in them especially look good.

Last, but not least, another Jeremy Piven letter.  I only grab these when they’re listed cheaply so I may never finish off this phrase.  Many people don’t want to list these cheaply after getting one of these as a hit in their Icons box, but they don’t really sell for more than $3 or $4.

On the letter front, just the second H from Kent Hrbek that I’ve ever seen showed up on eBay and went for a ton of money just like the first.  That’s another word that I may never complete.

That’s all for now.  Time to get the room together and things put away before I starting bringing in a bunch of new singles.

Technorati Tags: Mike Piazza,Glen Davis,Paul Pierce,Jeremy Piven,Clay Buchholz,Dee Brown,Larry Bird,Jorge Garcia

Traded: Cards from BA Benny’s Baseball Card Buffet

This traded was started when I saw the Ortiz autographed jersey card that was posted over at BA Benny's Baseball Car Buffet.  A couple of e-mails later, I had sent away my Babe Ruth hat logo card and a few other cards and got three Ortiz jersey cards and a nice pile of Red Sox in return.

One interesting thing of note is that Ortiz signed this sticker upside down.  If I thought that it would carry any sort of premium, I would hold on to it, but I think that I’m going to send it to Topps for a replacement.  I already contacted them and they said that they had replacement of this card available.

Technorati Tags: David Ortiz,Boston Red Sox

Box Break: 2010 Topps Baseball Series 1 Jumbos

I had some overtime on my paycheck, so it was time to order a box of 2010 Topps jumbos.  I love the jumbos and won’t touch the regular hobby boxes as long as these things exist.  I’ve had more luck with the basketball jumbos than I have the baseball jumbos, but my 2009 series 2 jumbo box was pretty loaded.

What’s not to love about jumbo packs?  You get one of each insert in every pack as well as a gold card and a Million Card Giveaway card.  Each box has one Mother real back, black parallel, autograph, relic and hat logo card.  For what some of the hat logo cards are selling for on eBay right now, you can get a jumbo box, sell the hat logo and end up with a lot more cards for a little more than the price of a hobby box.

2010 Topps has a great design.  Yes, the logos are large, but Topps did a great job of making sure that they don’t get in the way of the pictures.  Oh, the pictures.  The pictures in this set are beautiful.  Each time I go through the cards, I find something new that catches my eye (but unfortunately, none of the eye catching things have been a super short printed Abe Lincoln card).

I hate to dwell on the comparisons between Topps and Upper Deck’s flagship sets, but you have to do it.  While Upper Deck’s stadium cards are some of the drabbest, most boring cards that I have ever seen, Topps has some beautiful stadium pictures on their Franchise History cards.  Take this Red Sox card for example, this picture sums things perfectly.  You’ve got the historic Green Monster covered in banners celebrating the 2004 and 2007 World Series victories.  Yes, there are other World Series victories including the first ever, but none of those are as important as the first one after 86 years was.

Then there are cards such as this one.  How old is Randy Johnson these days and he’s still making plays such as this?  Great action shot with the ump in the background looking on to make the call at first base.

I don’t think that the backs of these cards have gotten enough attention at all.  The front and backs have similar designs which is nice.  The gradients look great.  Best of all, full career statistics.  Topps definitely didn’t phone it in on their first set with the exclusive MLB license.

It’s not all great though.  There are a few too many insert sets.  The ToppsTown cards aren’t all that great looking, but if kids like them then I’m fine with them being included.

I pulled silver cards of Lincecum, Mauer, Adrian Gonzalez, Longoria and Miguel Cabrera.  I pulled gold cards of Halladay, Tejada, Vlad, Manny and Ichiro.  I redeemed the codes, but I don’t think that I’ll be putting the set together.

I’m not a fan of the When They Were Young cards at all.  What’s worse is that Topps went and recycled pictures from previous cards.  What am I talking about?  I’ll tell you who I pulled from this set first and then I’ll show a card that most people probably haven’t seen before.  I pulled Little Papi, Little Damon, Little Berken, Little Beckham and Little Wright.  Luckily, these are the cards that are replaced when you get one of the one per box hits so you only end up with 5 of these ridiculous things.

There’s a company out there called Team Baby that makes DVDs for little ones to get them rooting for the team that their parents love.  Back in 2008, Team Baby struck a deal with Topps to include special cards in the DVDs of a player as a child.  The Red Sox DVDs contained David Ortiz, Mets DVDs had David Wright, Yankees DVDs had Johnny Damon and Dodgers DVDs had Russell Martin.  I haven’t seen the other cards from the DVDs, but I’m guessing that they have the same pictures that are in the When They Were Young insert set.

My daughter was given the Red Sox Team Baby DVD, but it came with a 10 card set of cards based on the 2008 design.  The cards were navy blue instead of white and the team name was in the Red Sox font.  They’re nice looking cards and show that the 2008 design was close to being a really nice one.

I’m not a huge fan of the History of the Game cards either.  This is something that I’d buy as a complete set, but not something that I’d chase to complete.  I do like the fact that I got a card of the first World Series with a picture of the old Huntington Avenue Baseball Grounds.  These days you’ll find Northeastern University on those grounds, but there is a nice statue of Cy Young where the mound used to be.  I pulled cards 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 11, 12, 14, 23 and 24.

These cards are sort of blah and the relic versions aren’t all that better.  Players have holes cut in their legs and crotches for the insertion of the relics.  It works better on some cards than others.  My Peak Performers were Lincecum, Braun, Cy Young, Steve Carlton, Morneau, Stargell, Miguel Cabrera, Chipper, Pujols and Pedroia.  I won’t be chasing this set either.  There just isn’t anything appealing about this set to make me chase it.

Now this set is more fun and has more character to it.  These Tales of the Game capture some of the great things that make this sport so fun.  Everyone has seen Carlton Fisk’s game winning home run, but I wish that they had put the actual tale behind this shot on the card.  I’ve written about it before, but there’s a great story about why the camera was on Fisk and not the ball.  Give it a Google and I’m sure you’ll be amused.  I also pulled Pesky’s Pole which is nice.  The Sox later named the left field pole Fisk’s Pole in honor of his 1975 home run.  I also pulled a card of the David Ortiz jersey that was buried under the new Yankee Stadium and one for the Curse of the Bambino that I might have to burn.  I also got cards of Mantle, Jackie Robinson, Josh Hamilton, Ozzie Smith, Prince Fielder and 1952 Topps cards going for a swim.

The Lineage set, like the Peak Performances set, is good for player collectors, but that’s about it.  I’m not quite sure what Yaz and Youk have in common other than last names starting with Y.  Some players are grouped by team, some by position and others by a statistic they excel in.  The set is just all over the place.  I pulled 1, 2, 10, 11, 12, 17, 20, 22, 29 and 30.  I’ll most likely be sending these off in trades except for the Y Sox.

I thought that I would like these cards, but I’m not sure if I’m going to collect them.  I’m still working on the Trading Card History set from 2008 and I like that set more.  The reprints of the vintage cards just don’t look right and it bothers me.  Even the 87 Topps doesn’t look right.  It’s far too light.  My reprints were Aparicio, Mantle, Musial, Robinson, Palmer, Munson, Schmidt, Ozzie, Bo and Ichiro.  My real back card was Ryne Sandberg.

I’m still enjoying the Turkey Reds.  I think it would be nice if Topps could rotate sets though.  Next year bring back Topps Gallery and then the year after that do Cracker Jack.  My Turkey Red cards were of Howard, Tejada, Braun, Mantle, Victor Martinez, Greinke, Holliday, Kinsler, Sandberg and Josh Hamilton.  I still haven’t finished the 2009 Turkey Red set, but I’ll be starting this one as well.

You get 10 gold cards per jumbo box and these are now numbered to 2010.  My gold cards were Tommy Hanson, AL Home Run Leaders (Pena, Teixeira & Bay), Yankees Anthem in the Bronx (A-Rod, Jeter & Cano), Yankees Franchise History, Will Venable, Texas Rangers, Philadelphia Phillies, Nick Johnson, Asdrubal Cabrera and Mike Gonzalez.  All of these are up for trade as are all of the gold cards that I’ve accumulated over the years.  I want to clear all of these things out to player and team collectors.  So, drop me a line if you’re interested.

My black bordered card was Roy Halladay numbered to 59.  I scanned it, but don’t feel like posting the picture of it.

My relic hit was a Melky Cabrera gray jersey swatch.  Just my luck to pull a Yankees card.  I was hoping to pull something Pedroia related, but my luck wasn’t with me.  I’m so over plain jersey swatches so most of these go right into the trade pile and this is no exception.

Here you can see how Topps just took the regular Peak Performance card and stuck a jersey swatch into it with no regard for the picture behind it.  Most of the pictures seem to be set up with that in mind, but it still doesn’t look all that great.  Does it look any better on the autograph card?  Let’s go find out.

Nope, it doesn’t look any better on the autograph cards.  In fact, since the sticker is larger these cards look even worse.

Aesthetics aside, I’ve wanted a Hanley Ramirez autograph for a while now.  I’ll hold on to this for now, but I’ll definitely have to upgrade to an on-card autograph at some point since this auto goes off of the sticker in 5 or 6 places it seems.  Ugh.  I understand why autograph stickers are used, but I’d rather have fewer autograph cards available and have them all be signed on-card.  Similarly, I’d rather have fewer jersey cards and have them all be something special.  If it’s going to be one color it should be almost the full size of the card and it should be autographed.

Another Yankee?  It figures.  The insert set that prominently features team logos gives me the middle finger.  Ruth seems to be one of the most popular players in this insert set even though he has two or three different cards.

I definitely need to pick up one of the Red Sox cards in this set.  I’ve checked out a few on eBay and those are just beautiful cards.

The only other thing is the Million Card Giveaway cards.  I got a set of 1 – 10 in my box and will attempt to redeem my codes tomorrow evening when I get home from work.  I’m hoping for something from the 70s or later even if they’re commons.  I’m also curious to see what kind of condition these cards are in.

So, that’s everything.  Even though I’m not a huge fan of a few of the insert sets, I still like this year’s set a lot.  I got a full set out of the box which is a big deal for me.  It’s worth buying the jumbos to not have to chase the set.  I’ve got plenty of trade fodder and can hopefully transform it into something nice to add to my collection.

On the strength of the great design, photos and variety of inserts this set gets an A- from me.  As usual, the jumbo boxes get an A+ in value.  MY box in particular would rate a B.  I got some nice Red Sox inserts, but two of my three big “hits” were Yankees cards.  The Ruth card is still a great pull regardless of the team.

Best of all, I think that I’m finally up to date on new boxes of sports cards that I wanted to buy.  Now I can bounce around a little bit.  I’ve been wanting to check out stuff like the late 90s Score Red Sox boxes and older Finest baseball and basketball boxes than can be picked up cheaply.  I do have one more box break waiting to be posted though and hopefully I can get that up tomorrow… er, later on today.

Box Break: 2009 Upper Deck X

I’m one of the biggest fans of discounted Upper Deck products.  I don’t buy many Upper Deck products when they first come out because you get far too little cards for your dollar.  The example that I’ll cite time and time again is Goodwin Champions.  I was so excited for it until I opened a few packs and then it was put on the back burner until prices dropped.

Upper Deck X is another example of this.  Even though this is a product designed for kids, it is still pretty pricy for what you get.  There’s only 6 cards per pack and 24 packs per box.  Once you are done with a box you are left with 24 inserts, 24 parallels and no shot at a complete set even with perfect collation.  The base set is extremely blah, but the Xponential inserts are very cool looking and are worth it at the right price.  BlowoutCards’ special of $19.99 a box was the right price for me.

Upper Deck X is all about the hits.  Sure, they aren’t hits that will break the bank, but they are a lot of fun.  Even the most common of the inserts are nice looking.  It’s tough to see in the scan, but there are embossed rays of light shining behind the player.  My box contained eight of the base level Xponential cards putting them 1:3 packs.  The players that I pulled were Magglio Ordoñez, Manny Ramirez, Mark Teixeira, Prince Fielder, Bobby Abreu, Brian McCann, Jonathan Papelbon and Magglio Ordoñez again.  I’ll trade any of them except for the Papelbon.

 

The X² cards have a horizontal orientation.  I think this is my least favorite of all of the designs.  There’s a giant three dimensional X behind the player and that’s about it.  My box contained six of the X² cards putting them at a 1:4 ratio.  The players that I pulled were Chipper Jones, Mark Teixeira (rainbow here I come), Manny Ramirez (Manny being everywhere), Randy Johnson, Big Papi and Chipper Jones again.  I can’t believe that I’ve already pulled two doubles in the insert sets.  I keep giving Upper Deck chances to win me over and stuff like this keeps happening.  Luckily the prices on their products is as reliable as the sun coming up.  At the price that I paid for this box, I don’t mind as much, but it is still frustrating.  If you’d like to trade for anything other than the Ortiz, please drop me a line.

The X³ cards are back to a vertical orientation.  There isn’t a whole lot going on with these cards.  The top half has a picture of the player on a holofoil background.  The bottom half has an etched X design.  It’s a little busy, but I still like it more than the X² design.  There were five of these in my box so you’ll get one in every five packs (rounding up a little).  The players that I pulled were Matt Holliday, Miguel Cabrera, Grady Sizemore, Chase Utley and Chipper Jones.  I’m not attached to any of these, but I’d like to keep at least one of the X³ cards in my collection.  So, the first four people who want to trade for one will be able to trade for who they want.  If someone trades me a Red Sox player in return then all five of these can go.

The X4 (no exponential 4 available) cards are the sharpest looking of the bunch.  The black segments of this card aren’t reflective while the lines behind the player are.  The cards have a really nice look to them.  I had three of these in my box putting the odds at 1:8 packs.  The players that were pulled were Alfonso Soriano, Jake Peavy and Ryan Howard.  Same deal here as with the X³ cards.  I’m not attached to any particular card, but would like to keep at least one until I pick up a Red Sox X4 card.


 

Last, but not least (at least from what I pulled), are the X5 cards.  These cards are very sharp looking as well.  The only thing that could have improved these cards, and all of the other cards for that matter, were team colors.  The green cards are nice and the foil board makes it look even nicer.  There were two of them in my box or 1:12 packs.  The players that I pulled were Ryan Howard and Ken Griffey Jr.  I think that I’ll be holding onto the Griffey, but any Howard collectors out there can trade me for both of the cards that I pulled.

I didn’t pull any of the X6 cards so I’m guessing those are every 1:36 or 1:48.  There are only 5 players in that set so they could possibly be even rarer.  The purple X6 cards are what Spectrum could have looked like with a good design.  I may look into picking one up if they aren’t too expensive.  There are also autographs to be pulled.  In a product such as this one they’re probably case hits.

Remember when I said earlier in this break that the collation on this product is terrible?  I didn’t even come close to a complete set from this box.  I have 61 out of 100 cards in the set.  I also pulled 24 doubles.  Actually, let me clarify that.  I pulled 18 doubles and 6 triples.  Triples?  Are you kidding me?  That’s ridiculous for something like this.

I’m not going to list off all of the die cut cards or my duplicates, but for those of you looking to trade, let me know what players or teams you’re looking for and I’ll tell you what I’ve got and set them aside for you.

One of the best things about this box was that it only contained 2 of the ridiculous 20th Anniversary cards.  One was basketball (Shaq) and the other was of the Avalanche goalie.  It those were the insert rates across all of the products, I probably would hate these cards a lot less.

Now for the hits that are what most people chase, but for the most part bore the crap out of me.  These cards are even worse than typical relic cards because the design is so terrible.  They just took the same design as the regular card and slapped a swatch right in the middle of it regardless of the picture behind it.

This here is a plain white jersey swatch of “Scott Rolen Game-Used MLB memorabilia.”  I think I had two Scott Rolen jersey cards in the big stack of cards that I used to get my box of 206.  It looks like this one is going to start the next stack in the hopes that someone else one day has another promotion.

Next is a “trading card with Eric Chavez Game-Used MLB memorabilia.”  This swatch is a weird shade of gray/green.  Both of these cards are also available for trade.

Normally that’s all you would get in a box.

Do I happen to get more than that?

I must have since I’m keeping this going.

I was lucky enough to pull a case hit of DeAngelo Williams.  Maybe it’s just me, but this is disappointing as a case hit.  Couldn’t they have at least put a patch in there or serial numbered the thing.  There can’t be too many of these floating around if they’re case hits can there?  Why even bother making a card this boring a case hit?

I bought this card mostly for the Xponential cards and I’m very happy with those.  I may even buy a second box of this to pick up more of those and hopefully finish off the base set.  The condition of these cards were pretty bad with many cards having soft or feathered corners.  The collation was terrible and the big hits leave a lot to be desired.  This box completely justified my policy of waiting until the price drops on Upper Deck products.  I would give the set a C- on the strength of the Xponential inserts and I would give my box a D due to the condition of the cards and the duplicates.  Without the case hit, it would have been an F.

Technorati Tags: 2009 Upper Deck X,box breaks

2007 Masterpieces glossy variations

Has anyone else out there seen Upper Deck packs containing only cards of their local team?  I saw them in K-Mart around this time last year and bought 2 or 3 of them to open.  I wanted to go back and get some more to set aside for trading purposes, but never saw them again.  You can read about what I got in my first pack in this post here.

The interesting thing about these packs is that they contained glossy Masterpieces cards.  I don’t know how many cards from the set are available in these variations, but for player collectors, it might be a variation worth noting.

Check out the two Schillings over to the left.  The top card is the regular, run-of-the-mill Masterpieces card.  The card on the bottom is the glossy card from the Red Sox team packs.  The colors look much darker on the glossy card.  Another way to tell the difference is the color of the foil border.  The regular cards have the gold border that you know and love while the glossy cards have a silver border.

Has anyone else out there ever seen these glossy variants?  It makes me wonder if any of the other cards in the Red Sox packs were altered from their original versions.  I don’t have any Artifacts, Future Stars or Legendary Cuts to compare those cards to.  What I do have is another side by side comparison for you.

Technorati Tags: 2007 Masterpieces,David Ortiz,Curt Schilling

Mail Day: Father’s Day Edition

Here’s a shiny, happy post to balance out that last O-Pee-Chee criticism.  This could be my last mail day post in a while because I’m moving at the end of the month.  I’ve got a package on the way from Check Out My Cards and if that arrives on Monday then there’s an outside chance that it gets posted before the move.

I’ll start this post with one of the cards that prompted me to check out CheckOutMyCards.com.  I was winning too many cards such as this Paul Pierce Bowman Chrome refractor for a dollar and then paying three dollars in shipping.  So, I went to the website and grabbed any card of this sort that was under four dollars.  Between Cardlots, COMC and card shows, I should be able to just look to eBay to get the high ends cards that I need for my collection.  It’s probably best that way.

His gimmick may have been being a friend of Hulk Hogan, but once he started cutting people’s hair he started getting very over in the WWF.  The Barber also had some decent tag team success.  His time in WCW is better left forgotten, but the fact that he was even able to come back after having his shattered face completely reconstructed with metal screws is impressive.

Here in the Boston area, he’s best known for getting busted for drugs while working for the MBTA (subway).  Someone saw white powder during the height of the Anthrax scares and reported it, turns out it was ONLY cocaine.  Regardless, I couldn’t pass up the red ink version of the card selling for the same as the normal version.  Thanks for the memories.

Here’s the gold version of Big Baby’s 08-09 First Edition card.  The horizontal cards don’t look as good in this set due to the gold stripe taking up at least a third of the card.  The next card looks a little nicer.

Here’s the same picture used for a completely different parallel.  I remember back when Electric Diamond and Electric Court cards used to be all the rage.  Now many collectors don’t care about it unless it has an autograph on it or relic in it.  The top rookies might garner some attention, but that’s about it.

I think I may already have this card, but I couldn’t pass up this lot consisting of the orange refractor /199 and regular refractor /1499.  It became an even better deal when the seller threw in the base card as well.  That’s three Big Baby rookies for $3.49 delivered.  Here in Boston you’d have a tough time even finding the base card for that much.  Local cards get really jacked up here most of the time.

I wasn’t lucky enough to pull this card out of the box of SP Rookie Edition that I opened and since it’s not worth opening any further boxes, I picked up this card on its own.  It was $5 delivered which is fine by me especially since I overheard one card dealer say “these cards went up in the last Beckett and should go up in the next one as well.”  That’s dealer speak for, “I’m selling this above book so it’s even more overpriced.”

There are rumors that the Celitcs are possibly shopping Ray Allen around.  The Celtics took a beating by letting the previous Big Three play out their careers in Boston.  It was great for the fans though.  That move was compounded by the deaths of Reggie Lewis and Len Bias.  Danny Ainge doesn’t want a repeat of that and wants the Celtics to remain title contenders.

Ray Allen could boost ticket sales for a team that probably won’t make the playoffs, but he’s not as valuable to a potential playoff team since he’s all but disappeared after the first round of the playoffs in the past two seasons.  I mention this because some of the freed up cap space will go towards re-signing Glen Davis and keeping him in Celtic Green for years to come.  This is his Bowman Chrome refractor rookie numbered to 199.

I had the base, autographed refractor and even a blue refractor, but I didn’t yet have the regular refractor.  That’s no longer the case.  It doesn’t look that refractory in this scan, but in person you can see all of its shimmery goodness.

Speaking of refractors, here’s a 2005 Topps Heritage Chrome refractor.  It’s numbered to 556 for some random reason.  It’s a chrome card in a Heritage set for another completely random reason.

Big Papi seems to be breaking out of his slump and he hit another home run today to help beat the Braves and missed another by two feet last night.

Meet the Ortiz twins.  $3.50 delivered got me a blue refractor numbered to 299 and a green refractor numbered to 199.

Topps always does a great job with the multicolored refractors in Finest.  That’s why so many people are willing to hunt down the rainbows.

It’s déjà vu all over again.  2009’s Finest blue is numbered to 399 and the green is numbered to 99.  When I won the Ortiz, the seller had a bunch of other blue refractors closing at the same time so I got Ortiz, Jason Bay and Lincecum all for $6 delivered.  Not too bad if you ask me.

To top it all off, it looks like my World Baseball Classic card has been shipped from Topps.  So soon I’ll have my Jung Keun Bong.  It’s 4 months after I redeemed it and at this point Red Sox and Yankees fans are cursing the World Baseball Classic and some of the managers there for damaging starting pitchers.  After all of the injuries, I wouldn’t mind if the Sox banned all of their players from participating the next time around.  The tournament did nothing for me personally.

Technorati Tags: Mail day,David Ortiz,Glen Davis,Big Baby,Paul Pierce