27 September 2017

A Vacation Blaster of Bowman Platinum

I opened a blaster of 2017 Bowman Platinum while I was in San Diego way back at the end of July/start of August. I talked a lot about it when the product was new, so I'm just hitting the highlights of the blaster today.


These are the shiny blaster-exclusive parallels. Cody Bellinger is the big pull here, and I like getting that Joey Votto card, too. I think Votto would have been a pretty huge star if he played in a bigger market or on a better team. 


Here are the inserts from the blaster. That Jackie Bradley Jr. is an Orange parallel, numbered # 20 / 25. All of the others are shiny and colorful basic inserts. I don't have much else to say about this blaster. Today was a long day at work, and after I came home the dog (got himself trapped in the fenced garden) and the kids (fighting with each other, stalling at bedtime) have taken what was left of my energy. I hope that tomorrow will be better, but I am assuming that things will be bleak until after Saturday, when the fiscal year ends and I hope to take a couple days off from work.

26 September 2017

Pack of the Day 176: A Blaster of 2017 Topps WWE Women's Division

One product I enjoyed last year was the Walmart-exclusive 2016 Topps WWE Divas Revolution, which featured the women of WWE in blasters with a guaranteed hit per box. The product is back this year as 2017 Topps WWE Women's Division. It remains a Walmart-exclusive, but adds a couple of packaging changes that I don't really like. There are still guaranteed-hit blasters, but the only inserts in the set are exclusive to rack packs or hanger boxes, with rack packs guaranteeing 3 cards from the Rivalries insert and hanger boxes guaranteeing 5 cards from the Finishers and Signature Moves insert set. You can basically get a full base set from two blasters of the product (along with two guaranteed hits), so when buying rack packs and hanger boxes you're mostly just going for the inserts. Assuming perfect collation, you'd have to buy at least 5 hanger boxes and 9 rack packs to get both insert sets.


Anyhow, I picked up a couple of blasters, a rack pack, and a hanger box. Today I'm just showing the first blaster I bought, because that's all I have scanned right now. According to the odds, parallels of the base set are hard to find, and I didn't pull any from any of the packs I opened.


The base set is broken into three parts. First up is a Roster section, which is basically what you think of when you think of a base set. It features individual wrestler cards for NXT, RAW, SmackDown, and Legend wrestlers. The design is pretty basic, but I like it. The card backs feature a nice long bio as well as height and hometown.


Here are a few more base cards that I scanned. I tried to include wrestlers from all of the categories in this scan. Charlotte Flair is making an appearance at a local bookstore this weekend before the WWE Live event to sign copies of her book. I am thinking about going, but I'm still not sure. If it were Bayley I would go 100%, but for Charlotte I don't know.


The next part of the checklist is divided into two different Matches and Moments subsets, one for NXT and one for WWE. It is pretty much what it sounds like, a highlight reel from the last year or so of WWE and NXT storylines.


These checklists are dominated by a few big names, so in the NXT checklist you see a lot of Asuka, Bayley, and Nia Jax.


The WWE Matches and Moments set isn't much different from the NXT set. You get a picture on the front and a breakdown of the match or moment on the back.


The checklist is again dominated by a few names, like Bayley, Charlotte, Sasha Banks, Alexa Bliss, and Nikki Bella.


The final card in this post is the hit. I got an autograph from this blaster, a Blue parallel of Maryse. It's numbered # 11 / 25, and the signature is on a sticker. The stickers aren't too obtrusive, though, so that's good. Blue autographs only fall 1:39 blasters, so this was a decent pull.

I'm a fan of this product, but I have a hard time with the rack pack- and hanger box-exclusive inserts. I wish everything was available in the blasters, because I'd buy those all day.

25 September 2017

Gint-A-Cuffs 9 Box Break

Most years during Gint-A-Cuffs, I do a full 25 posts and keep track of my score and my pace and all kinds of stuff. This year I am busy and I got my Allen & Ginter box pretty late, so I am just going to burn through this thing in one long post, scoring 1 box loader and 24 packs.


+4 - Standard Box Loader

Pack Total: 4 points
Running Total: 4 points


+2 - What a Day
+1 - Short Print
+1 - Rediscover Topps
+2 - World's Dudes

Pack Total: 6 points
Running Total: 10 points


+2 - World's Fair
+5 - Full-Size Relic Version A
+3 - SP Mini

Pack Total: 10 points
Running Total: 20 points


+2 - What a Day
+1 - Short Print
+2 - Julio Teheran Other Favorite Player
+4 - Black-Bordered Mini


Pack Total: 9 points
Running Total: 29 points


Kyle Hendricks Hot Pack!

+1 - Harriet Tubman
+2 - Sport Fish & Fishing Lures

Pack Total: 3 points
Running Total: 32 points


+2 - What a Day
+1 - Lance McCullers My Favorite Team
+1 - Short Print

Pack Total: 4 points
Running Total: 36 points


+1 - Valarie Jenkins
+2 - World's Fair
+2 - A&G Back Mini

Pack Total: 5 points
Running Total: 41 points


-1 - Dellin Betances Yankee
-1 - Tom Anderson
-1 - Gary Sanchez Yankee
+1 - William Shatner
+2 - What a Day
+1 - Short Print
+1 - Rediscover Topps
+2 - Constellations

Pack Total: 4 points
Running Total: 45 points


+2 - Kris Bryant Other Favorite Player
+2 - Revolutionary Battles

Pack Total: 4 points
Running Total: 49 points


+1 - Yuliesky Gurriel My Favorite Team
+1 - Paris Locks
+2 - What a Day
+1 - Short Print
+3 - Short Print A&G Back

Pack Total: 8 points
Running Total: 57 points


+2 - Sport Fish & Fishing Lures
+7 - Framed Mini Autograph
+4 - Black-Bordered Mini

Pack Total: 13 points
Running Total: 70 points


+2 - What a Day
+1 - Short Print
+1 - Dallas Keuchel My Favorite Team
+1 - Rediscover Topps

Pack Total: 5 points
Running Total: 75 points


+2 - World's Fair
+2 - Joey Votto Other Favorite Player
+2 - A&G Back

Pack Total: 6 points
Running Total: 81 points


+2 - What a Day
+1 - Short Print

Pack Total: 3 points
Running Total: 84 points


+2 - Revolutionary Battles
-1 - Stephen A. Smith
+2 - Bust a Move!

Pack Total: 3 points
Running Total: 87 points


+1 - Teoscar Hernandez My Favorite Team
+2 - Buster Posey Other Favorite Player
+2 - What a Day
+1 - Short Print

Pack Total: 6 points
Running Total: 93 points


+2 - Sport Fish & Fishing Lures
+2 - A&G Back

Pack Total: 4 points
Running Total: 97 points


+2 - What a Day
+1 - Short Print

Pack Total: 3 points
Running Total: 100 points


+2 - World's Fair
+2 - A&G Back

Pack Total: 4 points
Running Total: 104 points


+2 - What a Day
-1 - Yankee
+1 - Short Print

Pack Total: 2 points
Running Total: 106 points


+2 - Revolutionary Battles
+2 - Required Reading

Pack Total: 4 points
Running Total: 110 points


+2 - What a Day
+1 - Short Print
+1 - Rediscover Topps
+2 - World's Dudes

Pack Total: 6 points
Running Total: 116 points


+2 - Sport Fish & Fishing Lures
+5 - Full-Size Relic Version B

Pack Total: 7 points
Running Total: 123 points


+2 - What a Day
+1 - Short Print
+2 - A&G Back

Pack Total: 5 points
Running Total: 128 points


+2 - World's Fair

Pack Total: 2 points
Box Total: 130 points

23 September 2017

2017 Topps UFC Chrome Hobby Box Break

The box containing my Gint-a-Cuffs box of Allen & Ginter arrived the other day, along with several other things I'd ordered. Most of the breaks were pretty good, but the Allen & Ginter box was pretty disappointing. I am having a hard time getting myself motivated to scan the cards and add up the points for the contest, but I will try to get it done by the deadline.


The product that held up the order (I placed the order in July) was 2017 Topps UFC Chrome, which got bumped back quite a bit from the original release date. I ordered a box of it, as Chrome is something that Topps hadn't done yet for UFC. The box has 24 packs in it, with 4 cards per pack and two autographs per box.


The pack design mirrors the box design, so there isn't much to talk about here.


Here are the odds from the back of a pack. Based on this, I am expecting 8 base Refractors, a Blue Wave Refractor, a Green Refractor, an X-Fractor, 4 each of the Top of the Class, Museum Collection, Tier One, and UFC Fire inserts, and the two promised autographs.


Here are the front and back of Neil Magny's base card. The design is pretty familiar to anyone who collected Topps Baseball this year. The backs feature social media handles and a paragraph about the fighter. The cards look pretty good overall, although I noticed a fair number of reused images.


I got 64 base cards total in the box with no doubles, so if collation is decent you could build a 100-card base set with two boxes. This is a selection of 8 base cards I chose to scan. Randa Markos and Jim Miller are two of my primary fighter collections. Jessica Andrade and Ovince Saint Preux put on quite a show in their fights last night. I kind of collect Liz Carmouche and Stipe Miocic's cards, although I don't usually chase them down specifically. Paige VanZant is popular and I thought the Derek Brunson card had a cool image, so I included them to fill up the scan.


I pulled the expected 8 Refractors from the box. The fighter selection on these is all right, with Rose Namajunas, Mickey Gall, Nate Diaz, and Amanda Nunes being the bigger names of the group, in my opinion.


I got the expected X-Fractor in Nate Diaz, a Green Refractor of Robbie Lawler, and a Bule Wave Refractor of Raquel Pennington. The extra parallel in the lower right is a Red Refractor parallel of Matt Hughes, numbered # 4 / 5. That's a 1:359 pack insert, so I did pretty well there. The Nate Diaz is not numbered, the Robbie Lawler is # 51 / 99, and the Raquel Pennington is # 44 / 75.


The UFC Fire inserts are based on an insert called Fired Up from a previous Topps UFC Fire internet-exclusive product, but they are given the Chrome treatment for this iteration. They are pretty cool. I especially like the way the American flag pops on that Frankie Edgar card.


Again, Mueseum Collection takes the design from this year's Museum Collection product and applies the Chrome treatment to it. These look all right, although that's a lot of silver on the front of them.


I pulled the expected four base inserts from the Tier One insert, and I also got a couple of extras in the form of parallels. The Cody Garbrandt card is a Refractor and numbered # 86 / 99. That's maybe a relatively high print run, but these are a 1:73 pack insert, so not extremely easy to pull. The Anderson Silva card is even harder, being essentially a 2 per case hit at 1:144 packs. That one is a Pulsar Refractor, numbered # 23 / 50.


Closing out the inserts are four Top of the Class cards, which again take a previous UFC product and make the design shiny. There was a lot of Arianny Celeste and Chuck Liddell in this box. I also pulled the insert of Conor McGregor, who may eventually return to the Octagon after his stint in boxing.


Finally, I got my two promised autographs. These are signed on-card. I guess I could have pulled better names, but at least my base autograph is a 1st Autograph of Thomas Almeida and I got a parallel autograph of a fighter from the Women's Division in Joanne Calderwood. Both fighters display some pretty good penmanship here.


I believe Green is the most common of the autograph parallels, seeded at 1:57 packs. The Joanne Calderwood card is numbered # 43 / 99, while the base autographs are not serially-numbered.

Overall, this was a pretty good break. The cards look really good, and I got some neat stuff like a Red Refractor and a 2 per case insert. If I had $800 to blow, I would totally love to bust a case of this stuff. I know there aren't a lot of UFC collectors on the card blogs, but if you're interested in a cool UFC product I would give Chrome a shot.