I took a look at the Black Friday Doorbuster deals at
Blowout Cards and saw a couple of things I was interested in. Since I was up all night doing homework, I was at my computer when they started posting the deals in the morning. I was hoping to snag some 2014 Bowman Chrome Baseball and there were a couple of NASCAR deals, including 20 2014 Press Pass Racing blasters for $40 and boxes of 2013 Press Pass Ignite for $15.
Unfortunately, the deals weren't all rolled out at once, so any deal you got also came with a separate shipping cost. So my plan for preloading my cart and hitting refresh over and over at the start time was foiled. When the Bowman Chrome deal came around it sold out in seconds and once you accounted for shipping it wasn't that great a discount. They reloaded it a few times during the day and each time it sold out extremely fast.
When most of the case deals were posted, like the 20 Blasters for $40 deal, there were usually just 5 put up and they went into the negative numbers almost immediately. Any deals that were posted showed the number in stock at that price, and on the really frenzied sales the number would go to -15 or more within seconds of the deal posting. There were a lot of complaints on the forum, but that's how Doorbusters go.
With Bowman Chrome not falling beneath my threshold when accounting for shipping and the big 20 blaster deal going so fast, I preloaded a couple boxes of 2013 Press Pass Ignite in my cart and waited. It was mid-afternoon before that deal got posted, and when I refreshed my cart and saw the price drop I checked out immediately. Then I went to look at the product page and saw that the quantity left was 18, so I had probably been the first to check out. I also noticed that there was a 1 Box Per Household limit on the deal. I had ordered 2 boxes and I knew that the Doorbuster rules were that any orders exceeding those limits would be cancelled. So I sent them a note through the website apologizing for my oversight and saying that I would be happy to just have the one box and a refund for the second box.
They responded a while later saying that although I had broken the rules for the product, they still had processed my order and shipped both boxes. So I can't complain about that. Blowout Cards could have cancelled my entire order, but they took care of me and they'll be seeing more of my business in the future. Their forums are a pretty good resource, too, especially if you want to research box breaks of a particular product.
Their shipping was also pretty quick. My order was sent out the same day, and arrived within a week. My Cyber Monday order from Dave & Adam's didn't even ship until Friday evening, and isn't scheduled to arrive until Wednesday. They are different companies, but quick processing is definitely a plus in my mind.
Here's what came out of the first box:
This is one of the subsets in the base set. The cards show the speed the drivers attained on their qualifying runs for the Daytona 500. The cards are pretty colorful and busy, which I kind of like in this case. The backgrounds have a matte finish while the pictures have a glossy sheen to them. I chose to show off the cards from a few of my favorite drivers; Danica Patrick, Tony Stewart, and Dale Earnhardt Jr.
There are a few insert sets, which fall about 2 each per box. The Turning Point set discusses key moments in a driver's career. Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr. are pretty good pulls for me. The Convoy insert set highlights each driver's team hauler. I like seeing the semis, even though I am still in a very frustrating battle with my insurance company and the insurance company of the truck driver who used his lug nuts to push my car out of my lane in October. I don't have much hope that I will see any insurance settlement without a lawyer, and I don't know if it's worth getting a lawyer for a couple thousand dollars. I've wasted a lot of time and energy being mad about it already, and I imagine I will waste more before it's all done.
The Profile insert set is a pretty generic set that basically has the same paragraph on the back of each card: [Driver] races a smooth line, driving as fast as [s/he] can and passing cars until [s/he] is at the front of the pack. [Driver] knows what it takes to earn points and win. There are variations on the theme, but that's the basic gist of it. The Hall of Fame insert is an ongoing series that is inserted across multiple products and years, so it doesn't usually match up with the rest of the cards in the packs.
Because these were special hobby boxes, they each contained a Power Pack, which contains special cards. I guess it would be similar to the Panini Black Friday Packs or the various special Topps packs that get released at hobby shops, like the Spring Fever and Father's Day promotions. Apparently each Power Pack from Ignite contains one Power Picks base card and a Hot Threads firesuit card. This box's Power Pack contained a Joey Logano Power Picks card numbered # 15 / 99 and a Jeff Gordon Hot Threads Firesuit card with a nice red stripe on it. It looks like maybe it's part of the piping on his shoulder. The Jeff Gordon DuPont firesuit cards were apparently exclusive to the Power Packs.
Each box appears to contain one numbered parallel, and promises one relic and one autograph. My numbered parallel was a Kurt Busch Black Color Proof parallel numbered # 27 / 50. These ones were Hobby only. I was lucky and got two relic cards in this box. First up is a Paul Menard Blue Holo parallel (the base level, Silver, is unnumbered) numbered # 24 / 99. It's a plain black swatch. The other card is a pretty good hit, being a Jeff Gordon Hot Threads Patch Edition. The Hot Threads Patches only come in one level (Red) and are advertised as being numbered out of # / 25 or lower. This Gordon is numbered # 10 / 20. So far this has been a pretty good box, especially if you like Jeff Gordon.
I got a bonus insert in the box. This was a special Danica Patrick # 0 card that was inserted one in every 200 packs, or once in every 10 boxes. It was apparently a pretty tough pull. I think I may have purchased one when this set was pretty new. It only pulls a dollar or two at auction these days, but I probably paid some multiple of that for my first copy.
My autograph from this box was pretty good, a Kyle Busch Red parallel numbered # 2 / 5. It looks a lot better in-hand than it does in the scan, which really accentuates the junk on my scanner and the sticker, which is relatively transparent when looking at the card in person.
After shipping these boxes cost me just under $20 each, and this box was certainly packed, with 3 relics, two numbered parallels, a rare special insert, and a nice low-numbered autograph of a top driver. The other box wasn't quite this good, but it was still definitely worth the $20 I paid for it. Once again, I enjoyed watching all of the Doorbuster deals throughout the day and I was pleasantly surprised that Blowout processed my order and sent me both boxes.
