Black November, Act I - 20 Blasters of 2014 Press Pass Total Memorabilia Racing

The Black November sale is going on over at Blowout Cards right now, with a new wave of deals released three times a week, which I think leads up to a big sale on Black Friday. A lot of it is stuff that I'm not too interested in (that's why it's on sale!), but there were some things that caught my eye. One item in particular spurred me to place an order; a 20-blaster lot of 2014 Press Pass Total Memorabilia Racing at a large discount.

Like Billy over at Cardboard History, I planned on spacing the blasters out over a series of posts, but once I started opening them I realized that I would quickly run out of things to say. I also have a hard time keeping unopened wax around. I want to find out what's in there. The blaster promises 5 cards per box, including one hit and one retail parallel.

Each box contained the same assortment of non-hit cards. One base card, one Red parallel, one Acceleration insert, and one Hall of Fame insert. You'd be hard-pressed to build a base set at a rate of one per box. A couple of the Hall of Fame cards I pulled were holofoil instead of mirror foil. I don't know if they are some kind of parallel or not. Back in 2014 I won a Hobby box of this product in a contest and I couldn't find much information on the holofoil cards then, either. There were a lot of duplicates among my Acceleration and Hall of Fame inserts.

There were a lot of basic tire swatch relics in my blasters. Sixteen of the twenty hits were basic tire swatches numbered out of # / 275. I guess I was pretty lucky to get two Kyle Busch relics in this group of eight scanned here. There are some other decent names in the lot, like Jimmie Johnson and Denny Hamlin. I would have liked a little more variety among my hits, but I guess this is what you get when you buy discount blasters in bulk.

Here is the back of the cards. These relics aren't tied to any particular events or anything, so you just get a generic message of congratulations on the back. There is also a picture of the driver's car (or truck), which is better than a repeat of the portrait on the front.

Here is the next group of eight basic tire relics. There was a little more variety in the tire swatches this time around, with some cool ridges on the Kenseth and Truex Jr. cards, some cording on most of the others, and some lettering on one of the Ty Dillon cards. In spite of the cool relic swatches, these are all still all the basic versions that are numbered out of # / 275. Tony Stewart counts as a PC driver here for me, although I really only collect Danica Patrick and Josh Wise cards with any regularity. I will keep any Dale Earnhardt Jr. or Tony Stewart cards I get, though.

Breaking up the monotony a little bit, I did pull two firesuit relics. These are still basic relic cards numbered # / 275, but instead of a tire piece they contain a swatch of colorful fabric. They are cool enough, but don't feature drivers I collect.

That leaves me with two remaining hits out of the 20 blasters I opened. The first one I pulled gave me false hope, as it came out of the second blaster I opened and led me to believe that I might not pull thirteen basic tire pieces in a row afterward. It's a Burning Rubber - Chase Tire Edition featuring a piece of tire from Kevin Harvick's victory at Kansas Speedway in 2013, and it is numbered # 43 / 50.

This next hit came near the end of the break. It's a Dirt Track Treads relic card with a piece of tire from Austin Dillon's victory in the first Camping World Truck Series race at Eldora Speedway, a dirt track race. This one is numbered # 96 / 99. It's a pretty cool relic, and it's nice that I pulled the race winner.

Overall, this was kind of an underwhelming break. I was hoping to pull an autograph or two or maybe a larger variety of relic cards. I am glad that I didn't pay full retail on these blasters. Even at 50% off, this would have been a pretty disappointing break. At 75% off, it feels merely mediocre. I picked up a handful of other things in my order, and over the next couple of days I'll be going through them. Hopefully the breaks pick up from here on out. I don't know if I can classify this break as a failure, but it was certainly not a victory.

Some Josh Wise Relics on NASCAR All-Star Weekend

Here are a couple more Josh Wise relic cards I picked up a while back. This weekend is the All-Star race in NASCAR, which is about as meaningless as any other All-Star event in pro sports. Josh Wise has a pretty interesting All-Star race story, though, so although he isn't in this weekend's race it is appropriate to post about him here.

In 2014 a Reddit user took note of Wise and started a push to get him voted into the All-Star race, as well as to get him a Dogecoin sponsorship. Most of the spots in the All-Star race are allocated to drivers who finish well or meet other performance-based criteria, but there is also a fan vote that allows for other drivers to get into the race. Over the last few years that vote has largely gone Danica Patrick's way, but in 2014 the support of the Reddit / Dogecoin community pushed Josh Wise past her in the voting and into the All-Star race, where he avoided a couple of wrecks and finished in 15th place. Lionel made a die-cast car of his Dogecoin car, which I was glad to add to my collection.

Today's relic cards come from 2014 Press Pass Total Memorabilia. Press Pass sadly went out of business right at the beginning of 2015, and eventually Panini picked up the NASCAR license. They haven't put out any NASCAR products yet, but they have announced a few products coming down the line, with Panini Prizm probably being the first one. This first card is a single-swatch tire relic, numbered # 076 / 275.

Next up is a dual relic with another piece of tire and a plain blue firesuit swatch. It is numbered # 149 / 150. I've slowed down a bit on my NASCAR collecting lately, but I will still pick up stuff here and there. I think getting a couple of Panini products out will really be good, because we 'need' some fresh material in the marketplace.

Another NASCAR Season Ends: 2014 Press Pass Total Memorabilia Danica Patrick Quad Relic

I took a day off from blogging yesterday. It was my birthday, but that didn't really keep me from blogging. I got a big lot of M.U.S.C.L.E. figures in the mail and it took me a couple of hours to get them cleaned up. For the most part they weren't too dirty, but I like to give them a quick bath in some Simple Green and give them a scrub with a toothbrush. That also allows me to check for missing / broken parts and other damage that might get overlooked. Tonight I will probably sort them into the collection, marking off my checklist and setting aside any doubles for distribution to my kids.

I was able to watch this week's NASCAR race, the Ford Ecoboost 400, which ended with Kyle Busch as the winner of the race and the overall season champion. My kids were happy to see the M&M's car on the TV so much. The other cars they liked were the McDonald's car and the Target car, but the M&M's vehicle is definitely their top choice in any race. I was pulling for Jeff Gordon to win it all in his last race, but he wasn't running well enough to catch the leaders and finished in 6th place after spending most of the race in the 10th-12th spots. Some of the other drivers I follow, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Josh Wise, had altercations with cars and walls and fell to the bottom of the pack, although both were still running when the race ended. Josh Wise's accident at least served to get some screen time for him and his sponsors, as the cars at the back of the pack don't often get on the screen at all during a broadcast.

Danica Patrick, the subject of this post, started in 35th and ran a lot of the race in the mid-teens before falling back through the field and finishing in her usual mid-twenties finish at 24th. That's not a bad finish, really, but I wonder if she'll ever move into the next tier of drivers with an average finish somewhere better than 20th place? The card in this post is a pretty nifty one, although it didn't scan all that well due to the fact that it is rolling in holofoil. It comes from the 2014 Press Pass Total Memorabilia set and features four relic swatches, all of them multi-colored. Clockwise from the upper left are a firesuit piece, a bit of sheet metal, a swatch of shirt, and a fragment from a glove. This is the Melting parallel and it is numbered # 15 / 25. The card popped up on my feed as a Buy It Now for about $10 less than I would expect the bidding to reach on something like this, so I hit the button and made it mine.

And that marks the end of the NASCAR season. I've still got one or two NASCAR cards to post about. I may save them for the start of the 2016 season or I may get impatient and post them sooner. I'm nowhere near a hardcore fan, but I do like to follow a few drivers and watch a handful of races during the year.

Oops, I Already Had This Card: 2014 Press Pass Total Memorabilia Danica Patrick Gold Parallel

I picked up this card as part of a lot of three cards purchased from an eBay seller. After getting the cards in the mail, I thought, "That one card looks familiar." Sure enough, I had already pulled a copy of this one from a box I won as part of the Press Pass Fantasy NASCAR league last year. This is a Gold parallel from the 2014 Press Pass Total Memorabilia set, and this one is numbered # 044 / 175. It's a nice enough card, but I (sometimes) hate to spend money on a card I already have when I could be getting something totally new.

The Chase for the Cup is going on right now, but Danica doesn't figure into the Championship race at all. She will close out the season just trying to improve. She didn't make a lot of progress this week in the myAFibRisk.com 400 at Chicagoland Speedway, starting in 25th and finishing in 26th. She bounced around between 18th and 29th throughout the race, so was never much of a threat to gather a top 10 finish or anything like that. The final result did move her up one spot in the season standings, going from 24th to 23rd in the points.

It was nice to see that Josh Wise made a start and went the full distance, starting in 40th and working his way up to 33rd by the end.

Combined Shipping Leads to Buying Stuff 3: NASCAR Parallels

After adding the NASCAR quad relic, the R.A. Dickey auto/relic, and the George Springer Panini card I still needed two items to qualify for free shipping. I eventually settled on a couple of parallels from the 2014 Press Pass Total Memorabilia NASCAR set. One is a Gold parallel of Dale Earnhardt Jr. and it is numbered # 019 / 175. The other is a Black & White parallel of Josh Wise and it is # 91 / 99. I tend to focus mostly on my Danica Patrick player collection when it comes to NASCAR, but it is nice to pick up a card or two featuring the other drivers I follow. 

Earnhardt Jr. is 6th in the driver standings right now and has made the Chase for the Cup playoffs for this season. I don't know what his chances are, though. I haven't been paying a huge amount of attention to NASCAR for the last few months, but my impression is that he did better at the start of the season than he has in the last little while. Looking at the race by race results tells me that he's been pretty consistent all year.

Josh Wise changed teams in July and has a couple of races with his new team. It seems like his new car is pretty similar in quality to his old car, and he is qualifying and finishing in about the same spots as usual, spending a lot of time in the 30's. He does have a 10th-place finish this year, but is currently in 37th place in the points, far out of the Chase for the Cup.

That does it for my current batch of cards that I bought just for free/combined shipping. I usually try to limit my additional purchases to cards that I want anyway, but a good deal on shipping will often give me that extra little push I need to make a purchase. I have another big batch of cards on the way that I bought from one seller after noticing that anything after the first item shipped for free. I searched their inventory and came up with some good gems for my collection.