Cyber Week Breaks: Day 4 - Star Wars, UFC Chronicles, and Retail Baseball

Today's scheduled breaks from the big order didn't generate a whole lot of excitement for me, so I'm including scans of some retail baseball I busted last week to make things a little more interesting.

First up is the highlights from 8 packs of Topps Star Wars: Jedi Legacy. This box promises 2 hits, with one of them being a film cel relic. We got that hit out of these first packs, with a Darth Vader film cel. The Green parallel at the top left is a variation that falls one per box, and the Magenta parallel below it is either 3 or 4 per box. I can't remember. I don't find this product all that exciting, outside of the autographs and movie prop relics, so hopefully the second hit in the box is something enjoyable.

I also opened two packs of 2015 Topps UFC Chronicles. These come in a jumbo pack format, with 10 packs per box. Each box promises 2 autographs and 3 relics. That Frankie Edgar relic is the first hit of the box. The Gold Ben Rothwell card is numbered # / 88, the Black & White Jordan Mein is # / 188, and the Silver Ronda Rousey isn't numbered, but is probably still the best parallel of the bunch.

I also got a couple of decent inserts from these packs, with a Paige VanZant Climbing the Ranks card and a Ronda Rousey Victorious Debut insert. I also got the first autograph of the box, a base auto of Scott Jorgensen. It was probably about this point where I began to regret buying this box instead of another box of 2017 Topps UFC Chrome.

I picked up some retail cards on a shopping trip. These were my reward for catching and disposing of 5 mice in our basement, so my wife didn't have to look at or deal with them. I grabbed one of those value packs of 2016 Topps Chrome from the clearance bin. The highlights were a Kris Bryant Pink Refractor and a Byron Buxton Future Stars insert. Not the greatest break, but the Bryant is nice. 

I also picked up another box of 2017 Topps Holiday Baseball. I got a couple of nice Dodgers among the Metallic Snowflake parallels, Yasiel Puig and Cody Bellinger. I also got the same George Springer relic I pulled from my last box of this stuff. The relic on this one also does not quite fill the window. Maybe this card design just has an awkwardly-shaped window.

There was a blaster of 2017 Bowman Platinum hiding in the back of the shelf, and I grabbed it. I got an Aaron Judge insert, a Clint Frazier insert, and a couple of Astros among the base cards. I also finally pulled an autograph out of this product, a base auto of Will Benson of the Indians. Maybe even better, I pulled a Black parallel of Pirates prospect Kecin Newman, numbered # 06 / 10. That's a pretty good break when it comes to retail.

That does it for today's cards. The Cyber Week stuff for today wasn't great, but that's to be expected at times when busting a large amount of stuff over time.

What's in the Box 4: August 2016 Baseball Loot Locker

I've been watching The Loot Locker on Facebook and Twitter for a while, and in August I finally went ahead and ordered one. For $20 + $5 shipping, you get 3-6 Hobby packs of cards and some hobby supplies shipped to you in a 400-count card storage box. They offer Loot Lockers for Baseball, Football, Hockey, and Basketball. One in every 25 Loot Lockers comes with a bonus of $10+ in extra packs, and 1 in every 250 Loot Lockers contains some sort of high-end bonus product. 

Loot Locker has some kind of partnership with Ultra-Pro, so they feature their logo on the box label. Other than the label, it's a pretty standard 400-count card box.

Here is what I received in my Locker. The Ultra-Pro baggie contains some top loaders, some team bags, and some card sleeves. I got 2 packs of 2016 Allen & Ginter, 2 packs of 2016 Topps Chrome, and 1 pack of 2016 Panini Diamond Kings. I guess my Loot Locker was one of the randomly-seeded bonus lockers, as I also got a box of 2016 Onyx Authenticated Platinum Elite, which is admittedly a product and company I wasn't familiar with.

Not much came out of the Allen & Ginter packs. These are the most interesting cards that came out of them. Most of the Allen & Ginter cards in the two packs had that ding in the upper right corner that you can see on the Rollie Fingers card. It's impossible to know if that came from the manufacturer or the shipping process.

The Topps Chrome was a Nick Markakis hot lot, as I pulled the base and the Prism Refractor versions of his card. Outside of that, Max Scherzer was the most interesting base card.

Diamond Kings featured a couple of familiar faces in Luis Severino and George Springer. 

It also contained this Alex Bregman Diamond Kings Materials Framed dual relic card, numbered # 71 / 99. It's a pretty cool card and features a player on my favorite team, the Houston Astros Baseball Club. That's about it for the regular stuff you can expect from a Loot Locker.

I was kind of interested to see what this Onyx Authenticated Platinum Elite stuff was all about. I have to admit that I am pretty skeptical about 'off-brand' cardboard. This isn't something I would go out and purchase on my own. The front of the box promised four cards total, with two autographs. The base cards (Alex Reyes, Yeudy Garcia) look pretty much like the autograph cards, but without colored foil. Both of my autographs were the basic Blue Foil variety, which supposedly are limited to a print run of 200. There are other colors of parallel with different print runs.

My autographs were Alec Mills and Anderson Espinoza. I had to look them up. Both are promising players, I guess. Prospecting isn't really something I do, so these aren't names I am familiar with. This was a nice bonus, but I'm not really in the right demographic for this product. None of the autographs or base cards feature much information about the player, just an advertisement for the various colored parallels you can pull.

Obviously the cards you wind up pulling have a big impact on how much you like a Loot Locker or similar product. After accounting for my state's tax and a couple dollars in hobby supplies, I wound up spending about $4.25 per pack for the Allen & Ginter, Chrome, and Diamond Kings. I guess that's all right for Hobby packs. I am not accounting for the Onyx box in those numbers, but the chance at getting something extra in your Loot Locker probably plays into the decision to buy it.

I would probably buy another Loot Locker, but it's not an every-month purchase for me yet. My collecting habits these days don't leave a lot of room for opening random wax. At the moment I find better value for myself chasing singles and collated sets over opening packs and hoping for big hits. Every month Loot Locker posts a list of the packs that will ship out that month, so you can pick and choose based on the products you like. They also let customers vote on what packs might appear, so you can campaign for a product you want to try out.