The character who runs the Nachos Grande blog recently held a group break for a case of 2015 Topps Series 1 and I participated in it, snagging a combo spot for the Athletics and Diamondbacks. He is currently trying to fill a group break for a case of 2015 Topps Heritage as well as some extra stuff to add to the potential value, and as of this writing there are still five open spots. Due to the fact that I have blown all of my money on other cards recently I am sitting this next one out, but he usually runs a good break. From a full case of cards I obviously got a ton of base cards, but I am not going to show them here. The first card I received is shown above, a special green ink hand-numbered autograph card from the Munnatawket custom tribute to Allen & Ginter minis. My copy is numbered # 13 / 20.
My initial batch of inserts contains a nice Randy Johnson Free Agent 40 card, a set highlighting various significant free agents from the 40 years of baseball free agency. I collect Randy Johnson cards as one of my player collections, so this was a welcome addition to my card boxes. Paul Goldschmidt is the Diamondbacks' current big star, and he showed up in my shipment in the Archetypes insert set. The Geneva Conference card is from an insert set that pairs events from world history with events in baseball history. Because the historical moments aren't tied to specific teams, they were randomly assigned to break slots. Biz Markie is a hip-hop artist who came into relative prominence in the late 80's and has managed to parlay his couple of hits into a fairly long career on the fringes of pop culture.
And this is how my kids are likely to remember him:
I was lucky enough to get one of the hits of the break, with a Scott Sizemore autograph. While it is not an earth-shattering card, I can't complain about getting a hit. I also managed to get two of the Topps Buyback cards, for which Topps purchases perfectly good vintage cards and stamps them with a big foil 2015 stamp to insert them in packs. I guess selling a card to customers twice is a pretty good feat if you can manage it. I like the cards well enough, with all that green and gold. Those two Diamondbacks on the bottom row are Rainbow Foil parallels, which are this year's version of the Emerald and Red Hot Foil parallels from 2013 and 2014 respectively. Finally, I needed a sixth card to complete the scan, and I chose the Storm Davis card that was included to protect the outside end of one of the stacks of cards I received. Look at that mullet. It's pretty majestic, like seeing a bald eagle in the wild.
Also included in the package were a couple of these Babe Ruth's Call Your Shot Game code cards. You scratch off one of the foils squares, enter the code into the special game site, and see if you've won something. I chose to scratch off the Autograph boxes and entered my codes. One of the codes was a winner, netting me a random autograph from the Topps 'C' list once I agree to pay $5 in shipping and handling fees. The 'C' list includes pretty much every Major League player Topps has stickers for outside of the players on the 'A' list, which is made up of all of the stars and hot prospects in the game. I'll probably wind up paying my $5 before the game ends, just to see who I end up with.
I can't complain about a relatively cheap group break that nets me two autographs and a handful of inserts, parallels, and foil-stamped vintage cards. Thanks go out to Chris for running the break and putting in all the work to open, sort, pack, ship, and post about the cards for everyone to enjoy.
