Target Does Right by the Little Guy - 2018 Bowman Mega Box

I stopped at the local Target last night to see if they had any Bowman Mega Boxes. I checked the card aisle and the toy section, and they didn't have them. I almost skipped going today while I was out on errands, but I decided to at least give it a shot. There wasn't anything in the card aisle, but as I approached the toy aisles I saw a small crowd gathered. Target had actually posted an employee near the Mega Box display, and he was rationing them out with a limit of four per customer. I saw one guy who looked like he might be looking to fight the Target worker, but he eventually took his four boxes and moved on. I asked for three boxes, and the employee handed them over. I also told him that I appreciated what they were doing, and he said that they try to do that if they feel a product is hot and likely to be cleared out and scalped by resellers. He said that if I have friends who are looking for Mega Boxes, they have some more in the back, and they can go and ask for them. If you're in Nampa, Idaho or thereabouts, they had Mega Boxes as of noon today.

Here is what the box looks like. The box is bigger than a blaster, with fewer packs, and it's a bit cheaper than a blaster. The real draw here is the 2 Mega Box exclusive Chrome packs.

Here are the odds and whatnot from the back of the box. You've got your usual assortment of inserts, parallels, and autographs.

These were the highlights of the regular Bowman packs from my first box. Nothing too crazy here.

Here are the highlights from the initial two packs of Mega Box Chrome. The Green parallel of Heliot Ramos is # 09 / 99. 

Here are some highlights from the regular Bowman packs in the second box I opened. I should probably be showing off more prospect cards, but I don't know any of those guys. Kyle Tucker is one of the hotter prospects the Astros have coming up. I just learned that the Astros released one of my PC guys, Jon Singleton, after he tested positive on another drug test and earned himself a 100-game suspension. He wasn't likely to make the big-league roster again anyway, but getting suspended again for drugs isn't the way to make yourself attractive to any other teams out there. I'm guessing that this might really be the end of the line for him when it comes to baseball.

There was some color in this Mega Box. The Jorge Mateo Gold parallel is # 16 / 50, while the Purple #Trending insert of Sixto Sanchez is # 150 / 250. Ronald Acuna and Royce Lewis are some pretty good base pulls.

The last box I opened gave up some Astros, Vlad Jr., one of the Braves' hot players, and some other stuff from the regular packs.

The inserts from the Mega Box packs weren't that interesting (to me), but I did get Kyle Tucker, Shed Long, and Adbert Alzolay from the base cards.

This wasn't an earth-shattering break, but I was glad to have a chance at opening a few Mega Boxes. I thought it was pretty cool of the local Target to ration them so that more people could have a chance, although not everyone at the store today felt the same.

Pack of the Day 185: Two Blasters of 2018 Topps Heritage

Since my 2018 BBM True Heart Japanese Women's Wrestling post isn't getting written as fast as I anticipated, here's something else I got recently. Like many card collectors, I've been visiting the local retail establishments, hoping for a taste of 2018 Topps Heritage. Unfortunately, there hasn't been much stock at all in my local stores. There were a few rack packs and hanger boxes in my local Target for a day or two, but I haven't seen a blaster box in the wild yet. I finally resorted to searching online for them. I happened to check eBay on a day when there was a coupon for 20% off any purchase of $25 or more, so I ordered a couple of blasters from a reseller. After the coupon, the total cost was under the retail price, including shipping. I have also been watching this Wal-Mart link, as you can order them from the big box store and they will ship for free as long as you order two or more blasters. I ordered three that way, but they haven't arrived yet. They go in and out of stock all the time, though, so you just have to keep looking. I figure retail is gonna be the only way to build this set for most of us, as hobby boxes have been selling in the $120-125 range lately. That's close to double what I'd want to spend on one. So that's my philosophy on Heritage at the moment. Here are some of the highlights from my two eBay blasters of the product.

I'll start things off with a nice sunset card of Carlos Beltran, who retired on top as a World Series Champion.

I photographed a selection of base cards that I liked. You'll obviously see a lot of Astros here, as well as some notable names or (subjectively) cool pictures. I included Carlos Asuaje because I saw him play in person several times while I was in San Diego for work last year.

Here are some more nice base cards from the blasters. Some years I don't like Heritage as much as others, but 2018 is a year that I enjoy. I'll be trying to build the full base set this year, although I am going to go the easy route and buy the short-prints outright.

Speaking of short-prints, I pulled five of them between the two blasters. The Chris Davis card is a Chrome parallel, numbered # 588 / 999. Blasters contain 8 packs, and the Chrome cards are a 1:35 pack pull, or about one in every 4-5 blasters. Short-prints are 1:3 packs, so 5 is about what you'd expect from 16 packs.

These decals are the Wal-Mart exclusive for this year, and I got a couple of decent names for mine. It looks like you get one of these per blaster.

Here are all the vertical inserts I pulled. They've got varying pull ratios. I think I like the New Age Performers best. I'd probably like the Deckle-Edge inserts better, but they've been done many times over the last few years.

I also got a horizontal insert, with this Then & Now card featuring a couple of all-time great pitchers.

I even lucked out and pulled a hit from this break, an autograph of Cardinals outfielder Harrison Bader, who is one of the guys contending for the team's last bench spot this season. Heritage has nice-looking autographs, and at 1:375 packs they are hard to find in retail. They're hard to find in Hobby boxes, too, so I still think retail is the better bet for set collectors unless Hobby prices drop a whole bunch.

Pack of the Day 180: 2017 Topps Holiday Box

I was at Wal-Mart last night, looking at Collector's Boxes of Topps Gallery but unable to justify $70 for one of them, when I saw some Topps Baseball Holiday Boxes next to the Gallery display. They had a more reasonable price tag, and I grabbed one of them along with a hanger pack of Topps Gallery.

Each box advertises that it has 10 packs of 10 cards each, with one relic, autograph, or autographed relic card per box. Maybe not quite as enticing as the two promised autographs in a Collector's Box of Topps Gallery, but quite a few of the Gallery box breaks I've seen haven't had autographs worth writing home about anyway.

Here are the pack odds. You are likely to find 5 snowflake parallels and a relic card in each box. Autographs fall about once every 27 boxes, and every other hit has pretty astronomical odds. There is also some No Purchase Necessary information on here for those who are into that.

The product is basically the same as the 2016 version. It takes the current year's basic Topps design and adds a snowflake pattern to the upper right corner. The card backs have different numbering. I think the checklist has 200 cards, so it's pretty much a stars and rookies kind of product. I haven't checked to see if the card backs contain different write-ups or if they are the same as the base product.

Here are a few of the standout base cards. I was lucky enough to pull a few Houston Astros from this box. I also pulled a few stars from the teams that the Astros vanquished on their way to the championship this year. Max Scherzer got included because I like him and Ben Zobrist got included because Astro Evan Gattis makes a cameo on his card.

I got the expected 5 snowflake parallels, which are just like the base cards except that they have glitter affixed to the snowflake portion of the card. I guess Yu Darvish is the best pull I had on that front. In the bottom right is my relic card, featuring World Series MVP George Springer. Not a bad box for an Astros fan. The only disappointment with the relic card is that the relic doesn't fill the window. There is a distinct gap at the bottom of the window where the fabric doesn't reach the edge. I'll probably wind up buying another box or two of this in an attempt to complete the base set.

Pack of the Day 159: 2017 Bowman Blaster

I can't help getting excited about new releases, even releases packed with players whose names are unfamiliar to me. With 2017 Bowman releasing, I toyed with the idea of buying a group break slot or something, but couldn't quite bring myself to pull the trigger on it before the breaks I was looking at closed. Then I considered what a Hobby box would cost, and decided that wasn't really something I wanted to pursue, either. It seems like I've been on a bit of a cold streak recently with Hobby wax, and I hate that down feeling I get after busting a disappointing box of cards. But circumstances last night led to me driving past Target, and I found myself inside looking to see if Bowman had made it to the shelves yet. It had, and I debated between the rack pack, value pack, and blaster variations before selecting a blaster off the shelf.

The box promises 7 packs + 1 bonus pack, for a total of 80 cards inside. This is Bowman's 70th Anniversary, so there are a couple of retro inserts and buybacks stamped with a big foil '70' logo.

Here are the odds and the NPN information. I learned from Zippy Zappy's click-bait post that the paper autographs are retail-exclusive, so I guess that's pretty neat.

Here's the pack design, which mirrors the branding on the box. I didn't scan the back, because the insert odds are in larger print on the side of the box, and also because I am lazy.

One of the appealing / confusing things about Bowman is that there are three different sets within the one product. There is the base set, with mostly stars and rookies. Then there is the Prospects set, with minor league guys and maybe some recent call-ups. The Prospects set has a Chrome parallel, aptly called Chrome Prospects. So you get a mix of cards from those three sets in your packs, along with any parallels, inserts, or autographs you might encounter.

I got 33 cards from the base set in this blaster. I scanned some of the bigger names along with any Astros I found, as I don't know that Joe Musgrove is considered a big name.

I got 23 of the regular Prospects cards. I tried to scan names I've at least heard, but I am not good at following all of the minor league players. I can barely keep up with a handful of major league rosters. There are some cards in the Prospects set for participants in the World Baseball Classic, although I don't see any mention of ties to specific MLB teams. Maybe they are just guys who got buzz from the tournament. I don't know.

Here's the back of some of the Prospects cards. It looks like Bowman, with all of the lines and the bullet-point list of attributes or anecdotes for a scouting report on the player.

The Chrome Prospects cards are like the Prospects cards, only shinier. I got 16 of them in this blaster. One thing I find kind of weird is that there is usually also a Bowman Chrome product that comes out later in the year, so each year you get a couple of prospect-based Chrome sets, with one as a standalone product and one as a subset of the Bowman product. The Bowman brand is not for people who like simple card products.

And to round out the 'regular' cards, here are a few card backs from the Chrome Prospects I pulled.

I only pulled one parallel from this blaster, and it's so subtle that you can hardly even tell without seeing the serial number on the back. I was watching a Bowman break yesterday, and the guy had to flip through every stack of base cards from the back to find the Silver parallels. Without much of a border, the light silvering effect on the corners of the card is barely discernible. The odds say that a Silver Prospects parallel is a 1:47 pull, and this one is numbered # 364 / 499.

Topps has rolled back the number of parallels available in many of their Bowman and Chrome offerings, and I kind of miss all the crazy colors from earlier years. That's how I remember it, at least. Maybe I'm just looking at the past with Refractor-colored glasses. 

I got five inserts in the box, with four of them being of the vertically-oriented variety. The Clayton Kershaw in the upper left is a 1951 Bowman Reproduction insert, a 1:16 pull. The Riley Pint card comes from my favorite recurring Bowman insert set, the Bowman Scouts Top 100, which is basically a ranked list of the top 100 prospects in baseball. I like ranked lists, and a list-based insert set is pretty awesome. With these being seeded at 1:8 packs, you can expect to find one per blaster. The Yoenis Cespedes card is a 1992 Bowman insert, seeded at 1:11 packs. The final insert in this scan is a Carson Fulmer ROY Favorites insert, which is seeded at 1:8 packs, or about one per blaster.

The final insert is this Talent Pipeline card, which falls 1:11 packs and features a player at each level of A-ball for a given team. It's a pretty decent idea for a prospect-based insert, if you ask me. I don't have much investment in the Diamondbacks, but this is a neat insert idea.

I did get one of the buyback cards, with the Bowman 70 foil stamp. These are seeded 1:12 packs, so you can expect one every 1.5 blasters. My buyback is a 2000 Bowman card of Junior Brignac, who never made it past AA ball.

I pulled a hit in this blaster, one of those paper autographs mentioned above. This is a Green parallel of Tanner Scott, who is working his way through the Orioles' minor league system. The odds say these Green autographs are pretty rare, falling 1:614 packs. This one is numbered # 89 / 99. It would be a pretty exciting hit, but it came out of the pack damaged. On the top edge it looks like it got pinched in something mechanical, leaving it with a substantial crease. Oh well, at least I didn't have to look too hard for the cloud around my silver lining.

Pack of the Day 130: 2016 Topps Opening Day Blaster

I went out a couple of days ago and got myself a blaster of 2016 Topps Opening Day. If you've been reading my blog recently you know that I recently purchased some 2016 Topps Heritage and went on a big rant about how buying retail packs is a huge waste of money. And that's still true when it comes to Heritage, mostly because of my expectations and my desired end-state with that product. Opening Day is a different animal just because it's cheap and fun and my expectations are lower.

The box says that it has 10 packs plus 1 extra pack. I couldn't tell which was which, so I am going to just lump them together and say it has 11 packs. Opening Day doesn't have a lot to it. You get one regular parallel, one super rare parallel, printing plates, some photo variations, a number of easy inserts, 2 slightly more difficult inserts, and some autographs and relics. The Mascot Autographs are arguably the big draw here, although the player autograph and relic checklists have some good names on them. Really, with the autograph checklist being so small and the odds being what they are, you could open about 4,665 packs and have a pretty good chance of having yourself a Kris Bryant or Carlos Correa autographed card.

I didn't scan all the base cards, but I picked out a few of the cards that stood out as I sorted through the stack. I've noticed that Budweiser signs are popping up more often in the background of cards. I know that there are periods when that stuff gets whitewashed out of trading cards, but I guess maybe that's gone out the window. Toronto should put up a statue of Bautista and find a way to suspend the bat so it just sits in the air and spins.

That method would probably require the bat to spin too fast, but I'm sure they could find some way to have it just spin lazily.

Here are another few standouts from the box. I like that Garcia photo, with fielding shot and the high socks. I hear that Kris Bryant guy is fairly popular. Jean Segura's bunting image is pretty nice, too, with the ball in the frame of the photo. I had to include R.A. Dickey because he's one of my main PC guys and I didn't get a lot of those among the base cards.

The Opening Day Edition blue foil parallels are marked on the packs as being serially-numbered and we all just take for granted that they are numbered to the year of the card, just like the Gold parallel in flagship Topps, but they aren't numbered. They are shiny and blue, though, and since I've collected this set each year since I got back into collecting in 2013 I am chasing this year's set. I already had these two cards, so this box wasn't any help in that regard. I bought one big lot on eBay and another on Just Commons, so I'm currently 35 cards away from finishing the set. I have Kris Bryant, but I am missing a lot of other big names like Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, Carlos Correa, and some of the rookies who are selling for more than they're worth (in my opinion).

The Striking Distance insert features players who are close to hitting certain statistical milestones. I got Miguel Cabrera and Francisco Rodriguez. The Heavy Hitters insert features players with powerful bats. I've got Miguel Sano on one of my fantasy baseball teams, so I hope he does some heavy hitting this season.

Superstar Celebrations shows players celebrating, usually by getting mobbed, pied in the face, or having some beverage dumped on them. It's a good fun insert for this kind of card set. Although I am in favor of a little bit of flair and bat flipping and face-pieing, something about the home plate mob bugs me. I haven't nailed down what exactly it is about that specific practice that bothers me, but I don't like it. Maybe I'm just part curmudgeon.

I like the Alternate Reality insert, which shows and discusses some of the alternate uniforms baseball teams wear. I probably couldn't have asked for three better players in this box, either. Manny Machado, Kris Bryant, and Carlos Correa are three of the hottest young players in the game right now. They should combine for about 3000 hits this year, with half of those being home runs.

One big calling card of Opening Day is mascot content. The mascot autographs are pretty desirable hits, but a lot of collectors chase the Mascots insert set. Neither of these mascots is a personal favorite of mine, but I could see myself chasing down the set.

I didn't get any of the 1:36 Bubble Trouble cards, but I did pull a 1:24 Opening Day Stars insert of Clayton Kershaw. Past iterations of this insert were shiny and lenticular, and I'm kind of disappointed that Topps did away with that. This card is more rare than the other inserts, but there isn't anything special about it to set it apart. I want my lenticular cards back!

Opening Day is just about the perfect card set, in my opinion. I think it could be perfect if Topps added a couple of intermediate parallels like one # / 50 and one # / 250 or something, brought back lenticular cards, added one superstar and one gimmick insert that were pretty tough to pull (like 1:288 packs or something), and increased the checklist a little for the relics and autographs. It would basically be combining some of the best things about today's cards (parallels, autographs, relics) with the best things about the 90's cards (gimmicky inserts, hard-to-pull inserts).

I was pretty happy with this box of cards. There wasn't anything crazy amazing in it and the blue foil parallels were ones I already have, but I got a few nice inserts and had a good time looking through the base cards. This is the one set I could see myself chasing through pack purchases, although I wouldn't have nearly all of the Opening Day Stars and Bubble Trouble cards before I had multiple base sets.