Pack of the Day 186: A Blaster of 2017 Topps Allen & Ginter

I picked this blaster up last year in July or August, while I was in San Diego on a work trip. I am hoping this will be a quick blog post, as I promised myself that I would go to be early, and it is currently much later than early.

Here is what the front of the box looks like. Pretty standard stuff for Allen & Ginter.

Here are the pack odds from the side of the box. Nothing too crazy there, either.

Here are some of the base cards that stood out to me at the time. This would have been right in the middle of Judge-mania, so that card was a pretty good pull. It would be funny if that Giant Panda card was a photo variation of a Pablo Sandoval card, but it's just a regular card.

I'm assuming that these four cards are short prints. The only one here that I would be likely to scan otherwise is the Harmon Killebrew card. Then there are four What a Day inserts, with the highlight of those being a Ken Griffey Jr. card.

I got some minis, including a regular Willie Stargell, an A & G back Elvis Andrus, a Black Border Alex Reyes, and a surprisingly rare (1:50 packs) Required Reading insert. I also got Steven Matz and a horse.

These World's Fair and Revolutionary Battles inserts aren't all that rare. Neither card really interests me, but I appreciate the wide range of topics covered by Allen & Ginter.

The Sport Fish & Fishing Lures insert is more my style, and I pulled two of those. It's kind of cool how Topps made the fish look like a mini insert embedded in a full-size card with the cattails and the lure. The final card I scanned is a relic card of Mookie Betts. Retail hits are pretty difficult pulls in this product so I feel like I beat the odds in getting this one.

Contested Shots 32: World Series Door Prize from Collector's Crack

Cynical Buddha of the blog Collector's Crack held his 7th Annual Almost the Easiest World Series Contest on the Web last year. I guessed the right participants and the winner, but I was off on the number of games it would take, so I didn't win the contest. I did, however, win the random door prize drawing, so I got a prize package anyway. It was mailed out promptly, and I have unfortunately delayed posting about it until now, as the new baseball season is about to get under way.

First up is this winter-themed parallel from Topps' 2017 Holiday offering. I went hard after this set last year, trying to get the accidentally short-printed Cole Hamels card by busting blaster boxes. I think I opened at least 10 blasters before I gave up and bought the Hamels card on eBay.

That Jon Singleton relic card out of Gypsy Queen is a welcome addition to that player collection. He also included some shiny Astros and a retro Yulieski Gurriel insert from Gypsy Queen. The Joe Musgrove card is numbered # 032 / 250. That Randy Johnson Upper Deck Artifacts card is especially nice, and numbered # 01 / 50. There is also a Nolan Ryan phone card, a collectible that went on a pretty big run in the 90's.

The Nolan Ryan phone card is unused, but the one minute of air time expired a little over 17 years ago. Even if the minute hadn't yet expired, it might be a chore to find a pay phone to make the call from. I'd have to search for nearby pay phones on my smartphone.

Closing things out are a Harmon Killebrew / Mike Schmidt Classic Combos card numbered # 160 / 400 and a Future Phenoms relic card of Edwin Jackson, who has played for 12 different teams in his 15 season career so far.

Thank you so much for the prize package, Cynical Buddha! There was a lot of really cool stuff here, and I really enjoyed these cards! I'm sorry I took so long to post about them.

Pack of the Day 163: 2017 Topps Archives Rack Pack

This is going to be a pretty quick post, as I have a pretty big test tomorrow and I need to get to bed very soon. I had to make a Wal-Mart run this evening, and I happened to stop by the card aisle to see if they had any 2017 Topps Archives. They only had rack packs, so I grabbed one. I feel like rack packs cost too much for what you get, but that's what I had available to me.

Here's the front of the pack. There are 18 cards inside, plus a little security tag on a blank card. These packs didn't even appear to have been felt up by the local pack searcher, so that was nice. Usually he gets to everything first and damages it and leaves the shelves a mess.

Here are the pack odds. Remember, these are for rack packs, so the odds on other packaging will be different. There is also the NPN info, for people who are into that. I keep meaning to give it a try, but I never do. I guess Topps is probably counting on that.

Here are the vertical cards from the pack. There are some 1992-patterned cards at the top, and beneath them are the 1982-design cards. Tom Seaver's got some good UPF (Ugly Pitching Face) going on up there. It was very pleasant to see that the cards this year are printed on thicker stock. It doesn't feel quite as thick as Heritage, but it's thicker. The 1960 and 1982 designs also have a rough texture to the backs, while the backs of the 1992 design are smoother. But the thick stock is nice, and I am glad that Topps listened to the collectors on that.

That Rollie Fingers 1960-design card was the first one out of the pack. I was pretty happy to get it. I am also a big fan of the Randy Johnson card up there. I scanned a couple of card backs, but Julio Teheran's card apparently took a ride on the scanner glass. You'll just have to imagine what the missing edge looks like. The Dansby Swanson card at the bottom right is the promised 1960 Topps Rookie Star insert mentioned on the front of the pack. I also pulled his base card. I guess it's a Dansby Swanson hot pack.

Tucked into the middle of the pack was this Al Kaline tallboy insert, a 1959 Bazooka insert. I scanned the back because I think it looks better than having a single card photo centered in the post, not because it is particularly exciting. It would have been nice to pull a parallel in the pack, but it wasn't to be.

Overall I like the design and execution of this year's Archives product based on this small sample. Topps listened to the complaints about the card stock, which is a nice move on their part. I don't know how much more of this I will pick up, but if the prices don't go crazy I could see myself trying out a Hobby box of Archives this year.

Pack of the Day 105: Freebie 2012 Panini Cooperstown Blaster

I already showed one box of cards from my order from Dave & Adam's Card World, a Hobby box of Cryptozoic's DC Comics Super-Villains. Part of the shop's incentive program is a tiered group of gifts you can choose from based on the size of your order. My choice for this order was a blaster box of 2012 Panini Cooperstown Baseball. I don't usually go much for Panini's baseball stuff, but it was free and I've found myself grabbing various Panini singles lately for my player collections. Maybe I am softening in my old age.

Here are a few of the base cards that stood out to me. Nolan Ryan was my first favorite baseball player. I can't afford his cards, though, so I haven't built up much of a collection for The Ryan Express. Alexander Cartwright is apparently known as the father of modern baseball and played in the first recorded baseball game in 1845. He was also a firefighter. Harmon Killebrew is a local guy who lived in a town pretty close to the town where I went to high school. He also was a pretty good ball player. Catfish Hunter allows me an excuse to show off a picture from my personal life:

This past weekend my boys and I went on a camping / fishing trip with my dad. We didn't catch any Catfish, but we did get a nice big pile of trout out of the lake. I'm the bigger guy in the middle of the picture. The nights were a bit cold but we all had a good time. The boys really liked being able to hook and reel in their fish. Here's a close-up of the fish, the real stars of the show:

Anyway, it was a good time. The fish are delicious. In addition to fishing we went on a canoe excursion around the lake, visited a fish hatchery, and messed around at the campsite.

Getting back to the cards, here are some of the horizontal cards from the blaster. The Bruce Sutter card is a base card, but the rest are all from various insert sets. In the upper left is Gary Carter from the Field Generals set, a checklist that celebrates Hall of Fame catchers. There is a Hall History card of Honus Wagner, which is kind of an Inception card because it's a trading card about a trading card, in this case the famous T206 Wagner card. Finally we have a Postcards insert showing part of the Hall of Fame grounds during the winter.

I was happy to pull a Tony Gwynn card, with this one being an Induction insert showing Gwynn with his Hall of Fame plaque. The card in the upper right is a Bronze History insert that shows the plaque of Al Barlick, an umpire who worked a lot of games. It is numbered # 359 / 599. That Reggie Jackson card has a wood texture on the face of it. It looks like it comes from the blaster-exclusive Hall of Fame Classes Team insert set. It looks like individual players have multiple cards in the set, so maybe this set features players who had Hall of Fame credentials with multiple teams. Finally, I pulled an autograph, with this one being an on-card autograph of Dave Van Horne, a long-time broadcaster for the Montreal Expos. This one is numbered # 013 / 500. It's maybe not the most exciting autograph, but I'll take it. The dude has got some excellent penmanship. I was signing some documents the other day and they wanted me to sign my full legal name instead of my regular scribble signature. It was hard. It looked like I was trying to write with my off-hand. I had extra loops and letters and weird gaps and lines all over the place. I'd hate to be the PSA guy who tries to authenticate that batch of my signatures. That does it for this blaster box. There isn't much else to say. I didn't pull anything mind-boggling, but I did get some nice cards and an autograph. Not bad for a free blaster box.