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 184: 2018 Topps Silver Packs

Topps often offers some kind of bonus to collectors who purchase boxes or packs at participating hobby shops, usually in the form of a certain number of packs for purchases of a given size. For 2018 Topps Series 1, these bonus packs contain Chromed-out cards in the 1983 Topps design. There are randomly-packed parallels and autographs in these packs, too. I think the offer was that you could get one pack for the purchase of a Hobby box and three packs for the purchase of a Jumbo box.

I didn't buy a Hobby box or a Jumbo box, as for the last couple of years I've just been buying a factory set each year. I picked up three packs on eBay. Topps did away with my favorite flagship insert set, First Pitch, so I really have no incentive to buy packs or boxes of Series 1. Each of these bonus packs has 4 cards inside.

This first pack has some of the biggest names in the hobby from the last couple of years, outfielder Aaron Judge and third baseman Kris Bryant. That's a pretty good start.

This pack also has a famous outfielder and a famous third baseman, although Hank Aaron and Wade Boggs probably aren't nearly as popular currently as Bryant and Judge, at least not on pieces of cardboard. Judge and Bryant only need 34 All-Star appearances and 206.3 WAR between them to catch up to Aaron and Boggs in those numbers.

I pulled Mike Trout in this group of packs, too, which is pretty good. I also was happy to see that my only parallel was an Astro, second baseman Jose Altuve. It's a shiny green parallel of some sort.

The Altuve card is numbered # 79 / 99. Every card in the packs had the same paragraph on the back, talking about the 1983 Topps set.

I was hoping that I'd pull an autograph from these packs, but I was pretty happy with the player selection in these three packs. It was also nice to get an Altuve parallel.

Cyber Week Breaks: Day 8 - 2017 Topps High Tek Baseball

One of the big-ticket items on my Cyber Week order was a box of 2017 Topps High Tek Baseball, the patterned acetate offering with a new packaging scheme for this year. While the previous incarnations held just a few cards per box with one guaranteed autograph, this version has 40 cards in a box and promises two autographs. I scanned the cards in based on their background patterns, with the most numerous in the box first. I would imagine that the collation in my box does not necessarily match the collation in the overall print run.

These all have the same background pattern, but my scanner likes to add some variation in the coloring. Not a lot stands out to me in this foursome, but I do like that jersey Moncada is wearing. There seems to be a decent mix of rookies, veterans, and retired players in the checklist.

I also pulled four cards of this pattern. I think I read somewhere that the patterns are broken out by positions, so you have two different sets of patterns. One of them has pitchers, catchers, and outfielders (PCO); the other has all other infielders (AOI). That seems to hold true throughout the cards in this box. This pattern is probably one of the more common PCO patterns.

This group of four cards belongs to the AOI group, and is again probably one of the more common patterns. That's a young-looking Jeter there in the bottom right.

This last group of four is another PCO group, with Kluber making his second appearance in the box. I also like the Ichiro and Trout cards, with Roger Clemens rounding out the group.

I only pulled one group of three cards, which included Mike Trout's second appearance in the box. I guess I should try giving cutesy names to all of the patterns, but I think I tapped out my brain power coming up with the PCO/AOI designations. I'd honestly just like to figure out how rare each tier is and call them PCO 1, PCO 2, PCO 3, and so on. That's a lot easier to remember than Tek Prism Clockwise or some other name.

Each of these patterns had two examples in the box. It was nice to see Jim Thome in here, as well as a couple of star Astros. So far I am pretty happy with this product's player selection.

There are three patterns that had only one example in the box. The Bryant is a nice pull. Even though he got a little overshadowed this year by the hot new rookies, he still put up a 6.1 WAR season and got a decent share of MVP votes.

You supposedly get four of these Blackout parallels per box. I guess maybe that solves the question of which patterns are the 'base' patterns for each group. The pattern on top must be the PCO base pattern, with the pattern on bottom being AOI base. These are some pretty nice cards, too, especially the Aaron and Koufax up there.

You also get one of these second-tier patterns of the Blackout parallel per box. I got lucky with mine and landed another Altuve card for my collection of Astros cards.

There were four serially-numbered parallels in my box of High Tek. The top two cards appear to be the basic version of parallel, probably a Diffractor of some kind. The Kluber (his 3rd appearance in this box) is numbered # 007 / 250 and the Bogaerts is numbered # 101 / 250. Then there are a couple of colorful parallels, a Blue and a Green. The Pedroia is numbered # 42 / 75, and the Clemens is # 07 / 99. Not too bad, although this is a bit too much AL East content for me.

You get two promised autographs per box. Mine are both base versions, and I assume there are also parallels out there. Both of these are decent pulls, the Lindor probably more than the Fulmer. Lindor's signature is a little more faded than I'd like, but that seems to happen fairly often with these acetate cards.

What's this? My box had a third autograph inside. This Ben Zobrist autograph is a parallel of the TwiliTEK insert. I guess maybe this spot would normally be occupied by a regular insert card, but I got lucky and pulled a third autograph from the box. This is a pretty good one, numbered # 10 / 50.

This was a pretty fun break, although it's a bit pricey to bust a box of this stuff. Moving up from a handful of cards to 40 cards in a box really feels like an added value when opening this product. I am happy that Topps listened to the consumer on this one and boosted the number of cards per box. This set is really about collecting pattern variations, and it was harder to do that a few cards at a time. As it is here, High Tek is a little over my price range for box busting, but if they dropped an autograph and $20-30 from the price tag I would find it very hard to resist.

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.

Some of My Favorite Cards from 2017 Topps Stadium Club

I can't stomach the current box prices on most new baseball products, so I've been buying retail and singles. I do really like the Stadium Club offerings that Topps has been putting out, so I picked up a complete set on eBay. I shuffled through it and pulled some of my favorite photos to scan for a post. I sometimes let negativity take over my posts, so I thought with this post I'd focus on something positive. I like the card stock and glossiness of the Stadium Club cards, and the photos are awesome.

Here's the front and back of Paul Goldschmidt's card. I like that a poster with his likeness on it appears in the foreground, with the actual player as more of a background element. There are a ton of pictures in this set that could be used for various mini-collections around the blogs, like players signing autographs, turning two, players blowing gum bubbles, and awards on cards.

I tried not to pay attention to player names when selecting cards for this post, just focusing on photos that jumped out at me. Plenty of big names from the past and present still managed to find their way in, but that's mostly because there were a lot of big names in the checklist. That Tim Raines card has already been featured on a few blogs, and I think Night Owl highlighted the Rod Carew card a while back (actually, he complained about which version of the card he pulled).

I love that Denard Span photo. I don't know what that grimace is all about, but it's a good photo. I like the picture of Aaron Judge standing for the anthem. There are some other good pictures here, including a bubble gum photo, Bryce Harper holding Katie Ledecky's medals, Mark Trumbo signing autographs, and a couple of uniform variations.

There's some good stuff here, including Evan Longoria with a football, some comedy from David Ortiz and A.J. Ramos, and a really nice photo on the Jonathan Lucroy card in the upper right.

I'm closing out this post with a few more vertically-oriented cards that caught my eye. Highlights here include a couple of bubble gum pictures, another interview about to be interrupted by pies, a catcher's mask close-up, and a dramatic shot of Joey Votto getting ready to do some damage to a baseball.

That's my quick round-up of the photographs that jumped out at me from this year's Stadium Club set. There are plenty of gems that I left out, and probably some I just plain missed as I flipped through the stack. I really like what Topps has done with this particular product line, and I am looking forward to seeing which pictures get chosen for 2018. It would also be pretty cool to see a Stadium Club product release for the UFC, although that may be a pipe dream.

Pack of the Day 169: Blasters of 2017 Bowman Platinum

My wife and I got away on Friday and went to dinner at a Hawaiian place that opened up recently near our house. The food was pretty good, and it was fun to hang out with her for a while without our kids whining at us the whole time. After that I mentioned that I wanted to check out a Walmart nearby, as I hadn't checked it for Bowman Platinum yet and I'd seen a post somewhere about some stores seeing restocks on the product.

They had three blaster boxes on the shelf, and I grabbed them up. I found some more blasters at our 'home' Walmart on Saturday. I didn't take all of them, though, I just grabbed a couple and left a few on the shelf for the next guy. You can see the pack odds above for these.

Here are some of the notable base cards I pulled from the break. No Aaron Judge this time, but I did get two Cody Bellinger base cards, as well as some of the guys who have driven the hobby in recent years.

This Josh Hader Green parallel was the only colorful base card parallel I found in the break. This one is numbered # 09 / 99.

Each blaster contained a pack with four of these special foil parallels. I grabbed a handful of them to scan. I guess maybe Andrew Benintendi, Dansby Swanson, and Gleybar Torres are the hot pulls here.

These are the Bowman's Next Generation inserts I got from the break. The Nick Senzel is a Green parallel, numbered # / 99. They are seeded at 1:263 packs, so a fairly tough one to get.

I think I did all right with my Platinum Presence inserts, with plenty of big names like Trout, Seager, and Bryant. That Anderson Espinoza card in the lower right is an Orange pull, numbered # 21 / 25. Platinum Presence Orange parallels are seeded 1:1,040 packs, so this is again a pretty tough card to get. Hopefully Espinoza develops into a big-time player.

Aaron Judge didn't completely escape my grasp in this break, as I pulled his Rookie Radar insert, along with a couple of Astros and a couple copies of Christian Arroyo's card. I am probably done with Bowman Platinum for good now. I am disappointed that I didn't pull a single autograph out of any of my rack packs and blasters, but other than that I pulled some colorful parallels, some nice inserts, and rookie cards of some of the hottest players in baseball.