Half a Blaster Case of 2021 Panini Chronicles Racing

I mentioned a while ago that I ordered a couple of blaster box cases as part of a big card order from Blowout Cards. The first I already showed off, a case of 2018 Donruss Racing. The other case was 2021 Panini Chronicles Racing. A blaster case is 20 boxes, so this post will cover the first 10 blasters.

 

By my count, there are 17 different base designs in the Chronicles set. It makes for a lot of sorting. Technically I think the Chronicles are the base set and the rest are inserts, but either way there are 17 different designs. I got nearly complete sets of most of the 20-cards checklists, and partial sets of the bigger checklists. Scattered throughout are Green retail-exclusive parallels. This is a stars and rookies product, so the big chase is whoever your favorite driver is, as long as they are a star or rookie.

Blue parallels are /199 and cover most of the base designs. I pulled Ryan Blaney, Austin Cindric, and Kyle Weatherman. Not much else to say about these, as none of them really fit into my collection.

This Tyler Reddick Spectra parallel is numbered /99. Spectra is one of the bigger checklists in the product, so I didn't come close to completing it. There are parallels and nickname variations as well, which make it even harder to complete.

I was happy to pull a numbered Dale Earnhardt Jr. card, as he is one of the drivers I collect. Even better is that he is featured in his National Guard branding. I spent 20 years with the National Guard and retired last year, so I like this particular branding scheme.

The Jet Black Materials and Newly Minted relic sets feature multiple swatches per card. The Austin Dillon card has firesuit and tire, while the Paul Menard adds sheet metal to the mix.

Status Swatches are one of the basic relics you'll pull from this product. I wouldn't say I collect Ryan Newman, but I've gathered a handful of his cards over the years. With this being a 2021 product, many of the photos of current drivers feature masks prominently.

Chronicles Swatches are the basic hit you find in blasters. I pulled Ryan Preece, Erik Jones, and Aric Almirola. Two tires and one firesuit relic. Again, not much among the hits that fits into my collection specifically, although I cast a pretty wide net when it comes to collecting.

Each lot of 10 blasters gave up two autographs, with this half of the case yielding Michael Waltrip and Anthony Alfredo. Again, not anything that fits into my collection specifically, but nice to add a couple of names to my collection that I don't think I had autographs for yet.

That does it for the first 10 boxes of the case. As far as my collection goes, the best cards were probably the Dale Earnhardt Jr. parallel /99 and some of the Green retail parallels of various drivers I collect.

Cyber Week Breaks: Day 2

So it's Day 2 of breaking stuff from my Cyber Week purchases. Today's breaks include a box of 2016 Panini National Treasures Racing, another 8 packs of 2017 Topps UFC Chrome, and a box of 2017 Topps UFC Fire that came in the mail yesterday. The box of UFC Fire also had an unexpected bonus card packed with it, so I'll show that as well.

National Treasures is a pretty high-end brand, so there's a lot of fancy packaging surrounding 7 fancy cards. The wooden chest has a cardboard liner around it.

Once you remove the plastic and the cardboard liner, you get to the sealed case. It's kind of like a cigar box, I suppose.

Inside the cigar box, there's some fancy foam padding, some branding in the lid, and the cardboard box that makes up the pack.

The ends of the pack also have seals on them. Once you cut into those, the lid lifts up to reveal the stack of cards. We're expecting a total of 7 cards: 1 base card or parallel, 2 memorabilia cards, 3 autograph or autograph/memorabilia cards, and 1 booklet card.

The top card in the box is a Century Silver parallel of Rusty Wallace. This card comes from the Legends subset and is numbered # 18 / 20. Base cards are numbered # / 25, and the Century Silver parallel is the most common parallel.

 The second card in the stack is a Dual Materials card of Ryan Newman and Paul Menard. This is the Gold parallel, and this copy is numbered # 02 / 10. Newman's relic looks like a piece of glove, while Menard's swatch is a bit of tire. I especially like the glove swatch.

The next card in the stack is a # 1 / 1 Yellow Printing Plate of Austin Dillon's Timelines insert card. It's got a nice thick patch of what appears to be his last name, maybe taken from the belt of his firesuit. It's kind of hard to see what the card should look like on this Yellow parallel, so I pulled an image of the base card from eBay for comparison:

It's still pretty cool to pull a # 1 / 1  from a high-end box, though. And Dillon seems to be a pretty popular driver. I guess that completes the expected base/parallel card and the 2 relic cards. Next up should be 3 autographs of some kind and a booklet.

The first autograph is a Cahmpionship Signatures card of drag racing legend John Force. This is the Silver parallel of the card, numbered # 40 / 45. I was pretty happy to pull this card, even though it's one of the more common cards in the box. I follow most of the Force racing family on social media, and you may recall that earlier this year I picked up a booklet card featuring the signatures of two of Force's daughters, Courtney and Brittany. It's nice to add another signature from the Force family to my collection.

The next card is a Rookie Signature Materials card of Brian Scott. This is the base version of the card, and it is numbered # 08 / 25. The 2016 season was his first full season, and his last full season. He announced his retirement after the year was up, with a final placing of 31st in the standings. It looks like he did a partial season in the Xfinity series in 2017.

Ryan Newman hot box! This is the Silver parallel of Newman's Jumbo Firesuit Signatures card. It's numbered # 13 / 15. I wish the fabric piece had a little more color to it, but it's still a pretty cool card. I like that this card shows his car on it, as this is the first time we've actually seen a race car in this box. That does it for the promised autographs, so the final thing remaining is a booklet card.

And here it is. This is a Jumbo Sheet Metal Signature booklet of Joey Logano. This card also shows his race car on it, and carries a big piece of sheet metal in the right side of the booklet. The left side has Logano's signature on it.

This is the base version of the booklet, and it is numbered # 15 / 50. I'm not a huge Logano fan, but I'm not yet jaded to the point where I'll turn up my nose at a booklet card with a signature and a big piece of memorabilia in it.

That was a pretty fun box to break. I wouldn't say I got my money back out of it, but I pulled some nice cards and I enjoyed the experience of opening it and revealing the cards one by one like a group breaker. I don't have the stomach to open high-end boxes all the time, but this one was fun.

There wasn't a lot of excitement in the next 8 packs of Topps UFC Chrome, so I scanned some of the inserts. I pulled 2 Top of the Class inserts, a Museum Collection card, 2 Tier One cards, and a Fire insert.

Here is what the card backs on the inserts look like. Each of these inserts is a replication of another Topps UFC product, with the Chrome treatment added.

Like the Blue Wave Refractors which are numbered # / 75, the X-Fractors fall one per box, but these do not have serial numbers.

This is an Orange Refractor of Luke Rockhold. These fall 1:3 boxes, and this one is numbered # 14 / 25. I am 2/3 of the way through the box and still haven't hit either of the promised autographs, so I should be showing off two UFC Chrome autographs tomorrow when I open another 8 packs.

I also had a box of UFC Fire come in from Topps. They had these on sale for 50% off over the weekend, so I grabbed one of them along with a pack of the Topps Mini Baseball cards they had available. I am kind of wishing I'd bought more packs of Mini Baseball, but they are off the market now. I wonder if Topps will sell the remainder of the stock off to people like Blowout and Dave & Adam's?

The cards of note from this box were a couple of Red parallels of Chuck Liddell and Frankie Edgar. They are numbered # / 142. The one Fired Up insert in the box shows Dominick Cruz, and the promised autograph is a base autograph of Eddie Alvarez, numbered # 065 / 199. This was an okay box, but it didn't blow me away. I don't think I had an Eddie Alvarez autograph yet, so that was cool. I also like that Topps numbered all of the parallels in this set. I think that adds some perceived value over the High Impact cards, where only some of the parallels are numbered.

The bonus card was this '17 Cyber Weekend card of Carlos Correa. I saw that Topps was offering these on orders, but I didn't know if my order qualified for the bonus. Apparently it did, and I am happy to add another Astro card to my collection.

Have I mentioned lately that the Astros won the World Series this year? I fear I'm becoming as obnoxious as a 2016 Cubs fan. I'll be back with more breaks tomorrow, unless I skip out for some reason.

Oops, I Already Had This Card (Again): 2013 Press Pass Showcase Classic Collections Patrick / Stewart / Newman

This seems to happen to me fairly often, but I bought a copy of a card that I already had a copy of. In this case it is a 2013 Press Pass Showcase Classic Collections triple relic card featuring bit of sheet metal from the cars of Tony Stewart, Danica Patrick, and Ryan Newman. This is whatever parallel version has a print run of 75 copies, with this particular copy being # 43 / 75. The copy already residing in my card boxes is # 15 / 75 and was acquired in the relatively early days of this blog, when I was still in the process of getting back into the hobby after a long hiatus. I'm not extremely sad about getting another copy, as it's a nice-looking card.

About the only thing that would make it cooler would be if the relics were swatches of firesuit instead of sheet metal. When it comes to NASCAR relics I prefer the firesuit relics. I guess that makes me kind of a creeper, in some respects. "I want the clothes that touched your skin, Tony, not some bit of your car!" Really I like anything like gloves, shoes, firesuits, hats. Some of the car relics are pretty cool, though, like the windshield and lug nut pieces that Press Pass did before they went out of business.

I'm a bit of a broken record at this point, but I hope someone picks up the NASCAR license soon and finds a way to put out cards as good as the stuff Press Pass was doing over the last few years.

I've been thinking about some hobby goals for 2016, but nothing has really sparked my interest yet. At least not enough to set a goal about it. I've toyed with the idea of trying to do a post a day on this blog for the whole year, but that just turns the blog into work and primes me for burnout at some point. I may still try to do it, but I don't want to put it in writing. I have a couple of things I want to chase down during the year and a few sets from 2015 I want to finish as well as a few 2016 sets I plan to chase. Maybe I'll put those in writing and maybe I won't. We'll see. Hopefully I won't spend too much time this year buying cards I already have.