April 2018 Loot Locker

I ordered another Loot Locker in April, again going for the Triple Play Baseball locker, which costs a little more than the All-Star Baseball locker and less than the Grand Slam Walk Off Baseball locker. The All-Star and Triple Play lockers have different amounts of the same products, while the Grand Slam has higher-end stuff. There are also basketball, football, and hockey versions.

As usual, the cards ship in a 400-count card box with Loot Locker branding stickers attached.

Here is what I got in my box of stuff. There were also a few pieces of candy, but I ate them before I took this picture. Every Loot Locker contains a package of Ultra Pro supplies, usually around 10 top loaders and some penny sleeves. One in five lockers contains a bonus hit of some kind, and mine was one of the lucky ones this month. It's a pretty decent hit, too, a 2015 Bowman Chrome Purple Refractor autograph of Wilmer Difo. He's been a fairly regular player for the Nationals this year, backing up second, third, shortstop, and center field. He even had a Topps Now card a couple of days ago, with a walk-off single to claim a victory over the Phillies. The card is numbered out of # / 250, and looks to be a $10-15 card on eBay. Pretty good stuff!

The packs for the month are two packs of 2018 Panini Diamond Kings, two packs of 2011 Bowman Platinum, and one pack of 2018 Topps Gypsy Queen. As usual, I like to break down the cost of the packs to see what kind of value I'm getting for my money. I couldn't find a lot of 2011 Bowman Platinum for sale, but I did find enough information to suit my needs. To come up with my numbers, I price hobby boxes on online card shops, divide by the number of packs in a box, and multiply by the number of packs in the locker. It may not reflect exactly Loot Locker's costs, but it kind of reflects what I'd be spending if I made the unlikely journey to my local card shop. I round the numbers, so some of the final math is off by a bit. Here are the numbers I came up with:

2011 Bowman Platinum: $113.33/box / 20 packs = $5.67/pack x 2 packs = $11.33

2018 Panini Diamond Kings: $75.95/box / 12 packs = $6.33/pack x 2 packs = $12.66

2018 Topps Gypsy Queen: $174.95/box / 24 packs = $7.29/pack x 1 pack = $7.29

$11.33 + $12.66 + $7.29 = $31.28

That's a pretty good value for $30 + $5 shipping, especially with the card supplies and the bonus hit. The last two lockers I priced out came in at $26.32 and $28.64, so this one was significantly higher.

Here are a couple of the key base cards from the 2011 Bowman Platinum packs. Giancarlo (Mike) Stanton is heating up in New York (bad news for my Astros), and Miguel Cabrera is breaking down but probably has the numbers and accolades to get into the Hall of Fame.

I did pull some doubles from my Platinum packs, in the form of Ryan Howard and Jimmy Rollins. First world problems, right?

One of the Bowman Platinum packs also contained a hit, this bat relic autograph card of Juan Miranda. It is numbered # 0704 / 1166, and features a guy who played in parts of four seasons with the Yankees and Diamondbacks. His last season in MLB was 2011.

I pulled another hit out of Diamond Kings, an Original Materials dual relic of Miguel Andujar. Justin Verlander represented the Astros in my packs, and I also got a Sepia variation of Aaron Judge, last year's Shohei Ohtani. Today was Tony Gwynn's birthday. He would have been 58, but he passed away in 2014. He blamed a chewing tobacco habit for the cancer that eventually took his life, and it looks like he may have a cheek full of chew in that photo.

The Gypsy Queen pack contained another Astro, Dallas Keuchel, and a Missing Nameplate parallel of Mike Trout. The Missing Nameplate cards are some of the more common parallels out there, but Mike Trout is still a big name to pull any parallel of.

This was a pretty solid Loot Locker for me. The pack mix was a good value, and I did pretty well as far as pulling some good stuff from my packs. The packs for May's Loot Lockers are all 2018 releases, with Diamond Kings, Donruss, and Bowman making appearances. I've just ordered mine for the month, as that's a pretty good mix of products. I'd like to see more Topps stuff because I like logos, but I doubt we'll see too much more until stuff like Series 2 and Allen & Ginter drop.

A 2016 Breakdown Holiday Blast

Today is the first day of a long break from work for me. Because of the way our holiday time and scheduled days off worked out, I only had to take three days of leave to get eleven days off from work. It will be 2017 before I have to step foot back in my office. That's a pretty good feeling, but I hope I can get some things done around the house with my time off.

Many folks around the card blogging community have been targeted by the generosity of defgav from Baseball Card Breakdown recently, and I was one of the folks who received a 2016 Breakdown Holiday Blast package from him.

First up is a quartet of Astros cardboard, featuring probably my favorite current Astro in Evan Gattis and the guy I have a big player collection for in Jon Singleton. I'm still waiting to see what happens with Singleton, as it appears the Astros have given up on him completely. I am still picking up his cards out of habit, though. It's a fool's errand, but I think if you look close enough you might discover that this whole hobby (and maybe most hobbies) is kind of silly from a practical standpoint.

Next up is a shiny card of former Denver Bronco Ronnie Hillman. He was recently claimed off waivers by the San Diego Chargers after being dropped by the Broncos and the Vikings. He had a pretty good 2015 for Denver after C.J. Anderson went down with an injury, but it wasn't enough to keep him on the team for 2016. He had 7 carries for the Chargers last week. Denver is very likely to miss the playoffs this year, one season after winning the Super Bowl. Their offense just can't generate any points. I kind of wonder if Hillman would be a better back for the Broncos than Devontae Booker/Justin Forsett. What a waste of another great year for the Denver defense.

Now we're getting into the crazy stuff in this package. First up is this custom Andrew McCutchen Cardsphere Heroes card, exclusively numbered # 1 / 1. It's got all the hallmarks of a high-end collectible, with full-bleed photography, serial numbering, and a star-shaped hologram so you know it's authentic. I thought that all the McCutchen trade talk was kind of over, but in doing a quick bit of research it looks like he is still being discussed as a target for various teams. I kind of like him as a Pirate, but I'm no expert.

The final item is one of the Tony Gwynn rip cards that people have been showing off recently. Mine was numbered # 05 / 25. Some people hesitated before ripping theirs open, and others tore right in. I was in the latter camp, although I did use scissors to snip one edge off and peel it open rather than just grabbing the card and tearing it right down the middle without regard for the contents.

I found a familiar face inside in Danica Patrick, the NASCAR driver and subject of one of my larger player collections. In fact, Danica's name trails only R.A. Dickey on this blog when it comes to tags by name. I figured she would be in third or fourth place, but she beat out Jon Singleton and Josh Reddick on the baseball side and my larger basketball collections predate this blog.

Here's a closer look at the front and back of this custom # 1 / 1 Danica Patrick magnet. It's pretty cool, and features Danica in her new Nature's Bakery-branded firesuit. This was a really cool gesture by defgav, and he must have put in a lot of work building these customs and packaging them all up for collectors around the blogging community. I was pretty excited to be among those who received one of these mailers. Thanks, defgav!

At the Trade Deadline 45: The Prowling Cat Cleans Out His Clutter, and I'm Reaping All the Benefits, Part 5

Here is another set that I pried from the hands of The Prowling Cat during his big closet cleaning event. In this case the card set isn't a food issue, it's a toy store issue. This 1986 Young Superstars of Baseball set was put out by the now-shuttered Key Bee toy stores. I remember going into a few Kay Bee stores when I was younger, but I don't recall ever buying anything from them. I just remember that they felt crowded and disorganized. I wonder how great they were at picking out superstars?

Rick Aguilera played for 16 seasons and put up some decent numbers, with three All-Star appearances right in the middle of his MLB career. I'll go ahead and give him a passing grade. Chris Brown was 4th in Rookie of the Year voting and made the All-Star team in 1986, then pretty much disappeared. I'll mark that down as a fail for prognostication. Tom Browning had a decent career over 12 years, with an All-Star appearance and a World Series Championship to go along with pretty good numbers. I'll give him a pass. I'm being lenient here with my grades, as the superstar standard is pretty high. I'm going with a definition that is more like "pretty good over a period of time with acceptable numbers and / or accolades." It's all a subjective judgement through my own personal lens. So I'm scoring this group as 2 - 1 in favor of these guys being actual Young Superstars.

The card backs are pretty detailed, with plenty of biographical data, a paragraph about the player, and one year of stats to go along with a career stat line.

Tom Brunansky played 14 years with one All-Star appearance (1985) and a Championship. He mostly stayed positive on the WAR front. I'm calling him a win. (3-1) Vince Coleman won Rookie of the Year, stole a bunch of bases, made a couple of All-Star appearances, and lasted 13 seasons. The second half of his career was much worse than the first half, but I'm going with a win here. (4-1) Ron Darling had only one All-Star appearance, but he got a Championship and the first half of his 13-season career was pretty good, along with a small bounceback during his later career in Oakland. He gets a win from me. (5-1)

Alvin Davis' career wasn't much for longevity, but he was pretty good during the first seven of his nine season, front-loading things with an All-Star appearance and Rookie of the Year honors in 1984. I'm calling him a borderline win, as his WAR each of those seven years was pretty decent. (6-1) Mariano Duncan was tough for me to gauge. He had one All-Star appearance during a year in which he only played 88 games and racked up 0.4 WAR. He won two Championships, one with the Reds and one with the Yankees. It is interesting to me that those two seasons and his rookie year were his only three outstanding seasons. Based on his overall career, though, I am calling this one a loss. (6-2) Shawon Dunston's career numbers probably don't warrant it, but I am calling him a win for nostalgic reasons. He had a couple of All-Star appearances and a few good years here and there in his 18-season career, but overall he wasn't spectacular. But his name is one that I remember from the baseball cards of my youth. It seems like his cards were always around. So I'm calling his inclusion in this set a win. (7-2)

If I don't pick up the pace I will never get this post done. Sid Fernandez was good enough for long enough that I count him as a win. He made a couple of All-Star teams, won a Championship, and averaged more than 2 WAR/year over a 15-season span. (8-2) Tony Fernandez was also very good. He had a nice strong run and averaged over 2.6 WAR/year with several All-Star appearances, several Gold Glove awards, and a Championship. (9-2) Brian Fisher doesn't make the cut. His rookie season of 1985 was pretty good, but that was about it. He was never very good after that and washed out in a few seasons. (9-3)

John Franco put together a pretty decent long career. He made a few All-Star teams. I'm going with a win for him. (10-3) Julio Franco played in the MLB for about a million years, off and on from 1982-2007, or from just after I was born until just before my 26th birthday. He played baseball in Japan just last year in 2015, as a player-manager for the Ishikawa Million Stars. Franco had plenty of really good seasons and accolades, so he counts for a win. (11-3) I don't even have to look Dwight Gooden up (I did anyway). He counts as a win. (12-3)

Ozzie Guillen counts as a win, both for his playing career and his notoriety / success as a manager. (13-3) Tony Gwynn is a win. He's a Hall of Famer and probably individually has as many All-Star appearances as everyone we've already covered combined. (14-3) Jimmy Key is a winner. He has enough accolades and numbers to count. (15-3)

Don Mattingly had a good strong career and hung around in the Hall of Fame voting for a long time, so he counts as a win. (16-3) Oddibe McDowell has a cool name, but his seven seasons in MLB don't quite measure up to his cool name. I'm marking him in the loss column. (16-4) Roger McDowell's numbers probably don't measure quite well enough, but I'm going to argue that his zany antics give him a win. It's hard to measure relief pitchers anyway. (17-4)

Dan Pasqua played pretty well during his time in the league, but he didn't play long enough or outstandingly enough to merit a win according to my Superstar-meter. (17-5) Terry Pendleton was pretty good and won an MVP award, so I think I have to include him as a win. (18-5) Jim Presley does not get a pass as a young superstar of baseball. (18-6)

Kirby Puckett is a superstar by any measure. (19-6) Ernie Riles had 2-3 decent years among his 9 seasons, but not enough to count as a superstar. (19-7) Bret Saberhagen has plenty of resume items to push him into superstar territory. (20-7) 

Mark Salas wasn't much more than a part-timer during his career. He's not a superstar. (20-8) Juan Samuel was pretty close on the strength of three All-Star appearances, but I'm not feeling it overall. (20-9) Jeff Stone was not a superstar. He had more seasons with a negative WAR than seasons with a positive WAR (20-10)

Darryl Strawberry had some character issues, but he was a superstar. He counts for a win. (21-10) Andy Van Slyke was good enough to make my list of winners. (22-10) Frank Viola had himself a good career. I am counting him in the win column. (23-10)

Well, with a 23-10 record Kay Bee had a pretty good record at predicting which of these players would develop into superstars. I probably could have graded these guys a little tougher and come up with a 10-23 record, but that wasn't any fun. I wanted to include semistars and fan favorites in my grouping. I guess I could make the record 24-10 by including The Prowling Cat as a trading superstar. Thank you for these cool cards!

At the Trade Deadline 44: The Prowling Cat Cleans Out His Clutter, and I'm Reaping All the Benefits, Part 4

A while back the Prowling Cat posted a bunch of stuff he was planning on donating if he couldn't find someone in the blogosphere to give it to, and I put my name in the hat for several of the items. He sent out one shipment of stuff to me near the end of 2015 and just recently I got hit with a second wave of cards. I think out of this batch I originally just requested two things, but he sent more than that. The really cool thing is that the bulk of these items were food issue sets from the 80's.

I don't know if there is anything better than food-sponsored baseball cards. I was going to buy food anyway, but packaging cards with that food makes things so much better. Unfortunately this kind of thing has mostly gone by the wayside these days, but food issues had a long hobby run. My kids got Pokemon cards in their Happy Meals recently and some Canadian coffee place gave away hockey cards with their drinks last year, but as far as I know those are some of the relatively few food promotions out there. When I was a kid it seemed like you couldn't turn around without finding baseball card in your cereals and snacks. This first set in my package from the Prowling Cat is a 1986 Topps Quaker Chewy Granola Bars issue that touts itself as the 1st Annual Collectors' Edition. The card fronts feature some pretty nice portrait photos while the backs have a good amount of biographical data, 1985 stats, career stats, and a bulleted list of career highlights.

There are plenty of stars in this checklist, some teams like the Mets and Cardinals receiving extra attention. That jacket that Dave Parker is wearing looks incredibly uncomfortable, like someone coated a trash bag in rubber and added a zipper and sleeves to it.

Normally I'd have more to say about these cards, but I've got like twenty minutes until midnight and if I don't hit publish on this thing soon I will break my streak of posting every day this year so far. I am thinking that the streak might break in April anyhow, but there's no use in breaking it before I have to. Nice to see Fernando Valenzuela wearing a helmet on a card. Nolan Ryan looks like he might be trying to suppress some kind of gastrointestinal issue long enough for the picture to be taken. Maybe he's looking into the sunlight or something.

Don Mattingly is one of the few people on this earth who should always have a mustache. There are all types of mustaches on this scan, from Saberhagen's barely-there look to Wade Boggs and his uber-stache. I'm guessing that bulge in George Brett's cheek is just him eating some tasty Quaker Chewy Granola Bars.

That whole top row of photographs is pretty good. Reggie Jackson looks surprised to be having his photo taken, Eddie Murray is rocking all kinds of hair, Phil Niekro looks like somebody's grandpa, and I think they must have borrowed Dan Quisenberry's mugshot from the local precinct.

Thanks for the cards, Prowling Cat! There is plenty more to post from this package over the next little while.

Blast from My Past 2: 1993 Post Collector Series

I have always loved getting stuff in the mail. It is one of the things that drives me through each day. One of my enduring memories from childhood comes from the time my dad was stationed in Alaska for a couple of years. We had one of those communal mailboxes with the little keyed compartments and I would retrieve our key and make the trek down the road to get the mail almost every day. In the summer I could wear regular clothes, in the winter I had to bundle up, and during the spring thaw I'd wear rubber boots or wear regular shoes and get my feet wet from stepping in slush, mud, or puddles.

Being a kid I didn't have a lot of money, so much of my mail came from sending in cereal box Proofs of Purchase for items like card sets and Matchbox cars. I also made ample use of the offers in the back of magazines and comic books, mostly to order lots of postage stamps, sample catalogs, and anything else that could be had cheaply. Those 4-6 week shipping times were killers. Today we get agitated if an eBay purchase takes more than a week to arrive, but some of the stuff I ordered as a kid could take a whole summer vacation to hit the mailbox! I still check the mailbox every day, even though I know my wife gets the mail before I get home. It's part of my routine. This 1993 Post Collector's Series set was available in 3-card packs from Post cereals, but you could also order a set direct from Post. That's probably what I did, as I have a full set plus 3 cards. I must have pulled the pack of cards from a cereal box and liked them so much I ordered a set.

There are 30 cards in the set, and it is pretty well packed with star power from the early 90's. All of the big names make appearances, dressed in their airbrushed prison ball uniforms. I wasn't always hooked into any avenues for traditional sports cards from Topps, Fleer, and Upper Deck, so these food issues played a key role in my awareness of the stars of the day.

In fact, when I really got into card collecting as a teenager in the mid-90's I was mostly into basketball and non-sports cards, so these cereal cards made up the bulk of my baseball collection. I was too busy chasing NBA players and Independence Day Widevision sets to bother with baseball much beyond checking the standings every so often to see how the Astros were doing. I'd read the sports page in the paper, too, so I'd get whatever the big baseball headlines were.

I don't remember exactly when I started playing fantasy baseball, but Yahoo! has records showing that I've had teams all the way back to 2003. Maybe I played before then, but I can't remember for sure. For many years that was my main connection to baseball. I didn't watch many games, but I did keep up with the stats of individual guys, especially the guys who ended up on my roster. My 3rd-place team from 2003 included such luminaries as Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, Aramis Ramirez, Juan Pierre, Edgar Martinez, Raul Mondesi, Marquis Grissom, Jim Edmonds, Bret Boone, Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux, and Mike Mussina. Not a bad lineup, really.

I have to wonder a little bit if this kind of card issue would bring more young folks into the hobby of collecting today? I didn't have access to any sort of regular card shop when I was a kid, but food issue sets kept me generally aware of the sports world during my formative years. Maybe I never would have fallen into card collecting without them.

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.

2014 Topps Stadium Club Box Break - A Case Hit and a Redemption Card

I am trying to clear out my folder of card scans, and there is some old stuff in there. This is a box of 2014 Topps Stadium Club that I opened last year, probably in November or December. I vaguely remember some of the cards in this box.

These were the eight most interesting horizontal base cards I found in the box. Actually, the Hyun-Jin Ryu and Jeff Samardzija cards probably weren't the most interesting in the box. They are (kind of) PC guys for me. I like that Todd Helton farewell card. Tim Lincecum looks a lot like Mario's brother Luigi, and also like a guy I knew in one of my Army units. I don't remember that guy's name, but I remember he was kind of a funny dude. Adam Eaton got his own post a while back, and I think Jose Bautista did too (I guess Bautista had to share his post with three other guys).

These Rainbow Foil parallels came one per mini-box, or three per Hobby box. This is kind of a tragic group, as both Oscar Taveras (DUI car wreck) and Tony Gwynn (cancer) died during 2014.

That Gold Victor Martinez is a one-per-box parallel, and the Matt Carpenter Members Only card is a one-per-case hit. Martinez is having a terrible season after a massive 2014. Some people (like me) drafted him in fantasy baseball this year and are also having very bad years. Matt Carpenter is having a very good year for the Cardinals, helping to fill the void left by several key injuries. The Cardinals have signed some dark pact that keeps them consistently winning games from year to year.

These are all of the inserts that fall one per Hobby box. My Triumvirate card is Masahiro Tanaka, which was a pretty good pull at the time. He's been pretty good this year, too, but the big crop of hot rookies this season has kind of pushed him and Jose Abreu to the back burner as far as hype is concerned. Jose Fernandez is my Beam Team insert. Speedster Billy Hamilton is my Future Stars card. He's on the DL right now. Imagine how many bases he would steal if he got on base a little more. My favorite of this bunch is the Randy Johnson Legends die-cut.

These Field Access inserts come one per mini-box. If I remember right, that Randy Johnson card is a parallel insert numbered out of # / 99. I guess I could go look it up, but I'd have to dig through some boxes to find it and I don't want to. McCutchen, Jeter, and Mays are all good pulls, too, but I like the Johnson card best. Update: I did not remember correctly. In looking through my scans I found the actual Randy Johnson parallel I pulled in the photos for another box break. This one is probably the base version. I still like it.

Each box of Stadium Club promised three autographs, but the relatively weak checklist helped boxes to stay affordable for people like me. There were sales last year where you could get boxes for less than 50% of the original MSRP. One of my autographs was a redemption for a Chris Owings base autograph. James Jones has been in the minors for most of 2015. Yangervis Solarte has been toiling away with pretty good success for the Padres this year. Unfortunately for his collecting value, he is having success with the Padres and not the Yankees. Chris Owing has been playing all season for the Diamondbacks, but he hasn't found a lot of success with a negative WAR so far this season.

Sometime between then and now the redemption was filled and I got this card in the mail, signed by Owings with a nice big pair of initials. Overall this was a pretty good box as I pulled a case hit with the Matt Carpenter parallel and a couple of nice Randy Johnson inserts.