What's in the Box 4: August 2016 Baseball Loot Locker

I've been watching The Loot Locker on Facebook and Twitter for a while, and in August I finally went ahead and ordered one. For $20 + $5 shipping, you get 3-6 Hobby packs of cards and some hobby supplies shipped to you in a 400-count card storage box. They offer Loot Lockers for Baseball, Football, Hockey, and Basketball. One in every 25 Loot Lockers comes with a bonus of $10+ in extra packs, and 1 in every 250 Loot Lockers contains some sort of high-end bonus product. 

Loot Locker has some kind of partnership with Ultra-Pro, so they feature their logo on the box label. Other than the label, it's a pretty standard 400-count card box.

Here is what I received in my Locker. The Ultra-Pro baggie contains some top loaders, some team bags, and some card sleeves. I got 2 packs of 2016 Allen & Ginter, 2 packs of 2016 Topps Chrome, and 1 pack of 2016 Panini Diamond Kings. I guess my Loot Locker was one of the randomly-seeded bonus lockers, as I also got a box of 2016 Onyx Authenticated Platinum Elite, which is admittedly a product and company I wasn't familiar with.

Not much came out of the Allen & Ginter packs. These are the most interesting cards that came out of them. Most of the Allen & Ginter cards in the two packs had that ding in the upper right corner that you can see on the Rollie Fingers card. It's impossible to know if that came from the manufacturer or the shipping process.

The Topps Chrome was a Nick Markakis hot lot, as I pulled the base and the Prism Refractor versions of his card. Outside of that, Max Scherzer was the most interesting base card.

Diamond Kings featured a couple of familiar faces in Luis Severino and George Springer. 

It also contained this Alex Bregman Diamond Kings Materials Framed dual relic card, numbered # 71 / 99. It's a pretty cool card and features a player on my favorite team, the Houston Astros Baseball Club. That's about it for the regular stuff you can expect from a Loot Locker.

I was kind of interested to see what this Onyx Authenticated Platinum Elite stuff was all about. I have to admit that I am pretty skeptical about 'off-brand' cardboard. This isn't something I would go out and purchase on my own. The front of the box promised four cards total, with two autographs. The base cards (Alex Reyes, Yeudy Garcia) look pretty much like the autograph cards, but without colored foil. Both of my autographs were the basic Blue Foil variety, which supposedly are limited to a print run of 200. There are other colors of parallel with different print runs.

My autographs were Alec Mills and Anderson Espinoza. I had to look them up. Both are promising players, I guess. Prospecting isn't really something I do, so these aren't names I am familiar with. This was a nice bonus, but I'm not really in the right demographic for this product. None of the autographs or base cards feature much information about the player, just an advertisement for the various colored parallels you can pull.

Obviously the cards you wind up pulling have a big impact on how much you like a Loot Locker or similar product. After accounting for my state's tax and a couple dollars in hobby supplies, I wound up spending about $4.25 per pack for the Allen & Ginter, Chrome, and Diamond Kings. I guess that's all right for Hobby packs. I am not accounting for the Onyx box in those numbers, but the chance at getting something extra in your Loot Locker probably plays into the decision to buy it.

I would probably buy another Loot Locker, but it's not an every-month purchase for me yet. My collecting habits these days don't leave a lot of room for opening random wax. At the moment I find better value for myself chasing singles and collated sets over opening packs and hoping for big hits. Every month Loot Locker posts a list of the packs that will ship out that month, so you can pick and choose based on the products you like. They also let customers vote on what packs might appear, so you can campaign for a product you want to try out.

What's in the Box 3: A Mix-Up and a Fix-Up with Collector Crate

Collector Crate is a relatively new subscription service that sends out a mystery box of trading cards and related items on a monthly basis. They offer three levels of subscription which increase in price but also increase the value of the packs they send in the box. Currently they are offering baseball, football, and basketball boxes, and if there is enough demand they will probably roll out a hockey subscription at some point.

October was their first subscription month, and I ordered a box of the lowest (Bronze) level to see what it was all about. My conclusion was that at that price point it would be hard to compete logistically with the 20 packs + a hit repack boxes you find at Target. The higher levels offer better stuff like packs with guaranteed hits, so if you've got the cash that might be the way to go. I couldn't really justify the expense as a monthly thing, so I sent a message to Collector Crate using the 'Contact Us' form on the website asking them to discontinue my subscription.

A few days ago I was going over our finances and noticed that there was a charge on the card from Collector Crate for the monthly subscription amount. Because I had other transactions going through on that card I realized that I might have an issue on my hands. So I sent out messages and e-mails to express my displeasure at being charged when I had sent a message to cancel my subscription. After a while I got a reply from Collector Crate through Facebook offering to refund the money, and because November's shipping had already occurred, to keep the box that was shipped to me free of charge. A little later they came back and said that the box had been flagged and had not yet left the warehouse, so if I told them a couple of my favorite teams they would put together a box for me and still make the shipment. I replied that I wasn't looking to get something for free or put them out, and that refunding my payment would be good enough for me. They insisted, so I told them I liked the Astros, Blue Jays, and Athletics and said I would give them a mention on my blog. Here is what was inside the box that arrived in the mail:

This was the baseball-related swag that was in the box along with the packs. I got decals for the A's and Astros, and a little baseball with the Blue Jays logo on it. I got a little bag of sunflower seeds. When I was a combat arms soldier I chewed a lot of sunflower seeds and grew to really like some of the different flavors that have popped up, like Dill Pickle and Nacho Cheese. If I eat too many of the regular salted ones my mouth gets a little burnt. Now that I work in an admin role I don't chew seeds much. The pack of TeenyMates contained a Padre and a Pirate along with puzzle pieces for the Astros and Braves. The pack of 100 card sleeves will go to good use, as you can always use more card supplies.

There were 10 packs in the main part of the box, and I will follow the example of other bloggers by showing the 'best' card from each pack. There is no guarantee that my definition of best will match up with anyone else's definition. I'm showing them in the order I opened them in.

And we kick things off with what would turn out to be the hit of the break, with a Max Scherzer Blue Refractor from 2010 Topps Chrome. It is numbered # 113 / 199, and the fact that it was the hit of the break tells you pretty much all you need to know about how the pack-breaking went. The Chipper Jones was the Special Engraved Foil Card advertised on the front of the 1993 Bowman pack. 2009 Uper Deck Series 2 proved so boring that a team checklist made the cut as the top card of the pack, featuring Huston Street, who I picked mostly because of all the angst and press he has generated in the fantasy baseball world during his career. A Jim Thome Authentic Achievements insert card gets the nod from the 2008 Upper Deck Authentic SP pack. It's a decent-looking card, even if the foiled lettering is difficult to read.

Up next are 1996 Leaf Preferred, 2014 Topps Update, 2008 Upper Deck Masterpieces, and 2013 Topps Gypsy Queen. The two Topps products are both Hobby packs, so that means better odds on inserts and stuff than you'd get in Retail packs.

It was a tough choice between the metal card (Fred McGriff) in the Preferred pack or the Piazza checklist. In the end the mullet and mustache combo won out. I've discussed why Mark Reynolds is a PC guy for me before, but I don't follow him closely enough to know if he's still on a roster. The one image of Vladimir Guerrero that sticks in my mind is the gif of him hitting a ball after it's bounced in the dirt. This isn't it, but this is another good one that takes a swing at 50 Cent's horrible first pitch during the 2014 season. I've heard the yips can sneak up on anyone:

I don't have a lot of love for the Spahn card, but there wasn't a lot to choose from in the Gypsy Queen pack. The insert won by default.

The 2014 Stadium Club and the 2013 Topps Mini packs were included in the 10 Bronze-level packs that went into the box. The 2013 Topps Chipz and the 5-pack of 2013 Topps Series 1 were loose in the box as extras.

There wasn't much of note in those packs, so I turned this scan into a Wilin Rosario supermix. That Gypsy Queen Rosario didn't come from the Topps Series 1 5-pack. I just thought it would be more interesting this way. One of the Chipz appears to be a Glow-in-the-Dark parallel, but it was a Yankee and I left it out. The Stadium Club pack had a Rainbow Foil card of Jose Reyes, which was cool, but I skipped it because it is a horizontal card and between the mini and the Chipz this scan was convoluted enough already.

The final thing in the box was the relic/auto pack, a little yellow envelope with some cards inside. At the Bronze level you are guaranteed two cards that may be relics or autos. The exclusive this month was the Derek Jeter sketch print card, featuring art drawn especially for Collector Crate to use in their boxes. The hits in the packs were a Lance Berkman relic from 2003 Leaf Certified and a Shawn Green autograph from 1997 Donruss Signature Series. They are pretty nice cards, although the Berkman relic card is pretty beat up along the edges. The Donruss Rated Rookie Mark McGwire card was a bonus addition to the hit pack.

I scanned the backs to show that the Berkman relic was numbered # 186 / 250.

As far as the packs go, this break was a whole lot weaker than the one I did last month, when I pulled a couple of autographs and a numbered Mike Trout card. Collector Crate doesn't have any control over that, though, and I think the packs were probably of a slightly higher quality here. All of the Topps products included in the 10 packs for the Bronze level were Hobby packs, and there are some decent cards that can come out of most of them. I am sort of disappointed that Collector Crate caught hte box before it shipped, because I can't know for sure which components are from a normal Bronze-level packout and which ones were added later because of the issue I had with the payment.Going by what I've seen from other breaks this month, I am guessing that the car sleeves, the two loose packs (2013 Topps Chipz, 2013 Topps Series 1 5-pack), and maybe the Mark McGwire were added to the box, and it could be that the 10 Bronze-level packs were upgraded at least partially toward the Silver level.

I am not sure if I will start a subscription back up at any point in the future, but Collector Crate went out of their way to fix the problem I had and make sure I was happy. They didn't have to send me a box, but they did and I appreciate that. If you are looking to contact them about something in regard to your account, I would suggest using Facebook or direct e-mail, as the 'Contact Us' feature on their website does not appear to be a solid way to actually contact them.

I have noticed that after the first month's shipments started being opened and reviewed, Collector Crate went out and read the reviews and tried to respond by taking customer suggestions into consideration. They added the feature to allow you to choose some teams that will be emphasized in your swag and hit pack, and it looks like they have tweaked the pack distribution in response to complaints about things like the 5-card Topps packs and a high Retail : Hobby ratio in the pack mix. I still think it will be hard for their Bronze-level subscription to compete value-wise with other products available to collectors at retail outlets, but their higher-level boxes seem to deliver a pretty good value that isn't replicated by any products you can get from Target or Shopko. They're off to a pretty good start, and I hope they are able to keep a good foothold and grow their business. I was pretty irritated about the mix-up with my subscription cancellation, but Collector Crate went above my expectation to make sure the issue was resolved.

What's in the Box 2: Collector Crate Bronze Level Unboxing

I saw somewhere that a new outfit called Collector Crate were unveiling a monthly mystery box program similar to Loot Crate, which sends out a monthly box full of geek and gamer paraphernalia. The Collector Crate version would be sports collector specific, and consists of three different pricing tiers, which in turn offer a different level of merchandise in each mystery box. The tiers are Bronze (10 low-mid end packs, 1 relic card, 1 autograph card, various odds and ends), Silver (10 mid end packs, 2 relic cards, 2 autograph cards, various odds and ends), and Gold (10 mid-high end packs, 3 relic cards, 3 autographs, various odds and ends).

They were offering a $5 discount on the inaugural October boxes, so I ordered a Bronze box to see what it was all about. It arrived in the mail last week. There is a Bronze sticker on the front and four little boxes denoting which sport the box contains. There is a checkbox for hockey, although they don't yet offer a hockey option. My choice was baseball. When it arrived the seal holding the box shut had been cut, but the contents all seemed to be intact.

Here are the various odds and ends that were included in the box. In the upper left is a Big League Chew gumball. It was not as satisfying as real Big League Chew which was shredded bubble gum that came in a pouch, like Red Man chewing tobacco. There was a small foam finger, which you could place on your finger, a little plastic baseball with an Angels logo on it, a Houston Astros pennant, and a Boston Red Sox sticker. The Collector Crate card talks about how you could win a Collector Crate box through their social media sites, and the little yellow envelope contains the bonus hits. I chewed the gumball and will probably find a place on my wall for the Astros pennant, but this stuff is probably not anything that I would go out and buy on my own. And I am just lucky that the pennant featured a team that I am a fan of.

Here are the 10 packs that came in the box. The only real difference between this and your basic repack from Target is that some of the packs are Hobby packs, so the odds are maybe a little better of pulling something decent. Let's see how I did. I'll start off with the bonus hits.

I got a couple of Mets hits in the box, with a relic/auto of Mike Cameron and a relic of Robin Ventura. They are two guys who had long careers in baseball and both were All-Stars at least once. The Cameron card is even pretty limited, being serially-numbered # 03 / 45. The hair on the Ventura swatch is probably a Duke relic from my Basset Hound, who sheds pretty much everywhere, even on the scanner. He has never even been in my car, but his hair is in my car.

In addition to the relic and autograph hits, the envelope contained this 1989 Donruss Ken Griffey Jr. Rated Rookie card. You can't say no to a free Griffey. So the hits were pretty decent, even if they weren't anything I would seek out on the secondary market. We all know that they could have been much, much less exciting.

I didn't bother to scan everything from the packs, but I did scan the cards that were most interesting to me. First up are the horizontal-format cards, because they have to be scanned in their own little group.

The Jeff Samardzija is a base card, but it fits into my player collections. I don't know anything about that Upper Deck X Baseball stuff, but the Troy Tulowitzki card was super-shiny and I figured it was special. The 2008 Upper Deck Heroes pack featured a couple of card with players I collect on them, but the card design was so ugly that I didn't scan them.

Homer Bailey is another player I knid of collect, as is Chris Johnson. Carlos Lee is an Astro and a die-cut, so I included him in the scan. I may already have that card, though. I pulled three 'hits' from the packs, which seems like a better-than-average ratio to me. Eddie Butler is supposedly one of the top prospects in the Rockies' system, but had pretty horrid stats in the three starts he made for them in 2014. He is also injured, and when he comes back from that he will probably get some more seasoning in the minors before (hopefully) getting another chance with the Rockies. Brad Sullivan was a first-round pick for the Athletics in 2003 and pitched in the lower end of their minor league system until 2007, never really getting anything going. The Mike Trout Elite Dominator card from 2014 Donruss is numbered # 774 / 999 and features an X-Fractor-like pattern that doesn't really show up in the scan.

The Eddie Butler autograph is a Refractor autograph and is numbered # 484 / 499.

And that's about it from the box. Even with the $5 discount and the extra autographs and inserts I pulled from my 10 packs of cards it's a bit borderline on whether the box was worthwhile. I can get a 10-pack repack from Target for around $12. I am not sure that the two bonus hits, the odds and ends, and the upgrade in some of the packs from Retail to Hobby adds an extra $13-18 in value for me personally. I can't imagine that I would even pull a couple of autographs and a Mike Trout insert or equivalent every time I busted a box.

Maybe I am just soured a bit on opening randomly-packed stuff altogether, when it generally works out to be cheaper to take the direct route and buy the cards I want outright on the secondary market.

Collector Crate may be good as an occasional purchase for me, but I can't see myself dropping the money to buy one every month. I don't know if things work out better at the higher tiers (the Gold tier seems to feature some pretty high-end packs, for example, with guaranteed hits), but the Bronze tier just doesn't quite hold enough value for me to strongly recommend it. I can scratch the repack itch at a lower price point, and the pennants/baseballs/bubble gum/stickers are stuff I normally wouldn't spend money on anyway, so I don't really include it in my mental value calculation.

What's in the Box 1: Found Cards

I went out into our garage the other day looking for a box of cards I might have had out there, which I thought might contain some Hakeem Olajuwon or Gheorghe Muresan cards from my teen years of collecting. I didn't find that box, but I did find a plastic tote filled with partial sets I had been working on when I quit collecting. One of those sets was 95-96 Fleer Basketball, which mirrors the zaniness of the 1995 Fleer Baseball product that bloggers love/hate so much. I liked it, and because I bought so much of it that year the inserts from that set are iconic to me.

Which is more freaky; Rodman or Fleer ca. 1995?

There were some other sets in there in various stages of completion, but nothing too amazing. I also didn't find the box I was looking for, and began to dig deeper. A box or two down and I found clues that suggested I was close to finding one of our family's lost treasures. I saw a few comic books that seemed out of place, as most of my comics have been gathered and sorted for a few months now into new stackable drawer boxes. Then I saw a couple of swag bags from the 2006 Emerald City Comic Con. Then I found a box of books and old computer games. Sitting between Sid Meier's Pirates! and MechWarrior 4 was a Hakeem Olajuwon Rookie Card. A little while back I purchased a graded Olajuwon Rookie Card, believing that I had always coveted but never owned one. Apparently sometime in the cloudy days of 2004-2009 I did buy one and thought so little of it that I tossed it in among my computer game discards. So now I have two 86-87 Fleer Hakeem Olajuwon RCs. When I was younger I would buy each month's Beckett and flip to the 86-87 Fleer listings to track the price of this card. I even had a letter published in Beckett once in which I complained about the lack of respect that Olajuwon got compared to the other stars of the day.

The card is in pretty good shape, maybe even better shape than the graded copy I have. But this Hakeem Olajuwon discussion is interrupting the story I was telling about finding my family's great treasure. After setting the Olajuwon card aside I grabbed the next box off the stack and opened it, flipping through old notebooks and other junk. Then I finally saw it, an old sketchpad with pages sticking out of the sides. I flipped through it and saw many familiar faces staring back at me. I had found the sketches my wife and I had commissioned at Emerald City Comic Con 2006, our first comic book convention. We thought we had looked just about everywhere, but I guess there was still one stack of boxes that had remained unsearched since we moved to our new house in 2009. The sketches are now in their rightful place in an art portfolio with the sketches we got in 2012 when we were finally able to return to Seattle for another convention.