January 2018 Loot Locker

I ordered a Loot Locker in January, and it arrived in the mail a day or two ago. The Loot Locker is a monthly or one-shot service that sends you some Hobby packs and a few card supplies. It's a decent alternative for building up trade bait, or for getting your hands on a few Hobby packs. The basic Locker comes in two levels, a $20 and a $30 (plus shipping) box, with the difference being that the more expensive box holds a couple more packs. There are also high-end boxes, which I think are $50. They have premium brands packed into them. Each month, you can vote on that month's packs on The Loot Locker's Twitter feed. I think February voting closes tonight. The current leaders for February are 2017 Panini Optic, 2017 Topps Chrome, and 2017 Topps Archives.

I ordered the $30 option. The products inside included two packs of 2017 Topps Chrome, two packs of 2017 Panini Optic, and three packs of 2017 Topps Heritage High Numbers. There were also some top loaders and penny sleeves, as well a couple pieces of candy. The cards ship in a 400-count card storage box.

At first I kind of felt like there wasn't a lot here for the money, but instead of whining about it I went and did some research. I went out to a major card retailer's site and pulled down their box prices for these products. Then I divided them by the number of packs per box and multiplied that number by the number of packs in the Loot Locker.

For two packs of Optic, I came up with $8.80. For two packs of Topps Chrome, I got $11.91. The three packs of Heritage High Numbers would have cost $7.49. That gives me a total of about $28.20 for the packs. Throw in a couple of dollars for the card supplies and candy, a few more for shipping and Paypal fees, and a couple dollars of profit for the company, and you're right about at the $35 mark.

Not much came out of the Heritage packs. I got a couple of short prints, including a Houston and PC player, Josh Reddick. I also got a Rookie Performers insert of Hunter Renfroe.

Here are a couple of the shinier Optic cards. It was kind of hard to find any base cards among all of the Prizms, Diamond Kings, and Rated Rookies.

The Kluber and Moncada cards are both numbered parallels. The Kluber is numbered # 12 / 99 and the Moncada is # 79 / 99.

These are the highlights from the Chrome packs. I got a nice Blue Refractor of Yasiel Puig, and one of the 1987-design inserts of Addison Russell.

The Puig is # 075 / 150. I didn't pull any hits out of this Loot Locker, but I got a handful of nice parallel cards and a taste of a few products that I didn't buy a whole lot of this year. For personal reasons I don't visit my local card shop, and this is a nice alternative to making that trek.

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.

Pack of the Day 150: Three Topps Holiday Wal-Mart Mega Boxes

I've seen quite a few posts about the 2016 Topps Wal-Mart Holiday Mega Boxes on the blogosphere, and I thought I would add the results of my break to the mix. I liked the idea of these cards, with 2016 Topps Baseball's 'fog' effect replaced by snowflakes, but I wasn't sure if it was something I wanted to buy into. I saw some posts about the product on the Blowout Cards forum, including one that said the poster completed the 200-card base set easily from three boxes. That and the promised hit in each box prompted me to pick up three boxes from my local Wal-Mart.

The box front lets you know that this thing contains 10 packs of cards, including one relic, autograph, or autograph relic card.

The back of the box shows all of the cool stuff that might be found in the box, as well as pack odds and NPN information. This product has a pretty basic structure. You get one parallel to the base set (about 5 per box) and a mix of hits and parallels to the hits, with the vast majority of them being your basic relic cards.

The pack design mimics the branding on the box.

The cards mostly feature the same photos as the flagship Topps set. Some players got different photos. I anticipated getting a full set of base from my three boxes, but instead I got mostly triples and doubles across the boxes and wound up falling very, very short of completing a base set.

Here are some of the horizontal cards, as well as a card back. I didn't go through and check or anything, so I am assuming the card backs are mostly identical to their flagship counterparts outside of the card number. I believe the prefix on the card number is an abbreviation for Holiday Mega Box Wal-Mart.

I got the expected 15 Metallic Snowflake parallels. As others have mentioned, this parallel was created by affixing glitter to the card in the snowflake areas. It doesn't scan very spectacularly, and it isn't really all that impressive in-hand. I got some decent names among my parallels, with the best two probably being Kris Bryant and Carlos Correa.

Here are some more of the Snowflake parallels. I think the Granderson probably has the best photo out of this bunch.

I don't know what to think of Puig anymore. I was lucky enough to pull and sell a couple of nice photo variations featuring him back when he was a hot ticket, but his star faded pretty fast. I think he's still probably a serviceable player that you would want on your team, but I don't think he'll be a superstar. I'll erase this paragraph in a few years when he hits 40 home runs and leads the Yankees to a World Series alongside Bryce Harper, Mike Trout, and a cybernetic replica of Brian McCann.

Here are the relics I pulled from my boxes. All feature plain white swatches of fabric. There are some pretty decent names among my pulls, but no one I really collect. The snowflake theme makes them kind of fun looking, so I guess there is that.

Here are the backs of the relic cards, for completeness' sake. Pretty standard stuff, with the usual congratulatory message and the small print disclaiming any real association between the fabric swatch and the pictured player.

That does it for this break. I was pretty disappointed with the collation, but I think that tends to happen in retail fairly often. The cards go in big runs without a lot of variation from box to box, and if you catch a bad batch of boxes you wind up with a lot of duplication. I found a base set really cheap on eBay a few days ago, so I guess now I have plenty of cards to send out in trade packages.

Pack of the Day 147: 2015 Bowman Hanger Box

I found myself at Wal-Mart the other day, doing some shopping for something. Digging into the recesses of my memory, I think I was picking up candy to hand out to Trick-or-Treaters on Halloween. So I guess it was a couple of weeks ago, not the other day. Anyway, I discovered that this Wal-Mart had a card aisle again, after some period of time where the card aisle had been removed (or moved to a location which I never discovered).

None of the offerings really appealed to me all that much, but I figured I couldn't go too wrong with a discounted hanger box of 2015 Bowman. All of the Bowman sets kind of run together in my mind, so I don't really know how much 2015 Bowman I have in my collection. It could be a little, or it could be enough to wallpaper a small room. Those are questions that my big sorting question will hopefully answer. What do I have in my collection, and how much of it do I have?

These were the six most interesting (to me) cards out of the thirteen veteran cards in the set. I read an article today saying that the Dodgers would like to move Puig, but are afraid that he might return to superstar status and make them look bad.

There were nine regular prospect cards in the box. Addison Russell played in some meaningful games for the Cubs this postseason.

Six Chrome prospect cards came in the box. This would turn out to be a Josh Bell hot box. Mark Appel got traded from the Astros to the Phillies in the Ken Giles trade. Giles' performance left a little to be desired in 2016. Hopefully Houston can shore up their pitching for 2017.

A good number of the guys I pulled Chrome cards for showed up in the Yellow parallels, including Appel and Bell. Josh Bell was also the subject of the Bowman Scouts' Top 100 insert I got. I like these Top 100 insert sets, but I have never made a real attempt to complete one of them. They cost too much, especially the top few guys each year. I like pulling them, though. They are probably my favorite Bowman insert.

The big pull of the box was a Prospects autograph of Zack Jones. He hasn't done much to make a name for himself yet, but it's still an autograph from a discount retail buy. According to the odds, these autographs only fall 1 per 16 hanger boxes.

That was an okay break for a few bucks. I like the variety that comes out of a Bowman break, even though I don't know most of the prospects by name. It seems like I often pull something interesting out of a Bowman break, like a colorful parallel, a Top 100 insert, or some sort of autograph. They usually aren't all that valuable, but I get excited about them anyway.

Gint-a-Cuffs VIII: Pack 22

Yasiel Puig: +2 (The Numbers Game +2)

Pack Total: 2.00
Running Total: 102.00

Average Per Pack: 4.43
Box Pace: 110.87

2014 Topps Finest 41-50

Here's a set I haven't looked at in a while. My last post about 2014 Topps Finest covered cards 31-40 in the checklist and went up on my blog in October 2014. Let's see who Topps put on the checklist for cards 41-50 in this colorful set.

First up is Jason Heyward, who spent 2015 with the Cardinals and goes into 2016 as a member of the super-hyped Chicago Cubs. I know he's a good player, but he played in Atlanta and St. Louis, which are two teams that don't pop up on my radar that much. He also gets a lot of his value from his defense, so I haven't had him on many fantasy baseball rosters. Chicks (and fantasy baseball players) dig the long ball.

Michael Wacha is a decent pitcher. Again, though, he's not been much of a factor on my fantasy baseball teams and I don't follow the Cardinals too closely, so I don't pay much attention to him. Sorry, NL fans, but I am just not that big on your teams. I guess that seems a little silly, as my Astros were members of the NL Central from 1994-2012, but I wasn't paying particularly close attention to baseball until 2013. I watched the standings for the Astros and played fantasy baseball, but never really followed or watched much of it at all until getting back into collecting in 2013 and realizing that basketball wasn't really my thing anymore and football cards weren't keeping my interest.

The only Major League Baseball game I ever attended was a Cincinnati Reds game where they hosted the Houston Astros, probably in the late 80's or early 90's. I remember very little from that experience outside of a couple fragments of sitting in the stands with my dad and my grandpa. I could probably narrow down the dates a bit if I dug into old letters and stuff, but I'm not going to do that right now. The Reds and Pirates are probably the two NL teams I follow most closely.

I don't know anything really about Josmil Pinto. It looks like he was waived by the Twins, picked up by the Padres, waived by them, and now he is with the Brewers. I don't think he will be much of a factor with them.

Freeman is looking at another good year on a bad team. It's weird to think of the Braves as a bad team, because they spent so many of my formative years being very good. The main thing they have going for them in their Division is that they are not the Phillies.

Speaking of the Phillies, here's a retired guy who spent some time in Philadelphia. He won a Cy Young award with the Indians, but he had a couple of All-Star appearances and made $82.5 million with Philadelphia.

Jacoby Ellsbury jumped ship from Boston to New York in exchange for wheelbarrows full of money. His numbers have been all right with the Yankees, but health has been a factor for him. He got hit by a pitch today, but appears to have escaped without major damage to his wrist.

Bryce Harper is one side of baseball's current big-issue Civil War, whether hitters should be demonstrative after big hits or put their heads down and be all about business as they round the bases. Harper is in favor of bringing more emotion and flair to the game of baseball, while his AL counterpart, Mike Trout, believes that hitters should be more about the unwritten rules of the game. When asked about the controversy, famed reliever Goose Gossage said, "*%$& these young @#$%#* who want to $%*# this venerated game with their disrespectful %$$*(#!" Anyway, Harper is good at baseballing and I personally think that batters should be allowed to show a little flair as long as they are backing it up with their play. If the pitchers can fist pump and dance around after every strikeout, the batters should be able to flaunt it a bit when they knock the ball into the seats.

Things are picking up in this batch of cards, as young ace Gerrit Cole is the next card in the checklist. He is looking to follow up on the huge success of last year, and the Pirates will need his best as they are playing in one of the toughest Divisions in baseball, with the Cubs and Cardinals also looking to win it all this year.

Here's another guy who is more likely to be demonstrative on the field than not. Yasiel Puig was pretty huge when he hit the league, but spotty play and questionable attitude have him needing to come up with some kind of rebound in his play and some fence-mending in the locker room.

There are another ten cards from the 2014 Topps Finest checklist. I guess this kind of stuff has long fallen out of the hobby news cycle, but I feel compelled to at least try to finish this series. I wouldn't want some future reader to show up on my blog, read about the first 40 cards, and then be left hanging as to what else is in the set.