Pack of the Day 35: This Seems a Little Relic-ulous

I was at Target the other day looking for cards, and I saw some 2013 Panini Football Rookies & Stars packs that looked a little bit different from the blue ones I was used to seeing. It had only 5 cards per pack and said Longevity in place of the Rookies & Stars tagline on the front. But I didn't see the Longevity thing until later. I thought I would buy a pack of it and a pack of the regular Rookies & Stars cards to compare what you get in a pack.

While I was there I also grabbed another Rack Pack of Rookies & Stars and a clearance-priced blaster of 2013 Topps Archives. It would sure be nice to pull a Mike Trout Gold parallel out of a pack, as the card alone can cost as much as a Hobby Box. I missed out on one that was on eBay a few days ago with a But It Now of $25, but it must have only been listed for an hour or two.

First up is the regular pack of Rookies & Stars football. This is not really anything we haven't seen before, with nine base cards and a basic insert. I just like looking at these cards. I've seen complaints about the big stripe up the side, but I like it. What I don't like is pulling Joe Flacco out of every pack I open.



And four more players I don't really give a flip about. I think a couple of them were needed for my set, though, so they are not entirely useless.

The insert was one of those pack filler Game Plan cards, distinguishable from a base card by virtue of a different design layout and a little bit of foil. I also got a base card of Larry Fitzgerald. A while back I had the habit of drafting him in Fantasy Football leagues, only to be disappointed yet again. Elite Wide Receivers are almost never worth the price you pay for them on draft day, because they tend to disappear for a few games out of the year, typically whichever ones are really key for your season. Running Backs tend to get their touches no matter what, but when it comes to the passing game things are a little more dependent on the defense they're going up against.

So what is this Longevity stuff? It appears to be a shiny version of the regular Rookies & Stars set, almost like a Topps Chrome, only the finish on the cards is more foil than gloss. I don't even know if that makes sense, but they remind me of a 94-95 Upper Deck SE Basketball card of Grant Hill that I once pulled from a pack. It was one of the bigger hits of my young collecting days, especially if I can remember pulling it when so many other big moments of my life are foggy at best.

There isn't much of note among my five cards. I guess that Reggie Wayne is pretty good. But this pack had six cards in it...

Instead of a cardboard filler, I got this Dress for Success relic card of DeAndre Hopkins, a Wide Receiver for the Texans. It's slightly better than cardboard filler. We'll see if he pans out and sticks in the NFL.

The next thing I busted open was the Archives Baseball blaster. The first pack I busted open had this Justin Verlander relic card in it, so this was my second relic card of the night. It's pretty cool, and it's an upgrade to Game-Used rather than the Event-Used of the Hopkins card.

I already had both of the short-prints that came out of the box, so it was disappointing not to get any of the 8 I still need to finish out the set. I also had both of the All-Star cards that I pulled. I think I've got three of the Rickey Henderson cards now.

Same story with the 4-Yankees-in-1 sticker and the Ripken Tall Boy. All of them were already in my collection at least once. But that Derek Jeter Gallery of Heroes card was not one that I had in my collection, and the Gallery of Heroes set seems to be one of the harder ones to find cheaply on the secondary market, although the real expensive stuff seems to be the key Gold parallel cards. I think the relics are 1:40ish packs and the Gallery of Heroes cards are 1:33ish packs, so I had decent luck this time around.

I think that the Dual Fan Favorites cards are a retail-exclusive set. I am not chasing this particular set, but this card is pretty neat. It almost makes me want to complete the set. We'll see how I feel later. It's a pretty nice card, even if the old/new thing gets a lot of play on insert sets.

I had to throw in a few base cards because it wouldn't feel right to just post the hits. I will repost that Derek Holland card as many times as I can. It's that good.

 

Now I'll get to the Rack Pack of Panini Rookies & Stars I grabbed on the way out of the card aisle.

 

I didn't even know that Tim Tebow was in this set, but I was pretty happy to get his card in the Rack Pack. It's too bad that he won't open up to playing a different position, as he seems like a decent role model and it seems like he's got enough drive and talent to make it as a tight end or running back or something. I guess the most likely outcome is that he will continue to slowly drift out of the limelight and never get onto an NFL roster again.

Adrian Peterson had quite a rough week as his 2-year-old son died after being beaten by his babysitter, the boyfriend of the boy's mother. The news media has covered about every angle they can on this. I felt pretty terrible the day that it happened, probably mostly because my twin boys are two years old and I can't imagine hurting them or their older brother like that. The media discovered that Peterson may not have ever met the boy, as he only took the paternity test a little while ago and hadn't really done anything in public with him like he has with his other kids. In all the hubbub we tend to forget the important thing, which to me is that a little kid was killed by someone who has no excuse for it.

After that dark spot we have last year's best rookie quarterback and also RG III. Russell Wilson still hasn't lost a game at his home stadium in Seattle. RG III has been dealing with trying to recover from an Achilles injury and who knows if he will live up to his huge potential or if he will spend his career constantly injured and never quite playing 100%, sort of like Michael Vick, although hopefully without the jail time and the dog-fighting ring. A lot of it probably has to do with team context, though, as Wilson is tied to a pretty great all-around team and Griffin is not as well-protected and also has to play from behind a lot with the way his team plays defense.

As far as inserts go, I got a Longevity insert of Matt Barkley, which is apparently different from the Longevity set seen above. It has the same shiny foil treatment, but it has the word Longevity printed in the background several million times, so you know it's an insert.

Oh, and I got the third relic card of the night, a Marquise Goodwin Rookie Materials card, with a fairly large swatch of blue jersey material.

The card is numbered 224, and the back of the pack tells me that Rookie Materials are the last 40 cards of the base set. I wonder how many people really believe that? So not only do you have 100 short-printed rookies, you have 40 super-short-printed relic cards. I may try to finish the 100-card rookie set, but I am not going to chase these relics. The design is decent, but I don't need that kind of stress in my life.

It was a pretty big night for relic cards. I wish I still got as excited about them as I used to, but I have grown jaded and cynical. Apparently Panini has, too, as they are including jersey cards in a lower-budget product as part of the base set. That Verlander card was an all-right pull, although I don't have much use for it. For me the real hit of the night was the Derek Jeter Gallery of Heroes card and the runners-up were the Tim Tebow and Russell Wilson base cards.

Pack of the Day 34: 2013 Bowman Chrome Value Pack and a Mostly Unrelated Story

I opened up a Value Pack of 2013 Bowman Chrome. Three packs of Bowman Chrome and three bonus retail-exclusive Green Refractors.

I'll present the cards in the order they were opened. First up are the Green Refractors. Nothing too exciting here. Josh Willingham, a prospect I've never heard of, and the Braves catcher I don't harbor any ill feelings toward.

Next up is Pack #1. I hate that you only get three cards per pack in this product. I don't know that I will be buying much more of it because I don't intend to build the set and I don't like getting only three cards in a pack. Even regular Chrome gives you four cards in a pack.

Dexter Fowler in his running away from a monster picture that has been used a few times this year in other products and Jacoby Ellsbury, who is a good player but I haven't formed any strong opinions about him either way.

Hey, isn't there supposed to be another card in that pack? Yup, it's an autograph from Eduardo Rodriguez, who only has four elements in his signature that could be considered letters, but manages to use the whole card. I guess the whited-out spot at the bottom of the picture wasn't a good enough clue as to where the signature goes? I'm pretty sure I've seen this guy's card on another blog with the same commentary attached to it. Still, it's an autograph from a retail pack, so that counts for something. I don't know anything about this guy. Hopefully he's a decent player.

Pack #2 gives us a base CC Sabathia and a Padres prospect named Jeremy Baltz, whoever that is. Sabathia didn't have a very good season.

This pack also yielded a Ben Revere Refractor, with a guest appearance by the letter C and the letter R. By way of trivia, my Fantasy Baseball team this year was named Ben Revere's Ride. And yes, he did spend a little bit of time on my roster, going 28/68 (.412) with 6 runs, 0 home runs, 7 RBIs, and 2 stolen bases. My 2nd-place finish was somewhat tainted by the presence of Everth Cabrera, who had about 1/4 of my team's total stolen bases before being suspended for PED use. The bulk of my other steals came from Ian Desmond, who I picked up after Cabrera was suspended, and Leonys Martin.

Pack #3 saved the mediocrest for last, with three base cards. Bumgarner has the unfortunate Bowman logo placement thing going on, as it appears that there is a little Giant on his pants. Tom Murphy is excited, and Ben Revere doesn't want us to forget about him.

The autograph really saves this group of cards, in spite of the quality and placement of the scrawl. Those Green Refractors are a deep green that makes me think of Christmas ornaments. I just can't effectively deal with the three cards per pack thing. 

I nearly forgot to add my mostly unrelated story. On the day that I went out and bought these cards, I also stopped at a gas station convenience store to pick up some soda. I know it seems like I wear my Marshawn Lynch jersey nearly every day because it's been mentioned on the blog a few times, but I do have and wear other clothes. Anyway, I was wearing my Marshawn Lynch jersey. So while I was at the counter paying for my stuff I see someone come into the store in my peripheral vision. Then I feel a big slap on my back and the guy yells, "Beast Mode!" which is Marshawn Lynch's nickname. I am not all that keen on physical contact anyway, especially from random strangers, so I just kind of ignored the dude. So he brings his purchases up to the counter and continues trying to engage me in conversation, like, "Hey man, come on, Beast Mode! Yeah! Seahawks!" I gave a rather non-committal, "Yeah!" and went on my way after collecting my receipt and my items. I guess we both kind of came off poorly in each others' eyes, as I was the recipient of unwanted physical and social contact and he was offended by my lack of reciprocal engagement in a common fandom. If you ever run into me in the real world, please don't slap me on the back or grab my shoulder, especially if I am not expecting you to do so.

What eBay Hath Wrought 22: Golden Yankees

I got 2nd place in one of my Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball leagues this season, and the prize was $70. Instead of doing the responsible thing and using that money for good, I used it to help fill in my 2013 Topps Archives Gold parallel set. Unfortunately, this lot contains a lot of Yankees and Ryan Braun. Also, some of these cards were purchased on Sportlots, but I couldn't come up with a post category for that, so I lumped them into my eBay category.

It's a good thing this group has Chris Davis in it, because otherwise I would hate it. I hope that his massive power binge this season was because of natural stuff like changes in plate approach and luck rather than the artificial boosters that Braun, A-Roid, others have used. I know it's impossible to know for sure who is and who is not doping and there is some debate as to whether that really matters, but I feel like players should compete to the best of their natural abilities or the game just becomes a matter of who can inject the most stuff into themselves without blowing up.

Yankee count so far: 1

Nike Swoosh count: 2

David Freese is either very popular or very unpopular right now, depending on how you feel about the Cardinals. I am indifferent to them at this point in time. My favorite guy here is Fernando Rodney. His hat is ridiculous. Some people really don't like his hat tilted off to the side like that, but since he's the one guy in the spotlight who does that consistently, it's quirky and I think the guys who do things a little bit differently are the ones who make being a fan more fun.

Yankee count: 2

Nike Swoosh count: 4

I don't have a lot to say about this group. They fill spots in my binder, although I have a bit of a binder dilemma on the way. That's a teaser for a future blog post, though. We don't get any get any Yankees in this particular batch, but there is one Swoosh.

Yankees: 2

Nike Swooshes: 5

Here we get into the 1990 Topps set, which I really like. I really need to get a couple boxes of it to bust open and relive my childhood. Goose Gossage is a cool enough guy that his Yankeehood isn't too effonsive to me. Clayton Kershaw looks a little like a Muppet.

Yankees: 3

Nike Swooshes: 5 6 (edit: I think I see another Swoosh there on Arroyo's glove)

I didn't order any of my favorite Blue Jays, but Brett Lawrie is kind of a borderline guy. I almost got a tattoo last year commemorating parts of my military service, but I backed out at the last minute. I still want to get it, but it's one of those things that can sit on the back burner for a couple more years before I bring it back up. I definitely wouldn't be getting full sleeves like Lawrie has.

Yankees: 5

Nike Swooshes: 5 6

The Nike Swooshes tailed off there at the end and the Yankees got a big boost to almost catch up to them. Does it mean anything? I don't know. I guess Nike's corporate presence is just as pervasive in baseball card sets as the Yankees are. This is a pretty small sample size, though.

Pardon the Sawdust...

I am working on some changes to the template for my blog. Things may get a little wacky before they settle down.

At the Trade Deadline 6: Allen & Ginter's from Nachos Grande

It's been a little while now, but I completed a trade with Chris over at Nachos Grande involving a variety of stuff going his way and a bunch of 2013 Allen & Ginter's coming my way. I had sort of put off this post for a while because how much A & G can you take in one year? Now that people have moved on to Topps Chrome, Bowman Chrome, Topps Mini, and Gint-A-Cuffs V is over, I think it would be a good time to revisit the set by discussing this trade.

The main component of the trade that came my way was a complete base set of cards 1-350. I had purchased two hobby boxes and a number of other packs and wasn't even close to finishing out the set, so when he posted that he had one available I jumped on it. I've chosen not to scan any of the base cards because we've all seen most of them a zillion times.

The other stuff he sent were some inserts that I needed for my One Little Corner and Palaces & Strongholds sets. Those One Little Corner cards are beautiful. I'm glad I took the time this evening to bust open the binder and take a look at them. [Insert juvenile joke about Uranus here, then giggle.]

These Palaces & Strongholds cards are pretty neat, too, although some of the photos came out better than others. Some of the cards in this set look like Topps took the tiniest picture they could find, blew it up to card size, and in the process lost all the definition and detail in the photo. I still need seven cards from each of these sets, but it seems like A & G trading is about done for the year.

I have had a few good rounds of correspondence with Chris and I'm pretty happy to have all of these new cards in my collection. I am usually pretty open to swaps, but I am terrible about keeping up on my e-mail. I know there are a few people I've failed to connect with over the last couple of months.

Pack of the Day 33: 2013 Panini Rookies & Stars Football Rack Pack

With it being football day and all, I thought I would bust open a rack pack of Panini's 2013 Rookies & Stars NFL product. I have posted once about this stuff previously, when I bought a couple of packs to try out something new. Since then I believe I have bought 4 new rack packs, and that's about all. Each rack pack has 40 cards in it. In my experience this is made up of 2 inserts, 4 SP rookie cards, and 34 base cards.

Here's a sampling of what I got in today's pack, along with my commentary about stuff, at no cost to you (well, no cost except for your time and maybe some brain cells).

Seeing Greg Jennings in a uniform other than the Packers is a little bit jarring. Even though I knew he had moved over there and there was a little jawing back and forth about it that made the sports news pages, I hadn't actually seen any pictures of it until now. I am not attached to the Packers or Jennings in any way, but I still think of him as a Green Bay receiver.

How bad has Eli Manning been this year? Ermagersh, it's painful to see his stat line every week, especially since I drafted him in my Fantasy Football league this year. He's had one good week this year. You know it's a bad year when you're thinking about picking up an Oakland Raiders QB to improve your roster. He's got street cred built on a couple of Super Bowl victories, but how long before you blow up this team and start over?

Doug Martin played for Boise State here in Idaho, so I thought I'd toss his card on the scanner for this post. Tampa Bay has had plenty of drama this season, shipping Josh Freeman out of town to be picked up by the Vikings.  And I don't have much to say about Eddie Lacy except that I've shuffled him on and off my fantasy roster a few times this year without playing him, either because of injury or matchup problems.

The first insert in the pack was this Crusade Blue card of Tavon Austin. I like this insert design. It's shiny as all heck and all of the different color variations look pretty darn good. So far this season Austin has been a bit of a bust, but things change fairly fast in the league. He went early in the draft, so there must be some talent there. He's currently losing snaps to this guy, Austin Pettis, a player who was supposed to be fading out and being overtaken by Austin this year after not producing much during his time in the league so far.

The highlight of the pack for me has to be pulling an insert of the Denver Broncos QB, Peyton Manning, who is on pace to set the single-season record book on fire. Of course, there are still a lot of games to play and injuries and momentum shifts can put an end to these kinds of runs in a hurry, but so far the Broncos have been ridiculous. I wish I would have drafted this Manning brother in my fantasy league. In some weeks he alone scores more points than entire teams.

I love the design of this set. Everything about the front of the cards appeals to me. The card-backs feature a nice photo and logo of the player's team, but it unfortunately cuts out space for statistics. I like to see a player's full career, year-by-year, on the back of my trading cards. This set features 2012 stats and career totals along with a few blurbs featuring key stats, honors, or nicknames.

I like that the set is smaller in scope, restricting itself to the eponymous Rookies & Stars of the NFL. What I don't like is the collation and the short-printed rookies. I think I bought my 2nd and 3rd rack packs together, and only got something like 7 new cards for the Stars portion of the set. Out of 72 base cards I got like 65 doubles. It was disappointing and it took me a while to get another pack. Today's pack filled in a lot of the gaps, but then I run into the short-printed rookies problem. The first 100 cards are the Stars, and the second 100 cards are the Rookies. I have 84/100 of the Stars and 19/100 of the Rookies. How many flippin' doubles am I going to have to absorb from the Stars before I get all the Rookies? That I don't like. I guess they need to get their money from me and all the other suckers out there.

Pros: Card Design, Crusade Insert Set, Checklist

Cons: Collation, Too Many Short-Prints

Pack of the Day 32: 2013 Bowman Retail Box Break Pack 11: His Name is Rio

I guess the highlight of the base cards is that Manny Machado RC. I like the way this design looks in the binder, but it really does lose a lot of points when it comes to scanning. The player names are absolutely unreadable on the scans until I blow the pictures way up. I guess I could get a better scanner, but I don't know if that would help. It might just make for prettier unreadable cards.

The usual number of prospects is here in the pack. Since there are two Chrome prospects we know we didn't get any Refractor-type inserts. Rio Ruiz is a young Astros prospect. He was born six years before I graduated from High School.

CC Sabathia is the Gold parallel for this pack, and Hansel Robles gets the Hometown parallel treatment on his card, with the flag of the Dominican Republic serving as the background for his photo. 

We're getting close to halfway through the box, and I only opened it and scanned the cards a little over a month ago. I guess any pictures of baseball cards are good pictures of baseball cards.