Pack of the Day 30: 2013 Bowman Baseball Retail Box Pack 10

Here is pack 10/24 in my Retail box of 2013 Bowman Baseball. First up are the usual four base cards. Nice to see a couple of Blue Jays here, especially Reyes with his Maple Leaf cap. He does have that awkward Bowman logo placement thing going on, though. Good thing they're not the Toronto Woodpeckers.

Up next are the two prospect cards that come standard in a pack. I've never heard of either of these guys. Maybe I'm out of touch.

Same story with the Chrome prospects in the pack. Maybe someday they will be famous.

Finally, we get to the inserts in the pack. The one-per-pack Gold parallel is Jayson Werth, he of the heroic man-beard. We also get a 1-per-box Silver Ice parallel of Jose Cisnero, a guy who wasn't that great out of Houston's bullpen this year. His minor league numbers aren't too flashy, either, but he fits into the Astros team collection and that counts for something.

Pack of the Day 29: 2013 Bowman Baseball Retail Box Pack 9

It's been a long time since I visited this particular series of posts. Since then I have come to the conclusion that completing the set through packs would be rather ridiculous, so I bought a base set on eBay. Maybe that's a lot like giving up, but I was bound to spend a lot more money on packs to fill out a set that could be had complete online for around $20. A key contributor to that decision was the fact that none of my local stores had any more of these packs for me to buy, so I would have had to source them from the internet or something. So I will probably play out the series of posts just to do it. I have them tagged with their own special tag so that if someone wanted to wait until the end to see the whole box at once, they could click the tag and do that. I will probably do that at some point so I can remember what I pulled from the box.

The point on Corey Hart's beard makes him look like some kind of leprechaun. Or a total douche. Maybe he's a nice guy. I don't know. All I can do is judge his personality based on a picture of him playing baseball with a douche-beard. I hope I'm wrong. Aaron Hill is falling down making a throw and his dirty uniform suggests that he plays pretty hard. Good for him. Jayson Werth somehow manages to make a face like he's a model for the Cabela's catalog while he's playing baseball. Why is Hart's beard douchey but Werth's is manly and strong? I don't know. Search your feelings, you know it to be true.

Prospects! They do prospecty things! Don't they make batting helmets in prspect sizes? Or do they give them massive helmets as some sort of hazing ritual? Really, if you look at Hart and Werth above, their helmets look normal-sized. On these two dudes, the helmets are engulfing their heads. Does a person's head grow that much in their late teens and early twenties? I don't get it.

Everyone knows his name is Howie, okay, Topps? I got the base card and the Gold parallel in the same pack. If I were a Kendrick collector, this would be like winning the $16.00 prize in Powerball. It's not really that great, but it's pretty awesome compared to all the times you don't match any numbers or you just match one.

Here we have another prospect in a large helmet. He appears to be playing on Hispanic Heritage Day or the Reds' equivalent of that particular promotion. You can tell by his face that he is giving 110% right now. Hopefully this isn't a picture of him running to get in line for his post-game juicebox and hot dog.

And finally, we get to the insert. This is the 38th player in the Bowman Top 100, Alen Hanson. Do I know anything about him? Nope. I do like this insert set, though. 

Pack of the Day 28: Topps Series 2 Hobby Box Break

Well, here is the breakdown of what came out of my box of 2013 Topps Series 2. I haven't got much commentary at the moment. Maybe things will pick up once we get to the cards.

Base Cards - 293 / 330 - 88.79%
Doubles - 0

The collation in this product is pretty good, with no doubles coming out of the box. I guess it would be nice if you could get a few more packs in a box and complete the whole set in one box. But that would be crazy, wouldn't it? At least it's not an old-timey set from the 90's with a 1200-card checklist and 3 doubles in every pack.

Jason Castro made the All-Star team as the token Astro, but more importantly, he recently made the Last Place Teams Collective Super Squad. R.A. Dickey didn't have much of a year, which was quite unfortunate. He did not make the LPTCSS. I just liked the pictures on the David Murphy and Billy Butler cards.

'72 Minis - 9 - David Freese, Tim Lincecum, Willie Stargell, Fred Lynn, Gary Sheffield, Robinson Cano, B.J. Upton, Josh Johnson, Ernie Banks

These '72 minis are pretty cool, but why release this particular year's design in the same year that the '72 design makes up a quarter of the Archives set? I guess there weren't enough other designs in Topps' history to choose from.

Chasing History - 9 - Jason Kipnis, Ken Griffey Jr., Gary Carter, Cal Ripken Jr., Adrian Gonzalez, Sandy Koufax, Robinson Cano, Willie Mays, Mike Schmidt

This design is pretty good, but the mixture of vertical and horizontal orientation bugs the crap out of me. I prefer the horizontal cards. There is a decent mix of old and new players in the checklist.

Making Their Mark - 6 - Mike Olt, Lance Lynn, Will Middlebrooks, Anthony Rizzo, Dylan Bundy, Todd Frazier

This set apparently features key moments early in the careers of various young stars. Anthony Rizzo is pretty cool. I hear good things about that Dylan Bundy guy, too.

Chase It Down - 5 - Jon Jay, Alex Gordon, Mike Moustakas, Cameron Maybin, Adam Jones

This is a set that I like. Action shots of fielding. There is a lot of grass in the pictures. You'll notice that in most of the pictures above and below, the grass on the field is mostly absent. There is hardly any green to be found, aside from the Emerald parallels, of course. I might try to collect the rest of this set someday. It's nice to get some Royals and an Oriole.

World Baseball Classic - 4 - Carlos Beltran, Adrian Gonzalez, Anthony Rizzo, Carlos Gonzalez

I guess I should have saved this for last, because it's all downhill from here. This is my favorite insert set in this product. Look at all the color in the uniforms! Look at how the colorful corners all come together to make a beautiful diamond in the middle of the cards! I want to complete this set. It's awesome to see familiar players in unfamiliar uniforms.

Cut to the Chase - 3 - Buster Posey, Cal Ripken Jr., Sandy Koufax

I feel like these cards should be more exciting to me than they are. They're cool, with all the thick cardstock, glossy sparkle, wild geometric shapes, and die-cut craziness, but I think I'd rather have three more World Baseball Classic cards.

The Elite - 2 - Willie Mays, Ted Williams

These cards are all right, but I am not excited by them very much. They are also super-thick, so they take up a bunch of space that could be filled with more base cards. I'd rather have these be normal-sized cards and get my six additional base cards in the box.

Making Their Mark Relic - 1 - Zack Cozart

Here is the obligatory autograph or relic card promised in every box. It's all right, I guess, but Cozart isn't really on any lists of players I have an interest in.

Emerald Parallel - 6 - Casey Janssen, Ervin Santana, Blake Beavan, Brett Wallace, Lorenzo Cain, Robinson Cano

The Emerald parallels are inferior to the Blue parallels in Opening Day. I did get some Royals, a Blue Jay, and an Astro, so the favorite team mojo was working for me. I'll even ignore that I got a Yankee.

Gold Parallel - 5 - Tom Wilhelmsen, Drew Pomeranz, Justin Smoak, Craig Gentry, Jason Castro

Camo Parallel - 1 - Koji Uehara #95/99

And finally, some Gold parallels and one serially-numbered Camo parallel. I guess the Gold ones are serially-numbered, too, but anything over 999 is a bit silly really. That hasn't stopped me from chasing those Blue Opening Day cards I mentioned earlier, though. I think I would like the Camo card better if it featured a Padre in one of their camouflage jerseys. The favorite team mojo was not with me as much here, as I only got one Astro, and the Mariners I got don't really fit into my list of favorite Mariners.

Total Cards - 344

Still Missing - 339, 368, 377, 398, 404, 428, 481, 490, 498, 528, 547, 559, 566, 598, 607, 614, 643, 651

I've still got 18 cards to go before I finish Series 2. I am still on the fence about whether to chase the Update set too. Does it count as part of the set or is it more like the odd step-cousin of the main set? I don't really know.

Pack of the Day 27: 2011 Press Pass Eclipse NASCAR Trading Cards Box Break

My job was one of the ones affected by the government shutdown, so until they turn the lights back on I find myself with an increase in time away from the office (I hesitate to say free time, because plenty of other stuff steps in to fill the void) and the sudden disappearance of my paycheck. In theory that frees me up to finish out some of these longer blog posts I've had sitting in my folder for a while. Here is one of them.

I opened up a box of 2011 Press Pass Eclipse NASCAR trading cards that I ordered in early August along with a pre-order of some comic book trading cards and boxes of 2013 Topps Series' 1 and 2.

The gimmick behind this product is that the photographs have some sort of digital manipulation applied to them to make them kind of look painted. The cardstock itself also has a textured finish applied to it that is somewhat reminiscent of a painter's canvas. Touches of holofoil around the borders finish off the design elements. Why did I choose this product? The box was on sale for a pretty decent price, with 1 autograph and 3 memorabilia cards promised. But before we get to the hits, here is everything else, along with a breakdown of what I pulled from my box.

Base Set: 90/90
Base Set Doubles: 17

I got a full base set out of the box, with 17 doubles and no triples/quadruples. So collation was perfect. The base set is broken out into a number of subsets. The first 32 cards in the set are represented by that Tony Stewart on the left, portrait cards of different drivers on the circuit, offered up in alphabetical order. The stats on the back focus on the driver's 2010 season, Races Started, Wins, Top 5, Top 10, and Poles. There is also a blurb about the driver, along with at least one horrible art-related pun per driver. This is similar in execution to the terrible military-themed wordplay on the cards from the Stealth set.

The Honor Society cards represented again by Tony Stewart on the right give props to drivers who won different awards or led the different levels of racing competition in 2010. For example, Stewart won the Humanitarian Award for his charity work.

The Horsepower subset showcases some of the cars in NASCAR, shown in order by car number. Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s No. 88 car shows up near the end of the subset. The backs of these cards talk about the different technologies found in the cars and the logistics of keeping the cars going.

The Sand Blast cards feature the events of the awards weekend in Las Vegas, mostly talking about different drivers who received hardware, but also including a couple of the fan events like the Victory Lap parade. Dale Jr.'s card honors his status as the Hamburger Helper Most Popular Driver.

Speedscapes appears to be the art guy or gal's time to shine and go crazy with the neons and filters, showing cars in race situations with more extreme photo-manipulation on display than seen on the other base cards. Again I am featuring Earnhardt Jr.'s card, as he drives from the garage into the pits "where 150,000 screaming fans will come to their collective feet." He's a popular guy.

Finally, the 2011 subset looks ahead to changes being made for the 2011 season, with the focus on drivers who are changing cars or shuffling sponsors. In this case, Marcos Ambrose signed on to drive the Stanley Black & Decker No. 9 car for the 2011 season.

Rides: 6/9 - 99, 48, 20, 83, 00, 42

This insert set features the cars that are at the very least co-stars with the drivers, if not maybe a little more iconic in some cases than the folks who pilot them. The backs of these cards talk about the inspections cars go through before and after races.

Encore: 3/9 - Jimmie Johnson, Kasey Kahne, Joey Logano

I don't really know what Encore is all about, but it focuses on some popular drivers. Apparently they are competitors who compete and their fans are loyal. One thing I like about the inserts in this product is that they are made up of 9 cards, so they fit in card pages without having a single card sitting alone on another page or other shenanigans with unfilled rows. Even the base set fits evenly on 10 card pages.

In Focus: 1/9 - Juan Pablo Montoya

The car is presented in pit row, with the focus centered on it. Everything else is blurred. I don't know if it's the perspective or the focus effects or a combination, but this doesn't even look real. It looks like something you'd see on a model railroad layout. The pit crew look like little plastic figures more than actual people. It's kind of neat.

The back of the card tells us that Montoya knows the best way to win is to be the fastest around the racetrack. I guess that would do it.

Hall of Fame Class of 2011: 1 - Bud Moore

This is a set that I believe just keeps going as new people get inducted to the Hall of Fame each year, so it crosses years and product lines.

Gold Parallel: Tony Stewart Speedscapes #44/55

This replaces the holofoil accents with gold foil and adds a serial number to the mix. I guess I am used to Topps-brand sets with their 6000 different parallels, as many of these racing card products only have one or two parallels per box. Of course, some of the higher-end card sets seem to have three parallels, one base card, and one hit per pack, so it almost seems like the base cards are the ones that are hard to find. It's cool that my one parallel was a decent-looking shot of Tony Stewart's car.

Autograph: Clint Bowyer #97/99

This autograph card is printed on some thin cardstock. Actually, I just compared it to a base card and they're about the same, but it seems thinner. Maybe it's the lack of texture and ornamentation. In fact, if I didn't know any better I'd say this card wasn't really aimed at any particular product. The picture isn't altered to look like a painting and the design elements don't match up with the base cards or the inserts. It doesn't have an Eclipse logo, either. The autograph is on-card, though, which is nice, and the penmanship is pretty legit compared to many of the scrawls that are out there. Bowyer is not a favorite driver of mine, but he isn't a scrub either.

Spellbound: Joey Logano G Shirt #013/150, Dale Earnhardt Jr. N Tire #062/125, Tony Stewart W Tire #11/100

I got pretty lucky with my three relic cards, as all of them feature drivers on my short list of favorites. I guess each driver has a number of different cards, each containing a letter of their last name. The different cards have different levels of rarity, so Logano might have 250 L's out there and only 150 G's. I don't know why, as that kind of defeats the purpose of trying to collect a full name in some cases.

Logano's relic is a shirt. Unlike the autograph above, these cards are done in the design of the regular set, with paint effects added to the photos and the Eclipse logo featured on the card fronts.

Earnhardt's relic is a race-used tire swatch numbered out of #/125. The colored band containing the relic is a nice touch, coordinating with the driver's firesuit.

Last is another tire swatch, this one from Tony Stewart. He is my favorite driver out of this bunch, and his card is the lowest-numbered, being out of #/100. The other difference between this and the other guys' Spellbound cards is that the foil accents are red on this card instead of gold. I don't know if he also has gold W cards out there with higher numbers or if Press Pass just wanted to mix things up a bit. Maybe the Spellbound sets have parallels, and that's why I've see different cards with wildly varying print runs on eBay. I never really stopped to look at the foil colors.

I haven't had much luck with single packs of high-end NASCAR stuff (or high-end anything really), but the mid-range stuff I've ordered so far seems to give a decent value for the money based on my experience. The base sets tend to be small enough to fill from one box, for the most part, and the inserts and memorabilia/signatures tend to be okay. Between race car parts and the colorful patches and uniforms the drivers wear, there is potential for some nice flashy memorabilia cards, and if you shop around in products that are a year or two old there are some pretty good bargains to be had that still feature drivers who are relevant and prominent today.

Contested Shots 2: Guess What Number Play at the Plate is Thinking of?

Play at the Plate held a contest a few weekends ago, in which participants had to use clues given every hour (or so) to guess the player and the serial number of the Allen & Ginter's red-ink autograph he had pulled. I didn't win that contest but due to the silliness that went on in the final post's comment section he held a secondary drawing for a rack pack of Allen & Ginter's. I couldn't win the test of skill, but I did win the game of chance as I had earned enough entries with my comments to tilt the odds in my favor. Here are some of my personal highlights from the rack pack I received in the mail the other day.

The Mr. Olympia contest was held again last week, and Phil Heath won it again, so that card is somewhat relevant to current news events. I really want to get his autograph and relic cards from the set, but I haven't done it yet. Of course, given the nature of the 'uniforms' bodybuilders wear at events, I don't know that I would want to actually touch the relic swatch. Spray-on-tan-soaked man-thongs aren't really something I'm into as a collector, although I would assume there has to be a niche market for that kind of thing. My curiosity is almost piqued enough to Google that, but I will resist for now.

Thanks for the contest! It was a lot of fun, especially with the way things turned out on the final post.

What eBay Hath Wrought 18: Gold Jurickson Profar and a Bonus

The main card I was interested in was the Archives Gold parallel, as I already had at least one of the Archives base card and Bowman Platinum doesn't really hold much interest for me. But the Buy It Now price was within my price range for just the Gold card, so I pulled the trigger. Past auctions have had the Gold parallel go for between $1 and $8.50. This lot fell right in the middle of that. I definitely didn't want to pay the $17.24 that they want on COMC for it.

Showing Off 1: There's a First Time for Everything

The somewhat local card shop hosts a card show every few months. I hadn't ever been to a card show, so I thought I might try it out. I got there about an hour before the doors closed, so probably about half of the dealers had already closed up shop. There were still a fair number of tables occupied, though, so there was still a decent amount of stuff to look at.

The first thing I bought was the last two packs from a box of Topps Chrome on the table of the guy running the show, so I could get change for my $20 bill. The thumbprints on the cards all came from me. Not much to say about the base cards. Here they are:

And here are the two horizontal cards from the packs. I think my favorite thing about Topps Chrome cards is the smell that they have. It's a plasticky chemical scent that probably causes cancer in the state of California. I have just confirmed that Panini Prizm cards have the same scent.

I did not pull either of the two autographs allocated per box, and I had to settle for two base Refractors as my inserts. At least they are Refractors of decent players; Joe Mauer and Yasiel Puig. I guess I ought to put the Puig on eBay. It's going for upwards of $10 right now. That just seems a little ridiculous to me. But I guess the demand is there. I've picked up a little bit of Chrome here and there so far, but I didn't think I wanted to try building the set, as you only get about 3-1/3 base cards per pack. At $2.99 per retail pack and assuming perfect collation, it would take me 67 packs to build the set, or $200.33 + tax. Boo! Sure, there is the off chance that I could hit some kind of crazy hit and be happy, but especially on the retail side the odds are against me. So I ordered a complete base set from a case buster on eBay for $25.00 and am calling it good. Now I can pick up a pack here or there without feeling driven to buy Moar! and Moar! in an attempt to finish a set. In looking at my Bowman set I finally decided to do the same thing, as I have busted a lot of that product and still was quite a bit short of a full set. I enjoy building a set just as much as anyone else, but I like to keep my sets mostly achievable, like Opening Day or the flagship set, stuff that offers 7 or 10 cards in a lower-priced pack. That is probably enough rant for now. I should just be happy that I pulled a Puig Refractor and not some scrub base card.

I think I read a blog post a while ago that warned against wearing team- or player-specific clothing to card shows because then that's all people will try to sell you, but I forgot about it until just now. I wore my Marshawn Lynch Seahawks jersey to the show, and everyone tried to sell me Russell Wilson? cards, even people who had Lynch cards visible on their tables. I had to explain to them that I am mostly a Denver Broncos fan, and I don't think any of them believed me. Next time I will have to wear something neutral.

The guy I bought the next batch of cards from really tried to push a Ronnie Hillman (one of this year's Broncos Running Backs) relic card on me, but this is the card I was interested in:

The card says something about this being a Veronica Mars card, but I don't even know what that is. This is a card signed by the actress who played Deb in Napoleon Dynamite, Tina Majorino. I don't think there were ever any Napoleon Dynamite autograph cards released, so this is about as close as it gets for fans of that movie.

I also got this Panini Prestige die-cut transparent acetate card of Marshawn Lynch from the same seller. It is a pretty good addition to the collection, although I don't know why the guy didn't lead with it, as I was wearing the jersey featured on the card. Same colors, same player, everything. I don't know.

The guy was pretty frustrated by the lack of business he'd had at the show and told me he wouldn't be coming back in December for the next one. I don't know what card shows generally look like, but there can't be a lot of collectors in this area anyway, and the guy didn't exactly have a table overflowing with stuff that would pull in piles of cash.

Many of the dealers had two tables covered with 5000-count boxes of singles, maybe some display cases for bigger hits, and a couple odds and ends like bobbleheads, magazines, or complete sets. Most of them seemed to be pretty happy with the amount of business they'd seen. This dude had probably 50 cards laid out on a small table, and I didn't see anything mind-boggling among the selection. I would imagine a show is what you make of it.

He tossed in these two Elway cards. I guess that's pretty cool. I didn't even notice them on the table until he added them to the stack. I want to know why Elway is so flippin' orange all the time. He's like a human carrot. I was watching the Denver game this last week and the camera kept zooming in on his face. It was scary. I guess this explains it.

The last table I lingered at had some player-specific boxes of basketball cards. I overpaid for six Hakeem Olajuwon cards for my long-neglected player collection. Don't get me wrong, these are all the nifty insert cards I wouldn't have been able to purchase at the card shop in my youth (I could only afford base cards because I am terrible at saving my money) and I like them, but I overpaid.

When I was a kid, Olajuwon signed a deal with Spalding to release a shoe that kids could afford. The internet way-back machine tells me the MSRP on those was $35.00. I had a pair of them and still store part of my Olajuwon collection in the box they came in, but they didn't really have any staying power. Just a few days ago he released a new shoe as part of his DR34M SHAKE fashion line. The price on it is $185.00. It is also butt-ugly. I guess even our heroes can have flaws.

I may already have this base card. I may even have a picture of it on this blog. I don't know.

 After I got the Olajuwons I felt a little bad about the price I paid for them, the show was just about to close, and my pocket was pretty much empty of cash, so I left. I think that if I go again I need to give myself time to dig through the cheap boxes and work toward my want lists rather than just running around at the last minute without a plan.

The highlights of the show were probably the Majorino autograph, the Puig Refractor, and the two Olajuwon Flair Showcase cards.