The Itch to Rip - 1991 Topps Pack

Sometimes you just get the itch to rip.  Here's a pack of 1991 Topps from my pack shelf, part of a wax box that I've been slowly ripping through over time while hand-collating a set.  Last Topps flagship set printed on classic cardboard stock, last Topps flagship set to include a stick of gum.  The end of an era...

Tim Belcher leads us off, and his Dodgers cap is a good example of how the player photograph is allowed to overlap the border of the card to add some dimension.

This one made me chuckle, just because I can remember what a huge prospect McDonald was when the O's drafted him in the late '80s.  A really great-looking card here, with a fantastic photo and border colors that work so well with the Orioles team.

Awesome!  Always loved this card of the Big Cat.  I actually have a buyback version of this one currently in my Buyback Franken-set binder.  I know many collectors prefer vertically-oriented cards, but this is close to junk wax era perfection if you ask me!

Sweet!  Always liked the retro White Sox uniforms that appeared on some of the cards in this era.  Robin Ventura sporting the Topps All-Star Rookie Cup in that uniform is just fantastic.  I remember prizing this one as a kid.  There are actually two different versions of this card available, with this version being identifiable based on the darker brown inner border of the card shooting upwards from the Rookie Cup there.

Each pack comes with one of these Instant Win Game cards, and no it does not count as one of the promised 15 cards in the pack.  Can we talk about the fact that this pack includes 15 cards, actually?  Man, those were the days.

A nice Expos card here, and you have to love any card that features a parking lot in the background!

A nice, classic pose on this Dan Pasqua.

Ditto!

This one on the other hand, has to be one of the most boring cards on the checklist, no?

By contrast, Marvell Wynne received an absolutely amazing card in this release.  What an epic photograph, perfectly framed and clearly snapped at the famed Wrigley Field.  Based on photography and cropping alone, this has to be one of the nicer commons in this entire release.

Skinny-days Barry Bonds!  I really used to detest this guy maybe 15-20 years ago, even more so after reading Game of Shadows cover to cover.  These days I'm a lot more mellow about life in general, including Barry Bonds, and I actually kind of enjoy pulling his cards.  Especially the Pirates era ones.

Rounding it out with Andujar Cedeno, who for some reason the photographer asked to stand directly in front of that super distracting shadow?

That was a fun trip down memory lane, as these packs always seem to be.  Takes me right back to opening packs of this stuff after Little League games back in the day.

Thanks as always for stopping by, and I'll be back with more content later this weekend!

Wal-Mart Re-Pack - The True Finale

Earlier this year I picked up a lot of 100 random packs from Wal-mart's website for the reasonable price of $40.  I had a lot of fun ripping through all the packs and posting the highlights here on the blog.  Way back at the beginning of August I posted the final batch of those packs.  Or did I?

I turns out the seller was pretty gracious and actually included well over 100 total packs in the box, which is pretty cool.  So, a few months later let's look at that overflow and finally call this round of posts done, shall we?

As with before I'll handle these in batches and show only the highlights.  First up, a couple packs of 2014 Topps, and a 2008 Upper Deck First Edition Update.

The Upper Deck pack was a total dud, which doesn't sting so bad at a price point of 40 cents.  One of the two Topps packs yielded this Jonny Gomes however, a card which was surprisingly missing from my team collection.  I'll take it!

Next up, a combination of 2012, 2013 and 2014 flagship packs...

Only the 2012 pack yielded anything of interest to me, in this second year Mike Trout card.  This looks to be about a $4-$5 card looking at COMC, so I'm not going to retire by cashing this in, but might make a nice throw-in for a future trade package anyway.

The Topps train continues, with 2010 Update, 2012 Series 2 and 2006 Series 2...

Unfortunately there was not a keeper to be found for me within these three packs.  Can't win 'em all!

Here's where things take an interesting turn, a pack of 2007 Topps sandwiched between a pair of fat/hanger packs, one from Fleer Ultra and one from Upper Deck!

The Ultra pack was good to me, as it yielded a new Jason Varitek for my Red Sox collection.  I really like the full-bleed minimalist design from Ultra around this time, though I admit the designs all seem to blur together with the passage of time.

Also decided to keep this late-career card of Greg Maddux with the Padres.  I was an impressionable young baseball fan when he rose to prominence with Atlanta, so I've always had a soft spot for Greg.  At some point in the future though I could see myself sending this one out to another collector, not sure it's destined for the long haul here at Shoebox Legends World Headquarters.

The Upper Deck pack was even more interesting.  Each half of the pack included one of these All-Time Legends inserts.  While not terribly creative in name or design/theme, I at least appreciate pulling some big names I'm familiar with.  The top half of the pack spit out this Killebrew...

...and this Julio Franco, someone I half-heartedly collect simply due to the age he stuck around in the Majors until (I half collect Jamie Moyer and Bartolo Colon for the same reason).

The bottom half of the pack contained this Johnny Bench from the All-Time Legends insert set...

...and a really neat card for my Red Sox collection, featuring current manager Alex Cora in front of a distant and blurred Green Monster!  Really happy to have pulled this one, easily my favorite card in tonight's post anyway.

Perhaps the most interesting packs in the entire lot were these one-card exclusive patch card packs, which typically come as the guaranteed "hit" in a blaster.  I'm not big on manu-patch cards at all, but was hoping I could either pull a Red Sox card or two, or if not at least end up with some decent trade fodder.

First up, Ernie Banks.  I suppose I'll be able to find a home for this one, there are enough Cubs and HOF collectors out there anyway.

The other one I'll certainly be able to ship out, as I have two Mets collectors in particular that I've been trading with for quite literally years now.

So, in retrospect how was my experience overall with this gigantic re-pack lot of packs?  To be honest, I think this would have been a better fit for me years ago when I was into keeping any and every new baseball card that I didn't already have a copy of.  These days I just don't have the mental energy, and don't want to dedicate the required space in my house, to hang onto that sheer volume of cardboard.

The approach I took with these definitely helped though, as I retained only 87 total cards from this entire lot for my own collection.  Nearly all of the others have already been packaged and shipped out to my trading buddies over the past few months.  On the one hand, I'd have been smarter to use the $40 on something like a graded T206, but sometimes you just get the itch to rip.  For $40 these provided hours of pack-ripping enjoyment, and at least half a dozen blog posts.

In summary, not a deal I'd probably jump at again, but not one that I regret either.

That's all for tonight, but I've got plenty of awesome content coming up, including arguably the single greatest card I've ever been sent out of the blue in the entire time I've been running this blog!  Until then, thanks as always for stopping by...

Prizm a Plenty!

A few weeks back I picked up a hanger pack of 2018 Panini Prizm World Cup cards on a whim while strolling through Target.  I really liked the cards, but wasn't such a fan of the $9.99-for-15-cards price point.  Well, I ended up doing this...

I found a couple of giant lots of unopened hobby packs on eBay, what amounted to a few boxes worth, at a price that worked out to well under $2 per pack.  Now that's my kind of bargain!  Even now, a couple of months later and well after the conclusion of the tournament, boxes are still going north of $100 (and contain 24 packs), so this was a good deal in my mind.

Now, I'm not completely naive.  I realize what likely happened here.  Odds are a case breaker just ripped packs from new boxes until they found the guaranteed "hit" in each, then set the rest of the unopened packs from each box aside for this lot.  Doesn't bother me in the least given that I paid about a third of the price, and am more interested in completing the base set and pulling a few cool parallels than I am in pulling an autograph.

Tonight's post will cover the first 24 packs I ripped open, a poor man's hobby box so to speak.  With five base cards per pack (plus one parallel/insert/hit), and a relatively deep (by soccer standards, anyway) 300-card checklist, it would take perfect collation across 60 packs to finish the base set.

Happy to have pulled Ronaldo in my first batch of packs here, given that he would certainly be one of the pricier singles to have to chase down later.

I landed quite a few of the game's brightest stars in the base cards that I pulled here.  James Rodriguez was easily one of the best players in the 2014 World Cup with Columbia...

...and the same goes for Luka Modric in the 2018 World Cup with surprise finalists Croatia.  This is just my second card of the 2018 World Cup's Golden Ball winner.

All told, between these 24 packs and the cards I had previously I am now sitting at 140/300 for the base set, or 46.7% complete.  Plenty more packs to go however, hopefully the next 24 get me over the 60% mark at least.

As far as inserts and parallels go, I pulled just one of these Connections inserts, featuring Sweden.  Maybe my least favorite insert, but I only pulled a single one and it was new to me at least.

Next up, Fundamentals.  I ended up with only one of these as well, featuring Toni Kroos of Germany.  I doubt whether either of these first two are all that rare in terms of insertion ratio, most likely just a result of the random grouping of loose packs I was sent.

And now, the two insert sets I actually like, New Era, featuring the brightest young stars in the game...

...and Scorer's Club, which as the name implies showcases the sport's best offensive talents.  I pulled five New Era inserts and five Scorer's Club cards as well.  Worked out nicely that I pulled the two sets I enjoy five times as often as the two I don't.

The highlight of the product for me are the numerous colorful and amazingly shiny parallels.  In this grouping I pulled a single Hyper Prizm parallel, Swiss defender Ricardo Rodriguez, who plays his club ball for Italy's A.C. Milan.

I got a pair of these sweet-looking Mojo Prizms (gotta laugh at that name).  These look great in hand, and even better on the scanner bed apparently.  The better of the two I pulled is this Kasper Schmeichel, who was Leicester City's goalie during their improbable rise to the top of the Premier League table (and is still their starting goalkeeper to this day).

The most common parallel was, as expected, the Silver Prizm.  Think of these as equivalent to a basic Refractor in the Topps Chrome products.  They look nice, and allow you to see much more of the background texture and design elements than their darker base card counterparts.

I ended up with eight of these, so basically pulled one every three packs.  My favorite was certainly this Philippe Coutinho, one of the game's premier players in that tier right below the Neymars/Ronaldos/Messis of the world.  Philippe was so fun to watch during his time with Liverpool that I've been searching out his cards for years now, was nice to pull a new one for my collection from a pack myself.

I also landed this rarer Red Prizm featuring Gustav Svensson of Sweden, and serial-numbered to /149.  I was excited to pull this even though I admittedly don't know much about Gustav as a player, because I may try to build a franken-set of the 300-card set built entirely of different parallels, and this will be a unique addition towards that project anyway.

Well, that was fun.  I don't rip packs all that often, and opening that many of them from a set I enjoy was some good entertainment I have to say.  I actually just finished ripping through the next 24 packs, and will have those results up here in the next week or so.

Thanks for checking in!

The Spirit of Giving

I don't know if it's just me (I don't think it is), but it seems as though the online card collecting community was even more giving than normal this holiday season.  There have been numerous times over the past month where I finally got caught up on trade posts, only to be inundated with a flood of new packages in my mailbox the very next week.

This happened again in the week or two leading up to Christmas, and it was just such a busy time for me that the packages sat on my desk for a good stretch there.  It will be nice if I can catch up again to start off the new year, and towards that end I've got three awesome trade packages to highlight today.

The first was yet another PWE from the man who is quickly becoming one of my most frequent trading partners, Joe Shlabotnik of The Shlabotnik Report.  Inside this envelope were some 2015 Topps Series 2 needs, of which I picked my favorite pair to lead off with here.  I'm nearly done with Series 1 and Update, but sorely lacking when it comes to Series 2 this year, so these were great.

Joe crams a whole lot of variety into a small envelope, which is something I try to reciprocate when shipping cards his way.  This time was no different, as we jump from a 2015 release to one that's over a decade old now with this Topps Total Pedro.

We've even got some minor league representation here with this awesome Yonder Alonso from Topps Pro Debut.  I enjoy these Pro Debut sets so much that I may just make some want lists and attack all of them in the coming year.

Switching over to hockey now, here's the latest in a steady stream of '82-83 Topps Stickers that Joe's been laying upon me in recent months.  I'm sure most hockey fans recognize the subject of this one as Rick Middleton.

Back to baseball, and going all the way back to the '70s with this awesome SSPC Petrocelli.  This is another set that I really adore, featuring some of the best photos from any set of the decade.

Finishing it off strongly, Joe provided me with what is easily one of the coolest buyback cards I've received all year!  I know I'm in the minority here generally speaking, but I will never get tired of these regardless of what year and product they are from.  Great stuff.

Thanks for another excellent batch of cards Joe, I'll be sure to get another PWE off to you early in the new year...

Next is a blogger who is so kind that he has sent me cards numerous times now, even though I've yet to reciprocate.  The beautiful, and very thoughtful, Christmas card above came from Angus at Dawg Day Cards.  Angus collects Cleveland Browns football cards, of which I have none to send him...

...but that didn't prevent him from sending me some great O-Pee-Chee baseball cards!

Nice to land the O-Pee-Chee version of what is one of the more humorous hairdos in Red Sox cardboard history.

Angus even went back as far as the '70s with the O-Pee-Chee goodness.  Oh, and hockey was not to be left out either:

This 1991-92 O-Pee-Chee hockey pack was a definite trip down memory lane.  This set hit the shelves right around when I was turning 9 years old, and I certainly recall busting many a pack of this way back then.  Let's see who I got!

For starters, as you can see in the pic, the gum was decimated.  I made no attempt to ingest any.

Here's my "Special Card" insert, Jarmo Myllys wearing a North Stars jacket but listed with the Sharks.  Jarmo was a netminder with Minnesota before San Jose snagged him in the expansion draft, thus his inclusion as a special card insert.

Greg Adams here was the lone card in the pack that I already had a copy of.

Next up is Murray Craven, who became a Hartford Whaler not long after this card was printed up.

First HOFer of the pack in goaltender Ed Belfour!  Leave that much upper net exposed in today's NHL and you're getting scored on within about 10 seconds.

Back to back goalies, and a sweet retro Penguins sweater.  I love it when the Pens bring these sweaters back, which they seem to be doing frequently these days.

Brian Propp was an under-rated winger, and while his name may not be instantly recognizable to casual fans of the game, he did rack up over 1,000 points in his lengthy NHL career.

Another HOFer here with a subset card honoring Brett Hull for winning the Hart Trophy.  I guess awarding the MVP isn't too difficult when you've got a guy who lit the lamp 86 times as a candidate!

The honor of being the final card in the pack with the wax stains on the back goes to Joe Nieuwendyk, who is also the third HOFer in the pack.  That was a pretty fun pack to open.  Thanks for the cards and the holiday wishes Angus, I'll have to see if there are any Browns cards kicking around next time I make it to my local hobby shop!

Completing today's trifecta of trade are the contents of a killer bubble mailer from Jeff at 2x3 Heroes.  He'd reached out to me letting me know that he had some Stadium Club cards off of my want list, and boy did his package ever help me get closer to a complete set.

I got a whopping 17 needed cards in all, my favorite of which has to be this Bip Roberts which I've long admired from afar on other card blogs.  The perfect goofy image for a Stadium Club card if you ask me.

I'm sure this set will be very high on, if not atop, many "best of the year" lists that will inevitably be popping up soon.

I won't show you all 17 cards Jeff sent, I'm sure most of you have seen them all anyway, but I think these four alone give you an idea just how great an assortment was included.

Of course, Jeff also threw in a bunch of random other cards as well, because he's just that kind of guy.  In fact, he's been giving away stacks of cards like crazy on his blog the past few weeks.

In this case, I got a bunch of new cards towards my Red Sox team collection.  Some of which I already had copies of (but they will be delivered to a good home - aka Mark Hoyle's collection), others like this Bowman Chrome Manny were totally new to me.

I can't believe I still need cards from 1994 Fleer Ultra, but I do!

Two less at least thanks to this package.

This Panini Cooperstown Yaz is unlicensed done right!  What an awesome photograph, tell me that's not a man who's enjoying his profession right there.

One of the things I enjoy most about Jeff's blog, as well as his many posts on A Pack to Be Named Later, is that he really seems to sample a huge variety of new releases.

I guess it should come as no surprise then that I'm receiving cards in the mail from him from sets that I haven't even had a chance to see in person yet.

These three 2015 Bowman Draft cards are the first from this set to enter my collection.  The last two are also my first cards of the team's first round draft pick from this past summer, Andrew Benintendi!

Jeff is a hockey collector as well, and he shockingly managed to deliver a trio of junk wax Whalers that I was somehow missing from my collection.

Closing in on 1,500 unique Whalers cards, you'd think I'd have all the junk wax sets knocked out at this point, but I assure you there are still plenty of missing pieces.

That number decreases with every thoughtful package like this one that I receive though!  Thanks Jeff, your generosity is truly appreciated and it's not lost on me that I really owe you some return cardboard at this point.  You're right at the top of my list as far as outbound packages go.

Again, thanks for all of the great cardboard gents, and for taking the time to read my random musings here.  I look forward to enjoying your great blogs for another year in 2016!