Tuesday, July 14, 2020

The Itch to Rip - Penultimate Post from My 2018 Stadium Club Blaster

Sometimes you just get the itch to rip.  For the past few weeks, that itch in my case has been scratched by this blaster box of 2018 Stadium Club baseball, which I picked up online a while back.

I've ripped the first four packs so far over two blog posts, and today we'll take a look at what packs five and six have in store.  Just five cards per pack, so these are quick and dirty...

Nice bat rack pic on this Nicky Delmonico rookie card.  I seemed to recall this guy having a couple of solid games against Boston at Fenway Park, but his stats from last season look pretty atrocious (.206 batting average, just barely skirting above the Mendoza Line).

Love the photograph on Clayton Kershaw's base card.  Perfectly framed, great horizontal layout with the out-of-focus batter in the foreground.  Noticeably good photography in each of the first two cards in the pack, actually.

My second Cody Bellinger insert of this blaster here, with a Beam Team card.  As with the first one, it goes into the stack of cards for an upcoming card giveaway I'm planning for my hobby friends.  Moving on...

This Ichiro card is just plain beautiful.  It makes me miss baseball.  The photograph is so great that I made sure to check when entering it into my collection on tcdb.com that it wasn't a rare photo variation or something.  Nope, just his plain ol' base card.  This is exactly the type of card I was hoping to pull from this blaster.

I mentioned at the outset of starting on the blaster that my only 2018 Stadium Club cards were a Red Sox team set.  So, this JD Martinez is a dupe.  I've tossed it into a big stack of Red Sox doubles that I'm planning to compare against Chris The Collector's collection on TCDB to hit him with a trade package, however I'm quite sure he's already got this one.

Just three new base cards for me in pack five, but the Kershaw and Ichiro cards were really great so I'd consider it a win.  Let's check out pack number six...

Zack Cozart of the Angels leads us off.  Looks like he just hit a triple and is calling for some applause from the dugout.  Either that, or some type of issue with his batting helmet.

Really cool second-year Aaron Judge here.  I'm not one of those Red Sox fans who "hates" the Yankees.  Hell, I'm so starved for baseball and hockey that I'd love to watch a Yankees game right about now.  An absolutely awesome photograph of Aaron on this card.  All rise!

Addison Russell signing for the fans on his base card.  We're officially in the midst of a string of horizontally-oriented cards now.

Love the action on Jake Lamb's card.  He looks safe to me, though it's admittedly hard to call without seeing a proper video replay.

Closing out today's proceedings we've got a nice classic shot of veteran Joey Votto.

A fun couple of packs here, and I feel like I finally got a good dose of the photography that this set is known for.  Still have two more packs to go, really hoping to maybe pull an Ohtani.  No Acuna and no Soto in this release (other than maybe high-end autographs), and since I already have a copy of the Devers RC, Ohtani is really the card I'd like to pull most.  Maybe next time.

I'll be back with the final installment from the blaster soon.  In the meantime, thanks as always for stopping by!

5 comments:

The Diamond King said...

The Ichiro is great!

Nick said...

Ichiro was my Card of the Year for 2018, definitely one of my favorite cards in recent memory.

Adam Kaningher said...

Love how the Votto card shows him so clearly choking up. 2-strike count, perhaps.

Fuji said...

That Ichiro truly is a work of art. Best of luck on pulling the Ohtani.

Bulldog said...

Such great photos. I'm always all in on Stadium Club. The Ichiro is probably my favorite.

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