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Sunday, December 2, 2007

The Slowest Box Break Ever, Thank God It's Over Edition: Part 7, Packs 21-24

Way back here, on November 7th, I discovered to my horror that Bowman Heritage was not going to be delayed for a month like most of Topps' other products and was in fact live. Of course, I rushed out and immediately bought a box. Instead of ripping it open right away I forced myself to open it up a pack at a time, as rewards for clearing out the growing drafts folder for this blog. Three and a half weeks later, my drafts look a little better and it's time to finish this thing.

Pack 21:
49 Adrian Gonzalez
114 Zack Greinke
194 black parallel Jeremy Sowers #32/52
199 rainbow Felix Hernandez
BHP90 Gabriel Sanchez
BHP76 Chris Salamida
19 Aaron Hill
59 Brandon Phillips

The hits keep on comin'. This pack has a black parallel card, which looks the same as the rest of the cards except for the black border and the serial number. It's a hot pitching phenom too, so I guess that's cool. A slight touch of white can be seen on all four corners due to the black border, so I probably have the 52nd best example of this card in the world. That's among the top 100! PSA here I come. Oh wait, Jeremy went 1-6 with a 6 plus ERA last year. But he has 'upside'. I hate cards of pitching prospects.

Pack 22:
18 Zach Duke
134 Troy Glaus
235 Alex Gordon no sig SP RC
143 rainbow Torii Hunter
BHP40 JR Towles
BHP68 Ryan Finan
138 Glen Perkins RC
187 Matt Holliday

Ho hum, a boring pack full of plain ol' cards. No autos, no relics, no serial numbers, no press plates, no holy grails, no DNA samples, no signed OJ confessions... THANK THE LORD. I'm hitted out, thank you very much. These inserts are making it that much harder to finish the set, which is the whole point of this exercise. This one's not that bad. Two rookies including a short print Gordon. Matt Holliday missed the MVP by an eyelash, let's see if he can win it outright next year. Zach Duke went from phenom pitcher to complete bum in just over one season. Pittsburgh will do that to ya. Goodness gracious I hate cards of pitching prospects. Torii Hunter seems utterly bored on his card but he may just be worn out from all the excitement from his Allen & Ginter card. I know I said I wasn't talking about these prospect cards anymore, but there's something very very wrong about J.R. Towles' card. Somewhere in the cropping and vintagizing of his card evil was unleashed and J.R. knows it by the haunted look in his eyes.

Pack 23:
126 Travis Hafner
162 Tadahito Iguchi
119 rainbow Jamie Moyer
BHP58 Jeremy Jeffress
BHP60 Joba Chamberlain
216 Curtis Thigpen RC
11 Brian Roberts
79 Richie Sexson

I got the Joba prospect card finally so I won't have to overpay for it to complete my set now. So what is this thing going to be considered in the long run anyway? Joba's RC is already in the set, tacked on at card #251. Is this a rookie? An insert? An XRC card? A rookie insert? A waste of wood pulp? All for a player whose most probable career path is as a throw in pitcher in a trade to Seattle when Hank Steinbrenner decides he absolutely has to have King Felix. Like I just said, I hate cards of pitching prospects. Torii Hunter looks positively giddy compared to world-weary Jamie Moyer. In making these cards look vintage, Topps has managed to make a handful of them look really goofy and the rainbow cards accentuates the weirdness.

Pack 24:
154 Scott Rolen
43 rainbow Jeff Francis
BHP78 Brandon Hynick
BHP74 Matt Young
Checklist 3
242 Josh Hamilton RC
231 Jesus Flores RC
143 Torii Hunter
115 Justin Morneau

Last one. It's over. All the packs are busted and it only took about a month. Well, actually I haven't opened the A-Rod waste of space bonus boxtopper pack yet. I'm not really planning to, to be honest. Really, what's the point? If someone out there is collecting that entire set, please e-mail me. I want to laugh at you. The last pack throws me a curve. in every other pack the rainbow foil card was the 3rd or 4th card in the pack. It's the second one in this pack. I know, who gives a crap? This is actually critical information that baseball card historians will be craving in the future. Can you tell I'm avoiding talking about the cards in this pack? It's not that bad really, Rolen's good but on the downside, Francis is a good pitcher, Torii's pretty good and just got paid... I got another Braves prospect in Matt Young, another player I know nothing about. No, not the Seattle pitcher from the 80's. Then again, I didn't know who Adam LaRoche and Kyle Davies were when Topps put their cards in packs and, well, they're both gone now aren't they. Nevermind. Mario from Wax Heaven has already commented on how ridiculous Josh Hamilton looks on his card. The box opened with Freddy Sanchez and closes out with MVP Justin Morneau.

Ok, the box is broke. I need to finish up another 792 Gallery and post to A Pack A Day and I'll put up the final totals for this box.

2 comments:

Rob said...

The guy at my local card shop talked me into buying a box of these, and I ended up getting hooked. No surprise, since Topps Heritage are probably my favorite sets. So, I've busted two hobby boxes and a blaster so far. Is anyone else finding the even numbered prospects and odd numbered...uh...non-prospects difficult to come by? Going through the cards I've pulled, it's uncanny how consistent this is for me. Especially considering the number of cards I have at this point.

Anonymous said...

As I look through the cards I need to complete my set, I notice that aside from the short prints, of which I still need 25, I am missing all even number cards. Weird. I've busted three hoby boxes and 2 blasters. Rob - If you are interested in comparing need lists to help complete both our sets, send me an email at icculam@yahoo.com