First box of the year! I have a feeling most of the boxes I get this year will be like this one... a couple months after release when the price drops a bit. It's not a bad box for the price, 18 packs with 2 autographs on average. There's that ominous on average line. I'm not too worried about it though, I bought this for the cards, not the sigs. I'm probably not going to complete the entire set, but I'd like to get the base, a couple of the subsets and the stadiums at least. It looks good and is a fun rip which is all I'm looking for. Here's my feelings on how good a box this will be:Bad Box: missing one of the autographs, 90% of the cards are ones I already have.
Good Box: two autos, knock out a good chunk of my wantlist, no more than one or two SP dupes.
Awesome Box: an autograph of a Brave or someone good, complete the base set or one of the subset, get some kind of hit like a numbered card of someone good or a Yankee Stadium relic.
My standards for a good box are pretty low, so I'll probably end up happy with this one. The box top is up above, here's the bottom:
There's a Clayton Kershaw card I can cut out on the bottom. I can also cut out the Die Cut Longoria on the top if I so desire. You know how I love cutting cards off boxes. I'll probably keep this one intact for right now to hold all my dupes. Here's the wrapper:
Hobby packs are red, retail are blue. The back only has one useful piece of information.
Odds for the autos: 2 per box. On average. I know for a fact there are at least a couple of parallel cards inthe set, but no odds for them. They didin't even put the Yankee Stadium odds on the back. Those cards annoy me, but at least in this product they don't take the place of a subset or short print. I'm running late tonight, so I'll open two packs now and four per day the rest of the week. I'll start with the two packs on the very top. Cards I needed for my set will be in bold.Pack 1:
18 Ryan Braun45 Vlad Guerrero
81 Matt Tolbert RC
123 Max Scherzer RC '92
366 Ian Kennedy RC '95 SP
138 Mark Teixeira '94
202 Nyjer Morgan RC '95
300 Albert Pujols '04
Well that wasn't too bad of a first pack. Four cards I needed and a super sweet Pujols Timeless Teams card. I didn't have a Cardinals Stadium either, so that's a bonus. I got a short print too which is cool. I know the pack says 6 short prints per pack, but I only count the high numbered SP design cards as real short prints. Everything else is one a pack and as far as I'm concerned even if they are statistically a little harder to get than the base cards, one a pack is not a short print. This might be the last 2995 SP design card I scan because the foilboard cards don't scan worth flop.Pack 2:
44 Frank Thomas30 David Ortiz
93 Hernan Iribarren RC
116 German Duran RC '92
349 Nyjer Morgan RC '94 SP
178 Kosuke Fukudome RC '94
191 James Loney '95
278 Chien-Ming Wang '04
Wow! I needed almost the whole pack! If the rest of the box is collated like this, I'll be a happy fool. The Thomas card illustrates how they way I feel towards the base design has changed. At first I didn't like it that much but it's grown on my. The cards with a bright border around the photo look especially good like on Mets cards and this A's card. And you don't know how happy I am to see the Big Hurt back in an A's uniform. He looked just plain wrong in a Toronto uni. It's not as good as a Sox jersey, but it's good. I actually sent the Iribarren card to Thorzul since he was collecting Brewers from the set, and now I have it right back. I love when that happens. I thought I had every single Upper Deck Fukudome card known to man, but I guess I didn't. The '94 SP design on the Nyjer Morgan short print is really nice. I'll have to scan the back of the next one I get since it's pretty good too.Two packs gets me 11 cards I needed for the set. Not bad at all. Here's the box totals so far:
Base cards - 4
Base Rookies - 2
1992 design - 2
1994 Heroes design - 2
1995 minors design - 2
2004 Timeless design - 2
1993 SP design - 0
1994 SP design - 1
1995 SP design - 1
8 comments:
I just bought a box of this on eBay the other day. Maybe after you open your packs and my box arrives we can swap doubles. I already have a decent pile of duplicates from my first box.
a far cry from the $99 that shyster of a card shop owner was trying to get me to pay.
Bastard!
I'll live vicariously through you on this one....
*drools all over your Twins cards*
Now that I've drooled on your Twins cards, I get to have them, right? No? Eww. You're keeping cards with drool on them.
Perhaps a trade, then? Hit me up if you're interested.
Thanks!
The gray border, does it have like a marbled effect? If so it'd account for the splotches in my box. And do the diecuts have the printers crease in them?
Yes, and yes. The silver is slightly marbled. It's easier to tell from the back than the front. And 99.9% of all the silver die cuts I've pulled have that damn roller mark right through the middle.
I got a box for dirt cheap last week. It should be arriving tomorrow. After it's broken I'll post my doubles and wants.
I don't know how you restrain yourself. I would have had the whole box ripped open and sorted in 15 minutes or less. I have no self-control. And you call yourself a junkie?
After ripping open (and buying another) box of 07 SP Rookie Edition, which is essentially the same product as this, I've now warmed up to the idea of doing this set.
I still think they could've shortened the entire SP checklist by not repeating so many players, but they at least do you the favor of including at least 108 SPs in the box. I'm leaning heavily towards buying a couple of boxes now.
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