President Blasters for President's Day

It's Presidents Day so let's bust open a couple blasters of President cards. As always, before we go partisan here's some goodies for everyone on the right side of the aisle.

This is the Grover Cleveland card from 2008 Mayo. He was president back when the orginal set was released or something. Too lazy to look it up right now. I want to like this set so bad...

And the Presidents song from Animaniacs!



Ok, getting into the Obama stuff now. Dittoheads can go elsewhere if they choose or stay here and join the fun. It won't hurt my feelings either way.

If you want to build the 2009 Topps Obama set, you should really try to track down blasters. For one, there are 6 packs in the box for $9.99 so you get a free pack. The other reason is because packs in the box cannot be molested by human hands before you rip that plastic off. Now, in a set with no relics or autos for searchers to swipe, this might not seem like a big deal. Where I live, it is. Check out this loose pack I picked up at Target:

Notice anything about the cards? Click on it and look close. Every one of them is bent in half with a big crease going through the middle. Apparently a sore loser bent the pack in half and put it back in the middle of the rest of the packs. I've found about a half-dozen similarly trashed packs since I opened this one. Obviously I've stuck to blasters after that. I've put this pack in my binder in a page at the back. It's a good reminder of the partisanship that's prevalent in this country. I'm pretty sure if W got his own set I would have found some wrecked packs of them too if I looked in the right places. Follow whatever political ideology you want folks, just don't be dicks about it.

Here's blaster #1:

Pack 1:
Base: 4 63 33 21 52
Sticker 16
Foil stamp 56

For brevity's sake, I'm not listing out the content of every pack other than the card numbers. As a set builder I'm often far more interested with the number than anything else on the card anyway. They've pretty much all got Obama on 'em except for a couple with Joe or Michelle, so who cares if it's smiling Obama or debating Obama or serious Obama. I'm tempted to lolcat this card and have it say SERIOUS OBAMA IS SERIOUS.

Pack 2:
Base: 56 1 10 69 77 2
Sticker 17

Here's the base set basketball card. If you want the short printed insert version you're looking at one in thirty-two odds of finding one in a blaster. If you think that's really tough odds, consider that the odds of finding the insert card may be 1:192 packs, but the odds of finding any specific foil Inauguration Date stamp card is 1:270. So the foil stamp version of this base card is actually harder to find than the '70s retro card.

Pack 3:
Base: 25 38 19 49 68 86
Sticker 18

Yay! A baseball card! Boooo! They airbrushed the Sox logos off! Dammit Topps! 47 cards with this photo on it and the one I actually pull is airbrushed! @#$^%!!

Pack 4:
Base: 55 47 15 88 81
Foil sticker 12
Foil stamp 1

There are unnanounced foil stickers in the set for all you parallel lovers. It would have been nice to put the odds on the pack, but they look good at least. I think they fall somewhere around one on four to one on six packs. This was the only one in this box.

Pack 5:
Base: 26 9 53 12 3 31
Sticker 1

This is a pretty neat photo of Obama with Bishop Desmond Tutu. I'll be the photographer made damn sure they were standing in front of that 44 address.

Pack 6:
Base: 34 27 13 22 43
Sticker 3
Foil stamp 6

Aww, cute. One day someone my age will be elected President and there will be a picture of them hauling ass on a Big Wheel. Or maybe vegging out in front of the Atari 2600 playing Pitfall.

Totals:
33 base cards
3 foil stamps
5 stickers
1 foil sticker

For 10 bucks you can count on getting about a third of the set, 6 stickers and a few foil parallels. If you want a set, you're looking at at least 4 blasters due to the notoriously bad collation in non-sports sets. If you want a set and are smart, you'll get one off eBay. But what fun is that? The inserts fall 1:32 boxes for the retro basketball card and 1: 64 boxes for the puppy redemption card. You'd be better off just buying them individually. The scary thing is a full master set of all the inserts and stickers and foils would probably be doable if you wanted to blow a pile of dough and chase foil cards for a couple months. I'm not that nuts, I want a set to give to my grandkids and then I'm done.

So you guys stuck around this long? You get a bonus! Another card, another video and another blaster!

Here's a Topps World Series Program card with a lot of Presidents on it.

And of course, I couldn't let Presidents' day pass without The Presidents of the United States of America.



Here's a second blaster, just the bare bones totals this time.

34 base
2 gold foil stamp
4 stickers
2 foil stickers

0 doubles in the box
12 doubles between the two boxes


I actually did pretty good here with only 12 dupes between the two blasters. 55/90 cards isn't shabby. One less foil stamp card was countered with one extra foil sticker. No inserts though. If anyone is collecting this thing or just want some let me know, I've got doubles to share.