I am of course making a wild assumption that the short prints in Chicle are the high numbered subsets.I haven't been paying much attention to the official card news channels lately but from various eBay auction claims and what I saw come out of 8 packs I think it's a safe bet. If you're interested, out of 8 packs I got 7 SPs, parallels or inserts and they were all card #5 in the pack. Here is card #5 out of my second pack:
NO. 280 Jimmie Foxx
Artist: Chris Henderson
Double X in a... Phillies uniform?? I was bewildered by this at first too until I checked his Baseball-Reference page and found out that Jimmie Foxx finished out his career with the Phillies in 1945. Of course he played 11 seasons and hit 302 home runs for the Philadelphia Athletics compared to 89 games and 7 dingers for the Philadelphia Phillies but who's counting. It's not like Topps put him in a Flyers sweater or something. My second pack was utterly fantastic (check out this run of players: Snider, Ruth, Munson, Foxx. Woof!) and it was tough picking out my favorite from the pack. Snider looked great and had a neat little detail I appreciated. The base Ruth card was very well done. The Thurman Munson is a card that Matt from Heartbreaking cards needs for his collection immediately. But the Foxx has the all around package. The painting of Jimmie is excellent as is the pose and the background colors really ties everything together perfectly. I'm sad that it's a short print because more people need to pull this card from a pack.
I had a pretty productive week last week so on Friday I treated myself to a pack of '09 Topps American Heritage. I did pretty well for myself even though I only needed two cards out of the pack. Here are the doubles in the pack:
5 Nathaniel Hawthorne and his amazing mustache
60 Elizabeth Jennings Graham and her weirdly grainy picture
73 Robert Kennedy and his bullhorn
113 Completeion of the First Transcontinental Railroad
29 Nathaniel Greene who retreated to victory
42 Orville and Wilbur Wright and their flying contraption
58 W.E.B. Du Bois and his exquisite Van Dyke mustache
Not a bad pack even though I have them all already. This is the coolness:
This is one of the American Legends insert cards that drops at 1:200 packs. The Legends (and the even more hard to get American Icons) were where Topps snuck in their exclusive baseball player cards into the American Heritage set. With the long odds I didn't count on pulling one, but it appears I got lucky. This pack was errantly put in the $1.59 cheapo bin for some reason which is where I found it.
The card is pretty nice looking, a sepia photo with dark brown borders. You can actually see the serial number due to fortunate placement on a white background on this card. Double X doesn't have a logo on his cap. I'm not sure if it was like that on the original photo or was photochopped out. Cool card of a great player though. I love finding Hall of Fame players in current products. Here's the other card I was happy to see in the pack:
Checklist one of three. Now I've finally got all the checklists. Don't laugh, these things are almost impossible to find when you need them!
A luck virus to be precise. Not familiar with the luck virus? Watch this and all shall be revealed. I'll wait...
Got it? Good. I could have just told you that a luck virus is a virus that makes the infected person really lucky - heck most kindergartners could probably infer that - but Quarantine is an Epic episode of Red Dwarf and should be seen by all.
Anyway, I have been lucky as hell lately as some of my recent pack breaks at A Pack A Day has shown. I don't know what's happening right now, I just have the touch. (even so, the M word shall not be spoken here) So it's fall in Georgia which means everyone in the state has allergies right now. I got stuck going to Target to pick up some Claritin. And since I was at Target... well you know what happened next. There was a fresh box of A&G so I snagged a couple of packs. The el cheapo box had recently been refilled with stuff including 6 packs of 2007 Chrome. I like the shiny refractors so I snagged a few of them too. I ripped three of the packs tonight and here's what showed up:
The first pack of A&G started off poorly. The first card in the pack was damaged and somehow the second card was absolutely destroyed. The sides are crunched, there's a big crease going through Jeremy's face and the back has a scratch on it that looks like it got caught in a machine. I guess this is one of the "pre-bicycle spoked" inserts I've been hearing about. The mini was pristine though:
Candygram! A one per case insert or whatever. I want to know how last year I couldn't beg, borrow or steal a single solitary snake, but this year I've pulled two sharks out of retail. Can't complain though, lets rip the next pack.
AAAAH! She's everywhere! Talk about over saturation in the media... WE GET IT, she's a maverick who eats mooseburgers. I go to Ted's Montana Grill for a bison burger all the time, who cares. Ok, it's really a slightly altered Curt Schilling card. I promised you all a MSPainted Palin card a while back and I thought it was a good time to deliver. Enough of that, here's the GOOD stuff!
Double-X mini card! I do believe I'm going to have to shoot for this set. It looks too good. Jimmie Foxx is one of the all timers too. Hall of Famer, MVP, World Series Champion, 534 lifetime homers and Tom Hanks played an homage to him in A League of Their Own. I'm feeling pretty good right about now, let's open up that Chrome pack and check out my shiny card.
Unscannable Jeff Francoeur card first out of the pack. I like the scoreboard in the background. Next was a Chad Tracy refractor then this:
A freaking autograph of Kory Casto out of a retail pack that was in the marked down reject repack box. I have officially obtained "Lucky Bastard" status. Now I have a card to write up on Auto-matic for the People tomorrow. Problem is I'm an avowed pessimist and now I'm worried about when the luck is going to turn. Will the pipes break and flood the basement? Will my transmission fall out? Will I get hit by a meteor? I shoulda let some kid pull the auto and kept my peace of mind. Actually the kids were probably too busy searching that fresh box of Allen & Ginter to bother with the marked down packs. Hey, I don't feel bad anymore! Hooray for pack searching kids!
