Editor's note: You Know Who is in a BAD MOOD again. There isn't as much cursing this time though.
I'm not buying any 2010 Topps Blasters because I'm still effing pissed at them for jerking us over so blatantly last year with the variation blaster bait and switch. Not telling us about the variations at all in series one was bad enough. But then cutting it back to two packs per blaster once we figured out their scam and got hooked is unforgivable to me. Screw you Topps, and your pretty, pretty variation cards. I finally got a couple of samples in the mail last week so I can at least show off what I will never buy.
In every Topps blaster there are ten eight card packs plus a patch card. Two of those packs are filled with these variation cards instead of base cards. Basically, in order to gimmick up their blasters like they've gimmicked up the set, they've screwed their customers again by making the blasters completely useless for set collectors. Between the inserts and the variations you're looking at maybe 52-56 base cards per blaster for $20. You can get that many with two racks for $10. At this point I wish Topps would just put out a $20 pack with just inserts inside and cut out the base cards altogether. Cut to the chase and cut down the clutter. I'm ranting again, aren't I? Well, screw it, I'm gonna rant away. My broke ass was all ready to sneak out $20 from the unemployment check to buy a Series Two Wal-Mart Black blaster last year and Topps bent me over and had their way with me. This is why I'm practically giving away the base cards while I work on the Yo Momma set. Topps has taught me that base cards are meaningless. Thanks, Topps for making me even more cynical. I appreciate it.
Each soulless Mega Mart Box Store gets their own variation type. Both Megalithic Corporate Entities flipped a coin and Target got to pick the Retro variation, while Wal-Mart got the Black variation. You know what the mom & pop hobby stores got? SHAFTED. No special inserts and no new Upper Deck to sell to try to keep their small business afloat. At least we're all winners now.
Rob M. sent me the Target card in a trade and The Collective Troll provided a Wal-Mart sample before he got cardjacked. Here are those cards for your viewing pleasure.
Target Retro Variation:
Here's the Hudson I got from Rob. Don't worry Rob, I've got your packages ready and I will hopefully get to the post office tomorrow if no more disasters strike. These cards are on retro cardboard stock, sort of. the backs are of the gray cardboard variety, but the front is actually fairly glossy with foil stamping. They use the old school Topps logo though, with is nice. I'm not looking forward to the new, hideous logo in series 2.
Here's the back in all it's grayboard glory. This is a good lesson in why Topps didn't use full color and teensy tiny print on the backs of their cards from the '80s.It's still pretty fun though. Too bad it would take about 30 blasters with almost perfect collation to build one set.
Wal-Mart Black Variation
This was my favorite of the two designs last year. I'm not so sure this year though. Last year there was a hint of a background on the card, now Tommy is getting swallowed by the void. Maybe it's just this card. The player still pops out and the splash of color looks very nice indeed.
As far as I can tell the backs are exactly the same. That's cool, because the backs are fairly well done this year.
So in review: Graaaar snarl grumble bluh.
If any one needs Topps base cards send me a link to your wantlist.
I was going to rip one of these things sooner or later anyway, so let's get it out of the way. I had Heritage release day marked on my calendar for months and if I didn't rip something I'd get cardboard blue (base)balls. There were a dozen or so blasters at the Wal-Mart Chastain Meadows. One was upside down, as if it was placed that way on purpose. The spies are getting brazen. I must be on my guard at all times now. I took the baited box and now it is ready to open.
I'm still not sure if Wally World blasters are all black cards or if they are some sort of 'hot box' for people to chase. Before I rip it open, let's look at all six sides of the box and see if the word 'black' or 'border' is used even ONCE.
Front of the box:
"10 packs plus One Retired Legend Commemorative Patch Card!" Nope, nothing about black bordered cards there. There is a warning that THESE CARDS MAY KILL YOUR CHILDREN though. Never feed new baseball cards to your kids, folks. Give 'em some nice '87 Topps to chew on. Good roughage, that.
Back of the box:
Same as the front except in horozaontal format and Topps is no longer concerned if your children die. There is a nice ad for their Legends of the game insert set though. there isn't one for black bordered cards though.
Right side of the box:
A-Rod's rump. His best side. Everyone sees Alex is a cheater now. I don't. I see him like Ken Lay or that Bernie Madoff guy who stole money from Sandy Koufax's charity. They did something illegal to make massive amounts of profits and people looked the other way for a long time until the shit finally hit the fan. Give me a good old fashioned cheater any day.
Ok, commentary over. Toppstown.com ad. 10 code cards inside! 1956 world Series Patch! Actual Card may Vary! 10 packs, 8 cards per pack, 81 cards per box. No black. No border.
Left side of the box:
TONS if info here. There has to be a mention of black border parallels here, no? UPC code. Approximate odds: Gold parallel 1:10 Platimum parallel 1:21000 Base varation 1:119 Legends of the game 1:8 Legends gold parallel 1:2600 Legends platinum paralle 1:10000 Turkey Red 1:6 Black border stealth parallel 1:???
No purchase necessary blah blah blah
Legends commemorative patch cards: I'm gonna get Don Larsen, I know it. Maybe Yogi will be jumping in his arms at least.
Top of the box:
Same as the front minus A-Fraud and plus Topps Town.
Box bottom.
Ok. There's where tOpps hides all the legalese crap. They snuck the black border stuff in here to fool us. Distributed by... blahblahblah... no future value... blahblahblah... official licensee... blahblahblah... Mantle IP holdings ltd... blahblahblah... Williams family enterprises... blahblahblah... CMG... blahblahblah... Consumer Product Safety Commission... blahblahblah... topps.com 1-888-GO-TOPPS MLB.com MLBPLAYERS.com That's it. No mention of black borders anywhere. Effing Gimmick Bullpuckey.
Ok. Time to rip. Watch this lovely video while I start shredding and posting. Remember to hit F5 every so often kids!
Squished picture with Japanese subtitles! WOOOOOOO! Let's open this puppy!
First pack...
WE HAVE BLACK!!!
285 Justin Ducsherer 218 Emmanuel Burriss 270 Grady Sizemore TR48 Nate McLouth Turkey Red TTT17 K-Rod Topps Town 306 Javy Vazquez 29 Jerry Hairston 33 Jose Guillen
Pack 2:
313 Jamey Carroll 167 Aaron Harang 263 Elijah Dukes 250 Josh Hamilton TTT18 Miguel Cabrera TT Topps Attax code 191 Victorino Postseason 156 Carlos Pena 237 Aaron Cunningham
I can't believe I'm saying this, but this stuff looks GOOD. the Turkey Red in the first pack is a good omen for two in the box. Grady and Hambone are the two best cards so far.
Let me rephrase: this stuff looks good in person. It doesn't scan worth a flip. The second Turkey Red showed up quickly. Now we're shooing for a Turkey Red hot box!
Pack 4:
117 Ron Gardenhire 255 Joe Crede 176 AL RBI Leaders TTT23 Hamilton TT 10 Dan Uggla 292 Francisco Cervelli 45 Brad Ziegler 17 BOBBY!!!
Honesty time, I wanted the Bobby Cox card from the first nanosecond I saw that first Wal-MArt blaster break. I am now happy.
Pack 5:
295 Derrek Lee 205 Miguel Tejada 201 Combo - Salty Ham 206 NL ERA leaders TTT24 Bruce TT 293 Brian Bixler 109 Tom Gorzelanny 317 Jarrod Saltalamaccia
This box is rather Ranger-heavy so far. I think that's three Hamilton cards aleady.
Pack 6:
106 Marlon Byrd 60 Mariano Rivara 128 Johnny Cueto 221 AL ERA Leaders 246 Postseason - Rays TTT Dice-K TT Attax code 220 Jay Bruce 48 Mike Napoli
Players seem to come in bunches. Two Dice-K's in this pack and another Bruce card makes an appearance.
Pack 7:
58 Travis Snider 190 Chein Ming Wang 52 Marco Scutaro 238 Jorge Cantu TTT19 Carlos Quentin TT 224 Max Scherzer 236 Kelly Johnson 198 Conor Jackson
Ooh! Look at the little sliver of background at the top of Kelly Johnson's card. Isn't it cute! OH GOD. I'm liking this set. Must... Remain... Cynical...
GIMMICKS!
Pack 8:
316 Brian Stokes 68 Kyle Lohse 229 Cesar Izturis 127 AL HR Leaders TTT20 Berkman TT David Wright, waste of space. 12 Andrew Carpenter 277 Asdrubal Cabrera 2 Omar Vizquel
No inserts in a while. Here's the scan of the box topper pack to whet your appetite. Yeah, it scans worse than the actual cards.
Pack 9:
124 Reed Johnson 241 David Newhan 139 Postseason Stairs 180 Cliff Lee Gold #1700/2009 TTT21 Chipper Jones Gold TT 22 Combos - Price & Longoria 57 Jo-Jo Reyes 199 Ramon Castro
Chipper Jones Gold = Box is a success, gimmicks or no.
Pack 10:
75 Rich Harden 35 David Price 147 NLRBI Leaders LG25 Cal Ripken Jr. Legend TTT21 Chipper Jones TT 282 Chris Lambert 166 Jeff Baker 98 Akinori Iwamura
Finally got the Legends insert. Two Turkeys, one Gold and one Legend is about right for a blaster. You can't see it too well on the scan, but the foil on the David Price card is slightly off center. I bet if I put it on eBay as DAVID PRICE ROOKIE ERROR FOIL BLACK 1/1!!! I'd sell it for a fortune.
OK KIDS! TIME TO OPEN THE PATCH PACK!
(drumroll....)
HOLY CRAP KIDS, YOU'RE ALL GONNA LIKE THIS ONE!!!
Ok. I'm torn. Part of me is appalled that I have something so evil and unholy in my house, but this card IS. FREAKING. GORGEOUS.
I don't know what to do with this. Trade it off? Sell it? Hold it prisoner and drive the Mets fans insane? I shall ponder this carefully. A brief respite shall ensue before the final denouement.
Ok. Stale Gum has a theory that these cards are a legitimate printing error or test proof that somehow got overproduced so Topps decided to pack 'em out anyway. This guy says all shall be revealed in a couple of days. I still don't know if all the Wal-Mart blasters have black bordered cards or if the Spies left me a hot box. I do know that doing an unnanounced retail-only parallel is: Sneaky
Dirty
Low-Down
Underhanded
Gimmicky
Shenanigans
And this is how I feel about the whole thing!
These cards are freaking awesome, man. I think they look a hell of a lot better than the regular set and I LIKE the regular set. I know, I suck. I've lost all my cynical card curmudgeon cred. But they look good! They're like a trading card version of Cosmic Bowling, all dark and neon! If I knew with certainty that all the Wal-Mart blasters had black cards in them, I'd trade off my white bordered base cards and take my Heritage box money and just buy up a bunch of Wally World blasters and build the black border set. I like 'em that much. Pathetic isn't it? For now I'll sit back and enjoy the ones I have and wait for all this to settle itself out.
I don't know what the hell you're thinking Topps, but if you want to make this black border stuff a regular thing in series two and beyond I've got your back on this one. Just tell us next time, ok?
Ok, remember how last year Topps put exclusive T205 inserts into packs at Target and Dick Perez art cards into packs at Wal-Mart? Remember how cool they were? Do you want to know what the exclusives are this year? Well let me show you.
This is a Legends of the Game insert card. These are 1:4 packs and can be found in both Hobby and Retail packs:
Here's the checklist for these puppies. 25 cards in all, pretty hefty player lineup: LG1 Cy Young LG2 Honus Wagner LG3 Christy Mathewson LG4 Ty Cobb LG5 Walter Johnson LG6 Tris Speaker LG7 Babe Ruth LG8 George Sisler LG9 Rogers Hornsby LG10 Jimmie Foxx LG11 Lou Gehrig LG12 Mel Ott LG13 Jackie Robinson LG14 Johnny Mize LG15 Pee Wee Reese LG16 Roy Campanella LG17 Ted Williams LG18 Roger Maris LG19 Bob Gibson LG20 Mickey Mantle LG21 Roberto Clemente LG22 Thurman Munson LG23 Carl Yastrzemski LG24 Nolan Ryan LG25 Cal Ripken Jr.
Fun, huh? Now, here's the exclusive Target insert for 2009:
Look familiar? Yeah, same design just with gold foil and gold frame. There are ten cards in the set, inserted in 1:4 Target packs:
LLG-1 Williams LLG-2 Robinson LLG-3 Ruth LLG-4 Wagner LLG-5 Gehrig LLG-6 Ryan LLG-7 Mantle LLG-8 Munson LLG-9 Ripken LLG-10 Sisler
I haven't pulled a Wal-Mart insert yet, because I bought an Upper Deck blaster instead. I filched an eBay scan for educational purposes until I come across one of my own:
Yeah. These are the Platinum version, also 10 cards falling at 1:4 Wal-Mart packs.
LLP-1 Williams LLP-2 Gibson LLP-3 Ruth LLP-4 Campanella LLP-5 Cobb LLP-6 Young LLP-7 Mantle LLP-8 Johnson LLP-9 Clemente LLP-10 Foxx
It does look like the photo is different on the cards though as seen from this Target Ruth. Making things a little more complicated is the fact that there are also Gold and Platinum versions of the non-exclusive insert cards that are serial numbered to 99 and 25. These are a LOT tougher at 1:1725 packs for the gold and 1:6800 for the platinum. The cards are nice and all, but Topps really cut down on their insert sets this year. It's ashame, since there were some nice ones last year like Trading Card History and the 50th anniversary Rookie Cup cards. Too bad. The ones they have are decent at least.
You've been there before. Sunday afternoon and the pantry is bare. No milk, bread, cereal, nothin. The only thing in the fridge is old spaghetti with a greenish tint. There is probably something to eat in the house if it came down to it, but Cheerios Alfredo with pickle slices just doesn't sound appealing. If you're going to eat, you gotta go to the store on a Sunday with all the teeming masses. This happened to me this weekend so I braved the local Wal-Mart.
The place was absolutely packed with humanity all wandering in seemingly random directions as their foraging instincts kicked in. I had a plan, or at the very least a habit. I knew what I was looking for and where it was and without fail idiots were blocking my every move. A cart orbited by 4 hyper kids blocked the wheat bread. Two carts stopped at the same spot in the middle of the aisle obstructing my path to the juice. Some lady with a pantsuit that made her ass look too big stood in front of the pizza for about 2 minutes without moving. I'm not even going to get into the girl singing in the dairy section.
The atmosphere was cheery at any rate, which helped temper my frustration. It was a bright, sunny day, and some of the solar rays filtered in through the sky lights. Some hooligans attempted the old prank of having "Mike Hunt" paged over the intercom but their mischief was foiled when the extremely country customer service rep inadvertently added three syllables to the name. I tried to get some chicken for lunch but the head of the deli department who looks like a refugee from a CBGB concert was off on a heroin break. After ducking into the women's underpants section (I refuse to call anything at Wal-Mart lingerie) to avoid a gaggle of stampeding kids I decided it was time to go.
While getting checked out I learned of interesting shifts in our youth culture. The guy behind me in line was friends with the cashier and was buying a hat. The two started talking about clothes, more specifically, fashion. Here's the gist of the conversation:
"Yeah, that hat looks good" "Yeah" "You know, I'm starting to dress differently and the girls are loving it." "Really?" "Yeah, skater stuff. Pants that aren't baggy. Shirts that fit. Girls really like that." "Hmmmm...."
A sea change is about to occur folks, you heard it here first. No more kids wearing baggy shit! Now parents will have to bitch about those lousy kids and their tailored, well fitting clothes. Unless this has been going on in California for the past two years and it's just now reaching Georgia of course.
Now you know I wasn't going to brave the hell that is humanity without picking up a treat. This particular Wal-Mart is the one that receives the shipments of Legends repack cubes. These usually have about 10 packs in them of assorted junk packed in a storage cube. I like these things because the cubes are useful for storing smaller sets and stuff that you're currently working on (I've got my half-finished '07 Bowman Draft set in one) and as long as you can find one or two decent packs showing through the cube, the whole thing is usually worth the ten bucks. Recently they've started putting cards in the top and side to keep evil sorts from looking though the case and scoping out what junk packs they shoved in the middle. Here's the top of the one I got.
What appears to be an '88 Topps card on the left and an unknown Derek Jeter card on the right. However, There are two cards on the side too and they were both from the 2007 Wal-Mart Topps Trading Card History set. Inserts are always nice bonus cards so I snagged this one. Here are the four bonus cards:
WM1 Frank Thomas - The Big Hurt is on a 1941 Play Ball design, which Topps isn't allowed to mention on the back since Upper Deck has it trademarked or something. It's actually a pretty decent approximation of the design even though UD's 2003 Play Ball set does it better.
WM15 Ichiro - This is copying the 1933 Delong Set. Topps did a weekly giveaway of cards with the Delong design last year including another Ichiro. Topps nails it, but it's hard to screw this design up.
WM17 Derek Jeter - Ah, so the Jeter was a 1991 Stadium Club rip-off. When was the last time Topps did a full bleed set? This here looks pretty good, They need to bring Stadium Club back and do more of this. It looks like they ripped a bonus pack from an '07 Series 1 blaster for this cube.
The last card is an actual vintage '88 Topps card of good 'ol crazy Ozzie Guillen. No one has threatened to fire him in at least a month or so, so he's due to say something horribly offensive and entertaining soon.
I'll be opening the packs this week on A Pack A Day if you want to follow along at home. Here's the schedule:
Only 7 packs, but if you count each pouch on the jumbos, you got ten. My '07 UD set is pretty anemic so I probably need most of that Fat pack. I also am looking forward to ripping the Donruss, Ultra and Showdown packs so I didn't do too bad for myself.
