A little Bowman help, please

I am a hypocrite. I've been screaming to the heavens for a month that Bowman is a crappy set that Topps ruined years ago. I've been dissuading people from buying it because the 'real Strasburg rookie' will be coming out soon (HA!!!) and then everyone will forget about his first Bowman card. I've been bemoaning the fact that the base cards are pretty much filler in this set*. So tonight I went out to Wal-Mart and bought a blaster because I'm a hypocrite.

Don't go to Wal-Mart when you're hungry or when you're pissed off at the current state of baseball cards. I was hungry tonight and I got a bunch of food I didn't really need. I was pissed off at Topps so I buy... Bowman. Real smart there. I should have just bought some Upper Deck instead, oh wait.  Blowout Cards probably swayed my decision a bit also. I was searching through the deals this weekend and found that they are selling blasters for $37.99. I mean, that's just ludicrous. So basically my thought process was: "This #$%! store still doesn't have ANY baseball cards newer than Attax except friggin Bowman, and at least I'm kinda sorta getting that almost half off when you think about it".


I know, that's BS reasoning and I'm still a hypocrite. A hypocrite with a blaster to open at least.

I have a problem, though which is the reason for this post. I got the box home and panicked a little. You see, the shrinkwrap looks a little off. It's sealed very thickly on the sides to the point where the cashier had to stretch the wrap just to be able to scan the barcode. I don't want to end up with a damn repack box that was opened, filled with 1994 Upper Deck Bip Roberts cards and resealed. With the Strasburg Mania going on I wouldn't put it past someone to do that.

The rest of the box looks ok I guess. it feels heavy like there are 8 packs in there. There is a $19.98 sticker on the wrap. The plastic has 5 of those little blue Topps logos printed on it. I thought there were usually more, but I don't have another wrap to compare at the moment.

If anyone has opened a Bowman Blaster recently or has an unopened one can you tell me if this looks legit or did I just get ripped off? I'm probably just being paranoid because I'm in such a bad mood right now, but I don't want to open the thing up if it's a scam job. I'd rather just return it unopened and exchange it for something else. God knows what else I could exhange it for, there's literally no other baseball there except Topps Series 1 and Attax starters.

If you all think it's legit I'll do a live break tomorrow afternoon so you all can follow along and see just how bad a product this really is.


*Atlanta Sports Card has** a 5000 count monster box FULL of Bowman base for $30 if you're interested.

**Well, had one as of a week ago.

My Mistake

"Unfortunately Topps has helped by letting you know which blasters are which. How stupid! Now instead of multiple purchases to get the cards you know exactly which one."

I hit Wally World on my lunch break. Since Hand Collated stated that Topps told him the variation blasters were marked as such, I wanted to check 'em out and maybe walk out the store with one. The two black border Topps series 2 blasters were still there so I took a closer look.

I was wrong about them, there is a notification on the blasters. It's hard to tell the two apart at first glance, but there is a little black oval in the middle of the blaster stating that black border cards are inside.

Two packs of black border cards.

So instead of a full blaster of black border variation cards like in series one there's two packs of 'em. About 12 black border cards per box instead of 60. So if you like the black borders better and wanted to build a set of them instead of the normal base cards, you will now be spending over five times as much on blasters if you chose to do so. Which you might have thought about doing if you already invested heavily in series one black border blasters building that set. and if you bought up a bunch of white botrder blasters planning to buy the black bordered ones when they came out, well, now you just got a whoooooole lot of white border doubles if you do so. Nice one Topps. Yep, I made a mistake.

My mistake was buying a single pack of 2009 Topps base cards and not just going with the factory set like I planned.

I'm tired of being jerked around. I'm tired of having the rug pulled out from under me by some new gimmick every time Topps releases a series of their base set. Even though I have been building Topps sets since 1981 and have at least 10% of every damn set they've put out since 1951 I'm officially completely utterly sick of the Topps base set now and I'm not wasting any more of my money on it. I'd rather waste my money on Heritage or Goudey or A&G or O-Pee-Chee or Goodwin because while they are difficult to build gimmicky messes, at least they're not annoying difficult to build gimmicky messes. 2009 Topps is done for me and 2010 is looking bleak.

Anyone who still likes Topps base cards, watch this blog this weekend.

2009 O-Pee-Chee is apparently live

The 1971 Topps retro cards are dead, dead, dead though. Upper Deck should have saved themselves the hassle and just called this 2009 Fleer. Here are the early reports and pack rips, check it out for yourself.

A Pack To Be Named Later: 1 pack

Crackin' Wax: 4 packs

Long Fly Ball To Because... with comparison of the promised '71 Topps design with the actual black border parallels.

The design reminds me just a bit like '76 Topps. The 600 card set in six card packs with bloody short prints is just a rip off. Put it in 10 card packs, kill the SPs and call it Fleer and you might have something I'd buy. Right now, it appears that I might buy a pack or two out of curiosity but not much more than that.

Update: Reaction from the Canadian collectors who were once so proud that their heritage was reborn, but now their hopes have been cruelley dashed much like their dreams of a functioning Parlaiment.

Trader Crack is upset by the 'bait and switch' and I can't blame him. This stuff had to have been printed weeks ago and there was no indication from Upper deck that the '71s they showed off prominently on their pre-sell sheets were nixed. This is really no better than Topps' Mayo shenanigans (I want my McLovin autograph dammit!).

Waxaholic is not so much upset as in Berzerker mode. Remember in A Christmas Story when the dogs broke in and ate the turkey and the dad yelled "GGGDDDDMMMNNN BBBMMMPPSSSSSEESSSS1!!!!!!"? Yeah, he's that mad.

Wal Mart Goudey Rip Off Pack

Found this in a gravity feed box at Wal Mart. It was friendly and small and cute so I let it hop in my cart. Since $5 rack packs with 16 cards were right next to it and Target has 8 card packs for $3, I guessed a mini pack of Goudey would cost a couple of bucks, right?

WRONG. $2.97. For five cards. What a gyp. Who does Upper Deck think they are, Donruss? I guess they took my complaints about 8 card hobby packs costing two bucks more than 8 card retail packs and responded by cutting the number of cards in the retail pack. The damage is done, here's what was in the pack.

No.15 Adam Jones

Why do I keep wanting to call him Pac Man? I should know better by now.

No.257 Jerry West Sport Royalty SP

This is my first Sport Royalty card for the '09 set. Jerry West is cool, but why the black and white photo?

No.14 Kelly Johnson blue mini

Now I'm feeling kind of stupid for complaining. Results may not be typical. One thing I just noticed, the color of the Goudey bar at the bottom is the same as the ink color on the back. That's convenient.

No.101 Rafael Furcal

Furcal's not hitting too well this year so far is he? Aaahh, schadenfreude.

No.155 Ryan Howard

Cool, a real live superstar. Ryan is on the wrapper of the Series Two Topps pack I should have bought instead of this. I like the blue Phillies cap.

Ok, so that pack was pretty good, but the 5 card packs are still a rip off. Caveat emptor, kiddos.

No Base

Reader Brian sent me this one... Check out the seven reasons to buy Superlative Hockey by In the Game. Particularly number 7.

There are NO base cards in Superlative^TM Hockey.

Oh goody.

The packs probably run a grand each, but if there's no cards in a pack of cards that changes everything. I'll be sure to pick up a few cases now.

Also Chris Harris braves the horrors of Powerpoint to give us the scoop on 2008 Goudey.

Long story short, 30 more short prints, short prints are harder to get, mini cards are now a scarce parallel and there are more fucking goddamn piece of shit useless pile of crap President card garbage in the base set.

Going back to bed.

Never should have gotten up in the first place.

Two Amusing YouTube Sportkings Case Breaks

This break is epic. I'm going to use the "Steve Young Diaper" line every time I pull a crap jersey from now on.



It's actually kind of sad watching this guy go from being so excited about Dr. Price's new product to seeing his blood pressure rise after pulling the duplicate Poker player jersey card.



This one's a bonus, I found it searching for Sportkings on YouTube after I wrote the post. This guy busted six cases of the stuff. Check the sidebar, there's five more videos of busting Sportkings. I've only watched the first one so far.



These case breaks are pretty cool, it's like I get to bust some one else's wax while they pay. This kind of confirms what I originally thought about the product. The set's ok, the hits are nice, but no freakin' way is this stuff worth $400 and up for a pack. I am thinking about trying to pick up a Dominique card from the set if I can find one cheap. Heh. I just realized that the cost of all these boxes cost WAY more than my first four cars. I need to find 2 more case breaks so they all equal the price of the car I've been driving for the past 5 years. 140,000 miles or a near set of Sportkings and a bunch of random relic cards? You decide!