A trip to the LCS and a...big(??) pull..what do you think?

Last week I was in the town with the closest LCS so I stopped in. I wasn't looking for anything in particular but I figured I would get something. I ended up spending about an hour talking to the father/son team that runs the shop. The father is getting up there in years and it really seems like the hobby as well as the business has left him behind. I say this not just because of some of the things he said but also because they have factory sealed boxes of Topps, Donruss, Score etc. from the late 80's/early 90's that are priced at $35+. These are boxes that I could get 3 for $5 from a dealer at the show in the area I've been to a couple times.

Talking to the son was much better. He's in his early 30's and really has a handle on the state of the card business. We talked a lot about his biggest pet peeves in dealing with the card companies, mainly putting redemptions in a product for players that haven't signed autos in years. This isn't an issue for me as I've never pulled a redemption but it is certainly an annoyance that makes sense.

But let's get to the cards. Pretty much everything in the shop is overpriced but I couldn't go in without buying something. They don't have a cheap singles box and the singles they do have are overpriced. So after quite a bit of looking back and forth and back and forth I decided on three things.

First of all I picked up a pack of 2001 Topps Gold Label. I recently received a few cards from the '99 version as part of a prize package from Brian at Play at the Plate and quite liked them. So I thought I would give this a shot. Here is a parallel base card from the pack.

Jermaine Dye Gold Parallel #084/999

One thing I love about this shop is they have mystery card grab bags for $5. Every bag contains a hit or a rookie card of a super star. I know that I'm unlikely to get a card worth $5 or more from this but its a fun thing to purchase. This is what I got.

059/100

Actually quite a nice card and the couple that are listed on comc are for more than $5. 

Lastly I decided to buy a minibox from 2007 Upper Deck Elements. I was not previously familiar with this set. Apparently one hobby box has three mini boxes with each containing a different type of base card. One mini box has foil board cards, another is LTFX cards which I believe are more contoured, and the last box has PETG acetate cards. Each mini box contains five packs with three cards. The box I bought was the regular foil board. Each hobby box is seeded with three hits: a relic, auto and an auto-relic with normally one in each mini box. There are also dual (#/15), triple (#/5), and quad (#/1) auto cards that are rare inserts. 

Here is what the base cards look like.

In the fourth pack I pulled this card

Well..it's a hit. A very meh hit. 

Then in the last pack...

Dual Elemental Autographs Jim Thome/David Ortiz 15/15

Well not only did I get one more hit than I expected but I got a big one. The thing is, I don't know how big. I asked the shop owner son what he thought the insertion rate was for this and he figured it was somewhere around 1:300 packs but said that was just a guess. Upper Deck was of course not kind enough to print the rates on the pack like Topps does (One thing I love about Topps). So I did some online research and can't find anything. Baseballcardpedia.com doesn't have insertion rates. Comc doesn't have any dual autos listed. Cardboard Connection never reviewed this product. And since Upper Deck seems to have never released the print run numbers I have no clue how rare this card is or what it might be worth. Does any one have any idea?