A very nice box of Topps Chrome

The final box I picked up at the new LCS was a hobby box of 2015 Topps Chrome. It turned out pretty nicely.

Prizm refractors

101/250

094/150

I'll add that while I like chrome parallels, I don't like this year's regular refractors. They're just less "refractory" than normal and there isn't anything on the back to indicate what they are like have had in years past. 

These Chrome Culminations inserts are 1:288 packs, ie. one per case. Woo insert case hit!!

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Not a bad auto to pull. Far from the worst name on the checklist, though I do think Baez is going to be a flop. I think Topps really screwed up in switching the auto area back to silver. It was awful before and it's awful again. Next year they need to return to the white area. It really makes the auto pop a lot better than the silver.

09/25

At 1:1,082 packs this is another case hit in the same box!! Needless to say I was pretty pumped to pull this card. I do have one complaint though. For once my scanner is accurate, the orange really is that dull looking. I wish it was more vibrant as it would go well with the Giants orange.

That's all from my trip to the "new" LCS. Until next time!

Ginter

On my trip to the new LCS one of the boxes I picked up was 2015 Allen & Ginter. I've liked A&G since I got back into the hobby two and a half years ago so I've been wanting to get a box. It seems like Ginter is either really good or really crappy, for me at least. I liked 2013 and really liked 2014. Ive also opened some 2009, which was great, and 2011 which was mehhhh. I haven't read a lot about 2015 so I wasn't sure what to expect.

Box topper

Full size "buybacks"

Framed Ginter-back mini "buyback"

I put "buyback" in quotations because I don't think Topps really bought these cards back. I think it's much more likely that they just reprinted the cards and slapped some foil on them. I also have a bit of a bone to pick with the word used. 2015 is the 10th issue of the modern Allen & Ginter set, but by the way people normally count things wouldn't next year be the actual 10th anniversary? 

Anyways, the hits.

Ok not bad. 

I did do a little better than normal since not every box contains an auto. But really this was a pretty average box, and for that reason I feel like this edition of Allen & Ginter is overpriced. I must admit though that A&G has sorta always been that way. Most boxes are average or worse with the occasional awesome box. It was worth trying to see how it was this year, but I'm most likely done with Ginter for this year.

Found a new LCS

A couple weeks ago I got the itch to go to the LCS. But I kinda didn't want to go to the one I normally go to. Google told me there was another that was about the same distance away, but in the opposite direction. I went to check it out and wasn't too impressed but also not too disappointed. They had a fairly small baseball selection compared to my normal shop. Nearly everything they had was from 2014 and 2015 and they had no Panini products whatsoever. I ended up picking up two boxes and a couple loose packs. 

First up the loose packs. I got one jumbo pack of 2015 Bowman Chrome, the last one they had, and one pack of 2014 Bowman Sterling.

Chrome

Never leave the last pack!! I haven't redeemed it yet, not sure if I want to or put it up for trade.

I also pulled this nice Trout insert.

Sterling

Crawford has been tearing it up in the minors. Hopefully he pans out.

Alfaro has shown the ability to be a run producer so far in the minors, though he does strike out a lot. Still he looks like a pretty promising prospect.

This was definitely the best auto in the pack with Piscotty now an MLB regular. Had he been called up earlier in the season he may have been among the leading candidates for NLROY. He looks like he'll be a mainstay for many years.

Posts on the boxes will be forthcoming soon!

Fan Pack

A few weeks ago I came across a blog by a guy who gets fan packs from sports teams and posts about their contents. It made me curious to see what kind of free loot I could get. I searched through every MLB team's official MLB.com website and as it turns out the Braves were the only team that had an obvious method for requesting a fan pack. So I put in my mailing info and less than two weeks later a thick envelope bearing the Braves logo showed up in my mailbox.

The letter was basically a "Give us your money" plea. But it did list the items contained in the fan pack. It included a pocket schedule, Braves bumper sticker, "signed" picture of Freddie Freeman and a little baggie of Turner Field infield dirt.

The letter stated that the picture was signed. I would have flipped out if they sent me a real Freddie Freeman autograph. But I didn't expect that much and the signature is of course a facsimile. 

This is genuine Turner Field infield dirt, so they say. It's an interesting, though useless, little bit of memorabilia. 

Regardless of what they sent me it was pretty cool to get some free stuff in the mail from my favorite baseball team. 

Some nice retail

After I received the cards I bought from eBay I got the itch to rip some packs. I picked up an Allen & Ginter blaster and a Topps Chrome hanger box.

The A&G blaster yielded two nice cards.

Flag back mini #10/25

The Chrome hanger boxes come with four pink refractor parallels. The rest of the box was all base cards but the pink refractors ended up being really good cards. 

Three awesome cards to pull, especially Harper and Trout. Probably the two best ones to pull in the set other than Bryant.

Oh and the fourth card was some scrub named Chase Utley. =)

I'm still here

This is my first post since July 28th. This is the first time since I started blogging in June of 2013 that I've gone more than a month without posting. Part of this is a lack of content to post about. Mostly it's because I just haven't had time. August means the start of school which also means the start of the high school marching band season, during which I am the head brass instructor for a highly competitive group. So between that and my "real" job I don't have a lot of time. There are some days that I leave the house at 5:30 AM and don't get home until 10:30 PM, only to do it again the next day. So needless to say I haven't had much time to think about baseball cards.

One day last week while taking lunch I found myself on eBay and ended up adding some late 90s-early 00's inserts to my Chipper Jones PC.

This one is my favorite. It seems to be an acetate type card.

I also picked up this Christian Bethancourt 2015 Panini Elite Members Only Prime Patch numbered 13/25.

It felt good to add a few cards to my collection. I have a couple more posts in the pipeline and hopefully I can get back to my usual hobby habits soon enough.