Birthday break pt. 3

The next box I busted was one I was a little wary of. I had seen some people say that it was a rather boring set. It also came out during the strike shortened season. But the price was right so I bit.

2012/13 Panini Certified hobby box

10 packs per box

5 cards per pack

Every box contains four hits including at least one autograph

I didn't find the base set as boring as I had been prepared for it to be. I know some people don't like cards where the background behind the player is blurred or even non-existent. It doesn't bother me, at least to a point. Overall I would give the base set a B. Nothing special but not terrible either.

In edition to the promised hits the box also contained a good amount of numbered inserts.

Mirror Red parallel

And the hits

This one was a last pack winner. And based on my research this card should have pretty good resell value, if I did that sort of thing. Other hockey collector, what do you think? I didn't see anything Junior Class dual autos on COMC and eBay only had some lower end players.

Overall this was a so-so break for me. I wasn't wowed by anything in the box, save for the Phaneuf/Nugent-Hopkins dual auto. Not knowing nearly as much about hockey cards as baseball..I would guess that this is a set that debuts at way too high a price compared to the attractiveness and value of the content. But after a year plus of sitting on the shelf it came down to a price that was more around where it should be. I got the box for less than $50 which I think is an excellent price after factoring in that the dual auto may be worth a good bit more than that, (just an assumption). But I wouldn't have paid much more than that.

Birthday break pt. 2

When I was trying to decide what boxes to order for my birthday I was feeling kinda bored with the current selection of baseball cards. Heritage wasn't out yet and I had been kind of jonesing to open some hockey boxes for the first time. I ended up ordering three boxes, the first of which I will report on here.

2013/14 Score Hockey jumbo box
10 packs
52 cards per pack
Each box contains two autos and one memorabilia card

I'm not going to show any of the base set right now but it was fun to break. The photography is pretty good and I have some ideas of some new blog series that I can do to showcase these cards. The set itself is light on inserts but heavyish on parallels. Every pack contains four gold parallels and you have a shot at black parallels and alternate backs. I did manage to pull one black parallel.

And now the hits.

Neither of these autos are much of anything special, nor were they the highlights of the box.

The memorabilia was.

These Team 8's cards are awesome. Very thick cards that feature four jersey swatches on each side. They also seem to sell for pretty good prices online. Not the type of jersey card you would expect to find in a low end set. So it was pretty cool to pull this card. But even cooler was...I pulled a second one!

I particularly like the back of this one because all four swatches are different colors. 

Overall this was a really fun box to break. And if there's one thing I really like about Panini it's that quite often you will get more hits than advertised. If you like hockey and you're looking for a fairly cheap break with a lot of cards then I highly recommend one of these jumbo boxes.

Birthday break pt. 1

This past Sunday was my birthday and of course I asked for cards. I decided to change it up a a bit though and got some boxes that weren't of the baseball kind. I'll talk about those boxes and their plethora of hits in future posts.

But first, I ordered from Dave and Adam's Card World. As such I got a free gift with my order which happened to be six retail packs of 2012 Panin Prizm baseball. I bought a couple packs of this product last year. I liked it but the price point was too high for me with what was in the packs. I believe walmart had them at $4 a pack for four cards. That would be $2 too much. But in this case the packs were free so I was glad to have them.

I did like this cards when I first saw them last year. And I still like the design. Well, the border design at least. In opening these packs I realized how devoid of color this set is. And that has nothing to do with the lack of logos. Maybe that's an indictment of MLB uniforms in that so many teams normally wear a combination of white/grey/black/navy blue or red with only a little bit of color mixed in. That only changes when they wear alternate uniforms or 70's throwback uniforms, none of which are represented in this set. It doesn't help that the background in the photos is blurred and darkened to make the player stand out more. The background provides a lot of color in baseball cards that I guess can alleviate some of the uniform blandness. But Panini took that out of the equation. So I guess my two thoughts are that Panini should have better thought out the design of this set, and MLB teams need to have more color in their uniforms.

Moving on

An excellent pull for me as a J. Up fan. If you'll notice in the upper left corner some white specks. This card as well as some others came out of the packs with a powder that looked like they came from a powdered doughnut. The packs did not appear to be tampered with. So maybe someone in the Panini factory was having a snack while on the job.

Looks like he's in a Dodgers or Padres uniform. BOO.

Possibly the most colorful card out of them all thanks to Machado's sunglasses.

So nothing special but at least the packs were free. 

My internet access my be spotty for awhile but I will try to get the rest of my Birthday break reports uploaded soon. Thanks for reading!

Recent eBay pickups

One of my shortcomings are a collector is that I tend to spend money on cards from eBay that I probably shouldn't be spending. It's good for my collection but bad for my bank account. Regardless, recently I picked up three cards.

The first is this 1996 Leaf Signature Extended Jorge Fabregas auto. Sure he was just a platoon/backup catcher but I always thought he had a fun name when I was kid.

Next up is this excellent John Smoltz relic card from last year's TTT set #15/36. I can't wait to see him make the HoF next year.

And last is this awesome Chipper Jones Famous Four-baggers dual relic from 2013 Topps Tribute #79/99. The coolest thing about this card is obviously the dirt smudged on the swatch on the right. The one thing I don't get is if the sub-set is called Famous FOUR-baggers then why is it only a dual relic? Would make more sense to have four swatches. Oh well. I love this card anyways.

Need More Contest: 2nd Chance Drawing

Hey guys, I told you I would do a second chance drawing and tonight I finally got around to it. What I did was take all of the entrants into the contest, minus the two winners, and gave them each one entry. I randomized six times and the first name the sixth time gets the prize. The prize will be a brand spankin new rack pack of 2014 Topps Heritage!

And the winner is....

Congratulations to Richard from Dawg Bones, A Phillies Phan on winning the second chance drawing!!

Richard please send me an email at quinniethetrumpetman (at) yahoo (dot) com with your address.

Need More Contest WINNERS

Ok guys here are the two winners of my first blog contest. Like I said in the contest post, I used random.org to randomize the list 6 times to determine the winner of repack #1. After removing that winner from the list I randomized another six times to determine winner #2.

Congratulations to The Angels In Order on winning repack #1!

And congratulations to Brian from Play at the Plate on winning repack #2!

Guys if you will both email me at quinniethetrumpetman (at) yahoo (dot) com with your address so I can get your prizes to you asap.

For the rest of you that did not win, pay attention over the next few days as I will be doing a second chance drawing for you guys for a yet to be determined prize. 

Thank you to all of you for entering! I hope to be doing more contests in the future.

Need More Contest: CLOSED

Alright guys, the contest is now closed! Between initial entries, promos and referrals we have a total of 86 entries. Wow!! In a few minutes I will be randomizing the list so we can find out who our winners are.

Some street date Heritage

For the first time ever I was able to pick up three rack packs of Heritage at Wal-mart, on the street date. They're usually at least three or four days if not a week behind. So it was a pleasant surprise for me when I saw them there on the rack waiting for me. I won't go through every base card I received but suffice it to say, I think I like this year's edition of Heritage. That may or may not have anything to do with what I pulled...

Here's a sampling of what I got.

One thing I like about Heritage is the abundance of non-action photos.

I have beard envy.

Fredi! Incidentally, my only Braves card.

The only short print I pulled and probably the worst miss-cut I've gotten out of a recent Topps pack. Maybe this is an intentionally unintentional throwback to all the miss-cuts back in the vintage era. I must add though that while none of the regular base cards were cut this badly, a large portion of them were noticeably off center. Anybody else running into this?

Puddin pops

Interesting blurb about this card. The back shows the top 10 in wins from 1965 and 2013. In '13 Scherzer was the only MLB pitcher with at least 20 wins. In '65 there were nine. I guess even with the resurgence of lower scoring games in the last few years this shows how dominant pitchers used to be.

So..an insert set that is not rare..that only contains four cards? (According to Cardboard Connection) Well I guess there will be a ton of dupes of these floating around.

Crash

Bangarang!!

I seem to have some luck pulling ROA cards after I pulled that Bill Verdon auto from '12 awhile back. Topps must have added more subjects and had them sign more though since now these are only 1:150 rack packs. 

Now about Mr. Yellen above. An All-Star, he was not. He pitched a total of 26 innings with a 6.86 ERA for the Houston Colt .45s in 1963 and 1964. I guess Topps is starting to have to dig deep to find guys that played in the early/mid 60's that are still alive, no matter how short their stay in the show was. What I do find really cool about this card is that Yellen played for the Houston COLT .45'S. Not the Astros as the card says. Now I understand that this card looks the same as Yellen's 1965 Topps card which also said "Astros" on it since that was the year that they changed their name. However Yellen never pitched for the team under that name. Oh well. Still pretty cool I think to have an auto of a guy who played for the Colt .45s.

I will definitely be picking up more Heritage this year. Two thumbs up so far, Topps.

I Love the 90's

Boy I sure loved Metal Universe back in the day.

Contest Update

Hey guys! Just wanted to update you on my contest...

WOW!!! I am overwhelmed by the response! By my count so far we have 70 entries spread out among 37 different entrants! So I have decided to also do a second chance drawing for those that don't win the repacks. What will the prize be? Well I'm not totally sure yet...you'll just have to wait and see!

Remember, the contest ends on Saturday at 11:59 PM EST. Many of the entrants have not taken the opportunity to get an extra two entries by promoting the contest on your blog. You can still do it!!

Go HERE to check out the contest.

Thanks guys!

Need More Contest

Howdy folks! For awhile I've been thinking about doing a contest. One reason is to gain some new readers. Another is I want to give away some cards!!

Here are the contest rules:

1. You must be subscribed to this blog to enter.
2. To enter you must comment on this post.
3. You may gain TWO more entries by promoting this contest on your blog and commenting on this post with a link to your promotion.
4. For every contest entrant who indicates that they were referred by you, you will get an additional entry. So make sure in your promotion post you tell your followers to say that you referred them!

Easy, right?

Now I'm guessing you guys want to know what you're trying to win. Some people do contests for unopened packs. Some people do contests for single hits. Well I decided I wanted to give away a bunch of my own cards. So, I have put together two repacks from my own collection. That's right! We will have TWO WINNERS!

The repacks, (seen below), contain minis, base cards from non-flagship sets, parallels, inserts and FOUR HITS EACH. Both repacks contain two relics and two autos. They are not high end but I don't think that will upset you. =)

Repack #1, on the left, contains a few more cards and is overall slightly better than repack #2 on the right.

The contest will run until 11:59 PM EST on Saturday, March 15th. Shortly thereafter I will use random.org to determine the contest winners. I will randomize the list six times and whoever is at the top of the list on randomization number 6 will win repack #1. I will then randomize another six times and whoever comes out on top will win repack #2. 

Thanks for entering guys and don't forget to promote promote promote!!!

I love the 90's

This Paul Molitor card is from Fleer 1996. I'm sure many of you remember the 96 and 97 Fleer sets that were made of a non-glossy paper material and were marketed as being better for autographs. I loved these sets simply because of them being different. The different material also gave a different look to the photos that I really like. I may have to send some of these out for TTM autos. This particular card I pulled from a pack back in the day and it was devoid of foil. Some cards end up like that from Topps these days but without a border on the Fleer cards I think it looks pretty cool without the foil.