Sale! #1
I was out buying those cases I send my trades out in Tuesday, when I stopped in at K-Mart… and there they were. 2008 Upper Deck X and Masterpieces blasters… buy one, get one free. 2008! I couldn’t pass those babies up. I haven’t had so many packs to bust in one sitting for a REALLY long time, and even though I didn’t pull anything spectacular, and my arm was actually hurting by the time I was done, I had an absolute blast. Few things in the world are more fun than busting a lot of packs at once.
Before I get to the Upper Deck X breakdown though, I’ll mention that I also picked up PS2 game Raw Danger, a game I’ve been wanting to play since I first heard about it a good year-and-a-half+ ago, at K-Mart as well… for $4.99! Not bad eh? About $100 worth of stuff for $45 is prety good, right?
Anyway, with that all said, I thought I’d break it down for you. Here is the Upper Deck X first.
Two Blasters, 10 Packs per Blaster, Six Cards per Pack, One Not Really Guaranteed, Guaranteed Jersey per Blaster.
Base-
51/100… Just over half the base set, so I may try to finish it. I’ll put down what I need on the Want List Page I’m working on, to debut soon.
Duplicates-
15/100… 6 (Smoltz) 13 (Manny Ramirez), 15 (Josh Beckett), 22 (KOSUKE FUKUDOME~!!), 29 (Adam Dunn), 36 (Garrett Atkins), 43 (Hanley Ramirez), 57 (Prince Fielder), 62 (David Wright), 67 (Hideki Matsui), 76 (Ryan Howard), 81 (Khalil Greene), 83 (Greg Maddux), 97 (Vernon Wells), 99 (Ryan Zimmerman)
Except for Fukudome, these are all up for trade.
Die-Cut-
5 (Dan Haren), 10 (Nick Markakis), 12 (David Ortiz), 17 (Carlos Zambrano), 19 (Aramis Ramirez), 31 (Edison Volquez), 33 (Travis Hafner), 38 (Troy Tulowitzki), 52 (Vlad Guerrero), 54 (Russell Martin), 59 (Justin Morneau), 66 (Ian Kennedy RC), 71 (Robinson Cano), 73 (Frank Thomas), 75 (Jimmy Rollins), 80 (Adrian Gonzalez), 82 (Jake Peavy), 89 (Erik Bedard), 94 (Evan Longoria RC), 96 (Michael Young)
I’m keeping Ortiz, Vlad, Zambrano, Aramis and maybe Frank Thomas. And it’ll take a good Kosuke Fukudome (one I don’t have), Geovany Soto or MAYBE Alexei Ramirez rookie if you want the Longoria. The rest are officially up for trade.
Gold Die-Cut-
40 (Miguel Cabrera), 89 (Erik Bedard)
Same with these two, up for trade.
XPonential-
X1: Brian Roberts, Carlos Zambrano, Grady Sizemore, Todd Helton, Jimmy Rollins, Justin Morneau, Magglio Ordonez, Gary Sheffield
X2: Aramis Ramirez, Carlos Beltran, Chase Utley, Derrek Lee, Ken Griffey Jr., Matt Holliday
X3: Jimmy Rollins, Prince Fielder
X4: Alex Rodriguez, Jose Reyes
Zambrano, Lee, Aramis, and Griffey are keepers. A-Rod goes into the A-Rod stack, which may have a home with Kimaloo now. Prince goes into the Brewers stack meant for Thorzul if my lazy arse ever gets around to emailing him. Nobody else have a specific destination in mind except for *maybe* the Phillies.
That goes for most of my cards, actually. Only my Astros, Braves, Brewers, Dodgers, Phillies, Rays, Red Sox, White Sox, A-Rods now, and of course the favorites of Dinged Corners have specific homes in mind. If you have another favorite team, let me know, I’ll get some stuff together. And if you think you are one of the people I’m thinking of sending one of the above teams to, gimme a holla as well.
Oh yeah, the jerseys, such as they are…
Kenji Johjima and Jeff Kent. Mleh.
How sad that the first Japanese catcher to play in MLB (and up until this past season, a top ten producer amongst catchers), and a first ballot caliber Hall of Fame second basemen would elicit a “mleh”, but such is the state of our world and our hobby.
Overall, I was quite pleased with this purchase of Upper Deck X, I got a surprising number of keepers and a good bit of trade bait, not to mention enough cards to justify going for the complete base set. And the more I look at them, the more I like the base design of Upper Deck X. There is something to be said for the design fitting the theme, I think. And the XPonentials are swank, especially X3 and X4.
That’s it for this post. Of course I have no scans or anything. Sorry. Ahem, hit me up if you see something you like. Next time on BTHE, Upper Deck Masterpieces. Lots of pretty base and absolutely nothing else. *thumbs… up?*
See You, Space Cowboy
No Focus!
Yeah, that sums it up. I’m pretty much broke… I’ve been under $10 for the rest of the month since about the 20th, so baseball cards and blogging about them have fallen off the radar for the second half of this month. I haven’t even read anybody else’s for almost a week. This has been replaced, for the moment, by another of my many random loves: old school video games.
The recent triumphant return of Vixy from RockmanPM (to celebrate Mega/Rock Man 9) has kind of psyched me up again after a summer of not playing much (and by that I mean, not playing at all), and snapped me out of the previous post’s funk and overall lack of energy to do anything, for now.
As well, a friend of mine from 411mania has wanted me to try and get on there ever since I decided to end my tenure recapping a (mind-numbingly schizophrenic) wrestling show on a wrestling satire website this summer. So the other day I took my sorry, not mention rusty, gaming skills and started beta testing my idea for an old school games column highlighting all the great games I missed growing up, using forgotten NES gem StarTropics. After 8 hours and 45 minutes, I’m just starting the fifth chapter (of I think seven). The idea I had for the column is turning into a muddy mess, so I thought I’d drop a few thoughts on the game here though if nothing comes of it.
First of all, StarTropics stars Mike Jones, star high school pitcher from Seattle, as he attempts to rescue his archaeologist uncle from an evil alien. The game draws a lot of comparisons to the original Legend of Zelda, but I don’t really see it THAT much. I mean yeah, it’s exploring dungeons and stuff, but… it just feels different. For one thing, there is lots of jumping in the game. And as such, the perspective is a little different, to speak nothing of the gameplay mechanics. The dungeons also push the story along, ridonkulous as the scenarios can be.
StarTropics came out in 1990, a few years after LoZ, so the graphics are, in the dungeons at least, much improved. Control is kinda sluggish, but you get used to it quick enough. Also, starting each chapter with only your original three hearts is kind of annoying. The third dungeon of the looooong chapter 3 was particularly brutal and took many tries and tested my already suspect mental health. It was just a pain, but satisfying when finally completed.
Overall though, whatever complaints I have are relatively minor. I would definitely recommend picking up StarTropics on the Wii’s Virtual Console, if you haven’t already. It’s a good, lengthy, and challenging game, especially for the only 500 Wii Point ($5) price tag.
