Monthly Archives: January 2010

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2008 Donruss Threads Baseball Box Break & Review

Get excited, it’s finally time to do a box breakdown.  This is for 2008 Donruss Threads Baseball, if you didn’t catch the title of the post.

I’m sure there’s plenty of reviews & stuff out there already, so I’ll make the summary bit short & sweet.

24 packs per box

5 cards per pack

4 hits per box (at least two autos)

Threads is all legends and prospects with nothing in between (though being from 2008, some prospects have already made their MLB debuts), so if you ain’t down with that, I’ve got two words for ya: DON’T BUY. 😛

Not being licensed by MLB, there aren’t supposed to be any MLB logos or team names anywhere on the cards, but the attempts to remove them from the photos are often half-hearted at best, though some are fully removed.  Overall, lack of team names and weakly obscured logos don’t detract from things, though the fully removed ones are slightly jarring if you’re paying enough attention to notice.

As you can see, any partially obscured team names are left alone, and most hat/helmet logos are half-assedly dealt with at best.

The design is pretty decent I think, and I like how deep into the legend barrel they dug to pull out Frank Howard and some others, including Hall of Famers, that you unfortunately rarely see on cards nowadays.  It definitely allows this set to tap into a bit of the epic fun factor of the topps Archives & All-Time Fan Favorites sets from the early aughts.  It’s nice to see Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe too.

O hai

The short set is 100 cards, and there are 120 per box, of which about 14-15 will be inserts/parallels (more on that shortly).  That leaves room for a few duplicates in every box, but you should still be able to complete the set.  Not so fast my friend.  I came up well short of the finish.  I haven’t gotten around to collating it yet, but I think I came up at least five cards short of the complete set.

Aparicio & Trammell, just because...

Now then, the regular inserts and parallels.  You are promised 10 per box, one each of the following: Diamond Kings, Century Stars, Century Legends, and Green Century Proofs.  The other six are a random assortment of the above, as well as #ed base parallels, College Greats, Dynasty, Generations, and I guess Baseball Americana.  With six being random, there’s a good chance you won’t pull everything.  I didn’t get any Baseball Americana or Generations in my box, whereas Drew from drewscards pulled two Baseball Americana, but no Generations or Dynasty inserts.  I pulled one of the latter.

Century Legends Duke Snider & Ernie Banks (Keeper!), and Century Stars Nolan Ryan

The Century Legends are designed to look classy, and the Century Stars are designed to look fun I guess.  Both succeed.

Bob Feller base parallel #ed 15/100

My awesome base parallel pull. 😀

Pulled three Diamond Kings. Nolan Ryan and Ernie Banks are #ed /250 because the Threads logo is shiny I guess. :d

There are a crap-ton of Diamond King parallels, starting at /250.  Fuller is the regular base version, which isn’t numbered.  They used the same picture for Mr. Cub’s Diamond King and Century Legend (The two Century stars I pulled share the same photo as the players’ respective base cards, as well).  The photo recycling thing is annoying to start with, but within the same set?  Pathetic.  Come on, man!  And for the love of pizza, quit using the same picture of Joe Morgan already!

How many freaking times has that same picture of Joe Morgan been used with various cropping and/or filtering since the beginning of the '00s now??

It’s a cool card & all, but that picture’s been used on seemingly every single Joe Morgan card made since 2000.  Ask Field of Cards about that.  Poor guy’s haunted by that image.  He was even in attendance for my live box break on Jtv when I pulled this.

Halman Green Century Proof /250 & Molitor College Greats..

Halman came out of the pack in bad shape, with a dinged corner damage along the bottom edge.  Disappointing, and the damage will continue…

Emilio Bonifacio /1874, Keaton Hayenga 1/100 (woohoo eBay 1/1!), and Ryan Patterson /775 sticker autos..

Bonifacio was pretty beat up right out the pack, and Hayenga wasn’t minty fresh either, which is unfortunate because it’s the first time I’ve ever pulled the first or last of a print run.

Now, you see I pulled three autos.  There were two game-used cards, so that means I pulled an extra hit.  Donruss was always cool like that.  Getting more than promised seemed to be the rule rather than the exception for them.  Here’s my other two hits:

Century Stars Dale Murphy jersey /100

My weak link of the box.  Dale Murphy would be a really cool pull usually, and I guess he kinda still is, but considering how great the legend checklist is, this is probably one of the weakest possible legends you can get.  And, this is the only legend hit I got.  Oh wells.

Time for the grand finale!

Madison Bumgarner game-used something?... /100

Even at full size it’s kinda hard to see, but there are two parallel grooves in the swatch running the length of the swatch vertically.  I dunno what the deal is, but the swatch is super thick too.  It’s practically bursting from the window.  Whatever the case, I’m calling this a patch… err, being Donruss, Prime Jersey (which is probably more accurate than calling most special swatches a “patch” anyway), until proven otherwise. 😛

Now for grades.

Price: A This is a great product at under $50.  It’s fun and there’s a fair chance at a great pull.

Condition: C I think only the three cards were noticeably damaged, but they were kind of important ones.

Pulls: B Bonifacio has made it to the majors already but not been great.  Hayenga has potential.  Patterson is going on 27 and hasn’t made the show yet, though he might be decent if he ever does.  Murphy is cool but a weak legend.  Bumgarner is easily the hit of the box.  The regular inserts and the Bob Feller parallel are what bring it up from a C to a solid B.

Fun: A+ This was easily the most fun I’ve ever had busting a box of cards.  I may get another box of Threads in the future.

Final Grade: Solid B It has it’s flaws, but it’s just a fun product.  You’ll be close to the complete short set even if you do get too many dupes, the regular inserts are fantastic, there’s pretty decent big hit potential for the price, and it all looks pretty good, sticker autos aside.  There is much to like here.

Thanks for reading. 🙂

Until our next…

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Three Cards

First, I’m not sure I ever got around to sending BigD my address (if I did, it totally slipped me wonky lil’ brain), so I don’t know how this even got here, but here’s an ’09 Sweet Spot Shin-Soo Choo.  Nice to give one of my most underdeveloped player collections a little love.  I think this is only my fifth or sixth Choo.  Now to get working on that Pablo Sandoval collection (I think I only have one, and it’s missing!).

I really like this picture for some reason...

A word of advice if you are going to send a single card in a plain white envelope: Only use the thinnest top loader.  This was in I think just the next size up and still didn’t fit the sortything apparently, because one side of the envelope was all crunched up up to edge of the top loader.  Cool card though.  Only my second of the ’09 set I think.

Next, I sent Shot Not Taken the Jason “Mayhem” Miller relic plus a a few guys for his PCs.  Here’s what I received in return.  Two very nice cards to kick off my newest player collection, Deron Williams!

Yeesh, dirty scanner is dirty. :/

The Bowman was just a nice bonus. This is the card I wanted for Mayhem. I was an Illini fan from about 11 or 12 years old through when Deron and Luther played there and made that run to the title game. Fun times.

Lurve this dual jersey card.  The design is good, and white swatches are almost tolerable when offset by a swatch of another color.

Okay, I’m done blogging for today.  I needs to sleep some more.  Had been doing fairly well for awhile again until yesterday/today.  I look forward to more trades with Ray and a first one with the BigD in the near future.

Dos vadania, comrades. 😛

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Still Here…

Just didn’t feel like signing in for awhile because it’s annoying.  I picked up a few cards on the ol’ eBay in the few days I’ve been away, including my first Griffey game-used!

In other news, the only others news is that I’ve most just been drawing quite a bit and watching artcasts.  Still without TV, which sucks because I’ve missed so much interesting crap in recent days (all the late night nincompoopery and the second episode of Human Target), but it’ll be taken care of soon enough.  The artcasts are fun though, and I’m learning a lot.  I even set up a channel on ustream to do my own sooner or later, since most artists seem to be there rather than Jtv.

In the last three days, I’ve drawn 9 new sketch, six of them have been inked.  They are… the whole A-Team, Fred McGriff and a not quite realistic but still pretty good likeness apparently of Conan O’Brien cuz I’m with Coco, baby!  Ahem, yes.  The just drawn ones are Duke, Lady Jaye, and Shipwreck of GI Joe.  I made a list of about 20 Joes I want to do cards of, though a few of the lesser-known ones on the list I might not get to due to lack of reference.

Anyway, here’s two more of the six previously finished cards for y’all, since I don’t have the NSFW one edited yet.

SPAAAAACE GHOOOOOST!

Not too bad I guess.  I don’t enjoy coloring that much though, and I’m definitely not good at it yet.  But I’m tryin’.

Cybersix sketch card

I dunno how I missed the greatness that is Cybersix back in the day.  Still can’t get skin shading right to save my life.  Must find the patience to try to blend colors like I did when I first started doing stuffs.  I’m regressing like Joe Flacco.  Dang… :/

Okay, I’m outta here.  There’s more sketch cards to be done!  I’ll see about getting those box break posts up over the weekend.

Seriously, signing in is so annoying…

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It’s Sketch Card Time!

Heyo.

I was able to get out and do some more scanning last night, woo.  And my timing was good, the other two Brooke Morales cards were waiting for me when I checked my mail on the way out, so they got scanned as well.  I cut my hair too, so I’m not longer able to chew on my bangs.  Yes, they were seriously long enough for me to chew on… >.>

Yes I cut my own hair too.  Poor people gotta do things on they own sometimes.  I’m apparently not too bad at it though, so why not.  Can always buzz it down if it doesn’t take.

Anyway, I replied to Dinged Corners that I’d scan my latest sketch cards over the weekend.  So here are three of them.  These are three of the four guys they created so the SuperFriends wouldn’t be all white (didn’t finish El Dorado yet).  If only they remembered to give them pants… Alas.

On… to the cards!

Apache Chief

The Chief came out fairly well, hands aside, but as with all three, it looks like there’s a bit more coloring I could do (I’m not going to let myself though).  Coloring is such a pain, I always seem to forget some detail. :/

Black Vulcan

I totally botched Vulcan’s lips & his nose is sorta lopsided.  Live & learn.  I never could wrap my head around the whole throwing an actual lightning bolt thing, though I almost regret not going with that instead of the charged up hands now, not that they look too terrible.

Samurai

I thought this was my worst sketch of the three, but I freaking love how the coloring turned out.  I’m reasonably sure that 侍 means samurai, though I’m far less confident that I wrote it acceptably.  Still think it all looks pretty cool, heavy-handed penciling that I couldn’t quite erase all the way aside (hands & arms, the legs are intentional & weren’t erased at all).  I have started working on my touch, but not till after I did this one.  And this card didn’t want to come out my brain very well, so yeah…

That’s enough for now, more to come soon.  An avenging spirit from the final frontier, my latest unhealthy obsession with a fictional character, and one that ain’t quite safe for work (it’ll be censored on teh blog, but not dA).

Oh, and Human Target was awesome in that ’90s syndicated action series way that I mark out so much for. 😀

That’s all for now.  Home dawg needs his sleep.  Seeya. 😉

Until our next…

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Trade With Marie

So I finally got around to sending card stuffs (most notably that Ticket to Stardom Pujols Ticket stub) to Marie in December, so she sent some cards back.  As it turns out, that is how trading works. 😛

Anyway, here are all the cards I didn’t have already:

Starting off strong with numbered Zambrano and Ichiro and an awesome Rogers Hornsby insert...

The Riot and a couple of sweet '08 Sweet Spot base cards. I think I like 'em even better than the '09s. David Ortiz... now that's a real athletes body right there. Cool to get him since it doesn't happen very often anymore.

The good baseball playing Hoffpaiur on old school SP-style. Much like refractors and holograms, one can never have too many die-cuts.

Here’s a Soriano and the back of the Hoff.  Not a big fan of the topps206 base cards.  Not close to A&G, everything is way better than Uncanny Valley Goudey, it’s on par with Goodwin Champions, a bit below Obak.  And topps Heritage & UD O-Pee-Chee are N/A cuz they aren’t artsy and OPC doesn’t rip off any specific sets (not that there wasn’t an intention to for the parallels).  I’m sick of retro sets in general, but that’s a matter for another post.

Finally, the hits:

Ryno with porn stache and Aramis Goodwin Champions jerseys. Awesome!

I actually got the same Aramis from my Secret Santa at almost the same time.  I thought it might be karmic retribution for contemplating selling the Pujols after offering it to Marie, but there are at least four reasons that doesn’t make sense, none that are worth going into here.  And although facial hair is a pain in the butt (for my lazy arse at least), cards depicting Ryne Sandberg with a ‘stache never, ever go out of style.  Love the ivy behind him too.  That is so cool.  About as perfect as a card of a Cub can get.

And that, was an awesome trade.

I’m gonna be so sad if Hawk goes into The Hall as an Expo, but if the Cubs don’t retire his number regardless, I’m totally jumping ship for a year-and-a-half like I did when they traded Maddux when I was little, I’m just sayin’.

I’m serious man, I’ll totally do it! >=/

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I Just Had the Weirdest Dream…

Oh this could be interesting.  This is the dream I woke up from this morning.  I started writing this post almost immediately thereafter.  Enjoy.

There I am, well, that younger version of me that I still am in my head due to the disconnect in my body & mind that I’ve mentioned before.  But anyway, there’s my 17-ish year old inner-self, and… Wicked Ortega, and a girl… she’s fictional, I think.  But she’s very familiar to me for some reason, though I can’t quite place her.  Perhaps she’s from a different dream (I want to say from the “Matt’s Magic Arcade” one if that be the case), or perhaps an amalgamation of real people.  Let’s call her dreamgirl, for the sake of giving her a name.  Anyway, there we are, I guess we were trading cards or something.  In what appeared to be the middle of nowhere?

Things seem to be going whatever qualifies as normally I guess, when who should show up but @neilhimself… Yeah, Neil Gaiman is in this dream.  And apparently he is an alien.  What a world.  He wanted to take us… somewhere.  I’m not sure where exactly, but it sounded like the extent of it is that he wanted to teach us how to be great salespeople… um, okay?  I dunno if it’s Alien Neil’s homeworld or just some intergalactic conference, but anyway, even the space case that is me seemed to become a little dubious once Alfredo and dreamgirl show their misgivings.

Dreamgirl, who’s about the same age as my inner-self I think, really didn’t trust Alien Neil and left.  Then Neil jets too, but left Wicked & me this cheesy ’50s B-movie flying saucer thing to follow him to wherever he went.  Reluctantly we get in and the thing takes off by by itself.  I thought we were leaving the planet now, but nope, it was just taking us to another part of the world.  I don’t think the saucer was deep-space worthy anyway, the door didn’t want to shut as it was taking off.

On the flight, which at the speed it was going, must’ve taken us at least halfway around the world from whatever field we were in, I was nervously going through a smallish stack of baseball cards I think I received from Alien Neil Gaiman.  I think we all received a stack, but yeah, baseball cards made a small cameo.  I don’t know what cards where there exactly (I want to say there was some crazy early 2000s stuff though, judging by the thick cardstock), but I do know there were two UD Masterpieces cards that I put on the top & bottom of the stack because they have no gloss.

Right, so we finally landed, though I’m sure exactly how long it took.  It seemed to be here, this city I live, but it was… much more expansive.  There were skyscapers downtown and there was an ever-so-vague near future vibe.  Neil was there, and somehow dreamgirl showed up shortly after, despite us seemingly making a long trip at supersonic speeds.  I guess since we were all up in those skyscrapers (the saucer landed on one), Alien Neil Gaiman gave us flying, Silver Surfer-style surfboards and goes off to get ready to go I assume, while we messed around on the flying surfboards and considered going with him.

Finally, we were sitting around a table discussing going with Alien Neil.  Dreamgirl was still way mistrusting.  Wicked seemed cautiously curious.  After I woke up but was still kinda in the dream, he mentioned being sorta tied to earth because he has a family.  And me, I was making peace with the fact that it could go horribly wrong (something about a quote about wanting to see the stars, but not necessarily being welcome when you get there), but I didn’t have anything to lose, nothing much to stay for (though for what it’s worth, Ms. L, I did admit a few people might miss me).  I was pondering all the terrible things that could happen to me if I went, and rationalizing that while they might be painful ways to go, they’d all be quick at least.

Unfortunately, I woke up before we could get any further.  I wasn’t sure if The Don was going, but I had convinced myself to go (not that it took that much).  It looked like dreamgirl might end up very begrudgingly going if I went, because apparently I am a bumbling idiot that needs someone to keep me from doing stupid sh*t or something.  I dunno, but there’s some degree of reality in that thought, even if it’s just my own lack of self-confidence talking.

So yeah, there ya go.  Feel free to analyze away.

Maybe generic Honey Bunches of Oats right before sleep isn’t the best idea…

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Now I’m Ready

Last night was awesome!  I did one sketch card start to finish that I’d been meaning to do for awhile, and inked & colored about a half dozen more.  As such, I’m feeling plenty good enough to mess with cards and my blog again.  And not a moment too soon either.  More cards from Tim arrived today, these being the ones for the Eddie Mathews jersey.  Lots of great stuff in there. 🙂  Also, two Deron Williams jerseys arrived from Shot Not Taken.  And a new Brooke Morales card came from eBay, and a couple more should be arriving soon.  Project S.T.A.L.K.E.R. progresses, lol.

I’m still not going to post any trades yet though.  And no, I don’t care if Thorzul hates trade posts.  I don’t even think he’s ever been to my blog anyway.  I just wanted to take a minute right now to give some major props to some people involved in the National Chicle bruhaha over the weekend.

First, dayf the Cardboard Junkie for rants that pretty much summed up everything that’s wrong with and/or pisses us off about the hobby.  They were passionate and on-point to such a degree that I’d have to say he should probably now be considered one of the leading voices on the current state of the hobby.

Next, Chris Olds, the face of Beckett on the internet.  A fair bit of dayf’s wrath was directed at him, but his coverage of things was pretty decent, and raised my opinion of him a lil’ bit.  I don’t really know him beyond the smug, garish ogre he is hopelessly characterized as by many of the leading bloggers, but ol’ boy handled his business well enough here, and proved he has something resembling of journalistic skillz, so I’ll give him his due.

Next, it was great to hear from the artists commissioned by topps to do the upcoming National Chicle set, particularly Paul Lempa who did the Chipper/Ruth in modern Braves uni/Magglio Ordonez (that’s who it looks like to me, dammit!) card everybody got all militant about.  Being a wannabe artist, it pleased me that the dude was so positive about everything.  The same can’t be said for all the artists interviewed, but that’s where we’re going next.

Finally, to Sooz of a Cardboard Problem for the verbal whoopin’ on Monty Sheldon, explaining why crankypants’ quote was incredibly an douchy and arrogant one.  Good work, Sooz!  It stated why we are awesome, what you get yourself into as a writer/artist/entertainer of any kind, and made me proud to be a part of this hobby. 🙂

Until our next, I leave you with this, just because…

The tiniest swatch of Carlton Fisk jersey ever!

I am the Bazooka Joe heartthrob du jour…

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Can’t Talk, Arting!

Back in business just in time to take a few days off, huh?  Anyway, all I wanna do right now is draw and think about absolutely else, so I shall.  Don’t worry though, nothing personal, and not like how I used take off on my own back home whenever I got tired of hanging out with friends when I was little.  Actually I wouldn’t mind company if I had anyone on MSN or whatever, I just have a powerful need to get away from the sports cards and reality and twitter and sh*t for awhile and release this tension I’m feeling.

It’s like… I got no patience for anything that requires much of me right now.  Most of my art, and writing for that matter, is pure instinct and doesn’t require a lot of thought.  It just sorta happens.  So I’m gonna do that.  I’ll get around to some real posting again soon hopefully.

Oh, I did manage to get some cards sent out today, a couple small packages are on their way to Dinged Corners and Shot Not Taken.  Hope ya like. 🙂

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Back in Business I Guess

I was feeling better yesterday, so I went out and got some groceries and stuff.  I’m now kinda sick again, but I also managed to get some scans for my trouble.  Like 26 of them (and there’s a bunch more left to go).  So we’ll be getting back into some proper posting soon I think.  I do have every intention of throwing in more scans and/or pictures (if applicable) of my attempts at art, as well.  And the former Sketch Card Mania page will host the sketch cards I finish and scan after they get their proper posts.

This is all I’m posting today though.  Running a card blog ain’t as glamorous as it looks.  I have to get some trades in proper order, and then I’m going to see if I can squeeze a little more life out of my old and broke-ass digital cable box so I can watch TV again, maybe some football.  Then I’m spending the rest of the day drawing new sketch cards, and finishing the ones I’ve drawn already that need finishing.  Woo, such a life I lead. 😛

EDIT: Out of curiosity, how long do digital cable boxes tend to last?  I’ve had mine for going on 5 1/2 years, and it appears to be completely shot.  Not that I know anything about it, but all the stuff plugged into the back and the wall and everything is all tight, so I guess the thing is just finally broken.  Any advice on how to proceed here?

Have a safe and happy rest of your Wildcard Weekend, everyone!

Teh nose… it drips!