Flea Market Fail, Retail Mostly Win

The Big Hurt..

So yeah, if you heard on twitter, there was no flea market on Saturday, and apparently there won’t be one at all this month.  It’s okay though, I took my what basically amounted to my entire monthly card budget to Target and Walmart, and had the good fortune of it turning out fairly well.  We all know how hit-or-miss doing that can be, but it can turn out rather nicely at times too.  I picked up a 33%-off ($20 instead of $30) blaster of 2009 SP football (the only dud of the bunch) and a Heritage value box (should’ve doubled up on these) at Walmart, and the last two 3-pack value rack pack things of Gypsy Queen at Target.  So let’s see how it all turned out, shall we?

Just uh, pretend you didn’t read my tweets from Sunday afternoon.  They were spoiler city for this post.  We’ll start with the Heritage Value Box.

The value box bonus refractor. Classy design with rather subtle and subdued refractoring that perfectly highlights without being gaudy. End result: An excellent bonus card.

The only card of note from the Heritage hobby packs..

There weren’t even any SPs that I know of.  Nothing wrong with getting an insert of a legendary pitcher, but the design is snooze inducing, so without chromeyness or a hit (or some sort of super SP variation nonsense), Heritage tends to be… forgettable.  It’s cool though, the regular topps was on point.

Start it off with a much-needed mini, because I think I'm still in single digits on this set, unless this McCutchen gets me to 10.

A Frank Robinson card is ALWAYS a welcome addition to my collection. 60 Years of topps.

A diamond parallel of a star. No longer collecting this set (just Cubs and my other player collections), but Cruz is probably worth one of bigger players I am after, to the right trader.

topps60 > Peak Performance, I'm just sayin'. Fairly classy design. These are for trade..

Another cool insert for trade..

I also pulled two Diamond Giveaway cards from the packs, so I ended up with four instead of two.  That was nice.  Oddly, they were both the same as the two that came with it (’77 Reggie, ’50-something Jackie).  I ended up with an ’88 Tony Gwynn, an ’05 Reds team card, an early ’90s cards so forgettable I can’t even remember which of my three forgettable early ’90s cards was the one I got in this bunch, and a ’70 Don Young (Vintage Cubs!).

Other cards of note were base of Beltre and King Felix for myself, a Steve Carlton/CC Sabathia Diamond Duos, ToppsTown of Mauer, Markakis, Carlos Santana, and two David “I hit a game-winning home run with a broken freakin’ back!” Wright.  Oh, and this:

A jersey card of The Ace of the Angels staff! Weaver is 6-3 with an ERA in the low 2s and a WHIP below 1(!) so far this year. Bonus: It's a nice red swatch. None of that white or gray business here.

Great to pull a great player when you hit on a 1:96 pack card, that’s for sure.  He’ll be added to the For Trade page when I get around to it.

Now, for the dud blaster… Presenting 2009 SP Signature Edition Football:

Purple swatch is nice & all, but John David Booty is so very not worth the price of admission, even at 33%-off.

What can I say?  Even with a better hit, this wouldn’t have been very exciting.  There were Bears base, but this was just disappointing overall.  Why would anyone ever be willing to pay $30 for one of these, when the vast majority of them were most likely just as lame as this one, which stunk on ice at $20?  It was a mistake, plain & simple.  I would’ve been much better off going with a second Heritage value box, even if it turned out to not be any good itself.

Needless to say, only the Bears in the top row are keepers.  The other 57 cards in the blaster can’t be gotten rid of fast enough.

Putting the failure of the day behind us, let’s get to the main course and do us up some Gypsy Queen!

You saw one of my keepers up top.  Frank Thomas with the White Sox is an official player collection now.  I’ll take hits from anywhere he played, but base and inserts and such I’d prefer be of the White Sox variety.

Anyway, everyone always says “Since you’ve already seen the base on countless other blogs, we’ll just skip to the inserts and hits”. No, EVERYONE says this, so no one that doesn’t break down single packs shows the damn base at all (save for the occasional shortprint)!  So here are three more base cards (okay, Markakis is a shortprint).

Kyle Drabek RC, Andruw Jones in what has to be one of the least flattering pictures on a baseball card this year, and a Nick Markakis SP. The base isn't getting as much love as I expected, but it's got style and is anything but boring.

With that taken care of, now here are some inserts.  Was that so hard?

Pujols, Alexei, Rollie, McGee RC, and the Gypsy Queen back is Chris Carter.

I'm suckered in and collecting this set, so if you have any extras, the nine I have will be posted on the set wantlist page later, so you can see what I be needin'. Also, STARLIN!

It wasn’t all Hot Pockets and singing frogs with sombreros in Gypsy Queen land though.  The second of the two value rack pack things had about a half dozen damaged cards, the worst two being the best two cards I pulled from thing.

This is a Gypsy Queen-backed shortprint. Difficult to see, but the damage is visible on my oldass low-def monitor at least. The bottom of the left vertical edge is slightly raised on the front, as if someone tried sticking a finger nail in the edge or something.

Jackie Robinson Framed Paper #'ed 100/999. Then it got worse. The card came out of the pack with that little chunk below the words at the bottom ripped up and barely hanging onto the card. What the hell, pack searcher and/or lollygagging topps quality control person?! Like half of the inserts in this same rack having minor damage on *two* corners, and my short print and Aroldis Chapman base having far worse on one of theirs wasn't bad enough, let's screw up the two best cards too... Will be sending these back for replacements.

Fortunately, there was a saving grace with the Gypsy Queen.  Behold!

The Man!

There was a lot of good in this little binge, and plenty of bad, but it can’t be denied… Retail has it’s occasional moments.  A lot of my better hits seem to have come from retail, and this… well this card is right up there amongst the best of them, team allegiances or not.

That being said, ol’ Stan here is going to be available, seeing as how I am a Cubs fan and have no love for that whiny team from St. Louis, but I’m not in any rush to get rid of him.  You’ll maybe want to set about blowing me away if you’d like to add Mr. Musial to your collection. 😉

So there you go, my latest binge.  I think I would’ve preferred taking another $25 to the flea market, but aside from the SP and what should be replaceable damaged cards, I am exceedingly pleased with the Heritage value box and Gypsy Queen, and it only amounted to $10 more.  We’ll just call SP a $20 learning experience and try to be smarter in the future.

And this overly long post is finished!  Sorry it’d been a couple days without posting by the way.  My sleep got JACKED UP by a linebacker that goes by the name Ray Insomnia.

EDIT: Forgot the Gypsy Queen inserts, and the sign off!  Here you go:

How could I have forgotten these funderfulriffic cards?! These are the undamaged inserts. I am definitely collecting the Sticky Fingers set entirely because the design is so utterly perfect. Just now noticed the spider motif on the Wall Climbers too! I was going to collect it, but probably not now because I'm so utterly terrified of spiders. Admittedly, that is a terrible excuse, because bees are actually the thing I had a traumatic incident with in my youth (one somehow got in my shirt and stung me on the back several times DURING a little league game). My dad lost a toe to a Brown Recluse bite though, so my spider fear isn't misplaced though. Ah, screw it, I'm not collecting either one. Crap.

Now that’s a wrap.  I’ll post up the two insert sets I will be collecting later on tonight.  Thanks, as ever, for stopping by!

Also, I got my new computer, baby!

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…

Nothing New to Report

Christmas came and went, and it was nice I guess.  Ate so much I thought I was going to explode, went and saw my mom’s crazy family on Saturday, and managed to do seven new sketches in one of my sketchbooks on Christmas and the day after.  The money received for Christmas is about to turn into a box of 2008 Donruss Threads baseball, as I begin to run through the boxes I’ve been wanting to get for awhile that have finally fallen into my price range (will be workin’ on this till spring or so, then I’m hopefully scaling way back).  I having nothing useful for the blog coming out of Christmas though.

I started scanning a bunch of stuff Friday (Secret Santa gift, a few random cards, Fantastic Four Archives break, and a trade with the Great Sports Name Hall of Fame), but was distracted and never finished thanks to RiffTrax of Star Wars.  It was glorious, but I got nothing done afterwards, and I was too worn out to retrieve anything I did get done after getting back to town late last night.  So yeah, I got nuthin’.

No biggie though, just me being lazy.  What is kinda biggie though, is on the way back in to my place last night, I managed to drop the five regular inserts (not the sketch card) I from the FF Archives box AND nearly all of my sketch cards, severely dinging up all the inserts and a few of my sketch cards.  As well, all the sketch cards I dropped suffered at least minor damage (which was all but the very first five I ever did), with a few being pretty much completely ruined.  Needless to say, a lousy end to an otherwise great holiday.  So I’m back at square one with them, and in a somewhat foul mood today.

The fact that my box of ’09 UD A Piece of History still says awaiting payment, even though the payment was sent almost a week-and-a-half ago, that ain’t helping.  I grow annoyed at the universe kicking me in general, but especially on the heels of things going surprisingly right of late.  And in a place where it hurts, like my art and my cards.  You hear me universe?  Find yourself a new buttmonkey.  Go be an asshole to someone else.  I’m done with this crap.

On that note, seeya soon everyone!  Hopefully things will be better next time I get around to posting.

What do you do when you get knocked down?  Get back up and fight harder.