A Pretty Great Repack Box

After I returned my bike, I planned to just get something cheap to break the fiddy dollar bill I got in return so I could re-deposit half of it.  My first four packs of 2015 Topps weren’t very good though, and the dupes were already starting to pile up.  So I bit the bullet and grabbed pretty much the only other thing of interest to me that Target had: a $20, 20-pack (plus bonus) repack box that was almost completely devoid of junkwax.

Here’s the breakdown:

One 1991 Score

Three 2012 Panini Triple Play

One 2013 Bowman Platinum

Three 2014 Topps Series One 8-card blaster packs

Two 2014 Topps Series One 12-card retail packs

Four 2014 Topps Heritage

One 2014 Topps Heritage Jumbo rack pack (20 cards)

One 2014 Gypsy Queen

Three 2014 Topps Series Two 12-card retail packs

One 2014 Allen & Ginter

Bonus Item- Three loose 2014 Topps MLB Chipz

It sounds like a pretty lame bonus, but it turned out to be significantly better than expected.  Take a looksie, won’t you?

Poker chips are a somehow apt metaphor for pack-bustin’..

Turns out that gold-bordered glow-in-the-dark Tulo is actually pretty rare and reasonably valuable.  A run through the very few sold listings had them going for $5-20 a pop (with Jeters in $50 range), depending on the player.  The only two gold borders up for the bidding at the time were a Travis d’Arnaud Gold/Glow-in-the-Dark and Jose Reyes Gold/Blue, which sold for $13.01 and the opening bid of $9.99, respectively.  So this seemingly silly, innocuous bonus item was probably the hit of the box.  But this little repack had more going for it than just the bonus.  Much more, as you will see below.

Every once in a while, the gamble pays off..

Hit #1!  Yeah, there’s more on the way.

Flagship inserts..

Seein’ red..

Great name, one of only three Cubs, Bonifacio is #’ed 1282/2014, and Keppinger is 228/2014..

Topps Series One proved much more interesting than Series Two even without the sweet Zack Wheeler relic.  Better inserts, and the Target Red parallels aren’t something I see much of, even if there weren’t any huge stars.  Cosart, JD, and the series dos Hoz aren’t too bad though, and everyone is at least pictured (Cosart became a Marlin at the trade deadline) on teams that should trade easy enough.

Princert, Altuve base mini, Cuddyer SP, Choice RC..

GQ was meh, as it usually is.  But I never buy it anymore, so it was nice to find a pack in there.  It’s a meh that tastes a whole lot better when it costs $1 than when it costs $3.

Alen Hanson Top Prospects, Gary Brown base, Richie Shaffer chrome..

Bowman Platinum is the shiny version flipside to GQ’s old-timey style pointlessness, but it has been fairly forthcoming with the marginal prospect autographs & such for me, especially in 2012.  I don’t buy at full price anymore either, but it also makes for decent repack filler.

Mercifully, the only junkwax..

 

1991 Score wasn’t terrible, as junkwax goes.  A RC of a solid player who had nice, lengthy career that included a couple monster seasons and a stint with the Cubs & a couple late career Hall-of-Famers is the best you can really hope for in a pack like this.

Heritage base..

My resemblance to Holmberg is kinda uncanny..

The repack was heavily weighted towards Heritage, which is another product I’d never normally buy on its own, but am quite happy to get in numbers in a repack.  Despite my snarking to liven up the uneventful rack pack in my first post in ages over at APtbNL, that’s probably what ultimately made me decide to keep the repack while I was wandering around Target desperately trying to find something cheaper.  The McCutchen is fantastic.

Heritage inserts/SPs/parallels..

Outside of the red Yadi (my only complaint about this box is all the damn Cardinals inserts!), there wasn’t really anything all that special in there.  Just low level inserts & a trio of highly trade-able SPs.  I’d already pulled my hits before I got to them though, so it’s cool.

From the rack pack..

Quite possibly my only keeper from the entire box came out of the rack pack, so that helped too.

Captain Marvel Jr. insert and Giancarlo base mini..

Finally, main event time.  Allen & Ginter is consistently the best, most fun product Topps puts out every year (though 2014 had some legit competition for once, in the form of Finest and Stadium Club).  I’ve pulled a few hits & some rarer minis & other such nonsense (sea monkey card, flower card, World’s Biggest Mini SP) over the years, but the following, while not all that extraordinary, might still be my best pull to date.  Easily top-3.  Feast your eyes…

Kipnis Everdeen..

This Jason Kipnis is the first auto I’ve pulled out of retail in seven years of buying Allen & Ginter packs & blasters, and it is a beaut.  The funny thing about this outstanding repack box is that I had just started carrying that Prosperity Bean TJ sent in my Nerd Week prize pack that very morning.  Maybe it’s legit, maybe I’m just a superstitious and cowardly lot, I dunno.  I’m mostly just happy to have pulled some nice stuff out of a repack after the disaster that was January’s Greatest Chase repack/turd.

Anyway, that pretty much wraps up this post.  Let me know if anything strikes your fancy, and thanks for stopping by.

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…