Ustream Tonight

I will be doing a live break on ustream of 3 blasters I picked up cheap at Shopko last night. Their entire stock of $20 blasters was marked down to $14.99, and I also had a $10 off any purchase over $40 thing so I picked up four 2010 blasters for $12.50 apiece. Sweetness.

I opened the first one, 2010 topps206, in the car immediately after picking it up. It had nothing of note, but come see what resides in the other three at 8:30pm est/7:30pm cst this evening.  I’ll be busting a blaster of topps Chrome baseball, topps Heritage baseball, and topps Platinum football, all from this year.

Go HERE to watch my break, and then after mine is finished, hop on over to the Wicked One‘s ustream channel at 10pm est/9pm cst to watch the first part of his massive early-mid ’90s group break.

EDIT: The Cast went well, a few people showed up, pulled an auto & some nice chrome-age & fractors.  It was a good time, and the new mic works like a dream.  Come on by & say hey next time!

Group Breakage

No, not me. Not yet anyway. Over at Cardboard Collections. It’s cheap, the box choices are interesting, and there are plenty of good teams still available.  So go claim a team and get in on the group break goodness. 😉

Old School Group Break Loot & Stuff

I was a little late to the party so there weren’t many teams left to choose by the time I happened across the Old School Group Break, but there were a couple I thought might give me a chance at something of interest.  So, on a whim, I decided to enter and chose the Chicago White Sox and Minnesota Twins.

I did okay I guess.  Three so-so hits and one insert that’s apparently a really tough pull.  Read that the Upper Deck Rivals inserts only fell around 1:240 packs on someone’s blog.  But I was really hoping for some crazy early 2000s inserts and parallels, so I was a little sad to be completely shut out on those.  It turned out okay though when I gave up my Twins base cards for a few Cubbies.  I just figured I’d get some nice base cards & maybe & insert or two, but woah!  Take a look…

I think I'm gonna keep a couple of the Franks. Think I'm going to pare down my Griffey collection too, and then just keep a few of each guy that I like. Also keeping the throwbacks from this bunch.

I had completely forgotten David Wells played for the White Sox for awhile.  And look at the size of Frank’s arms in that Studio card.  Great googly moogly…

Here's some backs and a couple of the Cubs I received in lieu of Twins base. The Gibson and Youk came from packs of topps and I don't know why I scanned them with these. Sorry. >.>

And what fine backs they are.  I don’t think I scanned but maybe half of the White Sox base cards I received, so there’s plenty more where these came from.

Here's the hits and inserts and extras and extra hits!

Amazing cards all around, but those extras just blew me away.  Though a bit unnerved by him turning white all of a sudden, I never could bring myself to dislike Sammy, so I greatly appreciate the three in the top row.  I for one loved what he did at the congressional hearings, because quite frankly I think the whole steroid thing was/is a bunch of BS.  And though his time with the Cubs ended poorly, the good times still override it for me.

The Kerry Wood/Rick Ankiel dual bat card is really nice looking, though I’m not sure I can keep it.  Why would you make a dual card of hated rivals in the first place, let alone a hit?  I’m not so sure a Cardinals fan would care to have it either.  Did Kerry make any fans with Cleveland yet?  W/e, the card itself is really nice looking and I have no dual hit cards to speak of.

The Sam Fuld auto is epic.  I have high hopes for the guy.  I guess Nady is useful if he still has power, but I hope there’s room for Fuld to get a lot more playing time this year.

Oddly enough, I have no issues with the Morneau/Thome card.  In fact I quite like it.  I guess the rivalry thing just matters when it comes to your own team.  Huh…  Hard to believe it’s an Upper Deck card from the end of the decade, when they seemed to not be able to get much of anything right (I been there Upper Deck, no disrespect).  It was kinda cool to get both teams I picked on the same card though.  And as mentioned near the top, somewheres I read it was a very tough pull.

The hits were meh, as also mentioned.  Durbin’s yet to do anything of note.  I dig the Kip Wells just for the fact that it is an Autographics and the fond memories of the past I get from that.  The Mark Buehrle is easily the best player of the three, and the card is #’ed to /56.

Thank you very much, John.  If you do another group break in the future, you can count me in.  Hopefully next time I’ll get there early enough for the Cubs and maybe Mariners or Dodgers or some other team in my upper tier.  😀

Finally, while we’re on the subject of group breaks, I kind of have the itch to host a group break.  I enjoyed this one so much that I’d like to do mine in a similar style and price range.  I’d like to do pick out boxes from throughout the decade though.

This proposed group break wouldn’t take place until around opening day of the baseball season, because I want to get a lot of my ridiculously overbooked trading queue caught up on first, and besides, wouldn’t that just be an awesome time of year to do one?  Also, I’m still not going to have a scanner by then unless I get it one for free or win one or something, but the weather should hopefully be getting a bit nicer by then, so I will hopefully have a good bit more and faster access to the one I have access to now, so that I may be able to pull this off fairly efficiently, or what qualifies as such for me anyway.

The actual box bustin’ itself for this group break would happen on either my justin.tv or ustream channels over the course of multiple days, because I like to take my time when busting boxes of cards.  And that way everything will be documented, and people can come and go as they please during the breaks (hopefully a decent amount of people will bother to show up for them anyway; sorry in advance for not having boobs or an especially flashy personality :P), and they will be highlighted for those that can’t be there for the festivities, but do want to see what went on before the scanning.

So is anyone interested?  Let me know if you are, and please spread the word.  I think this would be a pretty exciting way to count down and kick off the baseball season.  I’d like to have enough people on board and everyone paid and get the teams chosen by mid-March at the very latest.  Otherwise we probably won’t be done in time.

We’ll start delving deeper into this should people start getting interested, deciding on the actual boxes to buy and cost to enter and whatnot.

I totally came up with most of these initial details on the fly, but is everything sounding sensible enough so far? 🙂

The Oddball Lot #1

Though I swore off all of Topps offerings in blaster form, I still have a few loose packs worth of A&G to add to the want/for trade list after I get some sleep soon, including a suh-weet Mantle Ginter Back Mini, a couple of which came after the blaster debacle.  I guess I can’t fully resist the Allen & Ginter goodness, though no more blasters EVAR~!  I’m pretty much done with it till whenever as of now though.  My focus has very nearly completely drifted away from baseball cards to non-sport offerings.  I am awaiting some as I speak, and the rest of the near future’s boxy offerings are of the entertainment variety.

Anyway, I STILL owe some A&G trade-related emails to the following people (Yes, I do fail, thanks for asking):

Nachos Grande– Send me an email with what you want if you still require anything you inquired about and your address, and I will just send them and some Reds along with no specific strings attached other than my vague wantlists (aka The Lonestarr Special~!), because I’m not completely sure what my nice haul from the A&G group break does to my A&G wantlist.

More on the later group break later, btw…

Box Opener I’m not sure there was anything specific mentioned, so I don’t know where to even begin.

Night Owl– I have a Blake DeWitt ’09 A&G bat card if you need it still.  Also plenty of assorted Dodgers of note, including a couple other “hits”, if lil’ Blakey isn’t enough.  Well, I guess it doesn’t matter, I always send team stuff anyway, so I’m sure I can make giving  up the Fukudome jersey worthwhile.  I can get more specific via email if you wish.

Beardy– I’m not sure if my comparably paltry number of A&G cards can help you out any, but I’ve got a decentish-sized stack of Orioles with probably something to get ahold of that No Number Aramis Ramirez Mini.

Cat Osterman remains a dream that only achievable via a pipe of some kind though. *sigh*

Sharpe Since ’92– I can hook you up with some minis for the cards you offered.  I’ll need to thoroughly go over the A&G group break stuff to know specifics again though.  I know it knocked a few off, but my attention span hasn’t let me get there yet to see what’s what.

And regular trade emails to:

Sac Bunt‘s Chris– One of these years I will get to it.

Wicked Ortega– I haz Marlins cards & stuff.  Will trade.

Marie of Cardboard Problem and Upper Deck Blog– Just need to find out about the Canos & such.  The Pujols sketch card will be done once I get some sleep. New markers FTW.

And now for a couple of different, yet equally faily of me things:

Sooz of A Cardboard Problem– Did I reply to the Ichiro list email?  I thought I did, but it isn’t in the sent or trade folders, so I’m not sure what the deal is.

David, the king of the Generosity Tribe… I totally flaked and forgot about the money order until I actually saw the box break happened.  I have the money order, but I don’t have your address.  On the Packs of Random Kindness bubble mailer, it is partially ripped away, and the Seattle Mariners pack of kindness bubble mailer one is long gone it appears, so if you get this message, please email me please.  Once I have it, I will send along a small (because I’m fairly severely lacking in your team) selection of Cleveland Indians cards as a thank you for your packs of kindness and hopeful tolerance of my forgetfulness.

If there is anyone I missed, and I’m sure there was, please get in touch.  If my email addy isn’t available through my WordPress blog somewhere (I honestly don’t know), then check my Google profile please.  It’s also Lonestarr, but with a Walt Bellamy card as the avatar.  Can’t miss it probably.

Finally, a quick newsbite for Shot Not Taken.  I’m looking at picking up the TNA iMPACT! box in early-mid September (only have about 2 1/2 packs worth of base cards right now).  Trading will hopefully commence shortly thereafter. 😀

That’s all for this one sports fans.  Tune in next time for the Northside half of White Sox Cards‘ exceedingly great packet from not long ago.

After that look for a three-parter to get my poor Gint-A-Cuffs showing officially posted and out of the way.  Let’s just say I’m near the bottom of the pack in that one. Bleh.

I’m failing bad at the being social and card trading things.  Sorry. 😦

K-Mart Cards

My brain woke up shortly after I posted earlier, so I actually got around and went out today, making it to K-Mart before closing time.

There wasn’t much baseball to choose from unfortunately.  No Goudey or Heroes anymore, though there was a fresh supply of ’08 Masterpieces.  The only other thing was regular Upper Deck Series 2 and the USA version of Series 2.

They had Hot Prospects basketball and Icons football, and enough Hockey to choke a moose, if anybody wanted to get other sports involved.  They probably had regular Upper Deck basketball and football too, but I forgot my list, so I can’t say for sure.

If the choices are lacking, it’s possible I can check back at Shopko sometime. Never know how long the random Hobby boxes and unopened retail boxes will hold out, but the boxes they had when I got mine would have been the same price as ten blasters for two of them.  It was all 2006 stuff, but it was some of the nicest that year had to offer in Flair Showcase and Ovation (and something else on their smexy looking upper-low end level that I can’t remember).  They’d have less cards than ten blasters even if it’s heavy on the Masterpieces, but unless the Masterpieces hold some hits (I’m 0 for probably 12 or so in K-Marts non-guaranteed hit discount blasters since they were marked down late last fall, so I’m not hopeful…), those boxes would would give up more hits, one or two being autographs.

There’s a lot of ways we can go with this, assuming it there is enough interest to actually make it happen.  We can always mix and match and replace a couple or four discount ones with more desirable regular price blasters like ’08 Allen & Ginter or this year’s Heritage or Spectrum (ha!) from elsewhere.

It’s getting a little convoluted, but I’m still down if the interest is there.  If you like the idea, leave a comment or send an e-mail.  And if you have an idea on how to make it all work, by all means, let me know.  I’d love to have the chance to be master of ceremonies for a group break for y’all, however we may decide to do it.

Thanks again for your consideration.  Did you all have a funderful day?

.::~Outtro~::.

Under Consideration

I’m thinking about doing something.  They’ve got a whole mess of discount blasters at K-Mart still.  It seems a shame to let them all go to waste, but I after my hobby box from Shopko, I’m pretty much done with buying cards of my own for the forseeable future.  I’m wondering though, does anybody want to do a group blaster break?

I’d like to get a at the very least 12 people, but preferably 14 (I’ll play too unless the turnout is good enough that 15 people wish to buy in), who would be interested.  So if you should come across this and like the idea, spread the word, because if you’ve noticed my hit counter, very few people actually read this blog. 😛

As for specifics, I’d like to get 10 blasters.  Does $9.00 per person for two teams sound good?  That should cover all the blasters and some, if not most, of the shipping, provided we get a full turnout of 14 or 15.  Even still, 12 will cover the blasters.  And I’ll of course cover you with stuff from my own collection if you get the shaft.  Heck, I’ll probably do it a little regardless (unless you completely pwn the break).  I’m cool like that.

I’ll be out tomorrow, barring something going wrong, so I can check out exactly what all they’ve got and pass it along.  The selection isn’t the greatest, but stuff apparently continues to trickle in, so there may be a new thing or two there, or maybe not.  We’ll see.  I can put the final decision of what and how many up to vote, if we actually get that far.

Thanks for your consideration, and have a funderful day.

.::~Outtro~::.