2010 Allen & Ginter Mutant Blaster

With my last little bit of cash (at the time), I picked up a blaster of A&G.  I had a little bit more than I thought, and once it was confirmed everything else had already gone through, I made a beeline for card section at Target.  I haven’t been able to spend hardly any money this month on enjoyable stuff, and it had been a really miserable month up to that point, so I needed it.  Fortunately, it turned out nicely I think.  So let’s break it down, shall we?

2010 topps Allen & Ginter Blaster

8 packs; 6 cards per pack

Pack 1

338 Francisco Liriano SP

346 Ryan Theriot SP

325 Brett Gardner SP

331 Huston Street SP

Crack theCode!

NA37 Komodo Dragon National Animals Mini (Indonesia)

TDH17 Joe Mauer This Day in History (April 19^th; The American Revolution Begins 1775)

The Komodo Dragon is pretty cool.

Pack 2

326 Aaron Rowand SP

306 Brandon Phillips SP

310 Placido Polanco SP

314 Ivan Rodriguez SP

190 Randy Wolf Black Parallel Mini

TDH14 Justin Verlander This Day in History (February 20^th; John Glenn Becomes the First American to Orbit the Earth 1962)

Nothing much to see here...

Pack 3

325 Brett Gardner SP (dupe)

331 Huston Street SP (dupe)

346 Ryan Theriot SP (dupe)

326 Aaron Rowand SP (dupe)

306 Brandon Phillips SP Mini

AGHS2 Mark Buehrle Baseball Sketches (Perfect Game)

Mini SP & a perfect game. There's gonna be lot of no hitter/perfect game commeration sketches in the 2011 set.

Pack 4

322 Gary Matthews SP

319 Austin Jackson Tigers RC SP

350 Alcides Escobar SP

AGHS3 Derek Jeter Baseball Sketches (All-Time Yankees Hits Leader)

MM10 Brachiosaurus Monsters of the Mesozoic

TDH6 Brian Roberts This Day in History (October 9^th; Washington Monument Opens to the Public 1888)

Jamie Moyer's pet Brachiosaurus from his youth. Jeter breaking the Yankees hits record. And a good rookie. Solid pack.

Pack 5

308 Adrian Beltre SP

315 Bobby Abreu SP

AGR-RZ Ryan Zimmerman Framed Relic- You can’t really tell in the scan, but there appears to be stitching running across the middle of the swatch.  Isn’t that interesting?

145 Jim Thome Ginter Back Mini Parallel

TDH44 BJ Upton This Day in History (August 21^st; The Mona Lisa is Stolen 1911)

Zim relic. I like the red frame better in person than it looked in scans.

Pack 6

338 Francisco Liriano SP (dupe)

332 Ricky Nolasco SP

344 Derek Holland SP

322 Gary Matthews SP (dupe)

64 Josh Beckett Mini

TDH56 Jimmy Rollins This Day in History (November 27^th; Baby Face Nelson Dies in a Shoot-Out with the FBI 1934)

Checklist Four of Four

The mini is a plain ol' base. Beat the odds & pulled two of them.

Pack 7

310 Placido Polanco SP (dupe)

313 Ryan Doumit SP

318 Carlos Gonzalez SP

316 Nate McClouth SP

Crack the Code!

LO11 Uranus Lords of Olympus

TDH72 Jay Bruce (April 3; Jesse James is Killed 1882)

lol Uranus...

Pack 8

305 Kelly Johnson SP

308 Adrian Beltre SP (dupe)

315 Bobby Abreu SP (dupe)

350 Alcides Escobar SP (dupe)

138 Javier Vasquez Mini

Crack the Code!

Vasquez was the other base mini. Aaaaand I got no This Day in History in the last pack...

As you can… *Ahem*… I said *Ahem!*  Thank you.  As you can see, all the base cards in the blaster were of the SP variety, and 10 of them show up twice.  Here be the backs.

Dig all those crazy numbers over 300.  Woo…

Everything but the Baseball Sketches, a Theriot, and possibly the Komodo Dragon and/or Brachiosaurus will be available for trade once I unberry myself from all the overdue trades I have to send out already.  All I’m definitely collecting from A&G this year are the Wordsmiths and the Baseball Sketches, though I’m considering half-hearted stabs at the National Animals, Monsters of the Mesozoic, and maybe even the This Day in History sets as well.

Oh and speaking of Ryan Theriot, should I feel as bad about the Dodgers trade as I do?  Because I’m not liking it at all. 😦

Anyway, if you see something you like, lemme know, because only the sketches and one of the Theriots are definitely going into The Lonestarr Personal Collection.  Hm, I like that font for the PC.  Makes it seem grander than it actually is, lol.  Anyway, that’s all for this one!  Seeya.

On the comeback trail…

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? 🙂