Sunday night I bought a pack of 2008 Upper Deck Timeline, 2008-09 Topps Treasury, and an 8 for $10 repack box that boasts an $18 value, at Walmart. Uhh, hell NO! A box with packs of cards from 1989 not named Upper Deck (Donruss and Topps specifically), 1994 Fleer Ultra, a 99 cent 6 card pack of 2007 Topps, three $1.99 packs (the dinky 5-6 card packs ’07 Upper Deck and Fleer Ultra, and regular-sized Topps), and only one $2.99 pack (Bowman Chrome) do not an $18 value make.
Well… maybe if your math works like Scott Steiner’s.
The sad thing is, even though you could hear the steam shooting out of my ears when I saw the old packs, I got better cards from those three than the five new ones. First though, a break of Timeline and Treasury packs…
2008 Upper Deck Timeline (6 cards per pack; look for two inserts in each pack, on average!)
46 Torii Hunter
10 Chase Utley
36 Jim Thome- The Pride of Peoria, dontcha know.
9 Mark Teixiera
123 Max Scherzer Rookie- On a forgettable old school UD design…
301 Rick Ankiel- I guess this would be a subset of some kind. Zero on the insert count though, unless they are trying to pass off the subsets as such. If they are a bit harder to get, that would mean shortprint, not insert, so WTF Upper Deck? There better be a 4 insert pack out there somewhere…
I mentioned in the shoutouts from my most recent post, these cards are FUGLY. What an incredibly boring design. At least Upper Deck X’s design fit it’s theme. This is just so… blah. As for the backs, they only have career stats and a little blurb, because of a second, different picture taking up half the back. This giant picture on the back may be a dig at the 2008 Topps base set design, as this picture is nearly as large as the ones on their fronts.
That was observational comedy, my friends. Onward to Topps Treasury!
2008-09 Topps Treasury (5 cards per pack; why isn’t Larry Bird on money?)
27 Zach Randolph- A big scoring presence that gets rebounds, but is still fairly soft nonetheless. Still, a fair few teams are lacking the good things he brings.
60 Rip Hamilton
59 Jeff Green- My first Thunder card! w00t!
83 Brandon Roy
120 Kosta Koufos Rookie Refractor #’ed to /2008- I assume this is a bronze. This guy is a rookie Center for the Jazz it doth seem. Here’s hoping for something better than Ostertagian for the ginormously tall youngin’.
The base design is simplistic, but it FITS THE THEME. Lack of easily fingerprinted up gloss is nice too. And the refractor version, much like what 2008 Topps Chrome baseball to the regular set, just makes it POP.
Now then, back to the recrap box. We’ve established that the packs in it are even more garbage than usual. Now for the contents of said packs. I stated earlier that I got better cards from the 1989 Donruss and Topps, and 1994 Fleer Ultra, than the five packs from 2007 (6 and 12 card packs of Topps series 2, 5 card packs of Upper Deck series two and Fleer Ultra, and a 3 card pack of Bowman Chrome.
So here are the best of what I got from each. You can judge for yourself.
Old Junk-
1989 Topps- Barry Bonds, Fred McGriff, Dwight Evans
1989 Donruss- Ken Griffey Jr. “Rated Rookie”, Lee Smith
1994 Fleer Ultra- Mike Piazza Award Winners insert, Roger Clemens, Kevin Roberson (<3) Rookie
New Junk-
2007 Topps- Joe DiMaggio “The Streak” 26 and 48, David Ortiz, Dan Haren Gold #’ed /2007, Brandon Morrow Rookie
2007 Upper Deck- Mark DeRosa? The rest of the pack consisted of David DeJesus, Carlos Silva, Alex Rios, and Olmedo Saenz, so… there are no winners here.
2007 Fleer Ultra- Hideki Okajima Rookie
2007 Bowman Chrome- Either Chien-Ming Wang or 29 year old “Prospect” Jonathan Van Every. Hmm… prospects are grim, methinks.
So whatcha think?
Griffey RC, Bonds, Pizza insert, Clemens, Lee Smith, the Crime Dog, and Dwight Evans
vs.
Two Joe D inserts that are cool but worthless, Okajima RC, Papi, Gold #’ed Haren, Chien-Ming Wang, and a pushing-30 prospect…
I didn’t even get any other good base cards in the 2007 packs. They were remarkably similar to the old school packs in that regard. A couple couple nice players, and then a whole lotta nothin’. Only difference being there are a whole lot less cards in the new packs.
Overall, the Griffey rookie makes it worthwhile, but it still won’t make me tilt my thumb upward. The Griffey is wonderful, but it’s the principle. The packs in this thing were garbage enough that I actually mean it when I say “never again” to Walmart repacks, and maybe ALL repacks in general. It’s just horrid to charge more than $6 for this CRAP.
Peace.
Life and Baseball Cards 