Traveling for the Holiday

No, the title doesn't mean that I spent all day on he road heading out of town for Thanksgiving. Fortunately, we are staying close to home and won't have to fight the ridiculous holiday traffic. Instead, the post title refers to the miles I had to travel to find a card shop that was participating in the Topps Holiday Promo this past weekend. Nether of the shops that I consider to be my actual LCS were participating so I figured I wouldn't be able to grab a promo pack. I figured I'd just pick up a few select singles. However, I found myself with a few hours free on Saturday morning so I decided to pack up my youngest daughter and drive about 90 minutes to a shop in Greensboro, NC. I arrived and it turns out the shop shared a building with indoor batting cages. The shop was up front and the cages were down a long hallway. Pretty cool concept!

When I got to the main showcase, I was happy to see the promo poster hanging. I asked and they still had packs so I was in business. The selection of wax was small, hardly anything open for packs and heavy on football, but they did have a few packs of Heritage High Numbers for $5/pack so I grabbed two to meet my $10 purchase requirement. There were several 5000 count boxes stacked on some shelves. Most were labeled 'NFL 2 for $1' but there was one that had baseball in it so I decided to take a look. There wasn't much organization to the box and I wouldn't consider paying $0.50 for most of the contents, but I found a few singles to add to my stack and rounded out my purchase by picking a few out of one of the football boxes(mostly for trading purposes). I made my purchase, got my promo pack and went back to the car for the long drive back home.

There's my underwhelming return on spending three hours in the car. Sadly, the HHN packs didn't have anything worth showing off. No, that's not an excuse to be lazy. There was really nothing good in them. The stack of singles will mostly find their way into trade packages eventually so the Snell on top is all I'll share at this time. The focus of the post is really the promo pack anyway. It contained three cards(chances for SN parallels and/or autos) and an advertisement card.

Apparently, the silver pack promo will make its return when Series One releases. I'm not sure how I feel about the flagship design, but I am looking forward to finding a copy of that Clint Frazier RC.

The back of the ad card actually teases something that interests me. Depending on the specific details of this Home Run Challenge, it could be a real bright spot in the product. I'm envisioning something along the lines of the Predictor card contests in Upper Deck products from back in the day. I really enjoyed those. I hope this ends up being similar.

There are my three base cards. No ugly sweater or turkey parallels to be found in my pack. I suppose the pack was saved by the presence of the Vlad Jr. I was really hoping to find at least one of the actual holiday themed cards in pack since Topps created a Rudolph, a snowman, and a new Santa Claus card for the set, but no such luck. I'll definitely be hitting eBay to try to add those singles. Thanks for reading.

Busting Some Mega Boxes

I haven't seen any mention of these in the cardsphere to this point(though that doesn't mean there hasn't been any). Topps went ahead and released another one of those retail exclusives that mixes packs of a current product with packs of a new chrome parallel of said product. Similar to the Update Chrome set that has been released the last two years, there is now a 'Mega Box' version of 2017 Bowman available at your local Target(or maybe not as the case may be). I became aware of this product early last week and have been on the search ever since. When I hadn't found any by this past weekend, I did a quick eBay search and found that these boxes that are priced at $14.99 for 5 regular Bowman packs and two of the exclusive Bowman Chrome packs were easily going for $30+ per box. This week has been a bit crazy at the office, but I continued my search and it finally paid off last night on the way home. I found 5 boxes and briefly considered buying them all. Once I looked a bit closer at the boxes which were pretty banged up, I settled on the two boxes with the least amount of damage.

This is what all the hype is about. When I got home and got the kids to sleep, I quickly ripped into both boxes. Since Bowman has been out for a while now, I won't share any scans of those. I will however mention that I have picked up more Bowman than I care to admit to this year. Even after these 10 additional packs, I have yet to pull a base Aaron Judge RC from this product...just crazy. Though the box doesn't state this, each of the Chrome packs contains 5 cards instead of the standard 4. Yay, thanks for small favors Topps!

Highlights from box one included the red-hot Dodgers rookie, Cody Bellinger and the next generation Vlad. Though the scan doesn't do them justice, you can hopefully see that the pattern used is the same as was used on the Silver Pack promo cards from flagship series one. I like it pretty well(not as much as the Update Chrome pattern, but still). In fact, I have seen a similar pattern utilized many moons ago and I liked it then too. That can be a topic for a post sometime in the future. Let's get on to pack two, shall we?

Again, not too shabby. I only included 3 in this scan because the insert I pulled from the second box was a dupe of the Padres Talent Pipeline. These were nice and all, but ey weren't all that I unwrapped in the two boxes. Each box had at least one numbered/color parallel.

I was thrilled to see the Rutherford in box one. The Holmes and the Pirates Talent Pipeline were both included in the second box I opened. In case it is hard to see in the scan, all three were purple parallels and were numbered /250.

I really like these! I guess you can say I'm a sucker for the 'special' chrome issues. As much as I'd like to chase the entire set, it is unlikely I'll take that plunge due to the set size. I'm pretty sure that it is 200 cards deep. I will, however, be on the lookout for a few more boxes to break and perhaps a few specific singles(assuming I'm not lucky enough to pull the ones I'm looking for). If anyone is interested I. This product, it should be noted that there are autos inserted in these packs as well. Aside from the auto chase, Topps also slipped the first English language card of Japanese league and WBC star Shohei Otani. If any of you watched the WBC, you'd understand some of the desirability of this card. Don't believe it's a hot commodity? Check the eBay sold listings for this one...they're through the roof. Darn prospectors! I'd want a copy because I enjoyed watching him play in the tournament, but if prices hold where they are or increase at all, I'd be hard pressed not to sell if I happen to pull a copy. Man, I feel bad saying that. Oh well, I guess I'll cross that bridge if I get to it.

For those that didn't know about this, sorry if I've now set you on your own quest to find some. To those who may be like me and have been unsuccessfully searching, I hope you enjoyed the brief glimpse. Thanks for reading.

First Sampling of 2017 Bowman, More Like WOW-man

I must admit, I've gotten a bit spoiled with finding new releases either a few days early or at least on release day. It's been a busy few weeks between my daughter's spring break and an unexpected increase in responsibilities at the office so I haven't written in a while. However, I have still been active in the hobby(which you'll likely be able to read about in the coming days/weeks). I was eagerly anticipating the release of Bowman this week. After a few exceptionally long days at the office on Monday and Tuesday, I stopped at the local Target on the way home Tuesday evening. The shelves were unexpectedly bare. Dejected, I went home empty handed. The rest of the week was quite a whirlwind. Fast forward to Friday afternoon. After meeting the school bus to pick up my oldest after school, my three girls and I loaded into the car and headed to one of our local Walmart to do some grocery shopping(don't judge, it's the closest option to our house for groceries). I am usually underwhelmed by the card selection at this store, so I didn't go in with high hopes. As usual, I did have to have a look at the card aisle when we arrived. Much to my surprise, I found some cardboard worth taking home.

I know, I know. This is not Bowman. Since I'm still trying to piece this set together, I couldn't pass up a few discounted value packs though. I'll write more about these at a later date. A few pegs over from these 'clearance' packs, I found 'value packs' of Bowman. I snagged one, especially happy that the 'bonus' pack of retail-only, yellow parallels contained 5 cards instead of the 3 that I would have gotten if I had found the pack at Target.

There it is in all its glory. Once I got home, got the car unpacked, and started cooking dinner, I quickly ripped into the pack.

Well, that looks like a good start! Senzel is one of the bigger names in the product and seeing his yellow parallel gracing the front of the 'bonus' pack set the tone for this value pack.

There is the first card of my first Bowman pack of 2017. Don't worry, I didn't scan each card, I was just trying to stretch the enjoyment of my first pack ripping experience over the past few weeks. Overall, I like the design of this year's set pretty well. It's (mostly) clean with the exception of this extraneous pseudo-explosion design surrounding the team logo and a faint, white 'right angle' design behind the Bowman logo. Neither of these unnecessary design elements bothers me enough to take away from my enjoyment of the set. The first pack was solid, with a few decent vets(Harper and Posey) but no prospects I recognized in either paper or chrome form.

Seemingly random side note - I am not big on the idea of recording my pack breaks. This is mostly due to the fact that I absolutely cannot stand listening to my own voice on a recording. However, after I ripped into the final two packs here, I wished I had recorded this break simply for believability purposes. Okay, back to where I left off...

After cracking the three packs, I decided not to specify highlights of each pack, but rather highlights of each subset included. Here are three of the paper prospects that I've heard/read about. I didn't scan any vets/rookies, though I did OK there as well. I was lucky enough to pull Trout, and rookies of Glasnow, Renfroe, and Alfaro.

Up next, the contents of the yellow parallel pack. Senzel was definitely the best of the bunch, but I figured he would be. It was great to pull a Chrome version of Clint Frazier. It's my first card showing him as a Yankee prospect and with any luck, it will end up with an IP auto a bit later this season when the Railriders come to Durham. Here's where the unbelievability comes into play.

Smack in the middle of the second pack was that green Chrome auto which is #/99 and only found in retail product. So right there, I figured the value pack way exceeded expectations. Then, right in the middle of the third pack I flip to that paper auto(also retail exclusive). Of course, I have no idea who either of these guys are, but to pull 2 autos out of a retail value pack was incredible to me. Apparently, good things come to those who wait(even if the wait wasn't by choice).

Not-so-random side note - in my recent absence from writing I have spent a lot of time interacting within several Facebook-based collecting groups. Assuming the break posts that I've seen(GQ and Bowman) are truthful, Walmart retail packs and blasters have been yielding some incredible hits in relation to their Target counterparts. I realize this correlation is about as far as you can get from scientific data, but if you have the itch to bust some retail product, perhaps it's worth exploring for yourself. At the very least, you'll walk away with 2 more parallels than you would otherwise. I can certainly say that I'll be on the lookout for another value pack or two during my next trip to Walmart(sorry Target, I still love you though). Thanks for reading.

Wrapping Up the Card Shop Visit

Once again, my best laid plans didn't work out. I intended to write and publish this yesterday and to move on to a more serious topic today, but it didn't quite work out that way. So, I will finish up the recent trip to the card shop today and hope that by the time I get to my other planned post that I may have a little bit of the readership numbers back closer to my pre-absence numbers. Let's take a peek at a reminder of what is still left to highlight.

Here was the pic of the homemade repacks I picked up the other day. Let's start with the goods from the varied Bowman products in the middle row.

Leading off strong with some awesomely shiny inserts. Heck, in this neck of the woods, the Teams of Tomorrow featuring Dansby Swanson was worth the price I paid for all 25 repacks($5 plus tax) alone.

Next up, we have a few Draft/Dividends, a Brendan Rogers(perhaps destined for some ink if I can make it to Asheville once he's healthy), and a card that would have been pretty decent a few weeks back. That's a blue parallel of Raul Mondesi #/150. Aphid I pulled that and tried to move it prior to his suspension for PEDs, I probably could have gotten a decent return.

Shiny is a good way to start and end any bunch of highlights. I was pleasantly surprised to pull refractors of two of Tampa's better prospects at the moment. I may even get to warpath them both play in Durham someday. Pulling the Urias refractor and a base chrome of Benintendi wasn't too shabby either.

The remaining repacks were filled with various Base cards and inserts from this year's Donruss.

Team USA starts things off with a cameo from Mr. AL MVP. I'm totally digging the Power Alley reboots.

When I first saw the 1982 Donruss subset, I toyed with the idea of chasing the 50-card set. I quickly came to my senses and decided to pick up only a few of my favorite players instead. The Kershaw and Posey were two of the better ones that fell out of these packs. If anyone is trying to complete the set, let me know, I can probably help. Though I'm not a huge Daimond King fan like most, these were still standouts from the repacks.

Here is the real cream of the crop. I love the Grier parallel! It's just a bonus that it's #/299. The pink Arenado is probably the only Donruss card here that is going into my collection. Beyond that, the Swanson and the two Rays prospect refractors are the only other keepers. If anyone is interested in any of the other cards from this post, I'd be up for trading them. Just let me know. Thanks for reading.

My First Look at 2016 Bowman

Tuesday, on he eve of its official release, I stumbled onto some Bowman 'value packs' at the local Target. I hurriedly picked out two and used a few of my Marketplace coupons to get $1 off each pack. I opened them and am just getting around to being able to scan them for a post.

Here is the 'exclusive' yellow parallel pack out of the first 'value pack'. I'm pretty happy with the Maeda, especially considering how dominant he has been in his first few starts.

Regular pack number 1 provided the money card. In my neck of the woods, Swanson is quite the hot commodity since the Carolina Mudcats are easily within driving distance. I'm hoping that I'll have a chance to shoot over to he stadium for either a game or one of their open practices to get this signed before he is promoted to the next level. That's also my first Chapman shown with the Yankees. The Guzman is #/99. I don't know much about that kid, but it's a relatively low numbered parallel which could end up being a decent piece of cardboard.

I really like the Vlad Guerrero squared card. I'm going to look into the rest of that checklist, it looks like a nice set.

Wow, I was beyond thrilled to pull the base Maeda from the same value pack. Piscotty is pretty decent too. Let's move along to the second value pack.

As awesome as pulling the yellow Maeda was, this pack was better. Moncada and Wade will hopefully end up with some ink on them at some point.

I'm digging the Mondesi RC. Since he made his MLB debut in the World Series, it's cool to see the WS patch on the sleeve of his uni. Compared to years past, I'm loving the Top 100 this year. It doesn't hurt to pull such a highly rated prospect, but he design is pretty sweet.

BOOM! Sitting in he middle of the second pack of my second value pack was a retail exclusive paper prospect auto. Try saying that five times fast... From my understanding, McGuire has some pretty decent potential in the Pirates system, and he's in his age 21 season this year so he still has time to develop.

The final pack was a bit anti-climactic, but it still yielded one of this year's RC Flashbacks and a unique, press conference card of new Diamondback, Zack Greinke.

Overall, I was really pleased with the packs. I always say that I'm not going to buy a lot of Bowman, but this season, I really like the design. Team that up with the fact that I am doing my best to get back into autograph hunting when I'm able to make it to the ballpark and maybe his is the set for me this year. I'll reserve judgment until I've picked up a few more packs, but my initial reaction to the product is quite positive. Thanks for reading.

I Heard A Bowman Hanger Calling My Name

This has been out for a long time now. I thought for sure that I was done for the year. I was in a Walmart and wasn't even planning to look at the poor excuse for a card aisle that they had. We all know how this story ends though... My name is Tim and I'm a pack-aholic. I walked out with this box shaking my head and muttering to myself about having no willpower at all. How could I lose that internal battle once again? I'm not sure why/how, but my gut knew I needed to take this box home.

Pretty decent base and prospect cards.  Love that I pulled the Chrome Bryant too(maybe this will be a sign of my ability to pull his cards going forward, fingers crossed). The yellow Russell is the first decent yellow parallel I've pulled.

I've pulled several of the Top 100 inserts and I like the design. It's great to have this shiny Severino. Here I was thinking this was a good hanger box, my feeling of buyer's remorse mostly gone...then:

I flipped to this. He's not the top of the organization prospect that would've really blown me away(or Rodon or Bryant), but I don't usually have great luck pulling autographs from products, let alone a Yankee auto! Taylor was actually called up to the bigs earlier this season, but was optioned back to Triple-A before logging an AB.

I'm still. It sure what made me decide to grab that box, but I'm sure glad I did. This makes three good pack/box breaks in a row. I think that can qualify as the hot streak I was hoping for. I'm gonna ride it out for as long as I can. Thanks for reading.

Congrats to Brett Gardner, AL All-Star

I was thrilled to hear that one of my favorite current Yankees was named to the All-Star squad yesterday. I had been voting for him as my Final Vote candidate. In the absence of The Captain this year, he has really been the heart of a team that is exceeding expectations at the halfway point of the season. His drive and work ethic are unmatched plus he's been an underdog for his entire career which makes it all the easier to pull for him. In honor of his first All-Star Team selection, I wanted to share the only 'rainbow' that I really feel I've completed.

2005 Bowman

2005 Bowman Gold

These two are the paper varieties.

2005 Bowman Chrome

2005 Bowman Chrome refractor

These are the non-serial numbered Chrome versions.

2005 Bowman Chrome xfractor

2005 Bowman Chrome blue refractor

Finally, these are both serially numbered. The xfractor is #/250 while the blue is #/150. Granted, I didn't have to track down any 1/1's here, but this 'rainbow' has more of a place in my collection than any I could try to put together of these more modern day products with a dozen or more variations I'd have to get.

Congrats on the awesome achievement Gardy!

Back in My Bowman's Arms

No matter how hard I try, year after year, I always end up buying Bowman Baseball. The past few years I tried to avoid it altogether and probably ended up with more of it than I've had in many years. So much for avoiding it. I'm pretty sure that the reason I am so drawn to the Bowman line of products is because it was the product to have for the best rookies of most players when I was younger and heavily into collecting. Ahhhh, the '90's...

This year was no different. I told myself that I wasn't going to buy any packs of Bowman this year. Well, that lasted all of 3 or 4 days past its release date(the only reason it lasted that long is because I didn't see any on shelves any earlier. When I finally found some, this is what I came across.

Like I said, I'm a sucker for Bowman, but I guess if you get technical, I didn't buy any packs since this was a hanger box. I like this year's design. The one flaw is that the use of foil makes it pretty tough to read the player's name. Otherwise, I think it's a solid design for prospects, rookies, and veterans. Here are the highlights from my 35 card box.

I did OK with the prospects. It's hard to read, but that is Kris Bryant and his fellow, highly touted Cubs prospect Kyle Schwarber. I also pulled a Nelson Gomez who is apparently one of the Yankees' up and comers.

I hear this Colin Moran kid is pretty good too, and it doesn't hurt that he played college ball at nearby UNC. I decided to show this Altuve for two reasons. First, I think it's a great shot of him tipping his cap(batting helmet). Second, I'm on the fence about whether I'm going to start collecting him as well. The box contained a few rookies too. Jake Lamb was on fire for the Diamondbacks before hitting the DL. This box also had a Javier Baez(not shown). I sure hope he gets his act together, because I apparently am a magnet for his RC's so far this collecting season. Let's move on to the chrome portion of the program.

Again, not too shabby. I got another Yankee up and comer and a top prospect of the rival BoSox. Archie Bradley was throwing well for Arizona before joining Lamb on the shelf. I think I bucked the odds when the next 2 cards fell out of the middle of the box.

Two minis in one box. I really like the shimmery(is that a word?) background on these. As much as I hate it, Castillo is likely to be quite a force in the Boston outfield at some point this season.

But wait, that's not all!

Here are 4 of the 5 yellow parallels and a few serial numbered parallels just for good measure. This would have been a perfect box for a Cubs fan, as the Albert Almora yellow rounds out a trio big name farm hands(or former farm hands).

I haven't heard of Chism from the Mets, but the green parallel is numbered /99. It's far too early to tell if all the hype around Yasmany Tomas was warranted, but I'll take this gray/slate colored parallel limited to 499. I guess maybe that's supposed to be the 'silver' parallel. 

There are the highlights of the box. No big 'hits', but I definitely think it was a good box. I wish I could say that now that I've ripped a box, that my desire to open more of this has been satisfied, but that is not the case. Guess I'll see what the next trip to Target holds.