Napkin Doon’s Attic Treasures #6: RO-CKY! RO-CKY! RO-CKY!

At some point in my past, I spent real money on Rocky 4 trading cards.  And I am so glad I did!  How awesome are these?

I wish I could get a job writing these captions.  In fairness, you’d be pretty limited in what you could write with so little room.

My only regret is that these are not Rocky III cards.   I will stop whatever I’m doing anytime that movie comes on.  Late at night I like to pretend Rocky III is about me and interchange Rocky with myself, and boxing with blogging.  It works seamlessly.  My favorite scene is when Adrian snaps Rocky out of his funk before his re-match with Clubber Lang.   In the Napkin Doon version, I imagine I have just been running sprints on the beach with the Dimwit, and I just quit on him.  He’s left in a huff.  It seems as though I don’t have the heart to blog anymore after my mentor, The Lost Collector, passed away (sorry AJ, but you had to be in this scenario).  I’m standing on the beach staring woefully at the waves when the Lovely Wife approaches (if you don't know Rocky III by heart, well skip the rest of this post, and, shame on you):

Lovely Wife: Can I talk to you? I want to ask you something important and I want you to tell me the truth.

Napkin: What?

Lovely Wife: Why did you come here?

Napkin: I just don't want it no more.

Lovely Wife: If it's over because you want it to be over, I'm glad.

Napkin: I do.

Lovely Wife: It's just, you've never quit anything since I've known you.

Napkin: I don't know what you want me to say. I mean, what happened? How did everything that was so good get so bad?

Lovely Wife: What's so bad? Tell me, what?

Napkin: I wrecked everything by not thinking for myself. I mean, why couldn't AJ tell me where I was really at right from the start? He didn't have to carry me and lie to me and make me think my blog was better than it really was when it wasn't.

Lovely Wife: He never lied.

Napkin: Those posts weren't funny. They weren't, Lovely Wife. I never posted anything interesting. There was always some angle to hold on to my blog longer than I should have had it. I mean do you understand what I'm saying here?

Lovely Wife: I understand, but you've got to understand that he read your blog and that was his job--humoring you!

Napkin: Look, but that humoring don't help nothing. It only makes things worse. You wake up after a few years thinking you're a winner, but you're not. You're really a loser. So we wouldn't have had the blog as long. So what?! At least it would've been real, Lovely Wife.

Lovely Wife: It was real!

Napkin: Nothing is real if you don't believe in who you are! I don't believe in myself no more don't you understand? When a blogger don't believe, that's it! He's finished, it's over, that's it.

Lovely Wife: THAT'S NOT IT!!

Napkin: That is it!

Lovely Wife: Why don't you tell me the truth?!

Napkin: What are you putting me through Lovely Wife?! You wanna know the truth? The truth is I don't want to lose what I've got. In the beginning I didn't care about what happened to me. I'd go to the computer, I'd run a Big Fun Game, I didn't care! But now there's you, there's the kids, there’s my Brycemas haul. I don't want to lose what I've got!

Lovely Wife: What do we have that can't be replaced? WHAT?! We’ve got boxes, we've got cards, we've got BINDERS! We got everything but the truth. WHAT'S THE TRUTH, DAMN IT?!

Napkin: I'M BLOCKED! ALL RIGHT?! YOU WANT TO HEAR ME SAY IT? You want to break me down? All right, I'm blocked. For the first time in my life, I'm blocked.

Lovely Wife: I'm blocked too. There's nothing wrong with being blocked.

Napkin: There is. For me, there is.

Lovely Wife: Why? You're human aren't you?

Napkin: Look, I don't know what I am. All I know is I'm a liar, and because of that AJ ain't here no more.

Lovely Wife: You didn't push him into anything! He was a grown man (I assume) and he did what he had to do! And you have no right to feel guilty for what happened. You don't! You were a blogger, and you did what you were expected to do, and you did what I and everybody else thought you should do. And you wanna tell me that those posts weren't real, that you were humored? Well I don't believe it! But it doesn't matter what I believe because you're the one that's got to carry that fear around inside you, afraid that everybody's going to take things away and afraid that you're going to be remembered as a hacker, that you're not a blogger anymore. Well, none of it's true! But it doesn't matter if I tell you. It doesn't matter, because you're the one that's gotta settle it. Get rid of it! Because when all the smoke has cleared and everyone's through chanting your name, it's just going to be us. And you can't live like this. We can't live like this. Cause it's going to bother you for the rest of your life. Look what it's doing to you now. The Dimwit thinks you can do it, so do I. But you gotta want to do it for the right reasons. Not for the guilt over AJ, not for the readers, not for the Gummies, not for cards or me, but for you. Just you. Just you alone.

Napkin: And if I lose followers?

Lovely Wife: Then you lose followers. But at least you lose them with no excuses, no fear. And I know you can live with that.

Napkin: How did you get so tough?

Lovely Wife: I live with a baseball card blogger.

Napkin: I really love you. I love you. [they hug]

Then I imagine a pulse pounding montage of me sorting through cards and doing typing drills.  I don’t know who should play Clubber Lang in this post, but whoever he is, he’s in big trouble now.

Etopps 6/20 Offering

I have to do this from my phone today so I hope Blogger mobile works this time!

This week:

Dustin Ackley
Ryan Howard
Danny Espinosa

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father’s Day to all you Dads out there!  I wonder what percent of you envision a perfect Father’s Day as opening a box of cards and going to a ball game?   That would be right up my alley, but alas, I don’t have any cards to open and we went to a game last night.  Speaking of which, I tried to blog using blogger mobile from the ballpark last night, but my post kept failing.  The San Diego, or I guess it's now "Famous" Chicken was there and put on a great show.  I also got to see Cardinal prospect and former Razorback Zack Cox play.  BTW if anyone has one of his 2011 Bowman Autos, I'd be interested in trading for it.

I try to keep my personal life separate from this blog, but for the purpose of this post, I can let it leak in a little.   Indulge me a minute on Father's Day while I tell you what kind of father I am.   I have a little boy (5 years old), who I hope at some point, will share my love of baseball and baseball cards.   But knowing him as I do, I understand that anything I try to push on him will be rejected without prejudice.    And truthfully, should he decide that his interests lie elsewhere, as long as he participates and is interested in something other than splaying out on the couch with his Nintendo DS, I will be thrilled no matter what he does. 

He doesn’t care too much for baseball cards right now, but neither did I at that age.   He doesn’t want to watch baseball on TV either, unless he thinks he can con a later bed time out of it (which he can).   He does, however, love going the Northwest Arkansas Naturals (Kansas City’s AA affiliate that is near my home) games.   Actually what he enjoys is eating snow cones and ice cream, coloring at the picnic tables and plummeting down the huge inflatable slide again and again and again.  The game itself is just background noise to him.   Hey, fine with me as long as I get to go and watch at least some of it.  We usually last 6 or 7 innings per game before he’s ready to go home.   So there are some positive feelings toward baseball in that regard which gives me hope.

He also loves getting things in the mail, which I thought I could use to my advantage.  So I decided one day last summer to write a letter to the Texas Rangers, and ask if they had any sort of kid’s pack, or freebies they could send my boy in the mail to spur his interest in baseball.  I sent the letter off and imagined his excitement from getting a package from a Major League team.   I also thought I should hedge my bets and send a similar letter to the Royals to increase his chances of getting something.  The more I thought about it, the more excited I got.  So I sent more letters.  To all 30 teams.  Only a few weeks later, the floodgates opened.  We started getting package after package from Major League teams.  After about the 7^th day in a row receiving packages, my son threw up his hands and yelled: “Why do I keep getting all this baseball stuff?  I hate baseball!”  Didn’t see that coming.   I began putting his packages away in a box after that.

My wife has a nickname for me: “Too Far.”  She breaks this out when I take my jokes, teases, requests, plans, suggestions, dinner orders and baseball card checklists “too far.”    After my son’s rejection of his mail order bounty of baseball, my wife just looked at me and said, “Too Far.”    I know she’s right.  What’s sad is that I’m really tempted to send out the letters again this summer, completely ignoring the lesson I learned last summer.

Maybe someday he’ll take an interest in this stuff, and if he does it will be waiting for him.  Until then, it’s blog fodder.  Here is some of what he received:

He hit the jackpot with the Rangers.  They sent a nice calendar (not shown), a round, felt pennant and several stickers.

The Yankees also sent a nice package with a coloring book, key chains, pencils and soom cool patch stickers.

Fenway dirt!

Speaking of dirt, the Braves sent a bag of field dirt from Bobby Cox's 2000th win.  Cool!

And he got a lot of stickers....

Some cards...

Some oversized cards...

And of course some pocket schedules.  The Mariners sent one in English, Spanish and Japanese.  These will look cool in some 9 pocket pages. 
This little box of goodies will be fun to go through again some day when he gets older.  Or perhaps my daughter will get some enjoyment out of the stickers.  All I know is: I can't wait to see what we get when I send the letters off again this year!  Happy Father's Day!

Napkin Doon Attic Treasures #5: A Long Time Ago…

In a small Texas town far, far away….  Little Napkin developed his early hoarding tendencies with Star Wars toys and products.   I distinctly remember my parents suprising me with my first Star Wars figure, R2-D2, right after seeing the movie for the first time.  My obsession was on.  I still love Star Wars, and still have all my toys.  I can’t wait to give them to my boy once he shows some interest, and then I can play with them again!

I just realized my two lifelong hobby interests have been Star Wars and baseball cards.  2 out of 3 of the geek triple crown.  The other, in my opinion, is comic books, and I never really got into those.  How in the hell did I ever manage to convince my lovely wife to pick me?

When I came across these cards, I was horrified to see that they had been wrapped in rubber bands.  The rubber bands were so old, that they fell apart when I tried to remove them.  Thankfully the cards were no worse for wear because of it. 

Actually, the cards weren’t in half bad shape, considering how much I handled them as a child.  I also have near complete sets of all 3 movies, so I might have to add these to the Super Duper Checklist and create an album for them.  Anyone have a suggestion for filling these types of sets?

On The Third Day of Brycemas..

My Harper Gave To Me:

3 Chunks of Set Fillers

My Super Duper Checklist was shriveling up quite nicely.  That is, until I added the components of Bowman 2011 and Gypsy Queen I want to it.  So I'm back to near 100 sets.  Happily, I was able to deliver some healthy shots to 3 sets I have been working on for a while:  2001 Topps HD, 2005 Gallery Artist Proof, and 1999 EX Century.  These are 3 of my favorite sets, and I have some new found momentum on them thanks to my Harper sale.

I am 8 cards away on EX Century, and 27 away on HD, (only 7 if you discount the final 20 SPs, which I don't).  I still need about 74 more Gallery, but I am content to take my sweet time on it. 

Mail Time (Non Brycemas)

One of the packages I a have been anxiously awaiting was my group break portion from The Daily Dimwit.     He ran a break of 2006 UD Ovation a few weeks ago, and I signed up for the Rangers, and had the Tigers as my randomly selected 2nd team.   The Daily Dimwit is one of the best blogs out there, and the author, Sam, is a great guy to boot.  So, I was glad to be apart of his break since it was the first one I've ever participated in.  Long story short, all the participants received a full set of Ovation base, as well as hits and dupes of their claimed teams.  I was crossing my fingers for a Michael Young autograph.  Imagine my delight when I managed to get 2:

I also got a Chris Shelton auto (available if anyone is interested), and some nice other inserts.
Ovation was a great set from Upper Deck, and I'm thrilled with my full set and hits.  Thanks Dimwit!

On The 2nd Day of Brycemas..

My Harper Gave To Me:

2 Series Topps Box...

Ok, it was just one box, but it was of series two, and I had to work it into the song.   Humor me.

I decided that my shopping spree wouldn't be complete without a box of cards.  My hope was that I might get another big hit and go on yet another big shopping spree.  I probably should have waited for A&G to come out, but that seems like a long ways off, and I need to burn up these funds before the lovely wife gets her lovely little hands on them.  And Gypsy Queen is too expensive.  So I got a hobby box of Topps Series 2.  No big hits, but I enjoyed opening it just the same.   Here are the pics: (I'll spare you the Diamond Duos and 60 series)

I got 10 Diamond Parallel cards, with a really cool Pee Wee Reese.  But other than that at the Ichiro, nothing too exciting.

The Diamond Stars should excite me more, but something about them looks kind of cheap to me.  The Prime 9 was something I didn't know about.  I hope one of the 2 card shops in this area are HTA stores and I can redeem these.    This is a pretty clever program from Topps, and I like the incentive to get people into card shops.  Having said that, I have a feeling I will forget I had these and miss the redemption weeks.

I won't chase much of 2011 Topps, but this is one I want to build.  The Series 2 Checklist is loaded with vintage players. 

I am not sure how I feel about the reprints.  The Mantle is an original back though!

And finally, the hit.  Mark Teixeira.  Not bad, but I'll be happy to trade it for a Game Used card from one of my top 5 players.  

On The First Day of Brycemas..

 (sing this along with the 12 Days of Christmas melody)

My Harper gave to me..

The Thickest Card I've Ever Seen... 

So, the moment I saw funds show up in paypal from my Harper sale, I looked at my eBay watch list for something to buy.  This Michael Young card from 2007 UD Exquisite had been sitting there for a while as a BIN in my list.  I didn't know anything about Exquisite which is why I hadn't pulled the trigger.  It's not that it was that expensive (around $3.50 or so) especially for a card numbered to #75, but I figured that was more than I wanted to spend on it without seeing one up close.  But since I had some new found spending flexibility, I thought, "Why not" and picked it up.  It was officially the first card I bought for Brycemas, and I am so glad I got it. 

This card is fareeeking awesome!  It is the thickest card I've ever seen.  I mean, look at the scan- it casts a &*!%ing shadow!  I immediately started looking for other cards from this set I might want and bought a Torii Hunter relatively cheaply.

So, while this wasn't the biggest or best purchase from my ongoing shopping spree, it definitely is a card I am proud of.

Napkin Doon’s Attic Treasure # 5: Ken Burns Baseball

Do you ever have a half baked thought or notion in your head that you just can’t wrap up and articulate?  Something about this Ken Burns set I found in the attic during my vacation has spurred something in my mind that I can’t put together yet.  There is something about this set I think will help me better understand why I buy what I buy, and for what prices.  But first, some background on the set itself.  Of course, this set came out about when Ken Burn’s fantastic Baseball documentary aired on PBS in 1994.  I do remember purchasing this, at a K-Mart, but I don’t remember how much I paid for it.  I think it was $10, but may have been $20.   To me, this is a superb set, and I am glad I rescued it from the boxes in the attic.  The photos are top shelf, and the backs are interesting and informative.  There are obvious star subjects in the checklist as well as those that are not household names, but nonetheless had an impact on the game. 

I don’t know why, but this set has made me think about how I buy baseball cards.  For example, if I saw this exact set available at a card show today, I knew it was made in 1994, and the cost was $10, would I buy it if I didn’t have it already?  I don’t think I would.

But what if a set exactly like this came out this year with a 2011 copyright, and was available for $20 at a Wal-Mart?  Would I buy it then?  I think I would buy it. 

That seems totally irrational to me, but I think that is how I would behave.  Somewhere in the dark corner of my pea brain, I can explain this.  But not yet.  If you have any thoughts, I’d love to hear them.

Napkin Doons Attic Treasure #4: 3D Cards

I found about 3 of these bad boys in the attic.   I was a little nervous scanning these things, as they seem  pretty delicate.   Tony Gwynn is the card I didn’t scan.   I didn’t dare put Mr. Gwynn under the scanner door, lest the card get crushed.  Boggs and Mattingly made it through fine, though, so now you have something to look at. 

These came out in 1985 and were sold in packs, 1 per pack.  And much like other stuff I bought back then, I have no recollection of purchasing or obtaining these.   These are even bigger than the Donruss cards I featured a few days ago.  They have some peel away strips on the back, so you could attach these to the wall if you so desired.   And, like some of the other oddball things I have found in my attic, these are super cheap on eBay should I decide to build the set.   

So, with the size, the adhesive feature, as well as the 3 dimensional format of these things, do they still classify as baseball cards?  Or are they just simply collectibles?  If so, at what point does a card cease to be a card?  How rigid are we when classifying these things?  Do the EX Century plastic cards I like so much count as cards, since they are plastic and not cardboard?  Why hasn’t the grape caught on as a pie?   You’ve got all sorts of other fruits that work as pie.  Blueberry works great.  Why not grape?  (I stole that musing from Curb Your Enthusiasm, but I love the question.)

Merry Brycemas!

I hope my play on words isn’t offensive to anyone.  As you may recall, I found a 1 in 2,900 pack redemption card of uber-prospect Bryce Harper.    I swear I didn’t really buy that much Bowman wax, but besides the Harper auto, I also pulled 3 Chrome cards, 1 Bowman’s Best and one base card of him.  But the auto was the big one.  I’ve never had that kind of hit.  Ever.  The question to sell or keep really wasn’t that hard when I saw what they were going for on eBay.    I played the odds and sold and was pretty stoked by what I got for it.  Even if he is the next Mantle and this becomes a $1,000 card, I still came out ahead and won’t kick myself too hard.   Something tells me he might not have the makeup for it though.   Of course, at 18 I was quite an idiot myself, so I don't really begrudge him a moment of a-holeness.   

The card is gone now, but Brycemas has begun!  Once those funds from the sale were in my PayPal account, I went shopping.  My super duper checklist has immediately begun to shrink and I will have plenty of blog material as these packages come rolling in.    I will have lots to show over the coming weeks....

Contest Plugs..

There are some interesting contests going on right now, and I wanted to take a minute to plug them.

First, Ryan G over at This Card is Cool is giving away a number of different items, all of which he is keeping a secret at the moment.  Ohhh intrigue!  His blog is one of my favorites, so do yourself a favor and check it out if you haven't already.

http://thiscardiscool.blogspot.com/2011/06/congratulations-you-may-already-be.html

Also, by taking my own advise and reading his blog, I learned about another contest at Buckeye State's Trading Post.    I was unfamiliar with this blog, so I am glad to have come across it.

Checklist Chip Away: 2003 SPX Winning Materials

Sometimes when scouring for cards I need, I find that when it rains, it pours.  I have been slowly building the 2003 SPX Winning Materials set for years now, and will at times go 6 months without seeing a card I still need available for a reasonable price.  I scored about a month ago with the Albert Pujols card from the set.  Two weeks ago, I managed to find 3 of these beauties that I needed and snagged them.   They just arrived last week:

Lost and Crinkly Trades:

I came back from travel last week to find some nice little packages waiting for me.  I typically am referring to dirty diapers from my little girl when I say this, but this time I am referring to my end of some trades with my pal AJ from the Lost Collector and Ted from Crinkly Wrappers.

AJ and I play Words with Friends.  AJ kicks the holy crap out of me most of the time, and I just keep coming back for more.  He also has a great, energetic blog that is an asset to this hobby.  He also sends cool cards in the mail like these:

The Hamilton refractor is really cool and I love the Piazza Vintage card.  In fact, I may start building this set if I can find some cheap starter lots.  The Gwynn cards are nice too, and hit several gaps in my Gwynn collection.  Thank you AJ!

I also received a package from Ted at Crinkly Wrappers.   This is one of the blogs that I read religiously before delving into the blog world myself.  It’s got a nice, crisp look to it that I envy.  He claimed some of my early Gypsy Queen gets and sent a lot of really nice stuff of top tier players in return.  This is just half of them:

The Ichiro cards are really nice.  I don’t collect much Upper Deck, so these are all new to me.  I also like the UD Icons set and may have to check into building this one as well.  Thank you Ted!

Etopps Offering 6/6/11

I have been pretty discombobulated the past two weeks with vacation travel and business travel, but at least for the next 6 weeks or so I should be relatively pat.  I’m pretty swamped playing catch up today, but because I am so dedicated to this blog, I will carve out a few minutes to show you the 2 cards Etopps will offer this week.  And being the fan of both Cliff Lee and the Rangers that I am, this week is stellar in my humble opinion:

Cliff Lee

Alexi Ogando

Yep, I'll be picking both of these up week.


****UPDATE*******

Looks like Jeremy Hellickson is being added too:

Napkin Doon's Attic Treasure #3: Donruss Champions Large Cards

Welcome to another episode of  "Flip This Card Set."    Starring a near complete set of 1984 Donruss Champions oversized cards.  Except I don't mean buy the set cheap and turn around and sell it for a profit.  I just mean take something kind of worthless and turn it into something nice.

My initial thought when I came across these cards was "Meh."  But then the small gears in your pal Napkin's brain starting squeaking to life and I saw some potential here.  There are several things to like about this set.  1)The checklist is small (50 cards) and pretty strong. 2) The cards I am missing are pretty cheap on sportlots.com.  3)  Most of the players in the set are still living.
My thinking is these would be great for autographs on cards of the  living players in the set which is probably 90% of the checklist.  I think if I could complete the set, get 15-20 autographed TTM and put them in nice pages, this could be a pretty special part of my collection.
I am kind of excited about this.  I'll start sending out a few cards next week!

Napkin Doon's Attic Treasure #2: Talking Baseball Cards!

Sometimes, long before I met my lovely wife, long before I became the super cool dude you all know, I liked to sit up in my bed at night and talk to my baseball cards.  "Hello Darryl Strawberry.  My that was quite a blast you hit today.  Thank you for showing up twice in the wax box I bought last week."  Or "Hello Will Clark.  They say you will be one of the greatest hitters ever.  This 87 Topps card of you surely will be able to help buy me a car someday."  Or "Hello Andy Van Slyke.  I hope that when you are making your Hall of Fame acceptance speech, grown up Napkin Doon will be sitting in the crowd, cheering you on."
Well, imaging my delight when I discovered that some cards could talk BACK to me!  As I stumbled across these Baseball Talk cards in the attic last week, I recalled my lonely, lonely nights of listening to baseball cards.  How I ever had a girlfriend in high school is beyond me.

I've got about 10 of these, including the ones pictured above.  I actually, don't remember much of the audio.  I faintly recall Darryl Strawberry saying something about no one having career years during the Met's 86 World Series run, but everyone playing for the team or something.  There is also audio of Bobby Thompson's shot heard round the world.  But I can't find the player for these cards (which are in great shape by the way) to relive the magic.  Maybe I should pick one up cheap on eBay:

Then the lovely wife and I could snuggle up on the couch, sip some Pinot and listen to baseball cards.

New Blog Contest Plug

The Diamond King (can't believe no one else has come up with this yet) is a new blog and is enticing new readers with a nice contest.  Check it out here:

http://thediamondking.blogspot.com/2011/05/want-list-is-coming-and-contest.html

Help out a new blogger and win some cool stuff!

Can't believe it!

I thought my luck with the topps diamond cut cards was good.  And I thought I did well to get 3 Bryce Harper cards from my Bowman blaster vs. Rack packs experiment the other day.  I've topped those today and then some.

We are in a small Texas town this weekend visiting family, so I popped into the local Wal-Mart to see if they had any Bowman 2011.  They did and I bought.  And out of a blaster I pulled a Harper auto redemption!  This is definitely the best hit I've ever had!  I also snagged another Chrome harper and a sweet Bowmans's best Harper. 
And yes I will be going back tonight for more Bowman. 

Napkin Doon's Attic Treasure #1: Topps Micro Sets

As I may have mentioned, I am on vacation this week.  I had grand visions of organizing my cards, improving my blog and updating my super duper checklist.  I'd say about 0% of has been done so far. I was able to pull down some boxes of cards/collectables  from the attic and dig through them, but that's about it.   And, with me and the lovely wife taking the kids to the Tulsa Zoo tomorrow,  going out of town for the holiday weekend, and traveling on business the rest of next week, I don't see much accomplishment on the horizon.  Maybe when I get done with vacation, I can finally rest and get in some solid goofing off and cardboarding done.  Until then, let's take a walk through some of the crud  interesting items I found in the attic from my previous collecting days.


In one of the boxes from the attic, I found a couple of really neat Topps Micro Sets from 92 and 93.  From what I can tell, these two years, as well as 91 were the only years Topps put this product out.  I wish they would issue them again, because they are really cool.  Here are some of the cards next to a standard mini card and a penny for scale:

I felt very old looking at these cards, alternately holding them closer and further and closer again to my eyes trying to find the right distance to gain focus.  I didn't include it in the scan, but there are checklists in this set.  I defy anyone without a microscope to read them.    The 1992 set also included a 12 card "Gold" bonus set.


They also were one step ahead of themselves on the Diamond Parallel cards everybody is snapping up this year.  The 1993 factory set came with a set of 12 "Prism" Cards:

Wax Wednesday- Which $20 was better spent?

One of the pluses of living in Walmart's backyard is that there are a lot of Walmart stores around here, and they are usually run pretty well, and stocked pretty well.  This played to my advantage yesterday when I ran to the nearby Walmart to pick up a few things and took my usual jaunt over to the card section.  To my surprise, Bowman had just been replenished and the shelf was packed.  It was very tempting to grab it all, but I realized a) I don't really care THAT much for Bowman b) I couldn't afford it even if I did really, really want it and c) my lovely wife would... well it wouldn't be pretty.

So, I rationalized that some serious analysis was needed of the difference between a $20 blaster box, and (4) $5 rack packs.  So I bought the necessary data input and brought it all home.  I am still alive today, but only because I think I got pretty lucky with the pulls.  First, a comparison of the contents:

	Blaster Box	4 Rack Packs
Base Cards	29	29
Base RC	5	8
Gold Parallel	8	4
Orange Parallel (#250)	0	1
Blue Parallel (#500)	0	1
1st Bowman	16	16
1st Bowman Chrome	14	14
1st Bowman Chrome Purple (#700)	0	2
Auto	1	0
Bowman's Brightest	1	1
Topps 100	3	1
Finest Futures	2	3
Topps of the Class	1	0
Bowman's Best	1	0
International Base	1	0
Total Cards	82	80

I counted the cards in the blaster at least 4 times, and yes, I did get two extra cards.  However, I should have received 16 chrome cards but only got 14.  Maybe getting the auto or the Bowman's Best card in the blaster had something to do with the allocation, or perhaps the exceptions are explained somewhere and I am just too lazy to look into it. 

In terms of parallel cards, the rack packs came out ahead, hitting one blue and orange version.  I also got two of the purple parallel chrome cards in the rack packs, but none in the blaster.

In terms of inserts, the blaster was much better.  I really like the Bowman's Best set, but only got one card.  I also was excited to see a Tim Beckham auto in the blaster.

So how did I do with the real reason folks are snapping this product up?  Not too bad.  I got 3 Bryce Harpers:  2 Base and 1 Chrome.

Here are the highlights:

Blaster Box Highlights

Rack Pack Highlights

Of course, this experiment is a very small sample size, and the rack packs add a strong element of randomness.  I think the best way to come up with some solid conclusions and recommendations is to run this same experiment 4 or 5 more times.  Surely my lovely wife can't argue with that logic?

 



Trade Posts: BA Benny and Steve D

Last week I received my end of a couple of trades:

1st:  A big trade with BA Benny.  He sent a whole mess of cards of my favorite players:  Tony Gwynn, Darryl Strawberry, Ian Kinsler, Keith Hernandez, Michael Young, Josh Hamilton, and the list goes on.  He also sent two really cool Michael Young Ticket to Stardom cards that include a game used jersey and a ticket from a Rangers game.  That seems like a cool hit gimmick that should be continued in other sets.  Here are just a few of the highlights from the trade:

Thanks for the trade Mike! 

I also had a small trade with Steve D, who does not have a blog as far as I know.  We did a swap of jersey cards of NY catchers.  I sent him a Jorge Posada 2005 Zenith, and he sent a Piazza T206 jersey, along with an extra Piazza Ionix card (which is very cool in hand BTW):

Thank you Steve, I appreciate it!

On A Diamond Cut Roll!!!

Maybe getting these is not that big a deal after all, but once again, I was able to scrape together a few mediocre cards and trade them for another 2011 Topps Diamond Cut Card of a Texas Ranger.  In no way did I think I would get this without giving up something great:

But I did, and I don't even remember what I gave up other than 1985 and 1987 Topps Tony Gwynns and some crud cards.  I can replace those for all of $.50 on sportlots.com or sportsbuy.com.  Now I have 4 Rangers (Hamilton, Feliz, Kinsler, Young) and am halfway home to completing the team set.  And once again, the diamond code cards I used to trade for this beauty came from another $14.99 value box.

Vacation begins..

With a downpour. 

I thought a Naturals day game would be a great way to kick off vacation this week.  Unfortunately, the storms that have soaked and battered this area for about a month now made yet another appearance.  My boy and I only got in one inning before we had to run for cover.  I did get to eat a couple of $1 hot dogs and see top prospect Mike Trout strike out, but that was it.

I missed my etopps post, but the offering this week was pretty underwhelming.