WalMart Stop: Series 2 Blaster + Value Box Break!

Hey guys, Drew back here. About a week or so ago, right before I left for New Hampshire, we stopped at Wal-Mart for some groceries and other stuff. I hit up the card aisle and walked home with a blaster of the new 2011 Topps Series 2 baseball, as well as the collector's recent hit, the Topps "Value Box". I haven't bought much of anything new card wise this year, but I definitely wanted to check out the new series as well as the recent rave over the actual "value" in the Value Boxes. Take a look at how I did:

I first tried out the series 2 blaster box, and here were just a few of the notable base cards. I didn't pull a single notable American League player, and if you may have noticed, this blaster was filled with stars of the NL East! My favorite base card I pulled was either the pumped up Huston Street or the Jose Reyes. The cards look pretty good as always, but there still was a lot of typical, boring pictures.

Also, a staple in the Wal-Mart Topps products is now the black back cards, where only the player is shown in color but the rest of the card, including the border, is black. I pulled some decent ones in the 2 packs that are like this, but none that I really want to hang on to. 

Next were some of Topps' inserts, many of them have already been extremely overdone. But, wait, is that shiny I see? Topps introduced the "Diamond Stars" insert in this series, and I pulled Ichiro and Ryan Howard. I actually really like the looks of these cards, but everything else is very boring and redundant. 

Hey look, more reprinted boring cards! Sigh. When will Topps learn that I really don't reprints of cards from the past 10 years. Next year, I will get on my knees and pray that us collectors won't be fooled again! 

Next is by far my favorite insert of the year, the new Kimball Champions set. While Series 1 was mostly devoted to current players minus a few legends, Series 2 is all former greats of the game. As you can see, I pulled some pretty good ones, in Ruth, Maris, and Robinson! 

Next are the parallels, which are pretty nice. The gold cards are getting very bland and unexciting now, and while Topps thinks its a great idea and a tradition, it's old, and boring, like that sandwich you'd find in your locker on the last day of school that's been rotting there for months. The diamond cards are new and very nice looking, but I sure hope after this year is over that they won't go back and make another "tradition" of them.

Finally, my commemorative patch pull was of Athletics pitcher Brett Anderson. I don't quite get these cards very well. If you're going to feature an old school logo, this being from the 1967 A's, why wouldn't you feature a player from that team? The patch looks cool, but throwing Anderson on there does not quite make sense to me. Oh well, I guess you win some and lose some, especially in this hobby. 

After a very "meh" blaster, we move on to the value box. In this box you get 5 packs of 2011 Topps Series 1, as well as two packs of this year's Topps Heritage, 2 diamond giveaway code cards loose in the container, and a Legend Chrome Refractor.

Also included is this MLB Collector's Guide, which brings collectors through every year of Topps' history, spanning a different star player for each year. It's a great way to teach the younger audience about the hobby, in case you were looking in getting a son or someone you know interested in the hobby. 

I know you are all sick of seeing these same Series 1 cards over and over again, but 1 thing I do want to tell you is if you need help with your Topps set, send me a wantlist and I can help you out, because, since I won the factory set, most, if not all of my base are for trade. 

My chrome refractor turned out to be of Jackie Robinson, rather than Babe Ruth or Mickey Mantle. While I would have much preferred one of the Yankees, you can't not like a card of Jackie Robinson. The card looks beautiful under a light, with great reflection and shine to it. If anyone has a Mantle or Ruth I would trade this for it though.

Here are the same old inserts as always, with a Toppstown in each pack (didn't scan Mike Stanton), and some diamond inserts of Brandon Morrow and Billy Wagner. 

Minus the lower group of cards in this scan, here are the better looking inserts I pulled. I love the Mantle "The Lost Years" insert, and I wish that was a real card and not just a made up insert. The Rivera Kimball Champions is a favorite of mine as well, definitely staying in my collection for a while. The Diamond Giveaways were all accumulated through both boxes, and there were 4 total. I was hoping to pull a Diamond card but instead I pulled a few cards from 1973, Danny Cater and Alex Johnson. 

While the flagship product didn't treat me overly well, Topps Heritage certainly did. In the 2 packs, I pulled a Then and Now insert of Mantle and Fielder, as well as some star players and solid rookies. 

I got very lucky in one of the Heritage packs as well, pulling this bat card of Jacoby Ellsbury! Talk about some good value! Ellsbury has been excellent this year for Boston, and it's a pretty good pull if you ask me. It's for trade for any Yankee though, since you all should know how I feel about Boston!

All in all, the value box, which was $5 less than the blaster, certainly had more value than the blaster, so keep that in mind the next time you visit a retail store. Again, most every card that isn't of a Yankee is for trade, so please contact me at yanks1996wsc@gmail.com. For most of the base/inserts I'd be interested in trading for anything in my wantlist on the sidebar. Thanks everyone!

See Ya!

Quite a Few Pack Breaks!

Hey guys, Drew back here. As I left off on Wednesday, I still only have my mom's laptop and a busy schedule to work on. However, I have been able to open a few packs over the past couple weeks. Take a look at my results:

First was a pack of 2010 Allen & Ginter. There really wasn't anything special in here, minus the Joel Pineiro A&G back mini and the Soriano insert. I already have the whole set so now the packs are just for fun.

 

 

I also got a pack of 2011 Topps Jumbo from Dad! We didn't hit anything overly spectacular, but a Swisher base, Mariano Rivera base, and the Jeter insert made it a hit for me. I unlocked a load of garbage with my code card, but thats ok I guess. I did get a few cards for my 2011 Topps set so I'm happy.

Finally, I opened about 4 packs of 2011 Topps Heritage! I really love the way these cards look this year, and I think I did fairly well with these. Sure, at about $5 a pack for some base cards and SP's may be a ripoff, but I think this is the most I've ever bought of a Heritage product. In Pack 1, I pulled a nice AL Win Leaders card starring CC Sabathia, David Price, and Jon Lester, as well as an SP of Roy Halladay.

Pack 2 provided pretty much nothing special, outside of a Miguel Cabrera card displaying his power and a card of Babe Ruth during his Twilight years as a Dodgers coach. I already pulled this card so I was a little disappointed to see it again, especially with all of the other Ruth cards I could have pulled from this product.

Pack 3 was perhaps the best, based on star power. You can never go wrong with pulling Chase Utley, Brian Roberts, Joe Mauer, and Prince Fielder base cards. Of course, I had to pull the AL Win Leaders card again, but I also got a rookie card of who may be the rookie of the year this year, Mr. Kyle Drabek of Toronto! I have him on my fantasy team and he's done nothing but good things so far in his few starts this season.

 

The last pack was pretty solid in my opinion, with base cards of Miguel Cabrera, Yadier Molina, and Jimmy "Red Hot" Rollins, who has started the season on fire for the Phillies! I also pulled a Lincecum card and a Chris Sale rookie card, so in my opinion I was pretty successful.

If you're curious in trading for any of the cards other than the Yankees, please leave me a comment and let me know. Thanks again Dad, and See Ya!

White Plains Card Show Recap 3/27/11! Part 1!

Hey everyone, Drew back here! Today, as I mentioned in my previous post, I went to the White Plains card show. Mike, Joemama, and I made the trip to the Westchester County Center, to meet some players, spend some money, and have a great time. We did all 3. Well, the day had its ups and downs, but majority were certainly ups. Over the next week or so, I'm going to highlight to you some of the things I got at the show. I'll start small with pack breaks, and end big with the players I got the opportunity to meet! For now, between Dad and I's pickups, here are some of the packs we bought:

In the dollar bin, dad picked up 2 packs each of 2002 Upper Deck World Series Heroes, and 2002 Upper Deck Ballpark Idols. We'll start with Ballpark Idols.

The cards not shown in the scan are Kevin Appier and Brandon Duckworth. Overall I've never seen this set, pretty much since it was mixed in with the thousands of random releases Upper Deck made around this time. For $1 each you really can't go wrong but there really was nothing exciting in these.

Again, not shown are Jose Rijo and Matt Williams. Click on the scan if you're curious to see a closer up shot of the cards. Anyway, from the 2002 World Series set, here are 8 fantastic cards of some great players. I've always liked this set, but never got much of it. Rickey Henderson and David Wells' cards are my favorite of the ones I pulled though.

After those 4 packs, I also bought myself 3 packs of the all new 2011 Topps Heritage baseball series. I've seen too much of this stuff already and I'm really liking the way Topps went about the set this year. One thing I've noticed is that the disgusting gum you normally get in these packs are resting in peace for the year which is an improvement, especially when they added one more card per each pack as a replacement.

Pack 1 was a great pack in my opinion. The 1 card not shown was of David Aardsma, but none of you guys care about him so I figured you didn't have to see his bald head. While I like the CC Sabathia and Brian McCann cards, my favorites of the pack are the A-Rod New Age Performers card and the Halladay Perfect game highlight card. I really think Topps hit a home run with the way they did the inserts this year, because they look great.

Pack 2 didn't have the insert flair of Pack 1, but I'm still happy because I got 2 more Yankees for the collection, in Andy Pettitte and Mark Teixeira. I also like Chris Perez now since he spent some of his contract money to buy the cut autograph booklet card of the 1927 Yankees team recently found in 2010 Topps Tribute.

The final pack contained some more very nice cards. It was thicker because I ended up pulling a Jake McGee chrome rookie card numbered to 1962, which I liked a lot. Also got a Jeter insert as well as one of those cool Babe Ruth special cards. The card highlights his time spent with the Dodgers as a coach before his retirement. Ruth apparently always wanted to manage a team, but he never got the opportunity in his life.

The final part of this post, is about some mystery packs I bought from one seller. He was selling $3 packs, each containing one auto or game used card and some other cards alongside the hit. I bought 1, and dad bought 5 of them, for $10. Let me tell you, we could have done a lot better, and I'm not going to bother show anything but the 6 relics we ended up pulling.

First off was this Shin-Soo Choo jersey relic from 2009 Upper Deck Sweet Spot. In my opinion, he could be the most underrated player in baseball, since hardly anyone knows how good he actually is. Last year, he batted .300 with 22 home runs and 90 RBI. Shin-Soo WHO?

This guy pitched for China in the World Baseball Classic. And theres a piece of his jersey. Wooo.

Next was a Brian Stokes relic. He was a Met after his stint with the Rays, and then became a free agent. I hope that explains the jist of how good he is.

Now we have Carlos Beltran. He was good, but now he's old and the Mets really shouldn't be relying on him this year to play in their lineup. We'll see though. By the way, I love Allen & Ginter, in case you didn't know!

From 2010 Topps Pro Debut, here's a Trevor Reckling jersey card. This has to be the largest swatch I've ever gotten in my collection, and it's numbered to 139. He's a pitcher in the Angels organization, and I don't know much else about him. Still a cool card though.

The final card was my 1 hit in my bag, a Hunter Pence manufactured patch numbered to only 10! The guy is convinced that the thing is a real jersey, but anyone that knows anything about Upper Deck Premier knows that this thing is fake. It's a really nice card though, my first from the set.

Well, that'll just about do it for the first post in the series! Stay tuned for the second part, coming soon to drewscards!

See Ya!