2009 Upper Deck Signature Stars Baseball box break

Freakin' 2018 Topps Archives hobby boxes have been delayed again, now not coming out until late October (10/24/2018)! Crazy it's taking them so long, seeing as retail packs and blasters were released back in the middle of August (8/15/2018). Geez.. What's the hold up? Frustrating for me since I pre-ordered a couple hobby boxes back in the spring. Getting impatient.

So I've had to tinker with the planned schedule for my stockpile of unopened cards that I ration out each month. My Archives boxes will have to become my November break now. So for September, I dug out what I had originally planned to save for November: 2009 Upper Deck Signature Stars Baseball hobby box. Nothing too exciting, but let's check it out.

A pair of highlights from the inserts. Andrew McCutchen doesn't have many Upper Deck cards, seeing as he was coming up just as UD was being sued out of the baseball card market.. so it's kinda neat to get this one to mix in my PC with all the Topps and Panini cards.

Some of the base card highlights, including an early Kershaw.

The box (which I paid a blaster-and-a-half for during a Black Friday sale last year) promises 4 hits, but the downside is most of them are no-name Team USA kids. And seeing as the product came out nearly a decade ago, if you haven't heard of them by now, you never will. These 3 cards are available for trade.
Luke Scott had a respectable 9-year MLB stint swatting 135 career dingers, mostly for the Astros and Orioles.
Asher Wojciechowski made the show in 2015 and also pitched in 25 games for the Reds back in 2017. He's still active but spent 2018 in AAA.
Matt Newman played in the Blue Jays chain, but topped out at AA a few years back.

Every pack included a thick "dummy" blank card for some reason (I guess to dissuade pack-searchers, but it wouldn't be hard for them to figure out and work around, as the dummy card is thicker than all the hits, at least in my box). So that was kind of annoying, but at least I can repurpose them for making sketch cards.

But let's wrap up with my 4th hit, which was a solid one..

Hey, Manny Machado! There's a guy who panned out. Cool to add a pre-rookie relic card to my PC of his, even though it's not a very interesting card.. with just a boring little plain white swatch. But it kept me from feeling like the box was a dud, at least.

Thanks for reading.

2016 The Mint (High-End Birthday Box Break!)

I was able to talk my mom into buying me a box of The Mint for my birthday, a product from Topps with a $999.99 MSRP. There was a brief period where collectors marveled at the excess and extravagance, but then Topps promptly came out with the even way more ridiculous Transcendent, that cost more than a house in some areas, and The Mint sort of faded away from thought, with really its only claim to fame being the Topps debut of Vin Scully autographs on the market.

Then it started popping up in Black Friday sales from card webstores at around half the original $1k price. Without any other ideas to ask for from my mom this year, I went ahead and hit her with a link and a little plea about how cool it would be for me to bust this crazy box of cards. God bless her, she went for it, though she was never 100% onboard with my baseball card collecting. Thanks, Mom!

So now I get the thrill of opening a very expensive box of cards, without the anxiety of having my money on the line. I'm very EXCITED!! I've gotten some great gifts in my life, but I don't think I've ever gotten anything that brought such a nice extended period of anticipation with it. Maybe like a big concert ticket or something.

There are just 5 cards in a box, all autographs, as is my understanding (Update: 5 autos and 1 relic). There are plenty of big name baseball guys in it, plus a few stinkers (damn you, Henry Owens, stay out of my box!). I think even Sylvester Stallone has a Rocky auto in there. And the aforementioned Vin Scully autos, which are all unfortunately redemptions, but they are apparently live now.

Fingers crossed for a nice hit or two!

I've drafted this intro part before opening the box, but now let's do it!






[....]







Oh, man. This box did not let me down. Do you like Mike Trout? I like Mike Trout.

NICE!!!!
I was very happy to pull this gorgeous Trout auto #'d 44/50. He's the best player in the game and only 25. I bought a Trout auto a couple years back, but that's a stickergraph, and I had been hoping to one day be able to land one that was on-card to really help kick my Trout PC up a notch. This card definitely does just that. You know what card also does that?

THIS ONE! Yep, back-to-back Mike Trout autos. Now that's something you don't pull everyday! This one is #'d 16/75 and includes a nice piece of jersey with a patch stripe thing (whatever you call that; hey, I'm no seamstress). Great looking card! Normally, 2 autos of the same guy in a pack would be something to roll your eyes at, but a double dose of Mike Trout? You jump at that 100 times out of 100. A terrific pair or pulls for me here.

This was actually the first card showing when I opened up the inner box, right before the pair of Trouts. Jason Varitek is no slouch, but when I saw this card, I briefly panicked that I was in for a bunch of cards like this.. not bad, but not justifying the crazy price tag. This one is #'d 95/99 and includes a little jersey number inscription. A key member of bringing multiple World Championships back to Boston, he's a bigtime Red Sox fan favorite. Pretty cool pull.

Ha, man, I sure to seem to pull Piscotty autographs frequently. I had just recently traded a couple away, but I had a feeling I'd be reunited with his ink again before long. And here we are. I might have to hang onto this one, a birthday gift, after all. It's #'d 45/50 and has been inscribed with the date of his MLB debut. At first I figured he was dating the signature, I guess just for the heck of it. But no, as you can sorta see at the bottom of the card, it's calling out his rookie debut, which was July 21, 2015. He had a very solid first full season in 2016 and looks to be an important part of the Cardinals' lineup for the long haul. (What's crazy is that Mike Trout is younger.)

And here's another guy whose autographs keep finding their way to me in recent months, 2015 AL Cy Young Award winner Dallas Keuchel. This one is #'d 80/99. Nice enough looking card, but can't get too excited about it after the down 2016 season he had. Hopefully he bounces back next year.


With the 5 autos out of the way, there was one non-auto relic card left to finish off the box...

It's a David Ortiz relic #'d 245/250. The plain grey swatch isn't too exciting, but as the card mentions (and authentication sticker corroborates), this is from his uniform worn on Mother's Day 2016, a very big day for him. May 8, 2016, he "unloaded for his 453rd and 454th homers with Boston, towering solo shots to right-center in the fourth and seventh innings of the Red Sox's 5-1 win at Yankee Stadium ... Big Papi's first blast on the night allowed him to pass Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski for second on the team's all-time list. With 512 home runs in his career, Ortiz also passed Mel Ott and is tied with Ernie Banks and Eddie Mathews for 22nd on MLB's all-time list." (source)

So that's a nice piece of history in that card. A silver-ink autograph on the card would really have taken it to incredible heights, but I can't really complain. It's a heck of an addition to my Big Papi PC.


And there you have it, the most expensive box of cards I've ever opened. The pair of Trout autos were clearly the highlights. If I were inclined to sell all these cards, I could likely make my (mom's) money back on the box without too much trouble. So it's definitely a relief not to have gotten a dud of a box. It would have been a particularly nice box for a Sox fan, with the Varitek auto and Ortiz relic... but thankfully no Henry Owens, the crappy young pitcher who somehow got an autograph included in this product.

The anticipation was a lot of fun, and I'm ecstatic that there was a nice payoff. While it would have been cool to pull maybe a Vin Scully auto, or like Hank Aaron, Sandy Koufax, or Kris Bryant in there, too.. definitely no complaints about a Mike Trout auto.. much less TWO Mike Trout autos! Wow.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a very Merry Christmas!

Throwing it back to 1974 #1

Topps was able to get me to bite on another of their online-exclusive Throwback Thursday sets. I snagged the Next Generation Shortstops a couple months ago, and now I've gotten the 2016 Hank Aaron Award Nominee set.

Ooh.. new fancy packaging. Throwback Thursdays sets aren't actually in the Topps Now line, but close enough, I guess. The cards were snugly encased in a plastic case within.

Quality group of players there! 579 sets of these were produced, though they're not serial numbered, unfortunately.

I don't own the original 1974 Topps #1 Hank Aaron home run king card that these are based on (yet), but I'm still very familiar with it, and thought it was a cool design for Topps to pay homage to.

The Hank Aaron Award is given annually to the MLB players selected as the top hitter in each league, as voted on by baseball fans and members of the media. Bryant and Ortiz brought home the honors this year.

Good cardboard stock. Phoned-in backs that don't vary from card to card other than name and number.

But yeah, this is a cool little set and I'm happy with it.

Happy Veterans Day and have a good weekend, everybody. It's the local monthly card show for me tomorrow, so that's a nice surprise (It's usually later in the month, so I was assuming it'd be the following weekend). Hopefully I'll have some good finds there to raise my spirits after a soul-sucking week. Grasping at a silver lining, at least I've been able to get out of work early the past couple days since I work right next to a major area where protesters gather and that screws up public transportation. I've managed to not run into any commute issues yet, though I am posting this from work Friday afternoon, so let's hope I didn't just jinx myself for tonight. Who knows, if I end up stuck downtown, I might even join them.

a box of 2014 Panini Classics

I've posted about busting the two hobby boxes of 2016 Topps Archives I pre-ordered a few months ago (see the best pull of my life and the Fantastical Machine trilogy), but I also grabbed something else to help bump me past the free shipping threshold at Dave & Adam's: a box of 2014 Panini Classics Baseball. It's a pretty nice mid-level release that seems to be a one-and-done product, as there was no 2015 version and no word yet of a 2016 release on the horizon either. I've seen 2014 Classics on blogs and gotten 2 or 3 cards from eBay or traders, but hadn't ripped any of it myself. I even put it on my Christmas list last year, but Santa passed on it, so I had to take matters into my own hands. I'm glad I did, as it turned out to be a pretty solid box for me.

This would have been a nice box for a Red Sox fan. Not a bad David Ortiz jersey/bat dual relic /99. He's having a great farewell season, despite being in a lot of pain.
And while this is the Cecchini brother I don't actively collect, I don't mind adding a /299 auto of Gavin's big brother Garin. He was sold to the Brewers after last season, and has spent all of 2016 in AAA so far.

My other 2 hits were definitely solid, as well.. a couple auto/relic cards each #'d /299.
Nick Castellanos is a fine young third baseman who seems to get better every year.
Jameson Taillon made his MLB debut earlier this month and looks to be an important arm in the Pirates rotation going forward. My biggest complaint about 2014 Panini Classics (well, besides no logos) is that all the autos seem to be stickers.. all the autos I got, at least.

I got a couple Timeless Tributes rainbow foil (or whatever) parallels #'d /149, both guys I kinda-sorta collect a little-- Billy Hamilton and Mark McGwire-- so that's cool I guess.

Here are a couple big names you're not likely to pull from a new pack of Topps cards. It's still odd to me that Topps has been shunning Bonds, while giving love in recent products to Canseco, McGwire, Clemens, and Palmeiro. Maybe Barry won't sign with them or something?

I was happy to come up with a fat stack of keepers for my collection, a few of which are shown here.
Looks like Panini got a little out of control photoshopping out stuff, and photoshopped out Mike Schmidt's mustache! LOL

While most of my interest was with the old-timers, there are plenty of cool active stars in there too.

So yeah, this was a fun box to bust.

dual cardboard blast (trade roundup)

Just a couple trade packages arriving within the past week or so, but both were nice fat bubble mailers from my cardsphere hommies the Junior Junkie and SpastikMooss.

First up is Mr. Mooss. He had his eye on one of my extra Wade Boggs Always Sunny autographed customs, and was cool enough to do some COMC shopping on my behalf in exchange, scoring me a nice selection of cards off my wantlist.

Never get tired of these! Thanks to this lovely lot of 2004 Topps Chrome black refractors, I've cracked triple digits in my attempt to complete that parallel set. I'm now at 103/487 complete (21%).

And my goal of spelling out Baseball Card Breakdown in various letter cards has made great strides lately. With these 2 additions, I'm happy to say I'm over hump now, with 11 cards down, 10 left to go. I can currently spell BASE A CARD EA. Not familiar with Greg Halman, but Yonder Alonso was a Padre for a while, so bonus points there.

Whale miniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis!! With these 5 needs, I've completed the 2012 Allen & Ginter "Giants of the Deep" insert set. I'm not a big Ginter collector, but I like whales a lot and was drawn to these minis. Feels great to finish off that goal.

Here's some fun stuff, including 3 Glow Star stickers, getting me closer in completing that subset from 1993 Upper Deck Fun Pack. The coleslaw boots seems to be from a Ren & Stimpy game.

Hmm, I should probably have included the stickers in the previous picture. Some dudes I collect in there. As for the top row, vintage PC needs of Billy Williams and Reggie Jackson. Poor Billy came to Oakland just a teeny bit late to get in on their championship run. While I like to think of my Piazza PC as "complete" I do still like to add Padres cards of his I'm missing and the occasional crazy 90s insert.

Sealed junk wax! Always fun to rip, even if there's probably nothing in there I really need for my collection. Fingers crossed the gum is still bright pink so I can chomp down on that shit. Not even joking!

Great stuff.. big thanks, Mooss!

 -  - - - ---o

Next up to the plate is new dad The Junior Junkie (congrats on the bundle of joy!). I was lucky enough to be a part of his recent epic mailing, even though he had very recently bought a couple custom sets of mine (thanks again!), so he definitely didn't owe me anything and was just getting a jump on our next trade, knowing he'd be a little preoccupied for the foreseeable future. So no rush, but I'll have to hit him back one of these days.

That's a big Gwynn lot! While I've already got most of the overproduction era cards, there are definitely some PC additions among these guys.

And here's a nice Greg Maddux lot to add to my Mad Dog collection.

David Ortiz represented.

A bunch of Giancarlo cards, highlighted by a dufex Pinnacle insert.

Some Padres hits and inserts. I don't know if Mike Thompson or Jon Knott ever showed much in the way of signs of greatness, but cool to get their autographs nonetheless. And neat A-Gon relic and Spangenberg Future Star.

And this picture wraps it up for us. Oops, I should have included that Maddux with the others, but oh well. I believe it's #'d /500 or something. The San Diego card in the lower left is Austin Hedges (I should have included it with the other misc Padres). Another unopened pack! I watched a little of Yo! MTV Raps back in the day. Probably even ripped a couple of these at the time. I should do a separate post where I rip these junk era packs I've gotten.
And the kicker! A custom blogger card of TJ himself, autographed and personalized to me on the back. Very cool! Thanks, man!

Closing out the recent card show haul

Let's bust out the remaining highlights from my haul at the latest local card show, which was a couple weeks ago. December's show is the Saturday before Christmas.. and as usual, it's at the mall.. Yikes! It's not the cool mall in town (that's Lloyd Center), but still, it's a mall (The Orwellian named Mall 205). I might actually voluntarily skip a show for the first time since I started going to this show a couple years ago. I think the only show I've missed was the one right after I got married and I just didn't have the time with everything going on. If things go right, I'll be getting a few boxes for Christmas (one of which is here already, just tempting me to open it.. tantalizing me with what wonders it might possess. Nice high-end box. Mmmm) and, really, I've been buying plenty of cards lately.. so I think I'll be able to sit out this month's card show without too much regrets. See you in January, Mall 205!

This photo represents a fine nickelbox dig (deal was 25 cards for $1). I could easily get a week's worth of posts on these cards, but ain't nobody got time for that, and cheap cards aren't exactly sexy to most blog readers, so just soak in this one picture. Many of these are stacks of one player, but not all of them. Let's see, what do we got here? Some nice Reggie Sanders cards, Rickey, Murray, Molitor, Canseco battery oddball, #'d Cliff Floyd, refractor Ruben Rivera, Gant, McGriff, Boomer Wells, Benito, Caminiti, BJ Upton, Derrek Lee, Sean Astin (I need to get my Goonies PC off the ground), Vlad, Paul O'Neill, Marquis, Sir Julio Franco, Klesko, Bonds, Larry Walker, Teke, Chili, Bagwell, Delgado.

The rest of the cards in this post were in a couple different purchases that either ran me 33¢ or 72¢ per card.

Some cool Red Sox cards. Xander and Mookie have been all over my blog lately. Ortiz Xprismfractor (yeah, that's what I'm deciding to call these). Pedro diecut badge thing. That Heroes of Fenway card is forever trapped in the screwdown, as I've had no luck unscrewing it. I need one of those tools that drills a hole through a stripped screw.. what are those called? And there's a #'d Ted Williams at the end.

This is the San Diego portion of the post. I've pretty much disavowed my Chargers fandom this year, but one guy I still love is LaDainian Tomlinson, and throw a #/149 serial number on the back and I'm sold. Then we've got a gold framed Gwynn, a Cashner refractor, a Cory Spangenberg Xprismfractor, and a couple NASCAR cards of Guy From Granite Jimmie Johnson.

White Sox and Nationals up next. A couple Sales for the PC, that one Frank Thomas from this year's Bowman. On the bottom is a Bryce Harper Xprismfractor and a Max Scherzer gold refractor #'d 17/50.

More numbered cards. That's Eric Young, Sr. and as the sticker implies, it's #'d 73/100. The Ichiro is kinda cool, #'d 208/750. Maikel Franco #/99. And Cueto #/150.

More shiny. Adam Jones, Willie Mays, Alex Gordon, Giancarlo. All fine players. Fine players, indeed.

Not shiny or numbered, but a solid trio of active players to go out on.

And that wraps up the November card show haul. Thanks for checking it out with me!

Haul from the Nachos Grande final group break of the year

I was originally gonna sit this one out, but after time went by and the Red Sox remained unclaimed, I went ahead and signed up for them in Nachos Grande's recent big mixed group break. There are several Sox guys I PC, plus I can always use more Boston representation in my trade box for my old trade buddy Mark Hoyle and now my new trade buddy at Shoebox Legends. As the deadline to sign up approached, Chris and I worked out a deal for me to pick up all the unclaimed teams at a discount. So I ended up with quite a haul.

Let's check out a bunch of highlights.

It's just a base card, but I was happy to get an Ortiz out of the Tek box; neat cards. Bryce Brentz refractor auto #/499 is perhaps the best card I got out of the break. Brentz isn't a huge prospect or anything, but he cracked the majors this past season and hit a sweet .308 in 9 games. And the Stadium Club (rainbow foil?) parallel is kinda cool. I know it says Shane Victorino on it, but it'll likely end up in my Big Papi PC as a cameo card.

Here's a scanner bed full of Diamondback highlights. A nice trio of Goldschmidts. A nice trio of Yasmanys. Great Randy Johnson insert. That Jake Lamb RC is one of those crazy refractors.. those ones that are like "this is what xfractors look like this year" but for some reason Topps got cute and called them "Prisms" even though in the card world, Panini has a firm hold on the term.

A scanner bed full of of Marlins highlights. The Jose Fernandez top middle is a refractor, though you can't tell in the scan. Nice lot of Giancarlos, though I think I already had them all. The action variation Ichiro is the best card here.

A scanner bed full of A's highlights. Love the Rickeys. And the Reggie. And the Venditte.. that was the base card I was hoping to pull from the box of 2015 Heritage High Numbers.. glad that worked out. The Chip is a Josh Reddick metal parallel or something. It and the gold parallel of the creepy big-head Eck are available for trade if anyone wants them. Oh, and that Zobrist Chrome parallel.. I believe that's #/999.

The Brewers slot didn't net me much, but the Yount and Molitor may be PC additions.. I need to check if I need them. The Khris Davis Chrome RC is nice. And here we see a better representation of a "don't call me an xfractor, call me a prism even though that's not what I am" parallel of Carlos Gomez.. this'll likely end up with Tony L. before long.

A scanner bed full of Royals highlights. A few new Brett cards for the PC. A couple Bo cards. Cool Yordano parallel. And that James Shields chip is a glow-in-the-dark one (though these things barely glow at all.. pretty disappointing, really. They should make the actual Chip material out of glowing plastic, not just a tiny little area behind the player photo). But still, this is cool, as I have been working on building up a little Shields PC lately, seeing how he's the best pitcher the Padres got right now.

Lots of Red Sox highlights, starting with the retired guys. Love the Ted Williams. And there's another card for my non-Yankees Babe Ruth PC. Gotta love UD Masterpieces. These are the glossy versions, not the fancy canvas ones, but still nice.

Final scan. More Papi. A Xander. A couple refractors. A new Adrian for the PC. I love Mookie Betts and was happy to get these two new additions (I was really crossing my fingers for Chris to pull a Betts auto for me, but I'll settle for these two base cards.) Oh, and at the end there.. that's gum. Part of my deal with Chris is that I got all the gum from the break! I'm happy to report that it's all pink. You know the old saying, "If it's brown, put it down. If it's pink, it's ok, I think." I haven't chewed any of it yet, but I probably will soon. I'm a gastric daredevil like that.

Thanks for another fun break, Chris!

Completing my David Ortiz PC

Big card-day for me today! First I had likely my best card show ever.. scoring big chunks of vintage for my setbuilds 73, 71, and 65, plus much more. Stay tuned for posts on that stuff this coming week.

I also received some great cards in the mail once I returned home. Let's look at one of them now..

Keeping my string of posting 12/25 cards on the 25th of every month alive!

This card represents a big triumph for me. I had been sitting on 99 different David Ortiz cards for a while now. I wanted to knock him off my wantlist with a great "final" card to put him into my Hundred Card Club.

This particular card fit the bill.. I already had an auto, a "David Arias" rookie, a relic or two, and even a printing plate, but I didn't have a Big Papi Christmas Card. It popped up on Listia with a hefty Get It Now price. I didn't have enough credits, but I wanted it, so I pulled a few good cards out of my tradebox to put up on there to sell and raise credits. But just as I was getting within spitting distance of the goal, somebody else snatched it up with the Get It Now out from under me. I was crushed.

Then a couple weeks later, the same card popped up on eBay at an opening bid that I'd consider less than what it fetched on Listia (though the conversion rate between dollars and Listia credits is ever tough to pin down). I won the eBay auction as the only bidder! So it went from being a huge disappointment for me, to an uplifting tale of salvation.

Hurray! David Ortiz is off my wantlist in style.

Heroes get remembered, but legends never die. Follow your heart, and you'll never go wrong.

Sorry for the long title, but it was either that or "more cards from the card show."

That's a quote from The Sandlot, which I just watched for the first time this past weekend. I know it's some of your guys's favorite movie, and as a baseball fan, it's a must-see. It came out just as I was leaving "childhood" so I missed the target demographic by a matter of months, and then it eluded me for many years somehow. But yes, now I've seen it and enjoyed it. (Should I bother with the sequel? I've read it's "more than just a bad film, it's an insult to the original." So maybe I'm better off skipping it.)

Anyways, here are some more cards I picked up at the recent card show for 50 cents each.

New HOF inductees, Pedro and Big Unit, both serial numbered on the back. I had another Randy Johnson card tentatively in my stack. It was #'d /500, whereas this one I chose to purchase was #'d /599. Normally I'd go for the "scarcer" of the two, all things being equal, but this was just a better looking card, with a nice refractor shine to it.

Here are a couple more numbered cards. Big Papi and Miggy (each with a Ramirez hiding out in the background). Both from the same insert set (one gold, one silver), though one has standard-sized text numbering and one is bolded (nice phat foil numbering). Funny.  Personally, I prefer a fat serial on the back, or slim on the front. But whatever.

Autos! One of the best sports names ever, Butch Huskey! And my 3rd different Brooks Kieschnick auto (all from card shows out of the same discount bins).

Someday I'll get a real Brett RC. For now, this Archives reprint will do. And while Ryno's (possibly short-lived) managerial stint with Philadelphia sort of takes the novelty out of cards picturing him on the Phillies, it's still a neat card.

And here's a Smoltz and a Mantle, dancing a bit.

And lastly...

I don't spend much cardshow time looking at football cards nor graded cards, but slabbed cards for 50¢ is a rare sight (figuring it costs a few bucks just to get a card graded). So I checked out the few the dealer had available and plucked out a couple Chargers. R.I.P. Seau. As for Ryan Mathews, I heard he's no longer with San Diego, though I haven't paid all that much attention to the team since Tomlinson left, to be honest. But good luck to you, Ryan!


Thanks for the click. Still got some trade bait from the show to put up for grabs soon.
-Gav