2013 Panini Golden Age - Box Break Part 1

I shared a single pack of this earlier. I decided I liked it enough to buy a box. This set is a lot like Upper Deck Goodwin Champions (and Allen and Ginter for that matter) in that it doesn't just feature baseball players. In a set like this I usually don't pick just one card to put in the reference book but a selection of cards from the set that reflect the variety. If there are clear subsets, I'll go with them.  Here are the base cards I picked for my reference book.  I did pertty well with the box, getting at least one of each insert set, except for the three that are 1 of 1's.

Of the 103 base cards, 36 featured baseball players.  As in other sets, Panini has chosen to use the Photoshop option and remove logos.

 11 cards featured either football players of coaches.

I don't know what kind of license Panini has with the NFL, but the football players all had scrubbed uniforms and no team name mentions. They did, however, sport the NFL logo on the back.

7 cards featured horse racing, either jockeys or horses.

 

 18 cards featured actors, actresses or entertainers. There were a few child actors, especially kids from the "Our Gang" series and the "Bad News Bears" movies. But I'm going with:

The "Bad News Bears" is an actual subset.

I'd pulled one of these in the single pack as well.

There were also enough American Presidents to include in the reference book.

I have more than half of the US presidents on some kind of card now.

And finally, boxers:

There are two full-sized parallel sets, Black (1 of 1) and White. I pulled one of the White;

The rest of the cards are a hodgepodge of golfers, artists, famous objects (the Edmund Fitzgerald, Apollo 11), gamblers, wild west lawmen, etc.

And it would be this kind of set without mini tobacco cards.  There was one in each pack.

I'll feature the insert sets later. Some of the themes I've shown here, carry into the inserts.

Oh, and I got the Mike Schmidt card.

2011 Topps - The Inserts

I posted regular base cards last week. I had bought 3 blasters, 1 from Target, 2 from WalMart for a total of 0f 300 cards, 184 were base cards, the rest inserts. There are 46 inserts and parallel cards in the Series 1 set but I only got a small selection. Overall, while I'm happy with the design of the base cards, I'm not so happy with the inserts. Outside of the Diamond Platinum parallels and the Kimball Champions, nothing much grabbed my attention.

2011 Topps Gold #224 Milton BradleyNo matter what the stated odds of the gold cards (this year it's 1 in 17 packs) I usually don't pull more than one or two in a year. Series 1 yielded just this Milton Bradley card. As usual, the cards are numbered to the set year. I got card number 1,822.

2011 Topps Diamond Anniversary Platinum #191 Jay BruceThis parallel set is pretty cool looking. They are inserted 1 in 4 packs and I pulled 7 of them. All the cards I got were base cards, no checklists, no leader cards. Also no Phillies, Astros or any players I collect. Maybe I'll have better luck with Series 2.

2011 Topps Throwback #163 Carlos PenaOnce again, this parallel set, printed on heavy gray card stock with the old Topps logo, is available only in Target blasters. There are 2 packs per blaster. I think I prefer these to...

2011 Topps All-Black #1 Ryan BraunThis parallel set is, as usual, only available in WalMart blasters, 2 packs per blaster. The novelty of these cards is wearing off.

2011 Topps 60 Years of Topps Reprints #19 Reggie JacksonI actually think this is a good idea as a 6oth-anniversary insert set. Except they did the "Cards Your Mother Threw Out" set last year and this looks just like that. I pulled 11 of them. The criteria for picking a card from each year doesn't seem consistent or even rational. For example, the 1989 card is the Royals Leaders card with Bo Jackson. Is this the best card, by any criteria, of 1989? I don't think so. There is an "Original Backs" version of these at a tough to pull 1:36. I got the 1987 card featuring Dennis Eckersley. Why Eckersley on the 1987 card? Who knows.

2011 Topps 60 Years of Topps: The Lost Cards $3 Mickey MantleThis 10-card set is inserted 1 in 12 packs. This is the not-published, but for contractual issues, might have been 1954 Mickey Mantle card. I was 3-years old in 1954 and I really don't care.

2011 Topps 60 #35 Frank ThomasOK, it's Topps 60th anniversary. I understand the connection. Let's produce an insert set which celebrates the top 60 of something. Top 60 players of all time? Too hard. The top 60 home run hitters? Too easy. What Topps chose to do is to pick players from a list which is categorized something like this: the top 60 players in any category, by all-time, by team history, by individual year, by team in an individual year, by decade, by any of those categories in a rookie season, yada, yada, yada. The listing of players in this set is practically arbitrary. What a waste. The cards aren't bad looking however.

2011 Topps Diamond Duos #DD-HF Heyward/FreemanThe Diamond Dogs, er, Duos set i2 30 cards inserted 1 in 4 packs. I pulled 10 of them. Pretty much a copy of last year's Legendary Lineage set, which I didn't care for either. Mostly a collection of randomly paired players. What will they think of next year?

2011 Topps History of Topps #5Topps makes history by releasing very possibly the most boring insert set of all time. And this is probably the most boring card of the set. At an insert rate of 1 in 18 packs, this is a relatively tough pull. I'm happy I only got the one.

2011 Topps Kimball Champions #7 Mickey MantleHave we run out of ancient cards to reproduce yet? Apparently not. This is a 1888 tobacco card set. I actually like them a lot. The 50-card set was inserted 1 in 4 packs and I pulled 9 of them.

2011 Topps CMG Reprints #26 Ty CobbI'm kind of a sucker for these reproductions of old sets. This 30 card set features a number of different sets. For example, this is a 1932 US Caramel card. Inserted at a rate of 1 per 8 packs I pulled four of them. Three of them were different Ty Cobb cards.

2011 Topps Throwback Commemorative Patches Chase UtleyFor several years, Topps has included manufactured patch cards like this in blaster boxes. Although I'm happy enough to get one when it features a Phillie, I'd rather get an auto or a relic card. In addition to this, I got two different cards featuring Washington Nationals (Zimmerman and Desmond) with Expos patches. Really, who wants something like that?

2011 Topps Ticket to Toppstown #15 David WrightThis is the third year for this insert. Are you as tired as I am of finding one of these cards in each pack of Topps? This year they upscaled the set by adding a foil background. It doesn't make me want them any more.

Fairfield Repack - 3

This is the third and last (and probably least interesting) report on box of repackaged cards from The Fairfield Company. To recap. In this package I got one pack each of 2007 Bowman, 2007 Artifacts, 2005 Donruss Leather & Lumber, and 2005 Skybox Autographs. I was fairly satisfied with these packs. The box also had a pack of 1990 Donruss as a "Bonus" and 100 loose cards.

1990 Donruss


I'm not a big fan of 1990 Donruss so I wasn't exactly thrilled with the "bonus", but the pack did have this card:

Giamatti was the National League President from 1986 to 1989. In 1989 he was made the Baseball Commissioner. He only served 154 days as commissioner before dying of a massive heart attack. He was 51. Giamatti is probably best known for banning Pete Rose from baseball after it was found that Rose was betting on baseball games. As far as I know he is the only baseball commissioner to appear on a baseball card (he is also on a 1990 Topps card). Giamatti was a life-long baseball and Red Sox fan. Both the Donruss and Topps card quoted the same passage from his essay "Green Fields of the Mind".


"It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in spring, when everything else begins again, and blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then, just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops."


Of the 100 loose cards, I kept 35. Most were junk (as far as I'm concerned, or cards I already had that I didn't need 2 of). There were two cards however, that I didn't have and knew nothing about.

1993 Pinnacle Home Run Club

This was a boxed set produced by Score. The sets were numbered to 200,000. The card is pretty attractive with a metallic finish called "Dufex". I'd be happier if the card was someone else other than Dean Palmer.

1997 Select Company Red

1997 Select looks to have been a complicated set by 1997 standards. The first 150 cards were designated "Red" and had a red foil insignia. The high series cards were called "Blue" with a blue foil insignia. There were a number of parallel sets (like Gold, Artist's Proof and the like). Select Company was one of the parallel sets that were issued, 1 per pack, in the high series packs. The cards have a silver foil background. The 'rays' coming out of the red foil circle are textured.

Select had started life as a Score product but by 1997, Score was owned by Pinnacle. After the 1998 season, Pinnacle went out of business. I'd never seen a 1997 Select card before.

Fairfield Repack - 2

I posted the first part of a review of a box of repackaged cards from The Fairfield Company. I was attracted to the box because showing were 4 pretty good packs of cards: 2007 Bowman, 2007 Artifacts, 2005 Skybox Artifacts, and 2005 Donruss Leather & Lumber. I already posted the 2007 cards. I'll post the 'bonus' cards from the box is a few days.

2005 Skybox Autographics

2005 was Fleer's last independent (independent from Upper Deck anyway) year. Fleer produced 10 sets in 2005. It was the 2nd and last year for Skybox Autographs. Right off the bat we get:

#5 Chipper Jones

You can't have too many Chipper Jones cards. And I didn't have this one.

#39 Alex Rodriguez
#59 Bobby Abreu
#58 David Ortiz
# 19 - Travis Hafner.

Pretty good pack and I didn't have any of the cards. Abreu is a Phillie on this card and I didn't have any Phillies from this set.

2005 Donruss Leather & Lumber

2005 was the last year that Donruss produced baseball cards before Major League Baseball pulled their license. There were about 18 Donruss sets in 2005. Donruss was the king of parallel inserts and everyone of their sets had multiple parallels. It was impossible to keep up with them. It may have been responsible on Donruss losing their license. MLB said they wanted to cut down on the number of cards produced. Dropping Donruss would sure do that. What did I get?

#88 Lyle Overbay
#46 Geoff Jenkins
#111 Rafael Furcal
#124 Shawn Green
#138 Brooks Robinson

The Robinson card is part of a subset of Retired players. I didn't have one of these so I'm happy with it but the rest of the pack is a disappointment. Brooks Robinson, of course, was the great third baseman of the Orioles from 1955 to 1977. Some say he was the greatest third baseman ever. I'll concede he was the best third baseman in the American League. I'm sort of partial to Mike Schmidt of the Phillies as the best of all time.

Fairfield Repack - 1

I was in Target Sunday morning and there was nothing new on the baseball card shelves. But they had some new repackaged cards by The Fairfield Company. The box has 4 packs (which you can see through the box windows), another 100 cards, and, be still my heart, a BONUS INSIDE! The 4 packs I can see are 2007 Bowman, 2007 Artifacts, 2005 Donruss Leather & Lumber, and 2005 Skybox Autographics. These were all nice cards so I say, what the heck? I'll probably do this in three posts.

Ths 100 cards inside were the usual collection of late 1980's Topps, early Upper Deck with a mix of random Fleer and Donruss cards. 20 of the cards were these 1988 Topps UK Minis which seem to be in every repack I buy these days. I've already written about these here. I have 42 of these already and the 20 in this box contain 10 dups. The "Bonus" turned out to be a pack of 1990 Donrus cards. Not really what I'd call a bonus. The pack does have a Bart Giamatti card which I didn't know existed. I have the 1990 topps Giamatti card.

2007 Bowman

Here's what I got:

#197 - Derrek Lee
#1 Hanley Ramirez
#119 Hideki Matsui

What's the deal with Matsui? I don't know too much about him. He seems to have decent stats, but Beckett doesn't rate him above a common.

#44 Mark Buehrle
#122 Greg Maddux
#128 Carlos Lee (Gold)
#74 Randy Wells (ChromeProspects X-Fractor) 227/250

#92 Neil Sellers (Chrome Prospects)
#63 Brandon Mann (Prospects)
#37 Brandon Roberts (Prospects)

Twp prospects named Brandon in a row. I'm pretty happy with this pack. The only dup I got was the Sellers card, but he's an Astro, so that's alright. And I didn't have a single X-Fractor card.

2007 Artifacts

I like these cards and don't have too many of them. Right out of the pack is:

#77 Daisuke Matsuzaka

#32 Vernon Wells
#35 Stephen Drew
#69 David Eckstein
#40 Ken Griffey, Jr.

If it wasn't for the Matsuzaka card, I'd have been unhappy with this pack as I had Drew, Eckstein, and Griffey in the 50 cards I already had. But Matsuzaka makes up for that. I had Andrew Miller (the 2nd best card in the set) so now I also have the best card in the set.

2008 Upper Deck Spectrum box break

I haven't done a box break (or even a pack break) on my blog and since I just got this today and I don't see it on any of the baseball card blogs I usually read, I decided to give it a try.

2008 Upper Deck Spectrum. I got this blaster box at Target. $19.99 for seven packs, 4 cards per pack. Target was also selling single packs for $2.99. The box was a slightly better deal, plus the box proudly proclaims "One Game-Used Memorabilia Card in EVERY box."

The box has a Major League Baseball holographic label and a curious "Made in USA Unleaded" label.

Also, "Look for Derek Jeter Retrospectrum Cards!".








First card is Jason Bay of the Pirates. Next is Ken Griffey, Jr. Not too long a wait for a star card.

The cards are glossy with a refractive foil background. The color is primarily blue. Sometimes these kind of cards scan up real colorful but these didn't. They are very rainbow-like however.

Is it my imagination or is Griffey looking a bit, shall we say, heavy in this photo?












The back is also glossy. There is a player head shot at the top. Stats go back to 2000. That looks standard on all the cards.

The Upper Deck hologram logo is on the bottom right, along with a code number to enter into the contest on the Upper Deck website.












Brandon Webb (Diamondbacks), Michael Young (Rangers), Carl Crawford (Rays, note they are the Rays this year, not the Devil Rays), Dan Uggla (Marlins), Scott Rolen (Cardinals, a star card for me), Miguel Tejada (I think the first Tejada card I've seen in an Astros uniform), David Ortiz (Red Sox), Hanley Ramirez (another Marlin), Freddy Sanchez (another Pirate)

And this must be a Derek Jeter Retrospectrum card. This is card #75, so this is going to be a big insert set.

Nothing special on the back. This card features Jeter's 6th All Star game in 2004, where he went 3-3.













Brandon Phillips (Reds)

Ian Snell (the 3rd Pirate in the box). This card jumped out at me. It's green and serial numbered (95/199). My guess is that this is a parallel insert set called Spectrum Green.

The back looks the same as the regular card.













Jim Thome (White Sox, star card for me), Fausto Carmona (Indians), Alex Rodriguez (Yankees, a real star card).
And here's my game-used card. A Mike Piazza Retrospectrum Swatches. Mike is featured in a Mets uni here. His Mets career is briefly summarized on the back. This card is numbered RS-MP1, so I expect there are other Piazza cards in other uniforms.













J. J. Handy (Brewers)

A Yankee Stadium Legacy card featuring Joe Gordon. It is card (and game) number 1,592. 9/23/1942: Yankees beat the Nationals 4-1. Gordon was a nine-time All Star whom I've never heard of. He played exactly 1,000 games for the Yankees and had exactly 1,000 hits.

Delmon Young (Twins), Ian Snell (Pirates, great I've got the regular and the green of this guy), Roy Oswalt (my second Astro, and one of my favorite Astros, who's making his third start tonight).

Another Jeter Retrospectrum (# 19) card but this one is red and serial numbered (28/99). So at least two parallel sets. This card recalls Jeter's first multi-homer game on 8/20/97.

Another Jeter Retrospectrum (#27). This card mentions that Jeter broke the single-season HR record for shortstops in 1998 with 19.











Finishing up with Russell Martin (Dodgers), Chris Carpenter (Cardinals) and Chris Young (Padres).

I'm pretty happy with the box. I think the cards look better than last year's Spectrum cards. I got a good selection (although I'd trade the Pirate cards for some Phillies however), and two of the parallels. I'll probably buy another box if I see them again.

Update 4/12/08: I was in WalMart today and saw the 2008 Spectrum blasters so I decided to buy another on. What a disappointment. Of the 28 cards in the box, 16 were cards I already had from the first box! Including the Mike Piazza jersey card! And no variations either. And still no Phillies!