Sunday, September 12, 2010

2005 Topps Chrome Series II packs (120)

As promised, here's the result of my huge 120-pack purchase of 2005 Topps Chrome Series II.  I purchased a similar (but smaller, I believe) lot of these groups of 24 shrink-wrapped retail packs from the same guy on eBay and was interested enough to complete the set to do the same with these recently.  It doesn't hurt that I got a pretty good price on each of the five auctions to the point where I paid less than $1/pack for packs that used to go for $3 just a few years ago.  How did I do?  Read on to find out.



Purchased from/price:  eBay, $79.60 (including shipping)
Packs/cards:   120 packs / 4 cards
Set size:  220 base cards (including 5 SP rookies)
Key features:  They're chrome!  Also, autographed RCs, Refractors, Black Refractors and A-Rod Throwbacks
Key cards:  Autographed RCs of Billy Butler, Justin Verlander, Nate McLouth, Glen Perkins and Chip Cannon

Base card front

Base card back
Set completion:  186/220 (85%)
Extras:
  • Doubles:  127
  • Triples:  59
  • Quads:  30
  • Quints:  9
  • Sextuples:  4
Inserts:   

Refractors:  32, all different (1:5, 24 expected)


     















Black Refractors (#'d to 225):  5, Vicente Padilla, Ryan Drese, Nick Green, Tony Armas Jr., Corey Koskie (1:36, 3-4 expected)

















A-Rod Throwbacks:  29 (1:5, 24 expected), including five "sets" of the four-card insert

















Autographs:
Base card autograph:  Glen Perkins, Landon Powell (1:55, 2 expected)
Black Refractor autograph:  Tyler Pelland (1:508) 










Relics:  None (none expected)

Best pack:  Manny Ramirez, Landon Powell AU RC (also Eric Hinske and Brett Tomko)
Worst pack:  2 doubles, 1 triple, 1 quintuple (my first at the time, Brett Tomko)

Quality control:  8/10  Minus a point for a card with "roller marks" on it, and another docked for some off-centered cards.  Everything else was fine--all packs had the right number of cards, nothing else was damaged 
Collation:  8/10  I'm making sure to take into consideration that this was basically 120 random retail packs, not a standard hobby or retail box of 24 packs.  Getting only 85% of the set was pretty disappointing, at least in light of all the triples, quads and so on that I pulled.  More importantly, in terms of the five base RCs, which are pretty difficult to pull, I got nine and only four were different.  That wouldn't bother me as much, but I pulled FOUR Bobby Livingstones.  I would have traded all of those for one freakin' Yorman Bazardo.  Still, I absolutely killed the insert odds; I would have considered two autographs a success, but getting the black Refractor was icing on the cake.  And I got way more inserts than I was due.  That makes up for the deficiencies of the base card pulls a bit
Value:  10/10  Remember, I judge this relative to the price I paid, not what it originally would have cost.  I paid less than $1/pack and got THREE Auto/RCs (all of which were some of the better ones in the set), including one $40 hit.  Throw in 32 Refractors, five Black Refractors, five sets of the A-Rod insert (and a few more to boot), and most of the set, and I'm very happy
Set design and player selection:  8/10  There's a large number of players that seem out of place in a higher quality set like this, even for 2005, but when you get into a set of this size I guess that's bound to happen.  I'm not the kind of collector that obsesses about Chrome, but these cards look nice, the Refractor inserts look great as always, and the autographs are excellent (on-card autos!) 
Inserts and extras:  10/10  I got sick of the A-Rod insert pretty quickly since there were only four and I was pulling them at better than a 1:5 pack clip.  But the Refractors and Black Refractors are great, and the RC autographs are outstanding 

Overall score:  44/50

4 comments:

  1. I love the Chrome sets myself too. Looks like a great deal you got too. I would be interersted in trading for any Mets, Yankees, A-Rods, as well as any players off my blog sidebar "what I collect" page you want to get rid of.

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  2. I love that Bagwell card, classic Baggy stance at the plate... if you're looking to trade any of the Astros in there, let me know, definitely intersted!

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  3. I'm working on the regular and refractor set if you are willing to part with some of your doubles.

    Here's my want/have list: http://sruchris.com

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  4. My LCS is still charging $4 a pack for those.

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