A huge Saturday post

Lots to catch up on because I've been pretty sick the last few days.

Trade with Beardy:

These came the other day but I hadn't had a chance to post about them yet.  I came up with a bunch of Orioles stuff for Beardy and he responded in kind with some great stuff for me:

A pair of 2008 UD Masterpieces Wolverines.  I didn't even have the regular Long because it was an SP that didn't make an appearance in any of my blasters.  A nice looking card from an excellent set, and better yet it's #'d of 75.
The jersey, if you can believe it, is actually my first Brady hit of any kind, so that's awesome.

A nice assortment of Ripkens, most of which I didn't have.  The Masterpieces cards, of course, are my favorites, and just look outstanding.

A couple of Tigers including a Granderson(!) and Beardy's infamous Boesch fingerprint auto:

Yoinked from Beardy's post

That doesn't really bother me so I may keep this one and sell my Blue Refractor auto that Georgia Mindset pulled for me in his group break. 

Also included:  a few more Wolverines, Tigers and Lions.  A great trade package from an excellent fellow blogger.  I look forward to seeing his upcoming trade post whenever he gets around to it!

In the mail, part 1:

As promised, here's one of the two big hits I was still waiting on from eBay:

This bad boy is a 2008 UD Premier Signature Foursomes of Henne/Arrington/Hart/Crable (yeah, I'm not sure how they ended up with Crable instead of, say, Manningham, but it's still sweet).  Only 15 were made, which makes it even sweeter, but they could have made 1500 of them and I'd still be thrilled.  A nice addition to the PC.

In the mail, part 2:

Quick backstory: a couple weeks ago I bought five value packs of 2010 Topps Chrome from my local Meijer. As I opened the first one, I realized I was short one retail pack (yay Topps QC). I contacted Topps with scans of the packs, receipt, etc., though I didn't expect much. To my surprise, though, they got back to me fairly quickly about sending me a replacement.
Fast forward to this morning, when I checked my mail and found a package from Topps already. Not only did they take care of this quickly, they sent me not one, but THREE packs, and they were all hobby packs. The results:

Pack 1:
Earl Thomas RC
Russell Okung RC
Eric Decker RC
Gridiron Lineage Eric Dickerson/Steven Jackson

At this point I thought Topps gave me a fairly loaded pack to try to make up for their abysmal QA in their baseball and football products this year.

Pack 2:
Ryan Mathews RC
Matt Cassel
Terrell Owens
Jimmy Graham RC Refractor

Still pretty nice. I'd guess that if this was a retail pack this is what I would have been missing from the value pack (I was shorted a Refractor in that one essentially). But it gets better:

Pack 3:
Darren Sharper
Reggie Bush
Jacoby Ford RC
and

Well that's more like it, Topps! I would have been happy with any one of these packs, but what a haul! The Claussen has a bit of a chipped bottom right corner (you can kind of see it in the scan). I'm planning to put it up on eBay in case anyone's interested.  Anyway, if I've learned anything here it's to make sure to contact Topps when any more of their QA issues rear their ugly heads.  

More to come:

I've gone crazy buying some great lots of stuff on BlowoutCards' forums recently, so you'll start seeing those soon.  Honestly I'm enjoying doing those more than blowing my money on crappy boxes--I'm definitely having an easier time getting my money's worth, so keep an eye out for more of those posts than box stuff, at least for the near future.