The Packening: the recap-ening

Thanks once again to the folks who made the time to attend my Packening live stream on Youtube last week!  I had a blast busting somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 retail packs and giving away a ton more.

On that note, I'll start with the giveaway's winners.  That's right, winners plural--just about everyone that showed up got some sort of prize!  Here's who they were and what they got:

Grand prize of 50 packs (equivalent of one order):  Chris of Nachos Grande
10 Dollar Store Topps packs from the Mid 2010s:  Paul of Scribbled Ink
10 junk wax packs:  Chris of The Collector and John of John's Big League Baseball Blog
5 2006 Topps hanger packs:  Fuji of the Chronicles of Fuji

Congrats to each of you and thanks for your support, as well as that of the other guys who hung out for a bit.  It was a great time and I hope to do something streamable in the future since everyone seemed to enjoy it.

And now what many of you are probably here for:  the results.  I'm currently cropping the live video since there's a lot of dead air for the first roughly 12 minutes.  Once that's done I'll likely embed the video here for your viewing pleasure, though if you're like me and prefer to just see the goods, look right below.  For what it's worth I didn't have time to show every single card, and I also skipped showing a good number of the packs because things ended up taking much longer than I had initially planned.

Anyway...

The two biggest hits were a 2007 Ultra Hitting Machines Materials jersey of Jim Thome and a 2014 Topps Update RC of Red Sox star Mookie Betts, easily the most valuable card in the bunch.  I've set aside the jersey for Paul as he's a Thome collector, and I'm keeping the Betts for now as it'll fit in nicely with my RC collection.  I'm just not the type to risk the usual eBay BS to try to cash in on it, and I especially don't get into grading, so I'll happily enjoy a top notch RC!

Next up is three scans' worth of Tigers.  Miggy was the PC guy I pulled the most, though in terms of trade bait he got a run for his money or was beaten by Ichiro and/or Kenji Johjima, a couple guys heading Fuji's way.  The Lineage Stand-Ups and Opening Day Stadium Lights inserts were definitely highlights.

Plenty more familiar faces here.  I filled in some gaps old and newer with some '91 Ultra guys and a trio of Ian Kinsler, including a shiny Heritage parallel.

Early 90s issues of blog favorites Tony Phillips and Mickey Tettleton were sights for my sore eyes (seriously, that was a lot of pack busting!), and I liked adding something new of former Tigers star Max Scherzer.

When it came to PC pulls nobody topped Junior Griffey, even if I only needed the last card in the bunch you see above--his 2015 Topps Archives base.  If only I knew one or more people that also collect Griffey....

Former blog namesake Curtis Granderson came up twice alongside Mr. Padre Tony Gwynn, former Wolverine Barry Larkin, Junior Ripken, and a (RC) of current blog namesake JV.  The Lineage Granderson and Ultra Gwynn were the only newbies here, but again, more trade bait is a good thing.

These last couple scans cover the remaining keepers for me.  Arrieta's card is a RC and might be decent trade bait if he can get its value back up a bit.  Johnson and Robinson are HOFers I was happy to keep.  And the Topps trio of Chipper, including the weird/fun Hot Button game card, will happily slot in with the others I've kept of him.

Last up is this bunch of star players from the Dollar Store Topps packs that, again, represent some good trade bait opportunities, especially when I dig into TCDB more.

Pretty much everything else is going into trade packages or my trade box sorted by team, with the exception of a decent stack of '89 Donruss and a larger one of 2006 Topps.  I figured I'd see if anyone who reads this needs some set-fillers, and eventually those can go on TCDB as well.

I realize this relatively short summary may make you think my return on $100 in retail packs was fairly light, but I think I got my money's worth of fun and trade bait with some bonus cards for myself.  And on that note I'd absolutely recommend picking up a few of these packages from Wal-Mart, with a suggestion of two to four to give you a nice variety and better chance of landing something good.  Fuji already mentioned he had a couple on the way and I hope others do and decide to show them off somehow because they're interesting to check out.

With that out of the way I'll be back to trade posts again next!

April 19 card show report part 2 of 2: quarter/$0.50 boxes and more!

It's Thursday and I'm finally getting around to showing off the rest of my haul from last Saturday's show.  My post on Sunday covered the 2013 UD Football box I grabbed while my TMM post on Monday included the Wolverines I landed.  Today's includes cards I kind of alluded to in that TMM post, when I mentioned my two non-box purchases:

• Three hits in a three for $5 deal, plus a pair of Wolverines for $10, totaling $15
• 25 quarter cards from a box where they were 25 for $5, and 24 $0.50 cards where the deal was 12 for $5, so another $15 there

Besides what you see below, a bunch of what I picked up was trade bait, mostly of the variety that'll allow me to send out a bunch of PWEs very soon!  Nothing huge, but fun stuff for everyone involved, I think.  Considering I flipped through probably eight monster boxes worth of singles, I think I did pretty well.

Here's what I landed for myself:

These all came out of the $0.25 and $0.50 boxes.  I hit two of my major non-Tiger PCs in Gwynn and Maddux, and I'm always happy to add fun inserts of guys like that.  If you guys like the middle UD Gwynn insert, I'll give a little teaser that someone's gonna get that insert of a player they really like!  I already have the '96 Ultra On-Base Leaders Gwynn (a set that taught me about the statistic, by the way), but this one is the Gold Medallion version, as you can see in the bottom-right corner.  The rest of this scan goes Braves heavy as I picked up both the 10th Anniversary Preview and 10th Anniversary Team inserts of Maddux from 1999 UD.  The Chipper was a cool looking insert celebrating Atlanta's '95 title, and I have good memories of him playing in the '90s and 2000s.  Next, I found a pair of Hudson Refractors, which seemed like a good idea since I'm starting to collect him a bit more.  And finally, I dug up a Lou Whitaker 2nd-year card from 1979 Topps, which was as "sweet" as Lou was.

Next up is the majority of cards I found in the $0.50 box.  A few--maybe three or four--were together early on and my interest was piqued.  Then I found more and assembled all I could find.  As it turns out, these are the Hall of Fame Plaque inserts from 2002 Fleer Fall Classics.  It's a 30-card set done up in the style of a Hall of Fame plaque (including die-cutting) that features an embossed image of the player on the front and a brief write-up that spans both sides, followed by serial-numbering to the year of the player's enshrinement, like-a so:

It looked like a fun set to work on, and since I was able to pick up 19 of the 30 cards for under $10, I decided to go for it!  The group of 11 I'm missing includes some of the bigger names, but I doubt I'll have too much difficulty completing the set at a reasonable price.  You can find my wants on my recently-reinstated baseball set wantlist.  I'll show off the whole set when I have it.

Troy Tulowitzki 2007 Ultra Rookie Autographs auto (#284/499)

Finally, I landed this Tulo autograph (my second, actually) from the other guy that also had a couple Wolverines for me.  When I saw this card in the 50-count plastic case with other hits, I figured he'd tell me it didn't belong there, but to my surprise he didn't bat an eyelash.  How much do you think I paid?  $10?  At least $5, right?  No way, dude--this was one of the three hits I landed for just $5 total!  Did this guy know something about Tulowitzki I don't?  Whatever the case, it was a great score for me, along with a couple hits I'll be sending in a future trade.  I'm adding this to my baseball autograph PC, but I'm also open to trading it if anyone would like to make me a tempting offer.  There was no way I could go wrong getting this card for less than $2, either to keep or trade, and I'd have to call it my find of the show.

So that's how I did this time.  As usual, I'm not sure when I'll be heading back, but I'll probably hit up at least one more before the year's up.  Stay tuned for some more new stuff soon!

A Larry happy belated birthday to Chipper

Larry Wayne "Chipper" Jones turned 40 yesterday (April 24) and celebrated in style with his third HR of the season en route to another Atlanta victory.  I may be a day late posting this, but considering that the 2012 season is the career Brave's victory lap, there's not a day that goes by that a Chipper post wouldn't be appropriate.  I'll leave the bulk of those to the excellent Braves-centric bloggers out there, but today I wanted to highlight the career of one of the greatest players of my generation by showing off some of my favorite cards of him in my collection.  And this list goes to 11!

1998 Donruss Preferred Title Waves (#0143/1995):

Remember when inserts were generally harder to come by and weren't throwaway parallels or endless permutations of reprints?  Donruss got into the #d insert game in the 90s and really did some nice things with them.  This card is an excellent example of that:  the die-cut waves, the set name's play on words, the serial numbering to the year of the significant accomplishment.  Besides looking great, this card is apropos of Chipper's career since it highlights his one Series victory in three tries.  Just a beautiful card, and if you haven't seen one of these in person, I hope you get a chance sometime. 

 1999 Topps Gallery Gallery of Heroes:

There's been a handful of stained-glass-style cards in the history of the hobby, and in general I'd say they've come off very well.  This translucent, die-cut beauty is enhanced by the appealing "glass" background pieces comprising the Braves' team colors.  "Hero" is a very appropriate title for Chipper, too--he's certainly earned it in his career-long stint with Atlanta, putting up some huge numbers and coming through in the clutch more often than not.

2000 Stadium Club Chrome Refractor:

Stadium Club full-bleed photo goodness + Refractor technology + Chipper Jones = 100% awesome.  I remember buying a few boxes of these closer to when they came out and pulling Refractors and other quality inserts of some excellent players:  Griffey and Jeter come to mind, and there may have been more.  I don't know, there's just a huge appeal for me when a Refractor is a full-bleed photo instead of a Finest or Bowman Chrome card with a distracting border.  God, I miss Stadium Club.  BRING IT BACK, TOPPS!
Bonus from the card back:  "In 1999 [Chipper's MVP season], Chipper became the first player in Major League history to hit .300 with at least 40 home runs, 20 steals, 100 runs, 100 RBI, 100 walks and 40 doubles."  There's one of your top five greatest switch-hitters ever, people.

1997 Bowman's Best Mirror Image:

I'm not sure how many of you are either old enough to remember or if you were even collecting at that time, but Bowman's Best's debut release in 1994 was broken up into veterans, rookies and "mirror image" cards combining one of each.  Those eventually evolved ("Topps" and "Intelligent Design" belong in the same sentence exactly as much as "Intelligent Design" and "public school" do) into this double-sided four-player version.  Whoever picked the four players on this one did all right for themselves, Russell Branyan and his all-or-nothing swing notwithstanding.  In the early-to-mid 90s, Matt Williams was a great player to be compared to if you were an up-and-coming star, and Adrian Beltre's had a very nice career for himself.  I don't say this often, but between the design and player choice, nice job, Topps!

1997 Upper Deck Ticket to Stardom:

Remember when I was asking earlier if anybody remembered the 90s when inserts were generally something more special than they are today?  Well if you want a warm fuzzy story that reminds you of the true spirit of collecting, I'll tell you that my brother pulled this card from a pack in our Easter baskets (yeah, we still got them at that point, and my mom got us cards because she's the best) and we both thought it was the coolest thing ever.  It ended up being a pretty nice day for us if I recall correctly, because I'm pretty sure that's also when we pulled a redemption for a Frank Thomas Firebrand insert, which was also beautiful but took forever to arrive.  Colby assembled the set so I'm swiping his image, which is totally fair since I'm writing a post 100% about the Braves.
Ok, now I can actually discuss this card.  First off, the scan simply doesn't do it justice, but it's just too foil-y and reflective to be as photogenic as it should be.  In-person, it's a pleasant gold-ish kind of color, Wonka ticket-style.  Upper deck did a nice job with the theme of the design, making it look quite a bit like a ticket.  According to the back, "Still only 24 and excelling in each phase of the game, barring injury, Chipper seems destined to be one of the game's best."  Very prophetic--injuries sapped quite a bit of the second half of his career, but he'll definitely be remembered as one of the greats as a first-ballot Hall-of-Famer. 

1997 Studio Hart Hats (#3737/5000):

Who doesn't love acetate cards?  Robots and communists, that's who.  This outstanding design is another great example of Donruss' excellent creativity and execution at the time.  Besides the card back stating that "Chipper is a classic dirty-uniform player who brings to the ballpark a work ethic that matches his skill.  He took extra bases on 66.7 percent of his opportunities in '96, fourth-best in the NL," I love that the front of the card shows him about to bunt, a classic blue-collar, hard hat sort of play that captures the attitude of a player unselfish enough to do so despite being a feared hitter with power.  Well done, Donruss.

1991 Bowman RC 

 1991 Topps RC

1991 Upper Deck RC:

Here's a trio of rookie cards of your 1990 MLB draft #1 overall pick (Todd van WHOpple?).  It's definitely fun to see him looking so young when you consider it's now the day after (or later, depending on when you read this) his 40th birthday.  The UD is my favorite because of the cool action shot, although the Topps has the better of the two posed photos.  These may be from the junk wax era and there may be enough in the world for everyone to have 10, but they're still a treasured part of my collection.

 2001 SPx Winning Materials jersey/bat:

I've certainly had this guy for a while; I don't think I picked it up in 2001 but it couldn't have been much later than that.  Hailing from a time when relics were still a bit of a novelty, this is one I've come to appreciate for the simplicity but effectiveness of its design.  UD didn't always have winners on their hands with the Winning Materials sets, but they did very well for themselves in '01, and they even capped this card off with a sweet shot of Chipper's sweet swing.

2002 Fleer Box Score All-Star Lineup quad jersey:

Here we've got a great quartet of great players on another concept/design I like very much.  It's possible all four guys here will end up in the Hall (not 100% sure on Helton but I'd vote for him) as Alomar's in, Chipper's a no-brainer and A-Rod probably gets in as long as something crazy doesn't happen.  What I like about all that is that Chipper's still the best player on the card as far as I'm concerned--at this point I'd take him over any of the other guys any day, and wouldn't you know it, he's clearly got the best relic piece on the card, a gorgeous Braves red (scarlet?  I dunno, I just do primary colors...) swatch with stitching at the bottom.  A sweet card in which Chipper is in good company.

Although I'm not a Braves fan, I truly wish Chipper well on his farewell lap of both leagues, but no matter what happens, he goes out a winner in my book, and it won't be long before we're talking about him as the next great Hall-of-Famer of our time!  Hats off to you on a legendary career, Larry.