2020 Facebook purchase: boxing day (with recap from last night's break!)

So I ended up doing things a bit out of order by breaking the '88 Pacific Legends box last night before posting this, but then again it's my blog and

Here's a quick breakdown on how this purchase came about, plus a bit of a look at everything I ended up with.

Last Monday I was perusing Facebook Marketplace again and noticed a guy not too far from me had posted a bunch of listings for a few things that caught my eye, starting with boxes of Topps commons from the 70s (and 1980) at very good prices. I was hoping to grab those for Jeff since he's working on a number of those sets, and he was definitely interested in these.

Besides those I was after a nice pile of 80s and 90s boxed sets, plus a couple of boxes of the aforementioned Pacific Legends cards, one of which I offered to Fuji.

Happily everything worked out and after about a 45 minute trip both ways and $80 cash I was back home with quite the bounty. I've already sent Jeff and Fuji their cards, which they can share at their convenience if they feel like it, and now I can cover everything else here.

  

First up: the results of my Pacific Legends box. I had a blast ripping packs, sorting cards, and talking to Fuji, Andy, Chris, and Chris last night, not that the video is a great indicator since I was spending a lot of time off-screen sorting. I don't really do boxes anymore so this was a fun treat for me, even if it came from the junk wax era. The $10 price was perfectly acceptable to me as I chased a complete set, and maybe a second?

While set #2 wasn't quite meant to be--I pulled only one of card #20, Jim Bouton--this was a fun rip of 36 packs of 10 cards each while attacking the 110-card run. Considering how bad collation could be back then, though, one set plus practically a second was a steal at that price! The player selection is awesome--Bill Freehan and Mark Fidrych join the likes of Kell and Kaline, not to mention Teddy Ballgame, Hank Aaron, and more--and the hits kept coming.

I did a quick breakdown and ended up with 367 cards, even when removing the six Tigers I already had in-hand, broken down into:

• Set 1: 110/110, 100%
• Set 2: 109/110, 99%
• Set 3: 60/110, 54%
• 53 quadruples
• 31 quintuples
• 4 sextuples

I'm working on tracking down one more Bouton so I can finish my second set, plus I have some dupes to help others, possibly even Fuji when he breaks his box!

With that covered, the rest of this post will show off everything else I grabbed, which was in the form of 80s and 90s boxed sets that set me back $1, $2, or $5:

Most of them can be seen here, and I'll go into a bit more detail below. The majority of these were a buck with some of the ones on the bottom making up the $2/$5 group.

And my favorite find of this haul was a 1992 Stadium Club Dome package for just $5. It's not that these are rare, but I don't think I'd ever seen one in-person, so having all the pieces is extra cool!

I opened anything that was sealed and got all the cards put in order, because that's always fun, then tried to get a quick look at fronts, backs, and any extras from each box. In this scan you can see (top to bottom, left then right):

• 1986 Donruss Highlights (56 cards): pretty obvious by the name. Includes a mini Hank Aaron puzzle.
• 1986 Fleer Limited Edition (44): a bunch of stars (like Gibby and Sweet Lou, whose card I didn't flip over to show off the back, d'oh!) plus free stickers.
• 1986 Kay-Bee (33): a collaboration with Topps that shows off young Superstars, like Tony Gwynn at the time!
• 1987 Fleer Award Winners (44): another obvious one. Also comes with stickers, which is a common theme among these.
• 1987 Fleer Baseball All-Stars (44): yep, 44 cards and stickers, plus wot it says on the tin.
• 1987 Fleer Limited Edition (44): you can see where I'm going with this. Look up a couple rows in the photo to compare the two designs.
• 1987 Fleer Record Setters (44): why not 45? I dunno! Cool stickers again.
• 1987 Kay-Bee (33): same set size as the year before, but the word "young" is left out and this is all "superstars" chosen quite well--few if any duds.
• 1988 Fleer Baseball MVPs (44): Fleer didn't have any problem coming up with excuses to print boxed sets, and that's fine by me!
• 1989 Donruss Traded (56): I've always been a sucker for trade & rookies-type sets. The real ones, that is, not the monster that Topps Update has become. Nolan Ryan on the Rangers seemed like a good sample card, and this one also came with a mini Musial puzzle.
• 1988 Score Young Superstars I (40): yeah, this should have been above the Donruss cards chronologically. Oh well. This is Series I of the super glossy young star cards Score produced in their debut season, and they also came with the mini lenticular trivia cards the brand would be known for for a few years.
• 1987 Fleer Mini (120): ok, these are here on purpose, at least, since I thought I'd put them last due to their oddball size. That's a little Eric Davis base you see, plus a rad version of the Tigers' best logo in sticker form.

I believe all of these were $2 apiece except for the UD hologram set on the bottom, though one or more might have been a buck more:

• 1989 Score Rookie/Traded (110): that's a good size for one of these sets. I think this one was $3 which seemed reasonable enough when you consider the Griffey seen here is a RC, one I didn't have! Also, more mini holograms.
• 1990 Topps Debut '89 (154): this one kept the standard '90 flagship design but added a banner up top mentioning the player's debut from the previous season. I couldn't help but show off card #84 of Yankees pitcher Kevin Mmahat--what a last name!
• 1990 Score Rising Stars (100): welp, I did it again, probably because I keep thinking Debut '89 is from '89, though it isn't. Anyway, here's another super glossy set filled with up-and-comers (and holograms). A huge stack of these was part of an earlier Facebook purchase of mine but pretty much all of them were damaged, so this was a nice replacement.
• 1990 Score Rookie/Traded (110): very similar to that year's colorful (as usual for the time) base set, except with orange borders. No huge stars to chase here, but some fun stuff, like cards of hockey dude Eric Lindros and football player D.J. Dozier, as highlighted in this Baseball Card Backs tweet yesterday.
• 1992 Upper Deck Team MVP Holograms (54): I already had a few of my PC guys' cards from these, but I just couldn't ignore the awesome packaging and presentation here. The shrink-wrapped packaging has a cardboard sleeve touting how limited this thing is, and that protects a sweet branded hinged plastic case. The super premium holograms were banded together with a COA starring Junior Griffey, too! Each team at the time got repped by their best pitcher and hitter, plus there's a couple checklists, giving you 54 cards.

Last up is the super cool 1992 Stadium Club Dome set, so called because it came packaged in a little replica of Toronto's SkyDome, host of the '91 All-Star Game. If you thought the presentation above was great, try this: the 200-card set goes into a fairly typical box, inside a molded plastic stadium that opens (and looks like R2-D2 at the bottom), and into another cardboard box!

This one includes 100 draft picks, 25 Team USA cards, 56 cards highlighting the '91 All-Star Game, and 19 more covering the playoffs and World Series. I grabbed fronts and backs from all four subsets, with my favorites being the mulleted draft pick and a back starring one of my favorite names in the game, Basil Shabazz. I'm definitely geeked to have such a nice looking Stadium Club set in my collection, and the original packaging is a very nice bonus.

Now that I have these covered I'll be back soon with another eBay buy and at least one more trade package, so watch for those as I figure out how to make room to store all of this!

1988 Pacific Legends box break LIVE link

Watch the break here or head on over to YouTube!

Rainy Sunday post: who's up for a live box break?

It's been a rainy kind of Sunday here in southeastern Michigan and that makes it seem like the perfect afternoon for spending time with some cards I recently purchased. I'll have a good summary up later, but long story short, one of the items I picked up in another fun Facebook Marketplace buy was a box of 1988 Pacific Legends.

  

That's 36 packs of 10 (fairly thin) cards for a reasonable $10. The set is just 110 cards so I'm hoping '80s junk wax collation doesn't prevail and that maybe I can get a couple complete sets out of this!

Is anyone up for watching me bust this low-end but classic box live? I'm posting this here and on Twitter so if I can get a few of you interested for this afternoon/evening, I'll throw up another post with a Youtube link. Just drop a comment here or on Twitter if you're in!

8-10-14 card show report: SPxcellence

It's been a bit less than a month since I last hit a card show, but with the usual sources not turning up much recently, I decided to head back to Gibraltar Trade Center in Taylor at least one more time before it closes up shop later this year.

As usual my focus was PC cards for me and trade bait for you guys.  I found some of each, and the former can be seen on a TMM post this evening, and the latter will hit a few of your mailboxes soon!

I eventually got sick of flipping through quarter/$0.50/$1 boxes and hit a wax dealer on the way out.  I'm not a big box breaker anymore, but I did see one that caught my eye:

I loves me some Upper Deck football cards, which nowadays combine beautiful photography and design with college photos.  I threw down $65 for 10 packs of five cards, including four guaranteed hits.  After I got back I looked up Blowout's box price, and while it's $10 less, that doesn't account for shipping (and waiting), so I don't feel like I overspent.

Here's how I did:

Base cards:  40/50 (80%), no doubles

Since this was a relatively small number of cards, I just scanned 'em all to show them off:

Pretty good player selection other than Andy Katzenmoyer.  Lots of big names and nice photos.  I'll likely just grab them from Sportlots, but if anybody has the 10 I need please let me know:
3 10 13 15 23 36 37 39 40 50

As always, here's a back for completeness in the form of set's lone Wolverine, Anthony Carter:

Inserts: 

1996 Inserts:  Collin Klein and Steve Young; 1997 Inserts Landry Jones

I love the callback to SPx's designs from 18 and 17 years ago (wait, seriously?!), especially the '97 card, although my experience with both original sets is limited to baseball.

Finite Legends Eddie George (#209/899); Finite Rookies Tyler Eifert (#464/899) and E.J. Manuel (#783/899) (3:10 odds)

Pretty good players again here, even if one of them is a Buckeye.  These are heavy on the gold foil, but I like how they look.

Hits: 

Le'Veon Bell Autograph Jersey (#108/475)
Keenan Allen Winning Big Materials Patch (#06/10)
Ryan Nassib Super Scripts auto
Marquess Wilson Rookie 2013 Signatures auto (#228/299)

Well, I got my four promised hits, three of which were guaranteed to be autographed.  Although Bell's a Spartan, he was still a good pull and I'm hoping he'll get me a chunk of change back.  The Allen falls closer to Topps' definition of a "patch" but is limited enough that maybe I can get something for it as well.  I like the design of the Nassib auto but it'll likely take a bit to find someone that wants it.  As for the Wilson, after I posted the results of my break on Blowout I was quickly able to trade it for a Denard Robinson relic, so that's a plus.

Overall it was an enjoyable rip, even if it was a quick one at just 10 packs.  I pulled zero doubles, the set will be cheap to complete, and I got some sellable/tradeable inserts and hits.  If you find this at a show or elsewhere for around $50 total I'd call it a no-brainer.

Everything you see from the inserts on down is available for trade minus the Marquess Wilson, so if you see something you like please let me know!

April 19 card show report part 1 of 2: 2013 UD Football hobby box break

Because I hadn't gone to a card show since last November, I hit up the "local" one in Taylor on Saturday afternoon.  I ended up staying longer than usual, mainly because for the first hour I couldn't find ANYTHING I wanted.  Later I made a few productive purchases, and I'll show those off soon, but my last pickup was a box of 2013 Upper Deck Football.

I realize the 2014 version just came out, so I'm a year behind the times, but the price for this one was right for me:  $55 for 20 packs of six, with three guaranteed autos.  I could have spent a bit more on jumbos of 2013 Score (more hits per box, but I already have the set) or 2013 Topps (which is Topps), and I realize I could have landed this cheaper at D&A's, but with shipping factored in, I did fine.  Here's what I pulled:

Base set:

The set is split into a few groups.  #s 1-50 are veterans, all in their college unis(!).  With 3-4 of these per pack, I landed all 50, plus 11 doubles (more on those later).

Here's examples of a front and back from the veterans.  I went with AC, my lone Wolverine in the box, for the front, and Bo, since his college stats are fun to look at.  These look fantastic, especially some of the older photos, and I feel UD knocked it out of the park yet again in what's easily become my favorite college-themed set.

#51-150 are Star Rookies that are inserted normally at about two per pack.  I pulled exactly 40 in my 20 packs, so those odds held true.

Swope's awesome photo earns him the nod for the Star Rookie card front example, and I picked Stanford's Thomas for the back since he wasn't from a team I hate.  Honestly, wouldn't you prefer these over the Rookie Premier photos from Topps?

Lastly, #s 151-300 are short-printed Star Rookies, with #s 215-275 found only in hobby packs and 276-300 in retail.  I don't know the exact odds on these, but I pulled two, so maybe 1:10?

My SPs came from the "States that start with 'K'" hotbox, apparently.  As with the non-SPed cards, there's a mix of great and obscure.  I'm not a fan of SPs and don't count them toward the regular set, so there.

Inserts:

First up were the College Football Heroes cards, inserted at 1:5, and UD delivered on those odds with these:

I pulled two each of Joe Namath and Barry Sanders.  These are in the vein of other cards in UD's Heroes series, and therefore good, plus the player choice was nice.

Next up are the '95 SP inserts, which, not surprisingly, are cards done in the style of 1995 SP.  In the past UD has sometimes used multiple older designs, but here they go with one, and what's cool is that both veterans and rookies are included, both with their own design, and both of which look fantastic.  Along with those is a pair of Ultimate Collection rookies, and in terms of player hype, I did pretty well:

I don't know how many cards of Delaware players I've pulled where I've seen the uni, got excited, and then suffered a huge letdown because they ripped off Michigan's design.  As for the Ultimates, Manti "The overrated catfish" Te'o was a pretty good pull.  Those are numbered to 575 for some reason.

Hits:

I said I was guaranteed three autos (including the awesome Letterman versions) and that's exactly what I got, with ZERO redemptions.  The base autos may be on stickers, but I really like how they look since they're just auto'ed versions of the base cards, which look great on their own.

Cal WR Allen was the better pull of the two, and not just on the strength of his name--he's from the Rare Star Rookies, Group C, making him a 1:191 pull.  UNC's Williams was from the SP group, Group C, and was 1:83, meaning he was also a tougher-than-average pull.  Not the players I was hoping for, but not bad!

And then the Rookie Letterman:

This is Patriots WR Aaron Dobson of the Marshall Thundering Herd, #04/25.  There are at or near the top of my favorite manufactured relics, and it's easy to see why.  By the way, every other pack had a dummy card in it (great for shipping) except this one, so I saved it for last when I noticed it wasn't a blank.  I was also hoping for a College Mascot manupatch, but I still did just fine.

Overall:

This was a fantastic value at $55, plus you can find it cheaper if you try.  Things have gotten even better for the 2014 version as you now get four guaranteed hits, though obviously the price is higher, at least for now (and I don't love the Letterman design quite as much).  The base set looks great and features UD's signature photography, and the inserts kept it interesting.  I give this one a thumbs up.

My wantlist:

After combining the contents of this box from the results of a few rack pack breaks (which are the opposite of hobby and are all Star Rookies), I need the following:

54 55 57 60 64 66 69 76 77 85 91 92 95 104 105 109 116 117 121 126 135 138 139 141 144 146 150

What's for trade:

Everything you see above from the inserts on down, though I'll be honest, I'm hoping to sell the hits.  But if you're interested in anything, make me an offer!  Also, I have the following dupes for trade:

5 11 12 20 22 25 32 33 38 44 46 52 56 59 61 71 74 78 79 80 81 84 87 93 98 99 103 106 108 110 113 115 131 133 137 145

If you're building this set, let's trade!

2007 TK Legacy Michigan box #2

As I've mentioned in a few consecutive posts now, the second box that I purchased at last weekend's show was a second box of 2007 TK Legacy Michigan.  My first box proved to be very interesting, as I picked up several players for whom I never would have had a hit.  I enjoyed it enough to set aside money ($45 for 10 packs, one autograph per pack) specifically for a second box this time.  Michigan's win on Saturday was just another kick in the pants that convinced me to pull the trigger.


Here's how I did:

Interesting inserts:

The Legend of Anthony Carter:  Exciting Play--Indescribable Player:  I don't know, "exciting" sums up AC pretty well if nothing else.  I do find it interesting that they went with a quote from (at that time) head coach Lloyd Carr instead of AC's own coach, Bo, before he passed away, but this is a fairly low-quality set in many ways, so I guess I'm not surprised.  I love the photo, though.

Program Cover:  1912, Cornell:  This is probably a great set across the various college sets.  In my case, I lucked out this time and nabbed this guy, from a very old cover, no less.  Continuing the low-quality them, though, we've got "Fileding Yost" as the coach, plus an "it's" instead of an "its."  Cue Bob the Angry Flower:

This concludes today's grammar lesson; back to your regularly scheduled Michigan content.

Game Day Diary--the Rivalry:  1943:  This series focuses on the Game, which gives it plenty of fodder for one set.  Last time (and this time, unfortunately) I pulled a card of an OSU victory, but this time I also nabbed a card describing the 1943 game, a Michigan blowout (in front of what now would be a paltry Big House crowd).  I love the note that this team included one of the great college names, Elroy "Crazy Legs" Hirsch.


Autographs:  new stuff:

Rondell Biggs:  Now THAT's a football name.  Rondell was a DE here for a good chunk of my college career--2003-2006.  Needless to say, this is my first autograph of him since he didn't make it to an NFL team.

Scott Dreisbach M-Stat:  This is my second Dreisbach, the other also being a numbered insert that I pulled in the last box.  I know a couple of you are Virgina fans, so you may not want to read the back (or the front).  A cool card commemorating a great game.

Remy Hamilton:  Remy was a kicker from 1993-1996 before plying his trade in the NFL with, among other teams, the Lions for a brief stint in 2005.  This is my first (and likely last, considering the odds) of him in my PC.

Gary Moeller:  As we were opening this box, Dustin was asking me who some of the better pulls might be.  I mentioned that I already had Steve Breaston so I looked at the checklist and figured former head coach Gary Moeller (1990-1994) would be the next best for me since I didn't have him and prices for the guy seemed pretty good.  So of course, in the final pack, Dustin pulled this card.  Moeller's tenure was brief after he inherited the job from Bo, but that was due to a stupid drunken incident at a restaurant, a mistake that ultimately cost him his job.  He was pretty successful while he was here, though, compiling a 50-37-6 record and 4-1 bowl record (yeah--we used to win bowl games a LOT).  Lloyd Carr took over the program and a couple years later won our last title.  Moeller rebounded from getting the ax, becoming an NFL assistant coach with the Bengals, then Lions before being named Detroit's interim coach in 2000.  He then went to Jacksonville and Chicago before retiring in 2003.  So this card has all that history behind it, plus a great signature!

Carl Tabb II:  Carl was a WR from 2003-2006 and I think I recall liking him mostly because he was a local kid (Ann Arbor Huron HS).  He playing pretty sparingly, but it's still pretty cool getting my first (and again, probably only) auto of the guy.

Autographs:  the doubles:

Since I said the box came with 10 autographs and you see five "new" ones above, do the math.  Here are my five doubles, which are now part of my Michigan for sale/for trade album (which I'm only trading for other Wolverines):

Yep, my doubles included a second Carl Tabb in the same box (oy), then dupes of Jeremy Vanalstyne, Tyler Ecker, Marcus Knight and an M-Stat of Hayden Epstein (this time #d 81/100).  I'm not shocked that I got so many doubles given the tiny autograph checklist, I'm just annoyed that I got two of Tabb in the same box.  All the same, I'm happy I got five new ones, and even better I now have some Wolverine hits to use as trade bait (but, again, only for other Wolverine hits!).

All in all I think I again got my $45 worth.  I'll be working on getting boxes of the other series if I can ever find them, and if I do, you can bet I'll be showing them off!  

Between this box and the rest of my show haul I now sit at 342 football hits, and 350 is just around the corner, though I'll be curbing my blowout spending for a while so I don't spend all my money on something as nonessential as cards.  Fortunately, that should get me more motivated to work on trades, get organized and get my trade bait posted, so as always, there's a benefit for you, the reader.

2011 Topps jumbo football case: inserts and sorta wrapup

This will be the last look at what I pulled from my 2011 Topps football jumbo case; however I plan to post an update/summary of my progress in selling things off pretty soon.

Today I'm showing off the plethora of inserts the case yielded, then giving my final opinion on quality control and the product as a whole.

Inserts (390):  

Faces of the Franchise:  60 (1:1, 60 expected)

A very meh insert that borrows from its equally uninspiring baseball cousin Legendary Lineage.  The player combos aren't terribly exciting, and instead of making one for each team, or at least focusing on teams with quality combinations...well...they produced this crap.  I pulled two full sets, 19/20 of a third and one quadruple (the crap you see above).

Game Day:  60 (1:1, 60 expected)

Now here's an insert I like.  I think what works for me is that the player is the obvious focus while the background is very secondary, though it often ends up looking very cool itself as it's depicted in the team's colors.  I also like how it highlights a key game in a player's pro or college career (kind of like Peak Performance highlighting a single game or season achievement in baseball).  I got 39/50 in the set plus 20 doubles and one triple.

Gold:  30 (1:2, 30 expected)

You've purchased a Topps flagship box before, yes?  These have remained fairly constant and the only thing I really don't like is that they abandoned stamping for printed-on numbers, which just isn't the same.  It wouldn't be a Topps set without these.  I was happy to pull a Steve Breaston, but the next best player I got was probably Reggie Bush or Eli Manning, unfortunately.  Why these were 1:2 I couldn't say.  Fortunately, every card was different, so I didn't have to deal with the annoyance of beating the odds and pulling a double.

Minis:  60 (1:1, 60 expected)

Carrying on the momentum from the baseball set, I'm sure, these work well here.  I just wish there weren't so many (140) or else I'd shoot for the set.  As it is, I'm trying to sell the 57 of them (including Cam Newton and Mark Ingram) I didn't really want, but I'm keeping the Charles Woodson, Tom Brady and Mario Manningham you saw last time.  I am happy to report that I got 60 different players here--no dupes!  They seem to suffer from bad cutting/centering, though.

Super Bowl Legends:  60 (1:1, 60 expected)

Here's another set I was pretty happy with, both due to concept and design.  Because my football knowledge isn't even a tenth of my baseball knowledge, I enjoy the history lesson it provides for a sport I've come to love over the last few years.  What I didn't love so much was the collation:  I got 25/45 in the set, then 21 dupes and 14 triples.  I just feel that out of a case it wouldn't kill them to get me one 45-card set.  Collation aside, it's a cool set with the bonus of forcing collectors to learn Roman numerals.  Bonus #2:  three Tom Bradys (one for each ring), though I only pulled two.

Super Bowl Legends Giveaway:  60 (1:1, 60 expected)

This one's still a bit of a mystery as all details of the promotion haven't been released.  It doesn't necessarily look like you redeem them for crappy Topps commons, but there are definitely prizes (virtual and tangible) for redeeming certain numbers of codes, with one of the better prizes being a Joe Namath autograph--the stipulation I'm reading into being that you need to unlock 45 "unique" items, but maybe that's not necessary, or maybe you can trade for them.  We'll know more in the future, but for now I'm holding onto mine until I know more and can decide I should redeem them or sell at a fair price.  Lots of sellers are liquidating these but I don't think that's the best idea without knowing what they could get you.  On a related note, I pulled five 10-card sets, then nine of a sixth, but got a seventh of a different card.  By the way, if you're lazy/stupid/cheap enough to be searching for free Giveaway codes, by all means please use the one above.  If you do, my reaction will be thus:

ToppsTown:  60 (1:1, 60 expected)
Ok, let's get this out of the way:  these suck, though not quite as much as the flimsy, throwaway versions Topps has done in the past. These are more like StarQuest, except with a dumb game you can play online.  Go ahead and swipe my code, see if I care.  I got 41/50 out of this set plus 19 dupes, so not terrible there.


NOTE:  I already showed the Black parallels in the hits post, so that's why you're not seeing them here.


NOTE #2:  I didn't pull an SP somehow, despite quite a bit of searching.  Go figure.


Quality control:  D-
Things seemed to look ok as I got started, but not long after that I started accumulating a small pile of cards with wrecked-as-hell corners:

I'm not sure this scan does the damage to the upper-right corner justice, but it's pretty bad, and symptomatic of a good pile of cards from the case overall (with some being bad on the lower-left instead).  Additionally, I found a nice little stack of poorly miscut cards:

Any worse and Brian would have been poking his head into his neighbor's card above going "HAY GUISE, WATS GOIN' ON IN THIS CARD?"  Since Topps has a stupid policy of limiting you to sending in 25 damaged cards at a time, plus I'd have to go through the hassle of proving they didn't fall off a truck (literally, apparently, judging by what you see) with scans of the boxes/packs/my retinas, I'm gonna say screw it since I really only needed something like 15 cards to complete sets 4 and 5 and I should get those soon in a deal anyway.  
I think the total number of damaged and miscut cards came out to be less than 50, but it was still very annoying after ponying up for a case, and I'd be even more pissed if I'd grabbed just one box and those cut into my base set.  Then again, this is Topps, whose reputation for quality control (if they ever had one, I don't rightly know) has plummeted in the last few years.  Way to set the bar low, guys.


Overall grade:  B+
At this point I don't think I could live without putting together a Topps flagship football base set.  While I'm sure I won't be repeating the case experiment very often, I'm glad I tried it with these first, especially because of what you saw in the hits post:  two autographs and a generally excellent rookie patch guaranteed plus some extras make for a nice experience for the money (and these will surely come down to more reasonable levels before long; I just wanted to strike while the iron was hot for selling purposes).  The base set and many of the inserts are also big pluses, and really only the usual Topps annoyances--bad QC, one or two stupid inserts--detract from a very good product.  So I give buying something of this product a big thumbs up and I strongly encourage you to save up for the jumbo box--you'll be glad you did.


And now, my promise that I'll return to this topic in a couple weeks with what I learned after trying to sell some of my hits, sets and inserts!