Embracing 12/25 cards (more beer n' cardboard)

I know I'm not officially among the #supertraders, but I'd like to be considered the unofficial Super Trader for 3 niche groups of cards: cards serial numbered 12/25, players named Gavin, and players who went to Granite Hills High School. Cards from these groups aren't likely to be pulled all that often, but when they are, please give me first shot at them! I'm sure the super trader assigned to that team will understand. Thank you. I will also take your Marlins cards, on the condition that the player's last name is Stanton. First name could be Mike, Giancarlo, whatever.. it doesn't matter to me.

In 2015, I curtailed my Christmas Card collecting a bit. I felt like there were wiser ways to spend my hobby dollars. Additionally, my posts featuring Christmas Cards typically don't get a lot of views. It might have subconsciously been as instance of the blog dictating my collecting habits. I bet some of you other bloggers out there have also had purchases influenced by the thinking of whether or not the card(s) in question would make for a popular blog post.

But that's a dangerous trap to fall into. You gotta collect for yourself, not your readers. And you know what? I find collecting Christmas Cards to be a lot of fun! When I'm holding a card in my hands and see that stamped "12/25" glimmering back at me, it just makes my heart happy. So screw it, I'm gonna keep on going after Christmas Cards. I've picked up a bunch already here in 2016, and page views be damned, I'm going to post about them once in a while!

Speaking of Christmas, while I've already covered the "Beermas" beers my wife gave me last year, my in-laws also surprised me with a nice selection of craft brews as a gift for my xmas eve birthday. While they've long since been drank, I've been keeping the bottles around for weeks now, meaning to photograph them for posterity / a blog post. I finally got around to it! My wife will be happy these bottles can finally be tossed in the glass recycling bin!

Upton/Downton. I think this is my first 2016 Donruss card. While a definite step up from the 2015 design which I hated, I don't know why Panini keeps making tiny little tweaks to the base design and calls it new. Yeah, I'll admit the 81, 82, 83 Donruss sets has similar designs, but they weren't that close. I'm especially sick of the white border. If they went with a black border, as like a nod to 85 or 87, I'd probably love this design. Hopefully Panini will get some balls for next year's product.

As for Justin Upton, he was a moderately bright spot for the Padres last season as a one-year rental. I never collected him too hard, but wish him the best in Motown. This is a Test Issue parallel or somesuch, with a faux black-printing-plate feel to it. As for the beer, I seem to recall this Downtown Brown ale was tasty.

Liberty/Free man. Get it?! This 2015 Pro Debut stickergraph is #'d 12/25 on the back, trust me. Mike Freeman isn't a huge prospect or anything, but he hit .317 in AAA last year, splitting time between 2nd and the outfield. Maybe Arizona will call him up this season. This beer was tasty, best I can remember.

Christian Yelich is a solid young player on the Marlins. This 2012 Bowman's Best diecut Xfractor was just about $3 shipped (plus came in the sweet magnetic one-touch!). I sometimes dislike Belgians, but this Brother Thelonious abbey ale was tasty, as far as I can remember. Here's the back of the card:

See? I told you it was a Christmas Card. Why didn't you believe me?!

Here's some tangerine wheat beer with a couple 2014 Bowman Chrome Mini prospects. Shae Simmons made his MLB debut for the Braves last season and did pretty well in relief, putting up a 125 ERA+ over 26 games. Spencer Adams was a 2nd round draft pick of the White Sox in 2014 and has put up pretty solid numbers in the low minors so far. At only 19 years old, he can't legally partake of this tasty beer yet.

So there was an eBay seller who obviously had busted a ton of 2014 Bowman Chrome Mini sets (they're only sold as factory sets, and each one comes with a few parallels). He had a key Gavin LaValley card I needed (upcoming post foreshadowing!), and he also had a bunch of these 12/25 yellow parallels for around $3-4 each with no additional shipping, so I grabbed a few. Jordan Paroubeck is pictured here as a Padre, but was dealt to the Braves in the Kimbrel trade, then shipped to the Dodgers. He's been slow to advance out of Rookie League, but has hit .308 as a pro so far. Robert Whalen was traded from the Mets to the Braves in the Juan Uribe deal. Rogue's Hazelnut Brown Nectar is among my all-time favorite beers. Dare I say tasty?

Cheating a bit here as this Chocolate Bock wasn't among the beers I was gifted by my in-laws, rather it was included in a Samuel Adams variety pack we picked up from Costco a while back (Well, the in-laws pay for our Costco purchases, so I suppose this can be considered a gift from them, too). If you like beers with some sweetness to them like I do, this and the aforementioned Hazelnut Brown really are the cream of the crop. In a word: tasty! Kevin Encarnacion? Lane Thomas? Meh, nothing interesting to say about them.

This one was really good tasty. It had one of those fancy champagne-style corks. Not sure if he's a "pranQster" but Joe Gatto hasn't performed that well in the minors so far after signing with the Angels as a 2nd round pick in 2014. Harold Ramirez, on the other hand, has impressed greatly. He's been the Pirates' breakout star in spring training so far, batting a ridiculous .625 thru his first 17 plate appearances. He's probably still a year or two away from being ready for the majors, but he's proving himself as one to watch for the Bucco faithful.

That's gonna do it for this post. Thanks to my in-laws for the tasty beer and thanks to you for stopping by. Expect to see a few more Christmas Cards on the blog soon (without the beer theme), including a nice one in the next trade roundup that Jeff Jones surprised me with recently.

Haul of cards from Rod at the card show

Imagine you're at a card show digging through the bins, when someone comes up to you and says, "Here you go," and dumps a couple long boxes totaling around a thousand free cards beside you. That's basically what happened to me a couple weekends ago. It was the third time I was fortunate enough to be on the receiving end of fellow Portland-area Padres fan's downsizing efforts. I'm talking of course about Rod of Padrographs.

Sometimes he gives me more cards than I know what to do with. You know those "LaMarry Christmas" ornaments I spread around last Christmas? The 1987 Topps cards I used for those were from Rod.. just an example of the massive quantity of Padres he's known to kindly dump on me. I'd be lying if I said I had a use for all the various Padres cards I get, from Rod or well-meaning traders, though among the Terry Kennedys and Jerald Clarks I don't collect, there are usually plenty of Pads I do collect.. Bip, Benito, Templeton, and of course Tony Gwynn, to name a few.

Anyways, it's taken me a couple weeks, but I've digested the haul from Rod into some highlight groups to photograph and comment on, so let's do it!

A nice little selection of autographs. Bip! The rest are customs of Rod's own creation. Just last month I showed off my own Dave Kingman '77 Padres custom that I got signed through the mail, now I've got another. Dig that lounging-in-the-dugout shot. Lowell Palmer is known for looking cool on his 70s cards sporting his trademark shades. Orlando Hudson won 4 Gold Gloves during his career, and spent a year and a half with the Padres near the end of his run. And Bud Black helmed San Diego from 2007 until getting canned last season. It looked like he was about to sign on to manage the Nationals recently, but he thought their offer was too low and then Dusty Baker slipped in and snagged the job, leaving Bud to settle on a front office position with the Angels, with whom he was pitching coach prior to his Padres tenure. I've got nothing against Bud, but I was also never much of a fan either. I'm hoping new skipper Andy Green can work some magic and help the squad contend this year.

This? This is all Tony Gwynn cards. Probably a couple hundred cards here. Sure, some multiples and plenty of cards I already had, but still a lot I needed.

And here are a couple hundred Benito cards! Thanks to this lot, I think I can call my Benito collection Finito. (Oh, that's a clever turn of phrase! I need to do a post of my PC and I'll title the post "Benito Finito" or something along those lines.) Maybe I could use some more of his later career cards, but I think I'm good on Padres/junk era now.

Bip! Always a favorite. I think this lot bumped me over the 100 card goal.

Mid 80s Padre favorites Goose and Garvey. Goose was in the news recently for a tirade against today's game. Didn't seem like very many were in his corner.

More Friars of yesteryear, including Tim Flannery, Ozzie Smith, and John Kruk. Looks like Flan triple-signed that 85 Topps card.. like he signed it once.. wasn't happy with the pen, then traced that signature.. decided it looked bad.. then signed it fresh again. Speaking of being in the news recently for a tirade, Flan typed up an angry post aimed at Padre fans who hassle him for selling out and going to the Giants or whatever. Personally, I never had a problem with the guy and definitely didn't blame him for following Bochy up to SF when he got pushed out. Anyways, love those Kruk minor league cards.

More Padres, now working our way into the 90s. Dan Walters was a backup catcher whose career wasn't anything special, but he was the first guy who ever signed a baseball card for me, so he's got a place in my heart. After his playing days, he became a cop and sadly was paralyzed from a gunshot.
Pretty sure I had most of those Roberto Alomar cards, but probably a couple new ones for me.
And I needed most of those glorious Caminiti cards.

Ryan Klesko was a guy I liked alright when he was in the heart of the San Diego lineup for a few years, though I wasn't collecting at the time. Once I returned to the hobby, he was never really a "PC guy" for me, though I did kinda hang onto his cards when I got them. With this big lot, he's probably knocked into Hundred Card Club territory. Highlights here for me are the Victory card (not often you see a fast food bag on a baseball card) and the retro 89 UD and 55 Bowman designs.

Here are a bunch more various Padres keepers for me. Love minor league cards (like the Mark Parent cards there) from before they became ubiquitous circa 1989. Sega CardGen cards are always cool to get. And that Cameron Maybin at-the-wall shot is a photo variation SP.

It wasn't all Padres, as Rod included a bunch of these Heritage cards from the 2009 American History set. I had seen these online, but never owned any. Pretty cool.

Even a few 2010 Pro Debut numbered parallels and a LeBron!

Thanks so much, Rod! This haul definitely helps me fill several holes in my collection. Much appreciated. And I'm still very much in your debt, so as always, let me know if I can ever help you with anything to return the favor.. Assistance on customs or whatever. I'm at your disposal!

A box of 2014 Pro Debut (Jesus saves the box with a nice collecting 1st for me)

I had a bit of Amazon credit burning a hole in my pocket, and my wife was placing an order the other day and asked me if I needed anything from Amazon. I threw a couple things into the cart: a dvd set of Son of the Beach vol. 2 (I never buy dvds anymore, but dang it, this isn't available from Netflix and it was only $9.99 for the 3-disc set, and as I've mention before this show was a favorite guilty pleasure of mine) plus a hobby box of 2014 Topps Pro Debut. Normally buying baseball cards on Amazon isn't wise due to the price markups. But I've got a few hobby boxes sitting in my wishlist just in case anyone needs an emergency "thanks for being cool" gift idea for me, and out of all of them, the '14 Pro Debut box was the closest to the going rate on eBay; only a couple bucks more than what I would have paid for the cheapest box on eBay, so I blew some store credit on one.

In recent months, I've busted boxes of 2015 Pro Debut and 2010 Pro Debut, and they were fun and fresh for me, so I thought why not keep the minor league action going?

Just a few packs in, the box cemented itself as one I would fondly remember forever:

Readers of this blog likely know that one of my favorite quirky collecting bents is cards serial numbered 12/25-- "Christmas Cards" as I call them. While I've built up a decent collection of such cards, I had never personally pulled one before. Even after my sweet ripping binge on mid/high-end product I got as gifts over the holidays, while I pulled a few /25 cards, none were lucky #12.

But my Christmas wishes were finally answered in the form of this grey-- er, I mean SILVER-- parallel of Jesus Galindo. And yes, the satisfying coincidence of my first Christmas Card pull being a player named Jesus is not lost on me, I assure you.

Galindo signed with the Giants as a free agent out of Venezuela in 2009. A fleet-footed/light-hitting outfielder, he's amassed 250 stolen bases over 7 seasons in the minors while batting .261. Probably not great odds on him ever being a notable major leaguer, but he'll always have a place in my heart thanks to pulling this special card.

[Slow, contented deep breath] :)

Ok, now let's check out some of the other highlights from the box! Just a couple packs after pulling the Jesus, was this:

Oh wow, Jesus Galindo hot box!

Yuletide lightning nearly struck twice, as this card is just one number away from being another Christmas Card. That would have been cool. I later pulled his base card. So I'm pretty much a Jesus Galindo supercollector now thanks to this box.

My other promised relic was this manipatch of AJ Cole. He cracked the bigs last year for 3 games with the Nats.

Cool thing about this card is it's a parallel numbered 3/5. I was lucky enough to pull a couple printing plates last year, but besides them, I believe this is the lowest numbered card I've ever pulled.

Here are my 2 promised autos, plus a /50 gold parallel. I'm a little frustrated with Pro Debut as my hits seem to nearly always be pitchers. Prospecting on pitchers has about the same odds as winning the Powerball jackpot.

Derek Law is a reliever in the Giants chain. With the charcoal border, I thought it might be a parallel, but it's unnumbered, and when my other auto was also in that same border, I realized all the autos must be like that. Kyle Hunter is in the Mariners organization. Edwin Escobar went from the Giants to the Red Sox in the Jake Peavy deal. These 3 guys are all respectable pitchers, I guess, but none of them is anywhere near being the next Kershaw. All available for trade.

Out of the base cards, here are a few I was most thrilled to pull. Mookie Betts might be my fastest-growing player collection over the past several weeks. Happy to pull a needed Gavin Cecchini. Joey Gallo, Vogelmoster, Correa, and Buxton are also exciting young dudes.

Some other names that rang a bell for me.

Baseball family dynasties. I just featured Jeremy Barfield the other day in a Black Sheep Minicollection post, and before this card, I hadn't realized he converted to pitcher.

It seems that conversion was a one-year experiment in 2014, as he only had a couple brief outings on the mound in 2015, mainly playing right field again.

So there was that box. Again, personally pulling a Christmas Card was a joy for me. The hits were fine, if nothing to get too excited over. Several good base cards, including a couple PC needs. And plenty of tradebox fodder. All in all, could have found a worse way to blow $52 of Amazon store credit.

I'd like to close out by saying it sucks to no longer get to share a planet with David Bowie. I've got an even 100 Bowie songs in my iTunes, a number exceeded only by the Beatles. I've been celebrating his music today playing through them all. Thanks for the great stuff, Mr. Bowie! You'll be missed.

2010 Pro Debut hobby box

Welp, I busted a box of 2015 Pro Debut a few weeks back and it was a fun enough break to where I took a look on eBay for cheap (sub 50) hobby boxes of other years of the product. I ended up winning a box of the inaugural year, 2010 Series 2-- yeah, I guess they broke it up into a couple sets back then. The hotter box is Series 1, featuring Mike Trout and footballer Russell Wilson. But oh well, Series 2 is a cheaper box. Maybe it'll have something nice for me.

Ya'll ready for this? Let's bust it open.

A couple PC hits for me.. Goldy and Gyorko. These are my highlights from the box. In hindsight, probably should have saved $40+ and got them offa Just Commons or something.

More guys who went onto be decent major leaguers. Sorry these pictures kinda suck, but it's hard to get it so that the names are readable thanks to the foil names on a dark background. Yep, 2010 Topps design is not very photogenic.

Some more names I recognized, including a bunch of Mets.

More dudes that ring a bell for me, including MiLB All-Time Home Run King, Mike Hessman.

Here are my hits! Quote-unquote hits, that is. Good news is I got an extra auto (only 2 are promised, yet I pulled 3), but the bad news is all these guys are nobodies. The best name here is Johnny Giavotella, who had a decent 2015 season with the Angels. You might remember I just pulled a nice Giavotella parallel out of 2015 Update a couple weeks ago. It's like the Baseball Card Gods are telling me to start a Johnny G. PC!
The David Cook auto is a gold parallel #'d /50. That's the good news; the bad news is he called it quits a couple years ago, never making The Show.
Shane Peterson performed at replacement-level in 93 games for the Brewers this past season, so at least he made it.
Ozzie Martinez made the majors for a few games in 2010/2011, but spent 2015 down in AA. Shame; that's a nice big swatch of fabric, #'d /199.

Here are my parallels. After only getting ONE freaking parallel in my 2015 Pro Debut box (must have been a parallel "cold box"), I was happy to get a fair amount of color in this box, with several lovely blues. The bad news? All nobodies. My greatest want in the entire universe was to pull a Goldschmidt blue parallel, but I failed. I pulled a base card of him, at least, but it was still a failure on the box with no Goldy parallel. The only decent name here is Adam Warren, who had a solid '15 with the Yanks; Maybe Zippy will be interested in it since it's a Staten Island Yankee card. On the bottom there, you see this was a "Jake Thompson hot box" with both a blue (/369 or so) and the only gold of the box (/50). Jake didn't pitch last season.. not sure if he retired or was injured; up through 2014 he had decent stats in the minors. There's also another "Jake Thompson" in the game, so it's confusing.

Some of these inserts. Mostly nobodies.

And some of these inserts. Shockingly, some decent names in this group. Austin Romine is the one in the lower right.

I could pretty much be talked out of any of this shit besides the Goldy and Gyorko.. so just me know if you're interested in trading. Some of the bigger names might take some convincing. I also obviously have lots of lesser base cards not pictured.

Question for you team collectors out there: Do you consider minor league cards like this as belonging to the respective major league parent club? These cards kinda suck in that they don't list anywhere which parent club they're affiliated with, so I may have to do some research when I sort these up by team into my trade box.

So there you go. The box was nice in that I got a bonus hit and several parallels, but a dud in that all my hits and parallels weren't of notable players. Not a single goddamned one. Ah well, such is the risk of busting a minor league product. Oh, and there were several dupes in the box, too. Still fun to crack open, I suppose. But yeah, after this fruitless break, I think my itch to rip has been satisfied for a while. I don't plan on busting more boxes until Xmas (hopefully I get a couple boxes of cards as gifts).

In other news, I just sold the Stan Musial auto I bought back in May. Sad to see it go, and I enjoyed it while I had it, but at the end of the day, I wasn't that attached to it. After spending a lot on cards in recent months, I felt like I needed to sell something nice to help balance out. Nearly doubled my money on it, at least. Stan and I will meet again (Still on the hunt for his 2004 Retired refractor auto.)

Thanks for getting through this post! Hope you all have a nice holiday.

The thrilling conclusion of my 2015 Pro Debut box

Yesterday I showed off some base card highlights from my 2015 Topps Pro Debut hobby box. I saved the good stuff for last, so now let's check out the hits and inserts.

My promised 2 autos weren't amazing, but seem solid enough:

Tyler Danish didn't allow an earned run in 94 innings pitched in his senior year of high school, and thanks to that performance, got drafted by the White Sox in the second round of the 2013 draft. He glided up the ladder his first couple pro seasons, but 2015 saw his WHIP balloon to 1.655 in Double A. Hopefully he can right the ship in 2016.

Jack Flaherty's card features a rare "pitcher on the basepaths" photo, and what appears to be a questionable photoshop job. One plus to this product is the real photos, as opposed to the 'shopped prospects found in Bowman and Prizm Draft. But I guess some doctored shots get in, too.

Anyways, Jack was named something like the California high school player of the year in 2014. He had a letter of intent for University of North Carolina, but signed with the Cardinals after they selected him 34th overall in the 2014 draft, with their compensation pick for failing to re-sign Carlos Beltrán. He's done pretty well as a pro so far, striking out 125 in 117.2 innings with just 35 walks. The back of the card also mentions he's also formidable base-stealing threat, which might justify the photo selection.

So, while not terribly exciting, those are a couple promising young pitchers to pull. It sucks that they're sticker-graphs, but what are you gonna do?

Distinguished Debuts is the most common insert set, seeded 4 per box. These would have probably looked nice if they were refractors, but alas, nothing shiny in this product.

Promo Night Uniforms are seeded 2 per box. That first one is kinda boring.. Italian Heritage night or something. But as a Star Wars fan, I was happy to pull that second one. It's not the best looking uniform, but it's supposed to be a Chewbacca getup.

My two promised memorabilia cards disappointed. When I pulled the first one, I was like, "Alright, whatever, it's kinda cool I guess." But when I pulled the second one, I was like, "Aw, come on! Another one of these relic cop-outs?" These are worthless unless maybe you pull one of the serial numbered parallels, of which these are not. I would have much rather pulled one of the "Fragments of the Farm" relics with like infield dirt and pieces of chairs and stuff. Even a regular jersey swatch from a fringe prospect would have been better than a manipatch thing like these. These two guys, Sean Newcomb and Braden Shipley, are fine, I guess, but nobody too exciting. What's up with all 4 of my promised hits being pitchers? Boo. As Tony L. always says, there's no such thing as a pitching prospect. For every Kershaw, there are 10,000 Van Poppels.

Here's the solitary parallel I pulled from my box. That's right, just one goddamned parallel. Pro Debut really needs to step up their parallel game. Give me color! Give me shininess! Give me value! If I were to do a comparison with the other prospect product I've opened in the past year, Prizm Draft, Prizm would definitely get the nod with lots of colorful, serial-numbered parallels in every box. On-card autographs are another big plus Prizm has over Pro Debut. But as for base cards, Panini once again craps the bed, overdoing that "steel floor plate" look, and of course the sterilized, logoless photos. So decent photos and base design are what help put Pro Debut ahead. I just wish they had on-card autos and more, prettier parallels.

But back to this guy..when I pulled this A.J. Reed gold parallel #'d 44/50, I didn't think much of it since his name didn't ring a bell. But then I looked up his stats and saw he led all of the minor leagues with 34 home runs this past season, with a .340 average to boot. So this might turn out to be a pretty decent pull if he can continue mashing like that.


But what really saved my box from being a dud...

Sweet cyan printing plate! These Distinguished Debuts plates are seeded 1:1884, making it somewhat of a case hit. Cole Tucker is touted as Pittsburgh's shortstop of the future. At only 19, he's probably still got a few years to develop, but he's off to a fine start, batting .293 with 25 stolen bases last season in A ball.

My non-PC Pirates typically walk the Bob Walk plank, and chances are Cyan Cole here will meet the same fate, but for now I'm just going to enjoy it and nuzzle it to my bosom. It's nice to start replenishing my Pirate stash after recently cleaning it out on Matt after he won my recent contest. If you missed his posts showing off the booty, check them out here (the Bob Walk customs I made) and here (the rest).

Usually you want your cards to come out of packs nice and pristine, but I think printing plates are an exception. They're much cooler when they're beaten up with signs of wear.. it really makes it clear the plate saw a lot of action in the card-making process. Kind of like how it's cool to pull a dirty jersey relic. So yeah, I was stoked to see this plate come out of the pack with lots of stains, scratches, and splotches on it. Very cool.

That's it for this break. Thanks for reading!

2015 Pro Debut box break

I've been on a ripping kick lately, following up a bunch of 2015 Topps Update this past weekend with a box of 2015 Pro Debut. I don't have much experience with this product, but thought I'd check it out. Back in my early days of collecting, I was big into minor league cards, buying many packs of Pro Cards, CMC, and Line Drive. But I haven't really messed with minor leaguers much since re-entering the hobby, with the exception of minicollection interests such as guys who went to my high school or are named Gavin.

One draw about 2015 Pro Debut that got my attention is relic cards with ridic items like pieces of pitching rubbers, infield dirt, mascot fur, and gift shop signs. Kudos to Topps for thinking outside the jersey swatch / bat chip box.
Plus minor league team names and logos are often a hoot to check out.

Basically I think it'd be a fun, stress-free break, because I don't really know any of the players. Was it a good box? Was it a bad box? No clue. I'll just hang onto the hits and hope one of them might become the next Kris Trout, Jr. in a couple years.

As usually, I've typed up this intro before getting the cards in-hand. I'll save this draft now and check back in once I've ripped the box.

Ok, we're back.
Normally a big reason I bust boxes is to load up on trade bait, but I kinda want to hold onto these cards for now. (Sorry.) I just think it'd be fun to put the stack of cards aside and then check back in 2 or 3 years which of these guys became anything. I also might try TTM requests with some of them next spring. Plus I've already got a lot of pending bites on trade bait that I still need to get to before I start getting overwhelmed. But that said, I may change my mind, so it wouldn't hurt you to ask about anything.

I guess my prior statement that I don't know any of these guys wasn't accurate. The set features guys who started the year in the minors, but many of them were called up during the season, evidenced by the fact I pulled probable ROYs Kris Bryant and Carlos Correa.

Raul Mondesi made history in 2015 by becoming the first player in the modern era to make his major league debut in a World Series game. His entire MLB career consists of only a strikeout, but hey, he got a ring for his trouble.

"Pro Debut" is a misnomer since many of these guys have been playing in the minors for years. Hell, Carlos Correa has been in Bowman products as far back as 2011.

A few of the names I pulled reminded me that I've ripped a couple boxes of 2014 Prizm Draft, which features a lot of the same players. But as an unlicensed "guys in pajamas" product, it's hard to consider that a true minor league set.

Some Padres. I guess the true "pro debut" guys get that extra logo on their cards.

One neat thing about the cards is the fact the border and player are glossy, but the background of the photo has a matte finish. It's a cool effect and makes the cards interesting from a tactile standpoint.

Thanks in part to following guys like Zippy Zappy and The Lost Collector, I'm familiar with plenty of Yankee prospects.

More names that ring a bell. Well, I haven't heard of Alex Jackson, but he's the product's coverboy, so that must count for something.

A trio of young Mets who helped bring New York a pennant.

Michael Conforto is a name that fills me with regret because I pulled a redemption of him from a box of Prizm Draft last year, sat on it for a few months, and instead of going through the hassle of redeeming it, I sold it on Listia for a chunk of credits. A couple weeks later he got called up and has been doing great since. I wish I would have redeemed that card, or at least waited a bit longer before getting rid of it.

And here's some more guys I'm familiar with because people on the internet talk about them.

So there are some highlights from the base.
That's it for today, but I'll be back tomorrow with the inserts and hits from the box.