catching a ballgame + 1997 Bowman hobby box

The Portland Pickles are a new collegiate woodbat baseball team, doing their best to fill the void in town since the AAA Portland Beavers moved away a few years ago. My wife and I hopped on the train yesterday afternoon and caught our first game of theirs.

We found a decent spot on the grass down the left field line. The home team got off to a rough start with the visiting Lodi Crushers scoring 3 in the 1st thanks to some sloppy defense, but the Pickles came back to tie it up, eventually taking the lead.

It was a pretty big turnout. In fact, I think it was a sellout and set their attendance record. A great day for baseball.

Selfie time!

Guy warming up in the bullpen.

It was my first live baseball game since catching a Hillsboro Hops game last year.

We ended up taking off in the 8th inning because we wanted to catch the train home (and it was that or wait a long time for the next one), plus neither of us brought a jacket and it was getting a little chilly by that point. The Pickles held on to win (link to recap), so that's nice.

I had printed up a few generic cards for autographs, but we didn't arrive early enough or stay late enough to score any signatures. Maybe next time.

So yeah, that was a fun evening at the ballpark. Would definitely go back again.


Switching gears... Here's another box I picked up cheap a couple months ago to have something around to rip on days I otherwise didn't get any new cards. Took me a while, but I finally got through it. Time for the highlights..

My Frank Thomas PC saw some additions thanks to the box. The American flags here help me meet the minimum requirements for a proper 4th of July blogpost. Happy Birthday, USA!

Some more inserts, with a Konerko and a couple Astros. These are available for trade, if anyone's interested.

Some base veteran cards of dudes I collect. Canseco looks kinda strange in his A's double-dip.

Here's a nice selection of "First Bowman Card" prospects. Forgot to include Halladay and Sean Casey in the photo. I think that's my first pack-pulled card of Guy From Granite John Barnes.. kinda cool, even if I did already pick it up from Just Commons a while back.

And a couple other prospect cards of guys I collect, Derrek Lee (from his brief Padres tenure) and Vladimir Guerrero. There were slight odds at pulling a Vlad auto from the box, though I wasn't so lucky. That guy was a beast in his prime.

Thanks for reading and hope you have/had an awesome 4th!

Busting a box of Topps Gold Label

Nice to see my holiday mailings are starting to arrive and folks seem to be happy with the contents! I'll have more details on Cardsphere Heroes in tomorrow's post, but today here's a box review.

Gold Label is a fancy product Topps put out for a few years around the turn of the millennium. I've come across a few singles here and there in trades and dimeboxes, and they always catch my eye because every card is a beautiful refractor. Hell, even the wrapper is a refractor!

I took a curious look and was able to find a hobby box of 2000 Gold Label on eBay for the price of a couple blasters. While it has the look of a high-end product ("super premium," as the packaging states), there aren't any autos or even relics in there to chase (at least not in 2000), only a shot at redemption for autographed uncut sheets or something.. and since that promotion has long since expired, unopened product isn't too pricey these days.

I figured it'd be a fun break to net me a few PC additions and add some shiny to my tradeables. I used the box for my "cardless days" breaks (ripping 1 pack a day on a day when I otherwise didn't get any new cards), so it took me a while to get through the box. Let's check out some highlights!

Lots of starpower!

Seeing double? One thing I didn't realize until I was nearly finished with the box: There are 100 players on the base checklist, but each of them has 3 different variations. Class 1, Class 2, and Class 3 are noted on the back, and are basically all the same but with different background photos on the front. In this year of the product, all three were produced in equal quantities, so it doesn't really mean anything if you pull a Class 3 card vs. Class 1.. it's not an SP or anything, just Topps being weird. You'd think they could just put 300 players in the set instead of 100 x 3.

So yeah, you OCD team collectors out there might need to collect your team in triplicate.

You can see the "CLASS 1" on the right. Call me slow, but I didn't realize the significance of that till I started working on this post.

There are also gold parallels with a diecut deckle edge that are #'d /100 and seeded 1:68, but I didn't pull any of those, unfortunately.

The toughest card I pulled is a Bullion insert, seeded 1:32. At 24 packs per box, I definitely beat the odds by pulling two of them from my box. The Larkin/Casey/Griffey might be the highlight of the box. McGwire and the boys are fine too.

The Treasury, Prospector's Dream, and End of the Rainbow are the other inserts. Since the names are hard to read, I'll list 'em off: Josh Hamilton, Mark Mulder, Derek Jeter (another nice pull), Sean Burroughs, and Choo Freeman. I also pulled an Eric Munson "End of the Rainbow" but it's been mailed off to somebody already.

Here's a photo of an End of the Rainbow card in a refractor rainbow. As it should be. (Too bad Sean's career melted like a wet witch. Sorry, that was supposed to be a Wizard of Oz reference. That would have made more sense if the inserts were called Over the Rainbow.)

Here are some more dudes I collect. Doesn't that look just like a bowl of Skittles?!

And here's an example of what the backs look like.

One more funny thing about this product to mention: It seems that the last card in every pack is cut a bit narrower than the rest. It's not quite "mini" levels smaller, but enough to be noticeable when you've got a few in-hand.

Here's a scan of the bottom of a stack. You can see there are 3 cards that are significantly narrower than the rest. Weird. Unannounced stealth parallels! haha

And that's that. Not a bad box. Thanks for checking it out with me.

Busting a box of 2003 Bowman

You know the deal.. I pick up an old hobby box or blaster every once in a while (usually something cheap) so I have packs on hand to rip on days when I otherwise don't get any cards. A day without any new cards is liable to cause me to spiral into a deep and violent depression. Ok, maybe it's not that bad, but I've found it comforting to have packs around to prevent cardless days.

The box I most recently got through was 2003 Bowman Baseball. It's a reasonably cheap product these days, as with most Bowman sets of the era, full of never-was minor leaguers among an occasional guy who went on to a decent career, plus the expected major league stars here and there. That year's product promised two hits per box.. chances are they'd be relics, but you might get lucky and pull an auto.

Let's start right off with the best card I pulled (don't want to bury the lead in this post or it'd probably not even break a dozen page views).

This David Wright "Future Fiber" jersey bat relic was definitely a nice hit for me. (Did somebody say "Fiber"? Obligatory plug for my band. New mp3 uploaded every Friday.) It doesn't "pay for the box" or anything, but seeing as most of the players on the relic checklist are "who?" career minor leaguers, to pull a big name like this was beating the odds.

By the way, congrats to the Mets on advancing. When the series began, I didn't think I had a favorite, but as the games progressed, I definitely found myself rooting against the Dodgers (even if the sad owl picture Night Owl posted on Twitter after the last out was heartbreaking). From here on out my rooting interests are decidedly NL over AL. The Royals were a great story last year, now it feels like they've outstayed their welcome. And screw the Blue Jays and their fans who throw beer on babies over a correct call that went against them. Also dick move leaving Mark Buehrle off the postseason roster. But the only team in the postseason this year I really hated was the Cardinals, and they lost so everything else is just gravy.

My second hit wasn't quite as impressive as the Wright bat, but could be worse. I especially like the fact you don't often see baseball jersey swatches in that color (or with the little breather holes like that). Anybody want it in a trade? Hee-Seop Choi hit 15 major league home runs in both 2004 and 2005, but after a down year in 2006, returned to his native Korea to mixed success where he's apparently still active. His best year in the KBO was 2009 when he hit .308 with 33 HR and 100 RBI.

Seems each box comes with one "uncirculated" encased card. The bad news is I pulled a player I don't care about and isn't worth much today. But the good news is one of my most frequent trading partners is a Brewers collector, so this will find a home with Tony L. before too long.

Before we get to the monotonous base cards, here are a couple more insert-type things. I assume the sticker was meant to be a handy label for collectors who actually put the set together, with the sticker going on the end of the box or binder for easy identification. That was thoughtful.. too bad that practice apparently didn't catch on with card companies. And cool that I pulled a redemption for an uncirculated first year card.. but of course it expired over a decade ago. :(

Here're some dudes I kinda collect. The black borders on these cards occasionally showed minor damage from sticking together or whatnot. The right edges of the Larry Walker and the Gary Sheffield-- that's not glare from the flash, it's paper loss. Like with pulling expired redemptions, it's a common risk when ripping old packs. Thankfully there wasn't anything too heartbreaking in there, such as an otherwise great pull that took damage. Most of the cards were fine, and nothing was so bad to where I felt obligated to throw it away. But yeah, you'll notice plenty of white specks in the black borders if you look closely.

More PC guys of mine. Sorry if the foil names aren't too easy to read, but these players should all be obvious to you guys on sight.

More notable cards, including RCs of Youkilis and Victorino. With the exception of the 2 hits, the cards all have the same drab design, with prospects having a blue inner border and veterans red. Even the 1-per-pack parallel gold signature cards (which we'll see in a moment) look nearly identical except they're thicker and the facsimile signature is in gold (which is not too noticeable, really).

A few more guys I kinda-sorta collect.

A fun game to play when ripping Bowman cards is "Find the Zaniest Name" with all the guys you've never heard of. These are all strong contenders. If I didn't know any better, I'd think Bowman was just making this shit up. Nathan Panther? Nook Logan? Terry Tiffee? Obviously all fake names, right? :P

Here are some unfamous guys with famous last names.
Dustin Yount? Son of Robin.
Michael Garciaparra? Brother of Nomar.
Jon Schuerholz? Son of Braves GM at the time, John Schuerholz.
Dwaine Bacon? Great-grandson of Sir Benjamin F. Bacon, inventor of bacon. (ok, I made this one up.)

I thought it was funny on the back of the Jon Schuerholz card, it quoted the scouting director as saying, "We would have signed him even if his name was Smith or Jones." Yeah right, maybe if he was the son of Lonnie Smith or Chipper Jones!

Let's close it out today with highlights of the aforementioned 1-per-pack gold signature parallels. You probably can't even really tell from the photo that these are any different than the base versions. Probably would have been more interesting if the border was turned gold (brown) like most other years of Bowman did during that era. But oh well. If Hanley can rebound from his down year, that rookie card parallel could possibly be a decent card.

Speaking of the Red Sox, I recently grabbed them in Nachos Grande's upcoming Final Group Break of the Year. He's got a nice mix of products lined up for it. I thought it'd be a good way for me to build up my Boston trade bait that's pretty thin these days, and plus I collect a few Sox players so they were the most appealing to me of the teams that were unclaimed. Hopefully I end up with some nice additions to my collection and my tradeables box. This'll be my 3rd group break with Chris, and they're always fun and he's a good, trustworthy dude. Check out the remaining teams and consider signing up!

So that's it for my box of 2003 Bowman. Not amazing, but a sweet relic hit plus several keepers to add to many of my PCs. Thanks for reading. My current "Cardless Day Breaks" box is Topps Gold Label.. which is a little more expensive and a lot more interesting. So look for that post probably in December.

a couple blasters that have since been busted

Picked up a discounted 2013 Archives blaster at the card show a couple months ago. I had patience opening it, using it for my "Cardless Days" (where I rip just one pack on a day when I otherwise didn't get any new cards).

I got around to finishing it off recently, so allow me to show some highlights.

Got a couple tall-boys. These would more accurately be described as "narrow boys" since they're the same height as a regular card. Jeter and Miguel Cabrera are a couple decent names to pull.

Here's one of those 4-way stickers. Pretty sweet as I collect all four of these guys. Now the dilemma is which PC to put it in.

Pulled a couple SPs. John Mayberry hot box! They couldn't dig up second photo of him? It's not like he's in a ton of sets these days. Should be easy to find an unused picture.

A couple All-Star inserts. Dave Winfield hot box! I had to show the back of his base card to reminisce about the days when Archives squeezed in tiny complete career stats on the back.. glorious! For the past couple years, they just list the first dozen or so years of the player's career and ignore the rest.. blasphemy!

And here are a few more keepers. No hits, but still a fun break for how cheap it was.


The other blaster I'm featuring in this post was a thrown-in freebie with my Dave & Buster's Card World (or whatever their real name is, lol) order a few months ago when I bought a couple 2015 Archives hobby boxes and a 2014 Prizm Draft box. The most intriguing to me of the limited pool of freebies to choose from was a 2012 Panini Cooperstown blaster.

I had planned on this blaster also being for cardless days and sat on it for a good while, but one weekend I went on a bit of a late-night card ripping bender and tore through the entire thing in one sitting. Not proud of it.

Not that I was expecting much from a free box of cards, but I was disappointed in pulling no hits or even any parallels for the second straight blaster. Only base cards and a few ho-hum inserts-- What is this, 1990?!

But at least I ended up with PC needs for a few old-timers I collect.

A handful of PC additions. Nothing too exciting, but not too bad for a freebie.

Here are the inserts. Al Kaline hot box! The Fisk was probably the coolest card of the 8 packs, with a faux wooden feel to the front of the card. It kind of makes for a boring card when there's no picture of the guy anywhere. That Phil Niekro card especially.. yuck. That should be the back of a card, not the front.

That's it for today. Have a great weekend.

Another 2014 Prizm Draft box

A few months ago when I pre-ordered my two Archives boxes (*groan*), I threw a hobby box of 2014 Panini Prizm Perennial Draft Picks Baseball in my cart to push my order past the free shipping threshold. It's basically a "half-hobby box" at only 12 packs.

I busted a box of this back in December and it was fun enough, so figured I'd try another one. As with most Panini products, the base cards aren't that great, but there are enough colorful parallels and stuff to keep it interesting, and the guarantee of at least a couple on-card autographs is a draw for me. Plus I'd have an outside shot at pulling one of the several Gavin LaValley parallels I still need from this product.

I used this box as part of my "cardless day breaks," meaning I opened one pack on each day when I otherwise didn't get any new baseball cards; because a day without getting baseball cards is something that no one should ever have to endure. And I finally worked my way through the box, so now I'll show off the highlights.

Although the box doesn't seem to have stated odds anywhere, the types of cards I pulled in this box were all in line with what I had pulled with my first box: 4 autos, 4 color refractors, and 4 regular refractors. (I refuse to call refractors "prizms"! Prizm is the name of the brand! Does Topps have a trademark on the word "refractor"? Why doesn't Panini use that word? It leads to confusion.) I didn't pull anything "super sick" but it was a decent box.

Let's start with the autos:

Unlike last time when one of my four autos was a redemption, this time all are in-hand out of the pack. So that's nice. (..Although, the redemption I pulled last time was the biggest name [Mets' top pick Michael Conforto].. and none of these guys are really big names.)
Ti'quan Forbes hasn't done much yet.
Chase Vallot ("press proof" /199) hasn't been hitting very well.
Isan Diaz seems to be doing ok this year. He gets the award for best signature of the bunch.. reasonably legible.
Jeff Hoffman ("blue mojo" refractor #'d 53/75) - Biggest hit of the box. Hoffman was the 9th overall pick in the 2014 draft despite missing all of that year due to Tommy John surgery. Seems to be off to a solid start this year. I really have a knack for pulling decent Blue Jay cards. Someday I should vacation in France and bring a big box of cards for the Card Poppa Boy (sic).

Here are my color refractors. There's Chase Vallot again. I don't think these other guys are big names. At least they're tradeable teams for me. (assuming "Los Angeles" means Dodgers, not Angels.)

There are the numbered backs.

Here are the regular unnumbered refractors.
That "minors gold" insert seem to be seeded one per box (I pulled Jorge Soler last time).. Kyle Schwarber is a nice pull there.
I remember Zippy Zappy talking about Michael Mader.. it's cool that his Twitter name is DarthMader or something like that.

Here are four base cards (well, non-parallel, at least) of guys I've heard of.
Trea Turner.. *Sigh*.. swapped by the Padres for Wil Myers. I have a feeling San Diego is going to be kicking themselves over that deal in a couple years (if they're not already).
Schwarber again.
Carlos Rodon is good, right?
LUUUUIS Servino I only know because Zippy is big on him.

So that was my 2nd box of 2014 Prizm Draft. Could have been better, could have been worse. At least it was cheap (by modern "guaranteed auto[s]" hobby box standards) and served its purpose of getting me free shipping on my order. Don't think I got many dupes from my earlier box, either; always a plus. I don't see myself buying another box of this (or honestly any Prizm product ever again.. [really burnt out on that metallic silver at this point].. but never say never.)

It's funny that in two boxes, I haven't pulled a single goddamn Gavin LaValley.. not even the base card, much less a fancy parallel I needed. Bummer.

Pretty much all these cards are available for trade (I might wanna just hang onto the two Schwarbers and the Hoffman auto), so let me know if you're interested in anything. Otherwise, I'll hold onto them and hope 1 or 2 of these guys eventually pans out to be a quality major leaguer.

All work and no baseball cards makes Gavin a dull boy

The company I work for is moving to Georgia later this year. As such, my co-workers have been jumping ship to other jobs (sellouts!) and those of us sticking around just have to take up the slack for the next 2 or 3 months until operations move over there and things slow down here, eventually drying up around the end of the year. A key person in our department abruptly left this week, and I'll be the go-to guy for picking up her duties. So that means it'll be a busy summer for me. Fun. :(

But hey, more work means more money to buy baseball cards! Whee!!

You probably don't remember, but back in March I busted a box of 1998 Bowman Series 2 and after I showed off the highlights I said, "Next up is a box of 1999 Bowman Series 1 from the same seller. Stay tuned!," or words to that effect. Now, I'm usually a ripping fiend, and unopened packs of baseball cards in my house don't stay unopened for long. But I also have a tendency to get cranky on days when I don't get any new baseball cards.

So recently I've adopted the idea of having a hobby box (or the like) on hand at all times so that I can bust a single pack of cards on days when I otherwise haven't gotten any new cards. It's really a nice little pick-me-up, even if it's only cheap stuff and nothing of note is pulled. Just a nice little fixx for a pack addict.

The inaugural box for this new plan was the aforementioned 1999 Bowman Series 1. Took me 2 or 3 months, but I recently got through it, one otherwise cardless day at a time. Let's check out the highlights.

These psychedelic cards provide a welcome break from the drab Bowman base cards. I suppose Pettitte and Thome are both decent names to pull. Thome is a guy I've thought about PCing, but haven't really pulled the trigger yet. Maybe if/when he gets The Call.

As with the Late Bloomers inserts, these Scouts' Choice cards are also 2 per box. Adrian Beltre is obviously the bigger hit here, still working on a fine career. Russell Branyan managed to stick around in the Bigs for parts of 14 seasons, so he wasn't exactly a bust either.

Here are the PC guys I pulled, highlighted by a Griffey base and the foil home state parallel (That's the liberty bell in the background).

And here are a few other tentative keepers for me.

I wasn't familiar with Chip Ambers, but this card definitely stood out thanks to the spectacular photo, a rarity in Bowman sets. Yeah, it's staged, I'm sure.. but still a great shot.

So there you have it. Was that $20 worth of cards? Even with the not-pictured stack of other cards from the box, probably not, but the thrill/fun of the rip is really where it's at. The prospect of having a back-up stash of packs helps me from tearing my mailbox off the wall in a rage when I come home after a hard day's work and find it empty.

I definitely plan to try to keep packs around to cheer me up when I need it, and make "cardless day breaks" a regular thing. I can wake up in the morning and know that regardless of what else happens, at the end of the day, there will be fresh baseball cards waiting for me. Isn't that beautiful? Even on Sundays and holidays. It takes some restraint for me not to just bust a box in one sitting (which I still do sometimes, like with my recent Archives boxes), but I think it's worth it.  (I'll admit that last Saturday night, I broke down and ripped my Sunday pack at a quarter past midnight.. hey, it counts, technically! Otherwise, I've been good and not cheated.)

Of course it's more financially responsible to use junk wax for this purpose, but I'd rather not accumulate more '91 Donruss, '88 Topps, and the like, so I'll at least try to find cheap boxes for sets I don't have much from in my collection, like with this late 90s Bowman. That way, I can at least pick up a few cards for my various PCs and maybe have a shot at a chase card of some sort to up the thrill. (I pulled an auto from my '98 Bowman box, but wasn't as lucky this time.)

I'm currently working on a box of 2014 Prizm Draft (ordered along with the Archives boxes to push me past the free-shipping threshold), which I'll show off after I eventually rip through it.