A pack rip of 1990 Donruss you WILL NOT BELIEVE!!!

I've been watching a lot of pack-ripping on YouTube because I got in on a player-break for Gavin LaValley in 2018 Bowman. And all that crinkly foil sound of a ripped pack really gave me the urge to open a pack myself.

Let's see what do I have on hand..

1990 Donruss.. sure, that'll do.

Hey, that Dean Palmer rookie was a big deal at one time.

Whoo.. PC hit with the Nolan special. While I'm pretty sure I've already got it, this pack-fresh pull might be an upgrade.

Diamond Kings are always nice to spice up a pack.

Sultry Yaz lips. The Mike Greenwell is a rare "wax residue on back" parallel. (Hmm.. I shouldn't give Panini any ideas.)





Last card...


OH MAN.. I HIT IT BIG!!!

Shohei Ohtani auto!!!!

Holy Crap! It's even a 1/1!!!!!

BIG MONEY! $HOHEI!! eBay here I come!!! Easily $40k.

Man, that was the best pack of '90 Donruss EVER!!!!!!!!!!!

wrapping up my weekend with a fair hooker and dick cummings on my bed

Crazy weekend, right?!
Nah, actually it was a pretty chill. Just hung out, did a little cleaning.. went through a recent package from COMC.

Call me immature, but I thought this photo of a Fair Hooker and Dick Cummings on my bed was pretty funny. I had to run out and pick up a Fair Hooker right away after seeing him on the Cardboard Hogs blog, I think it was. And then I came across Dick Cummings on Wrigley Roster Jenga. My collection would seem incomplete without it, so I splurged. (LOL, sorry guys.. first a weed post and now weiner jokes.. my blog may have gotten a little lowbrow lately.. I'll have to class it up more soon.)

I've already completed the rainbow for Brian Humphries' 2012 Bowman Chrome card, only missing some printing plates, so why did I add another red wave refractor to the PC?...

Christmas Card, that's why! Upgrade!
Not sure if/where Brian is playing this year yet. He doesn't seem to be on the roster for the independent Fargo-Moorhead Redhawks with whom he had a nice 2016 season.

Dexter Fowler helped the Cubs win it all last year, then cashed in for a big payday to sign with the Cardinals. I don't really collect him, but was impressed by him speaking out against the travel ban in the face of St. Louis fans bitching at him to shut up and stick to sports.

And it's a Christmas Card, too!

I love wave refractors. I already had a few various wave colors.. red, blue, black, orange.. but wanted to land an elusive green wave of somebody. Luke Jackson was the best name available for the price I was looking to pay.

Here's a weird 2016 Panini Father's Day relic card of Manuel Margot. It's a "player worn" gimmick, likely worn during that photoshoot and that's it, not game-used, but it was pretty cheap for a memorabilia card of a top rookie, #'d 16/25. And the whole atomic refractor look is kinda cool.

A Cecchini Brothers diecut.

It's the #'d 25/25 xfractor. I already had the 50/50 parallel (shimmer refractor), so it was neat to get the "last of the print run" of a couple different parallels of the same card.

A couple cheap autos. I don't really need anymore Gavin Escobar autographs, but at just a buck-fiddy, I couldn't pass it up. Plus he's pictured in a (whitewashed) SDSU Aztecs uniform. After a lackluster 2016 season with the Cowboys, Escobar signed as a free-agent with the Kansas City Chiefs for 2017.

David Denson was never quite a top prospect, but is known for being the first openly gay active player in affiliated baseball. After batting .212 last year in A-ball, he decided to hang them up and pursue a career as a personal trainer instead. Bummer he couldn't break through to the bigs, but all the best to him. Happy to pick up this refractor auto for my Pride PC minicollection. Cool signature, too.

We finish up with a couple refractors. Hunter Renfroe has been doing ok in San Diego so far. As I was ready to place my order, I still had 31¢ in my account over the needed $3.99 for shipping. Instead of saving it for next time, I searched for cheap cards to clean me out, and settled on this 2010 Bowman Chrome Mark Buehrle refractor. I remember seeing his name trending on Twitter a few weeks ago and thought, "Finally, a team wisely signed him. Still got plenty in the tank." But no, turns out he's still retired. He was in the news because the White Sox announced they're gonna retire his number.

That's it for today. I also picked up some set needs, but we'll save those for another post. Thanks for swinging by. I gotta go wash my sheets!

Dawning of a new era: Rainbow Brite Breakdown!

Welp, this has been coming for a while now. I'm sure you regular readers are aware of my obsession with Rainbow Brite, the enchanting doll/cartoon from the mid 80s. It has now overtaken my interest in baseball cards. So it was inevitable that this day would come. While bittersweet, it's time for me to announce that Baseball Card Breakdown will come to a close shortly, and this blog will henceforth be known as Rainbow Brite Breakdown, focusing solely on Rainbow Brite, with emphasis on Rainbow Brite collectibles and fan-fiction.

I'm sure all of you are just as excited as I am to begin this next chapter of The Breakdown!

I look forward to engaging in long, deep conversations with many of you in the coming months and years, sharing our mutual love for all things Rainbow Brite!

Yay!

Are you fo' real?? (Buybacks 'n' Bunt)

I haven't bought any 2017 Topps, neither unopened nor on the secondary market, yet as you can clearly see, somehow I was able to obtain some of those buybacks all the kids are crazy for. But wait! Take a closer look at the above photo. These are homemade buybacks! Pretty ingenious, right?! You can literally turn every card in your collection into a homemade buyback! All it takes is a pen and a dash of danger.

Sorry, guys, these ones aren't for sale, so don't even bother trying to talk me out of them. But feel free to make you own.

Switching gears to something slightly less stupid.. I've still been hopping on the Bunt app just about everyday since getting a smartphone around Christmas. While I still think it's crazy to consider paying for a picture of a card, it's kind of a fun way to kill a couple minutes during my morning public transportation commute. I wonder when they're gonna get 2017 digital cards on there.. still flogging the old 2016 design. Maybe I'll even try to figure out how to play the game aspect of the app once the season starts. It's my understanding it's sort of like a fantasy baseball thing?

But I suppose my true goal with Bunt is to score some rare cards on there that I can sell for a few bucks, then use that money to buy actual cards. I haven't attempted any sales yet, but maybe one of these days if/when I pull something big.

This might be my favorite digital card I've pulled so far. These were a special 1987 Topps Football insert set briefly available during Super Bowl weekend. I scored the Trout and the Braun. There's one on eBay right now for 99¢, so I guess this isn't gonna be the card to monetize my Bunt experience.

Some of my other favorite inserts:

Wound up with 3 of these Altuves somehow.

I believe this Gwynn was gifted to me by a cardsphere buddy.

And I also typically jump on the Star Wars Card Trader app most days after I check in with Bunt. It's pretty similar, though seems tough to pull anything special, and I have no idea what's up with the "game" aspect to it, I just open packs and hope for something cool. Again, it'd be nice to eventually be able to sell some of those fake cards to fund the purchase of real cards, but yeah, I like Star Wars so it's kinda fun to rip a digital pack. Here are some highlights from my lil' virtual SW card collection:

Cool.

I'm not necessarily trying to convince anyone to get in on the action, just scraping a post together out of some of my favorite digital cards. Don't worry, traditional cardboard collectors, I won't make a frequent habit out of posts like this.

While I'm not a huge hockey fan, I've also tried to find the Upper Deck ePack app, but couldn't find it. Is it not available on Android or something?

But yeah, Bunt, SWCT, and Twitter are mainly what I mess around on my phone with. I've resisted any dumb, addictive games as I don't want to get sucked into them. I used to play Mafia Wars back in the day and I got borderline unhealthy about it, pointlessly leveling up all the time. I can barely keep up with my Twitter feed. And yeah, I actually try to keep up with my Twitter feed. It might make me look like a jerk when I don't follow back someone who follows me, but damn, I can barely keep up with the accounts I follow already.


I'll end the post with a half-hearted plea...

I think Bunt "free digital pack" code cards like above were inserted in 2016 Bunt (physical) packs, and they're due to expire at the end of February 2017. If any of you readers have any of these sitting around unused on the cusp of being wasted, I'd be grateful if you could hook me up with them. Whether physically by snail mail or just scratch it off and email me the code, I'd be happy to put them to good use. I don't want them enough to, like, trade you good cards just for them, but if you're thinking of sending me cards before the month's out and have a couple to throw in, go for it. Or if you have a bunch and email me the codes, I'd definitely mark you down for future considerations.

Anyways, yeah if you have any of the expiring Bunt code cards you're not gonna use, let me know. Thanks!

funny cards from the card show

I threw a few cards onto my stack at the latest card show pretty much just because they made me crack a smile.. and they were cheap so why not?

When I see a Booty this nice, I just have to grab it. Aren't you jealous of my awesome Booty?!

I saw this one and read the bottom as "GOD DOUBLES" and I'm like... Damn, Topps! I know you've been sucking Ortiz's little papi all year long, but to deify the man?!

My favorite Nick Toon is probably Sponge-Bob. I used to kinda like The Fairly Odd-Parents, too. Rocko's Modern Life, if you wanna go old-school.

Isaiah Pead. When you say his name, it's a sentence. Coincidentally, I just watched an episode of The League last night from a few years ago where this guy's name was mentioned dozens of times. Is he still a good sleeper pick?

Ok, Chris Polk and Johnathan Franklin aren't really funny names, but I'm posting them here along with the other Crusade cards I picked up. They really are nice looking cards, regardless if Panini or the modern Leaf knockoffs. (The cards in this post are all available for trade, btw.)

Thanks for reading!

2016 Topps Preview from the Parallel Universe

[This is a recurring feature where we take a trip into the Parallel Universe to check out silly, fake highlights from a new set.]

It's that time of year again! 2016 Topps Series 1 officially releases tomorrow, 2/3, though some lucky collectors have been finding it pop up on retail shelves already. Once again, Topps brings out the big guns with exciting inserts and subsets to chase. Let's take a look some of these cards now!

One insert set that was a big hit last year were the First Pitch cards featuring celebrities and other notable folks who got to throw out the first pitch of a ballgame.

Collectors will be pleased to see this insert set return in 2016.

Well, hey now, that seems poorly timed.

Hmm. Well, let's venture on.


Another stalwart of Topps cards are team and combo cards, highlighting standout groups of players.

Hey, that doesn't even make any sense! Entirely inappropriate. Something is terribly wrong here.


Let's put that behind us and check out a brand new insert this year. It's called Pressed Into Service and features players who took one for the team by playing out of position in a pinch.
I'm excited for this one!

The hell?!! Topps has really made some curious decisions with this year's product! I can't see this card being very collectable at all.


Another special insert set for 2016 celebrates the 100th anniversary of Wrigley Field in Chicago. It's a legendary site for baseball, and regardless of your team affiliation, you've got to admire and cherish all Wrigley has brought to the game over the years.

Are you frickin' kidding me, Topps?!! Ok, that's it. I'm done.

The incredible thing is these are just 4 of the 27 different cards in 2016 Topps Series 1 that feature Bill Cosby in some capacity. Personally, I think this is a huge misstep for Topps, and shows the company is woefully out of touch with today's consumers. Will the gambit pay off? Only time will tell.

Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time.. here in... The Parallel Universe!!

Introducing the Stargell Braves meme

Yesterday I found this real photo of Willie Stargell as an Atlanta Brave and it blew my mind. I had never seen him in anything other than a Pirates uniform. It feels like catching your dad in drag or something.

Spurred on by a bottle of wine, I was compelled to make it into a meme and have been peppering different versions of varying levels of dumbness on my Twitter account for the past 24 hours. I otherwise didn't have a blog post ready for today, so here they are in roughly chronological order.

Around this time, Tony L. looked it up and verified that Pops was indeed a coach in the Braves organization for a few years, even coaching a young Chipper Jones. I imagined it probably went a little something like this:

Then I went on an A&G tangent:

UPDATE: one more.

I think it'd be cool if the card-collecting world had a popular meme of our own, so please create and share some yourselves and maybe this'll catch on. The site I've been using is Meme Generator (it's free and easy) and the original pic is at the top of this post. Go nuts!