Opening Some Series 1 Thanks to College Football

Who would have thought that a random Bowl Game played in December would land me some baseball cards in mid-February. 

Prior to bowl season, Kerry over at Cards on Cards hosted a really cool contest for the eleventh straight year! It was a classic college football bowl pick 'em with a small twist. You picked your bowl winners, but also placed a confidence rating on each game, which rewards you with more points for games you rank high on your confidence scale. It's pretty simple: There are 41 bowl games. You make your win/loss picks on all 41 games. Then, you rank the games 1-41 on how confident you are that your pick will be correct (41 being the highest, 1 being the lowest). Your most confident pick is worth 41 points. Your second most confident pick is worth 40 points, and so on. 

It was my first time in a contest of this style and I had a blast. I didn't win the contest overall although I *thought* I did pretty well. I was in the 84th percentile of all ESPN participants but finished 11th place out of 29 participants in our pool - which was apparently loaded with college football experts!

There was a neat little side contest that asked participants to guess the winner of the Belk Bowl as well as the final score. As a casual Kentucky football fan, I was pretty confident in the underdog Cats. I was one of few who took them - and although my score prediction of 24-14 was well under the final score of 37-30, it was the closest guess of those who took a chance on UK. 

For the prize, Kerry was kind enough to send a 2020 Topps Series 1 fat pack my way. I don't typically bust open a large amount Topps Flagship so this was a really great way to get my fix. I haven't shown any Series 1 on the blog yet so I'll use this opportunity to share my thoughts on the product.

34 cards to get into. 

Only one Pirate but I'll certainly take it. I think Archer could be primed for a comeback season. He can't get much worse than he was last year, but I'm really hoping he can return to his days of owning a three-point-something ERA. 

As for the base design, it's fair. I am a big fan of borders as long as they're done right. I feel like flagship always has a border, so this is some interesting new borderless-territory. For a design without borders, it certainly works. The photography is great but it's not Stadium Club!

2018 Cy Young Winner Blake Snell on a really nice looking 1985 Topps 35th anniversary insert. I like the foil stamp. The only Pirate that shows up in this set is Roberto Clemente

Turkey Reds are back in the 2020 set, and I got two hot names. I'm a big fan of these cards coming back. They also come in the form of Chrome parallels. I haven't held any in-hand yet, but as a guy who loves all things shiny I'm very eager to see them. The set is 100 cards and features two Pirates, Josh Bell and Chris Archer, so I will likely try to get my hands on those. 

Thanks again to Kerry for hosting the contest again, this pack was really fun to open.

Busting three Mega Boxes of 2019 Topps Chrome Update

I have been itching to get my hands on some of these boxes ever since they began to emerge a few weeks ago. Topps Chrome Update is a retail exclusive to Target - which theoretically would be great for me. There's a Target about a mile from my home and it's on the way to and from work. They do a great job of stocking cards there as well, so I felt like my chances would be decent. I stopped in often but it was to no avail. 

I started to lose hope. How many times can I stop in a Target for baseball cards? In addition to stopping in to the store, I also stayed tuned to the Target App. I finally got lucky and some boxes popped up late last week. Not only that, they were on sale for $17.99 each. Being a RedCard member gives me free 2-day shipping. I wasn't planning on grabbing more than a box or two, but the killer price inspired me. I pulled the trigger on three, totaling $55 delivered to my door.

I'm not going to go pack-by-pack here. Just the highlights. I only hit one Pirate - #87 Josh Bell ASG. I was really hoping to hit #29 Bryan Reynolds. I'd love to trade for it if anyone has one.

I was fortunate and hit on most of the top rookies. #38 Keston Hiura, #22 Carter Kieboom, #86 Pete Alonso ASG, and #54 Fernando Tatis Jr. Rookie Debut.

More rookies, #42 Cavan Bigio, Vlad Guerrero Jr. Family Business Insert, and #62 Keson Hiura.

Now, on to the "hits," if you will.

On the left is a Griffin Canning x-fractor, #/199. x-fractors fall 1:93 packs, so I beat the odds here and was fortunate to pull this. On the right is Lane Thomas refractor #/250. Refractors fall 1:74 packs so I beat the odds here too. Interestingly, you have the best odds on hitting an autograph, which fall 1:40 packs, which are awesome odds for retail. 

I also this pulled beauty. Walker Buehler x-fractor #/199. I really love this card. Buehler is a super likable guy and already one of the best pitchers in the game. Add in the ASG graphic and the All-Star Rookie graphic - icing on the cake!

Overall, this was tons of fun. I'm big on Update and I'm a chrome guy so this is one my favorite releases of the year. I really love that refractors and x-fractors are serial numbered. I'd rather pull one of these for a decent player than a no-name auto. Lots of great stuff to stash away to re-visit in a few years.

2019 Bowman Chrome Hobby Box Break

It's that time of year! The time when I randomly get an email from UPS telling me that a package is going to be delivered to me in a few days, and I start to wonder what the heck it is. I ponder for a minute and then I remember that it's the box of Bowman Chrome that I pre-ordered months ago. It's become somewhat of an annual tradition for me: Sometime in the summer I pre-order one box of Topps Chrome and one box of Bowman Chrome, and it becomes a nice little surprise a few months later.

This year, Bowman Chrome took a different route with Hobby: 

• A standard Hobby Box is referred to a "Master Box."
• The Master Box contains two Mini-boxes (broken out in the two pictures below).
• Each Mini-Box contains 6 packs, 5 cards per pack, one auto.
• 12 packs total, 60 cards, two autos.

The cover artwork features a man who crushed his 50th home run last night. And Fernando Tatis' son.

On to the highlights:

Sam Hentges Chrome Refractor /499. Hentges is a 23-year old lefty who spent the year in AA with the Akron Rubber Ducks, the AA affiliate for the Indians. He finished the year with 5.11 ERA. 

(L) Tommy Wilson Purple Refractor /249. Similar story to Hentges. 23 years old, spent the year with the Mets AA affiliate, the Binghamton Rumble Ponies. 4.96 ERA.

(R) Garrett Whitlock Purple Shimmer. #27 Prospect in the Yankees system. 

Brandon Bielak base auto. #11 prospect in the Astros system, and seems to have some good upside. 11th round pick out of Notre Dame in 2017. He was pitching in AAA this year, so his arrival may come sooner than later.

Blaine Knight Refractor Auto #/499. #16 Prospect in the Orioles system. This 23 year old weights in at a whopping 165 pounds, so he could certainly add to his 6'3 frame. He was a third rounder in the draft this year and from what I've read, a live arm.

So there we have it. Overall, this was a fun break. All of these cards will be going directly into storage and I'll revisit them down the road. Unless you hit a unicorn, that's the attitude you have to have with Bowman Chrome. Store them away and revisit in a few years. Patience is a virtue in collecting. I've learned that the hard way, like the time I flipped a Giannis rookie relic in 2014 just to reimburse the cost of the repack I found it in. Man... what I would give for a 5-year rewind with that one.

2019 Topps Chrome Hobby Box Break

A few months back, I placed a pre-order for one 2019 Topps Chrome Hobby Box and one 2019 Bowman Chrome Hobby Box. This has become somewhat of tradition for me. I always place the order a few months in advance, I forget about it, and I'm usually pleasantly surprised when I get a UPS notification about a package shipping.

The Topps Chrome box just showed up yesterday and I was able to dive right in. 

My card collecting peak was 2013-2015 and for that reason, I really miss full borders on Topps Baseball cards. Starting in 2016 they moved away from borders and now they take the images right to the edge of the card. Minor complaint, just a matter of preference.

In the spirit of being picky, the Last Name-First Name format is an interesting call. I can't recall the last time that Topps went this direction. Not something I really care about, merely an observation. 

Overall I'm a fan of the base card design. It's clean, and there's half of a border. We'll take it!

Kicking us off is one of the most promising young pitchers in the game. Man, I hope this kid pans out and recovers well from Tommy John. There's no reason to believe he won't. I've found myself pulling for the White Sox because I really want all of these prospects to pan out. They committed to the rebuild 110% and it would be nice to see that pay off.

I was lucky enough to pull three Pirates - and they're all over the map. This is only my second Colin Moran card, the other is his rookie auto from 2013 Bowman Chrome when he was donning a Marlins jersey and a clean shave. Kevin Kramer is still in the wings as one of the next-up AAA prospects and will likely be up next year. 

My two autos, both Rookies. Certainly nothing that will blow me away - but this box wasn't a total loss. Ryan Borucki is a new name to me. As a Pirates fan I very rarely catch any AL baseball unless they're on national TV... hence why I haven't seen a Jays game all year. Brad Keller is more familiar to me because I've streamed him a few times on my fantasy baseball team. He's been acceptable or better for KC and seems to have a future in the MLB. I'll hold onto these two and hope for the best.

These two are arguably bigger "hits" than the two autos. Full transparency, I actually had no idea that the card on the right was a refactor until I took this picture. Nailed it!

Really happy to see the Polar Bear show up twice. I'm pulling for this guy and hoping he's here to stay - I'd hate to see a sophomore slump. The Mets are starving for a bonafide slugger like him. 

Anddd this is officially a Mets box and that's quite alright because this a sweet card. You have to love when a parallel color blends perfectly with the team colors. Nothing like black or gold parallels for the Pirates, blue parallels for Dodgers/Rangers, red parallels for the Cards, etc. etc.

This card is the perfect example. It's numbered to 25, and according to my research, this is a photo variation.

Overall, a nice little break. Thanks for reading!