Five Months of Mail Roundup!

2021 and the start of 2022 has been busy for me and I've once again neglected the blog. I've still been buying, selling, and collecting, and I've got some fun stuff to show off from recent pick ups. Let's get right to it:

 

Henry Davis - 2021 Bowman Draft Refractor

 

Baseball America released it's farm system rankings recently, and the Pirates are back near the top of the league at #3. That's what you'd expect out of a rebuild. GM Ben Cherington has depleted nearly the entire Major League roster in favor of prospects, and we're seeing the result in the cardboard world with lots of Pirates prospect cards. 2021 #1 overall pick Henry Davis is certainly part of that, and he's one of the blue chip prospects in 2021 Bowman Draft. Thanks to a TCDB trade, I was able to grab this as well as a regular base chrome.

 

 

Ke"Bryan Hayes - 2021 Topps Chrome RC

 

I've been collecting as many of Ke'Bryan Hayes' rookies as I can, both from flagship and chrome. I've got 5-6 of each so far through TCDB trades. If you've got any, send them my way! 

 

Ke"Bryan Hayes - 2021 Topps Rookie Cup RC Auto - Foil /90

 

This is the only Hayes autograph that I have in my collection at the moment since his prices have skyrocketed. For some reason, his 2021 Rookie Cup autographs are very affordable compared to other products. I am absolutely obsessed with this card - the horizonal style is perfect and it has a clean, on-card signature. The foilboard looks great. I'm still hunting a good price on the same card, gold #/50. 

 

2016 Bowman Draft - Bryan Reynolds Auto Refractor /499

 

While this may seem like an unassming Bryan Reynolds Bowman First autograph, there's something very speical about this particular card...

 

 

Ebay 1/1!!! Serial #10, Reynolds jersey number. I'm usually not one to caresabout these types of things, but as a Reynolds "super collector" of sorts, this was a special find for me. It truly does it make it one-of-a-kind for me, and I was willing to pay a little over value for the "ebay 1/1."

 

 

Bryan Reynolds - 2020 Topps Chrome Gold Refractor /50

 

I'm getting a little closer to my 2020 Topps Chrome Bryan Reynolds rainbow. Today's mail included the gold #/50, which had been on my wish list for a few months. Annoyingly, for several of the parallel colors, Topps did both a "gold /50" and "gold wave #/50," or "green /99" and "green wave /99." This is creating a little extra work for me, but I guess I could look at it glass-half-full because it's more for me to chase. Not counting the Superfractor, the complete rainbow is 17 cards, and I'm sitting at 11. I still need:

• Green /99
• Blue wave /75
  
• Orange /25
• Orange wave /25
• Red /5
• Red wave /5

 

 

 

Any leads on those are appreciated. Moving on to basketball:

 

Anthony Edwards - 2020-21 Panini Mosaic RC

 

 

Immanuel Quickley - 2020-21 Panini Przim Red Cracked Ice  

 

Obi Toppin - 2020-21 Panini Przim  

 

LeBron James - 2014-15 Panini NBA Hoops Silver #/399 

LeBron James - 2018-19 Panini NBA Hoops Silver #/199

 I've been lucky to pick up some basketball retail through Target online, which is a nice change of pace from never finding retail for the last two years. I was able to get a few Mosaic blasters, and I was happy to find the Edwards rookie, although my other breaks were largely duds. 

The Quickley cracked ice was an eBay purchase under $10, and Toppin was pulled from a pack. I'm a huge fan of this year's Prizm design and an even bigger fan of the photo on Toppin's card. If you've watched a Knicks game this year, you'll recognize that as as his post-dunk celebration.

As for the two LeBrons, those were two needed additons to a small LeBron project that I'm working on. The goal is to get my hands on a silver parallel from every year of Panini NBA Hoops in whoch Silver parallels were printed. After a hiatius, Hoops returned in 2011-12, and Silver parallels began to emerge three years later in 2014-15. With the addition of the two above, I am just two away from completing the "set" of eight cards - I need 2015-16 and 2021-22. 

Thanks for reading!

Cheap Fun Breaks Mystery Box Break

For the second month in a row, I decided to purchase a Mystery Box from Cheap Fun Breaks:

Despite getting close many times in the past, I’ve never actually dabbled with mystery boxes. Many collectors/breakers have tried to create them and sell them over the years, but I can’t recall any that any have had lasting success. I think the biggest issue with these products is that you rarely have an accurate idea of what types of packs you’ll be getting, so there’s always the risk of lots of junk packs and non-licensed brands. It also seems like mystery boxes rarely include hobby packs. Couple these factors with trepidation over legitimacy and trustworthiness, and it’s usually best to stay away.

 

I have been ordering hobby boxes from Blowout Cards since 2013, and on the rare occasion I join a group break, I usually use Cheap Fun Breaks, run by JBrooks and Houdini who are affiliated with Blowout. All experiences with Blowout have been great, so I took a stab at a Mystery Box in July, and I was very happy with the contents. I ordered again for August and decided to recap on the blog.

 

Each box is $200, which is in the ballpark of what you’ll fork over for a hobby box these days. The mystery boxes typically contain an assortment of hobby packs from very recent releases. You are promised at least $200 in “sealed” value, and you will have a good idea of what types of products will be included, so there’s no real surprises. For August, potential packs included: 2021 Topps Chrome, box hobby and jumbo, 2021 A&G, 2021 GQ, 2021 Museum Collection, 2021 Bowman Sapphire, 2021 S2 Jumbo, 2021 Bowman hobby and jumbo, 2021 Heritage, and a few other older releases. 

 

Here's what I ended up with:

 

Not a bad mix! There were a few certain packs that I hoped to see, and I was perfectly fine with a big chunk of Topps Chrome.

 

I did some math (cross multiplying is sweet) to calculate my odds of getting some hits. Topps Chrome hobby has an autograph in every 12 packs, so with seven packs, I could expect .6 hits, if you will. In TC jumbo, you’ll find five autographs in each 12 pack box, so three packs should yield me 1.25 hits.

 

Allen & Ginter has three hits in each hobby box of 24 packs. With four packs, I should expect .5 hits, so it would be fair to expect a 50/50 shot at a hit.

 

Here’s how it went:

As you can see, I was very lucky and beat the odds big time with both Topps Chrome and Ginter. Nothing here is too spectacular, and none of the rookies are big names. Regardless, it’s always fun to pull some rookie autographs as you never know where these guys careers may take them. It’s also nice to pull some hits out of a mystery box. I have full trust in the product, but it never hurts to have some reassurance that there’s no funny business with pack searching, or something of the like.

 

The 2021 Topps design works much better with Chrome than it did on the paper cards, in my opinion. The silver borders are clean. On card autographs are also a big plus. The Ginter hits are underwhelming, although the Chapman relic does have a pinstripe, if you look closely. Always nice to get more than just a white patch on a relic. Aside from hits, I also pulled a few other noteworthy cards:

 

Some refractors from some “veterans,” including a Pirate who is having *abysmal* season.

A few noteworthy rookies.

 

 

These two cards may very well be the best pulls from the box. Both players have showed flashes of excellence this year, albeit very inconsistent. Bohm has been terrible defensively and the Phillies have had a hard time justifying keeping him on the hot corner. His power has also been down, but he’s made a ton of hard contact and by no means has been an easy out. It’s always exciting to pull some rookie parallels, so I’ll be stashing these away.

 

To wrap it up, this was a really fun rip. I’m well aware that I got lucky and beat the odds with hits. I’ll do my best to prevent that from creating a bias. Bottom line, there are less fun ways to burn through $200 in this hobby and I fully endorse grabbing Cheap Fun Breaks Mystery Box. Thanks to JBrooks and Houdini for creating the opportunity to purchase and enjoy these boxes.

The Knicks are in the Playoffs

It's been eight years since I've been able to say those words. It feels great. I was hoping to get this post up prior to the series start, but I'm a little late and the Hawks already have a 1-0 lead. Last night's loss was brutal, it really felt like the Knicks were in control starting in the middle of the third quarter. A would-be turnover eluded R.J. Barrett, and it turned into a momentum-swinging three pointer by Bogdan Bogdanovic with 55 seconds remaining. 

Despite the loss, it was still thrilling to watch the Knicks in the postseason. No one, myself included, expected the Knicks to finish over .500 or contend for a playoff spot. The Knicks truly are playing with house money, and I keep reminding myself of that. I'm also very optimistic about Game Two at MSG on Wednesday night. The home court advantage is very real, and I don't see them losing two straight at home. 

The blog crowd seems to be 75% baseball fans, so I try to keep my basketball posting to a minimum. This is a special occasion. My Knicks PC is pretty small, mostly because we haven't many players worth collecting. It seems like the leadership in place has a plan to win, and the team is becoming more collectible.

My scanner is jacked up, so we'll have to settle for cell phone photos today:

R.J. Barrett - 2019-20 NBA Hoops RC

Julius Randle is undoubtedly the star and the leader of the team, but I believe that the team goes as R.J. goes. Randle has been attracting a ton of attention from opposing defenses and it frees up a lot of space for other scorers. There are plenty of solid role players, but R.J. has star potential. 

The remainder of my R.J. rookie cards - I have at least one copy from most major releases, aside from Prizm.

I also have a few R.J. cards from 2019-20 Prizm Draft. The middle card is a Purple Refractor, and the card on the right is a Green and Yellow Prizm, #/249.

Immanuel Quickley - 2020-21 NBA Hoops RC

The jury is still out on the the Knicks first first-round pick in the 2020 draft - Obi Toppin - but it certainly looks like they hit on their second first-round pick, Immanuel Quickley. I watched every game this dude played in at Kentucky, and I was hyped when the Knicks grabbed him. He put together a stellar rookie year and finished fifth amongst rookies in scoring. 

There's no rhyme or reason from here on out - I'm just going to show off some cards at random. Alonzo Trier is out of the league, but he made a nice little splash with the Knicks in 2018-19, and Panini printed the sh*t out of his rookie cards. The Randle and Mitch-Rob cards are blue velocity parallels from 2019-20 Donruss Optic. They are sweet looking with the matching team colors. 

Some random rookies - the Shumpert is #/599. The Gallo card is cool - he got a nice start to his career with the Knicks, but he's made more of a name for himself elsewhere.

I pulled the Kadeem Allen autograph out of a retail pack last year, which was cool. I didn't love him as a player - he was one of those guys that probably belonged in the G-League, but stuck around the big league roster to help with the tank. 

I traded for the Toppin rookie on TCDB, and I've had the David Lee auto in my PC for a long time. He was a favorite of mine back in the late 2000's when he was a lone bright spot for the Knicks. One year, he averaged 20 ppg and earned himself an All-Star nod. I was happy for him when had sustained success with the Warriors and went on to win a ring in 2015. 

A selection of my childhood heroes - all of those are pack-pulled by me in the 90's. Gotta love the Allan Houston insert. 

I don't have much 'Melo - but here are a few. 

Finishing up with some more randoms. Looks like I got the wrong Antetokounmpo, but still fun to see that name on a card. 

Thanks for stopping by. Here's to hoping that the Knicks can bounce back on Wednesday night and make a series out of it.

The Pirates Don't Suck (Yet)

Baseball season is underway. Somehow - by the grace of god - the Pirates aren't doing nearly as poorly as expected. With this afternoon's win over the Twins, the Pirates have raised their record to 10-11. Pre-season projections had the team winning 60 games - so some quick math tells me that 10 wins in 21 games projects to 77 wins in 162 game season.

We will actually win 77 games? No shot. The rebuild is full swing, and we'll be sellers at the trade deadline. After we ship out some of our consistent role players for prospects (I'm looking at you Adam Frazier), I imagine August and September will be rough.

Regardless, this has been a fun start to the season, and I am elated to have baseball back on my television. To celebrate, let's check out some of my recent Pirates pickups:

Bryan Reynolds - 2020 Topps Allen & Ginter Chrome Gold Refractor #/50

After a miserable 2020 campaign where he hit below the Mendoza line and looked like a shell of the player we saw in his rookie year, Bryan Reynolds is back to his old self. With this add, I'm now up to 38 unique Reynolds cards.  Not only was this a nice addition to my Reynolds PC, it's also another great add to my Pirates Gold Room. I know many collectors are experiencing "chrome fatigue" and aren't thrilled bout Ginter chrome. I didn't buy any boxes of it but I think this gold parallel is a beauty. 

Tyler Glasnow - 2017 Topps Chrome Rookie Debut Gold Refractor #/50

Speaking of gold parallels,  I was able to add this Tyler Glasnow card to my old PC for a reasonable price. As he continues to dominate, I'm not sure how many more of his cards I'll be able to snag. 

Nick Gonzales - 2020 Bowman Draft Paper

Nick Gonzales was the Pirates first round pick in last year's draft at #7 overall. He's a big time prospect, so collectors of all types are clinging to his cards. I was able to acquire this through a TCDB trade. This is my first Gonzales card and I hope it's the first of many. 

Phillip Evans - 2018 Topps Stadium Club Autograph

(L) Phillip Evans - 2018 Topps RC

(R) Phillips Evans - 2018 Topps Rainbow Foil RC

The Pirates have a handful of new faces in the everyday lineup, one of whom is Phillip Evans. Evans made a quick debut with the Mets in 2017 and 2018 but it only amounted to about 50 plate appearances. He spent all of 2019 in the minors before making his way back to the show with the Pirates last year. Across four seasons, he's still only played in 63 games, making him a widely unknown name. I was able to trade for all three of the cards above on TCDB. 

David Bednar - 2020 Topps Foilboard Rookie #/264

While this certainly isn't the flashiest of my recent pickups, it might be my favorite. Bednar, a Pittsburgh native, was part of the trade return for Joe Musgrove. Bednar isn't a big name but he's pitched very well for the Pirates and has earned himself a look in high leverage situations. He's a Pittsburgh native and has quickly become a fan favorite. The foilboard parallels were added exclusively to Wal-Mart complete sets, and they're one of the prettier parallel finishes that I've seen. 

Joe Musgrove - 2018 Bowman Chrome RC Refractor #/500

When Joe Musgrove was dealt to San Diego over the winter, I let go of several of my Musgrove cards, including most of my autographs. I had too many, and his cards were fetching a decent price right after the trade.... Fast forward to last week when he threw the Padres first ever no hitter. I had immediate seller's remorse. Nostalgia washed over me, and I hopped on eBay to see if I could find a cheap rookie. For $6, this is what I came up with. It's nice to have a shiny Big Joe rookie back in my collection. 

Thanks for stopping by.

Box Break and Review: 2019-20 Panini NBA Hoops Premium Stock Hybrid Box

The Pirates are not a good baseball team right now. They're fully committing to a rebuild and I'm OK with it. They're trading away their major league talent for very young prospects, so there's not a ton for me to chase in the baseball world. Couple that with the fact that the card market staying red hot, and it's caused me to spend most of January "hobby time" selling as opposed to buying cards. 

As my cards funds have built up, I wanted to treat myself. In a shameless effort to continue milking the 2019 rookie class, Panini decided to re-release 2019-20 NBA Hoops during the 2020-21 season with a new product called NBA Hoops Premium Stock. It's NBA Hoops as we know it with two changes: New photography, and a chrome finish.

I'm a sucker for chrome, and NBA Hoops is one of my favorite basketball products. I had my eye a box of this for a while, and was excited to get a decent-enough price on Blowout to pull the trigger on a "Hybrid" box, aka, a Hobby Box.

Each Hybrid box only contains 24 cards. There are no guaranteed autos, which is unusual for a hobby box, but Hoops has never been an autograph-centric product. In this instance I'm totally OK with it. A guaranteed auto would jack up the price, and there's a 99% chance I'd pull a no-name.

One thing I love about the Hybrid boxes is that all of the cards are Flash parallels, pictured above. They pop off the card a little more than the standard chrome and have a rainbow refractor glean to them, along with the north-south striping. These are your "base cards" for a Hybrid box, but they are not true base cards. The true base cards exist in the retail products and have more a standard chrome finish. Think: Topps Chrome.

Here's an example of the standard chrome from eBay:

Here are all of my veteran base cards:

Getting just 24 cards isn't ideal, but the fact that that all cards are guaranteed to be Flash parallels is cool. No one too notable here except SGA.

While we're looking at the veteran base cards, I'll take the time to point out a major printing flaw that unfortunately made an appearance in my box. See the image above, and notice the lines that I circled in red. Those thick solid lines on the border of these four cards are not supposed to be there. They're so well centered in the middle of the card that at first glance, they almost look as if they're part of the design. Sadly, they are not.

To be fair, I was warned about these flaws prior to purchasing. I saw some pictures on Twitter that showed some of the print flaws. I got the box anyway and figured "It won't happen to me!" And of course it did. Live and learn.

Here we see the Flash Red parallels. Cool to pull a Knick, would be better to pull a Knick that plays more than 0.0 minutes per game.

This one is my favorite of the three Reds. The Tribute cards are part of the base set, but have a nice throwback design. Sweet picture of Iverson.

I pulled one Green Flash parallel, which is numbered to /99. 

I also pulled a Purple Flash parallel, numbered to /35. I'm excited that it's a rookie. Quinndary Weatherspoon certainly wouldn't be my first choice for a short printed rookie, but I'll gladly take it. The Spurs have done a fantastic job of developing young players lately - Keldon John and Lonnie Walker come to mind - so this could be a good card to stash away.

Each box promises two Silvers. Both of mine were vets.

Here are my rookies. Kabengele and Schofield are still waiting to see some real minutes. Alexander-Walker has worked his way into the Pelicans rotation and has been a solid role player for them this season.

The Wizards suck, but one of their bright spots is their young forward, Rui Hachimura. He's awesome and this is a sweet card.

This one definitely felt good. Zion is undoubtedly one of the guys you want to see when opening a 2019-20 basketball product, and this card alone makes the break worth it for me. For a while, hitting a Zion meant the card went straight to eBay to help reimburse your box/pack purchase. Selling this on eBay today would earn me back about 25-30% of my purchase price, and that's not worth it to me. I think we're transitioning into "hold" territory with Zion. 

And you know why it's best to hold? Because Zion isn't the hot new thing anymore. He's not a prospect. Therefore the value of his cards is declining. The hilarious part is, the dude is actually panning out. Remember all that hype around him? Well, it's actually happening!! The hype was real! He's 19th in the league in PPG, 30th in RPG, and 9th in FG% - in what is essentially his first full season. Better yet, he's been fully healthy and hasn't any injury concerns. He has a real chance to be an All-Star this year.

But, he's not a rookie anymore! He's not the next big thing! So no one cares about him anymore. I think I'll hang onto this one for a while.

Each box promises one Rookie Photo Variation per box, which is an enticing offer since the rookie class is so loaded. Here's mine. Doumbouya hasn't seen a ton of minutes for Detroit but at least he's a consistent part of their bench rotation. Detroit is bad - very bad - so I hope they'll give him a bigger role and to see what they have in him. 

REVIEW:

Overall Design: The Hoops design is always clean, and this year is no different. The new photography and chrome finish only add to the appeal for me, and I really love the Flash parallels.

The Hits: No guaranteed autographs or memorabilia products. Hits will come in the form of short printed parallels. You could also make an argument that the top rookies are hits. With a good amount of color and a loaded rookie class, there's plenty to chase here.

Positives: Card design, checklist, array of parallels. 

Negatives: Potential printing lines on cards, no guaranteed hits, recycled product/money grab by Panini.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10. This is a really fun product. There's no question that Panini is "pulling a Topps" here, if you will, by slapping a new card stock on an existing product. I'm not upset about it. In this case, they took a product I already love and made it better. I was leaning towards a rating of 9 out of 10, but the print lines are definitely a real problem and seem to be relatively common. That earned a half point deduction. Otherwise, there aren't any major drawbacks. It's not a perfect product, but it's pretty awesome. It's definitely expensive, but compared to other 2019-20 basketball products it's actually pretty affordable. Grab it if you have the means.

Thanks for reading!