A Pack To Be Named Later: 2009

Monday, December 28, 2009

2009 Bowman Chrome Football Retail

Here we go, short and somewhat sour. 3 cards, $2.99, one rookie per pack.

#41 Fred Taylor

#25 David Gerrard

and our one per pack rookie is...

#146 Aaron Maybin

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

1997-98 Upper Deck Collector's Choice Series 1 Memorable Moments Edition Basketball

And I'm almost done with the NBA repack box (finally! right?) as this will be pack 7 of 8. As you may recall, there was already a pack from this set posted earlier, but this is a 5 card pack with at least 2 guaranteed insert cards. I wonder how a pricing structure like this might work today. You either get a ton of base cards and barely anything to speak of in the insert/parallel department, or you get an insert-heavy ratio. Of course, I have no idea how this stuff was priced when it came out or how you could obtain either kind of pack.

6 of 10 - Jason Kidd Memorable Moments (These are pretty nice looking, although I can't stand Jason Kidd. They have a sort of wavy die cut look to them.)

SQ37 - Rasheed Wallace Star Quest * (That's supposed to be a single star. I couldn't find anything else on the keyboard to replicate it. Apparently there are multi-star versions of this stuff that perhaps represented what is now "common", "rare", "ultra rare" etc. these days. I loved 'Sheed as a Blazers, although they could have chosen a better picture here.)

6 - Antoine Walker (Antoine Walker was pretty huge for a spell. I actually didn't even hate the Celtics back then. I remember Walker being on the cover of one of the NBA Live games. Specifically, I remember the commercials with "Cyber-'Toine" in them. It was pretty hilarious. I should try and find that on YouTube someday.)

187 - Clarence Weatherspoon

131 - Hersey Hawkins (Hawkins had a nice 14 year career in the league and is now the Blazers Player Development Director.)

One more pack to go and I swear I won't post any more basketball for a long time... or maybe a few days.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

1994-95 Flair Series 1 Basketball

On we go with pack 6 of the 8-pack basketball repack I bought some time ago. I think I erroneously mentioned that last pack was pack number 4 when it was, in fact, number 5. I regret the error. These cards came in a box, though, which is something I've never dealt with before. Usually I'm quick to toss a pack wrapper in the trash, but I am having a hard time throwing this one away.

51 - Billy Owens

80 - John Salley (Salley was incredibly annoying as a TV personality. I sort of wonder what he's up to now, but I am not curious enough to look him up on Wikipedia.)

154 - Tom Gugliotta (Gugliotta was seemingly on his way to stardom after being a high draft choice in 1992, but he had "tall white guy" and "Washington Bullets" standing in his path.)

35 - Jamal Mashburn (Mashburn had a monster rookie season, but I feel like he fell a bit short of his promise. The backs of the cards are almost indistinguishable from the fronts. You only get one picture instead of two and there are stats there as well.)

147 - Jay Humphries

169 - Mark Price (Team USA was still riding high after the big Dream Team of 1992. I'm not sure how many Team USA cards were in this set or if they were harder to come by than regular NBA cards.)

116 - Charles Barkley (Chuck is threatening to become better known for his TV persona than his actual playing career, which was pretty impressive.)

111 - Shawn Bradley (I was hearing on the radio tonight that there's a 16 year old high school girl out there who stands at 6'11" and is still growing.)

94 - Benoit Benjamin

2 of 10 - Patrick Ewing Scoring Power (Pretty nice insert card here. I always liked Patrick Ewing for some reason. His game was pretty ugly, yet he was incredibly effective. I guess that's what I appreciated.)

Saturday, December 19, 2009

2008 Topps Heritage - Hobby

This product is getting close to two years old, and with the popularity of the Heritage brand I was really surprised to see that no packs had been busted here at A Pack to be Named Later.

This is a hobby pack from a double box break I have featured over at Phungo.

Baseball Flashback

2008 Topps Heritage #BF7 Baseball Flashback Brooks Robinson

This was not the top card in the pack. For the 2 boxes I opened, in every pack the insert/sp/chrome/relic was the 7th card I think. There are 6 insert cards per box on average this card would fall into that category.

Base

Click to Enlarge
#183 Yuniesky Betancourt
#303 Tim Lincecum
#327 David Ortiz
#327 David Ortiz (b-side)

The top 3 cards have a some star power with Ortiz and Lincecum.

click to enlarge
#329 Detroit Tigers Team Card
#260 Carlos Zambrano
#98 Jon Garland
#333 Kevin Kouzmanoff

The second half of the pack features a Phungo house favorite in Kevin Kouzmanoff and a pretty good pitcher in Carlos Zambrano.

And for the sake of completeness here is the wrapper for this pack.

For a look at a Buy Back card that came within the case from which this pack was pulled please see the preceding post.

2008 Topps Heritage Original Buyback Card - 1959

As you are likely aware half of the 2008 Topps Heritage Hobby Boxes contained a buy back card from the original 1959 Topps set. Above you can see the wrapper that houses the buy back card. If you click to enlarge this you may be able to see the team logo on the card through the wrapper. It is just left of the '59 on the 50th anniversary emblem.

I could tell this was a the 50s era Red Sox logo before opening the package - so no chance of pulling a 59 Mantle, Gibson or Hank Aaron for me.

Buy Back

1959 Topps #161 Frank Baumann 1959 Topps #161 Frank Baumann Buy Back

I have been building the 59 Topps Set and I was hoping to get a card that I do not have yet, but as luck would have it I pulled a Frank Baumann buy back of which, I already have an original. The Buy Back is in slightly better collection, and I expect to keep it just so I can show comparison shots as the one above. Baumann had a pretty decent eleven year career with both the Red Sox and White Sox. He won the ERA title in 1960 which was his best season when he won 13 games. During the 1961 season he knocked out both of his two career homers. One of those homers was hit on July 13th 1961 in a game where both Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris hit homers.

I have details of the rest of the 2008 Heritage double Box Break up at Phungo.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

2004 Fleer Patchworks

I thought I'd take a break from all the amazing NBA packs I've been posting here. Here's a little something I picked up for $1 at a card show last weekend. Hey, it's got Pujols on the wrapper, so it's alright with me.

- Checklist (Well, that's not a good start.)

19 - Rafael Palmeiro (I wonder if there are very many Palmeiro player collectors anymore.)

66 - Barry Zito

5 of 15 BN - Eric Gagne Behind the Numbers (The numbers were very, very good for Gagne once upon a time.)

44 - Curt Schilling (Bleh.)

30 - Pat Burrell

Not my favorite set in the world, but it was fun to get an insert card, even if it was Gagne. I think I still need the Pujols from this one. Maybe I'll try again next time.

Monday, December 14, 2009

1997-98 Upper Deck Collector's Choice Series 1 Basketball

And we're on to pack 4 of the series that nobody asked for (i.e. the NBA repack that I bought) and this one is a doozy. Doozie? Doozy.

24 - Chris Mills (Not to be confused with Chris Mihm.)

64 - Kobe Bryant (Guh, I hate this guy. And the Lakers. But especially him.)

66 - Corie Blount

180 - Seattle Sonics NBA Game Night '97 (These are interesting cards featuring a collage of the key players on the team.)

179 - San Antonio Spurs NBA Game Night '97 (This was coming off the year that the Spurs tanked the season to get Tim Duncan. David Robinson was hurt and Dominique Wilkins ended up being the leading scorer.)

193 - Michael Jordan Catch 23 (How annoying.)

199 - Checklist Challenge (UD decided to make checklists a "challenge" by not including the card numbers. Hilarity ensues.)

152 - Harvey Grant (The lesser known of the Grant brothers decided to wear goggles to be as cool as his brother, Horace.)

147 - Roy Rogers (Yes, Vancouver is putting on the Winter Olympics soon and yet they couldn't even sustain an NBA franchise.)

142 - Karl Malone

137 - Doug Christie (Yes, I know this is a different team, but I saw that the Minnesota Timberwolves wore retro uniforms the other night. Considering that I can easily remember the beginning of their franchise, that seems mildly hilarious to me. Besides, who would want to relive those days, anyway? And yet their team seems in no better shape right now than they did when they were an expansion team. Hey Raptors, do you feel like bringing back the dino unis for a few games? I didn't think so.)