2013 Press Pass Showcase (NASCAR)

This is my first post to A Pack to Be Named Later, so I thought I would do the very first pack I opened after I created my own blog, Cardboard History back in November. I mostly collect the NBA, NASCAR and some Non-Sports cards, and I like to talk about them...a lot.

Showcase was a Super Premium product, with a retail price of $225 a box, which is only three packs plus a one card bonus pack. Luckily, Dave & Adam's marked them down to $99, so I had to get one.

This was what came out of the very first pack I opened of the set, in it's 5th and final year of release-

The box is a fake leather/rubber with holofoil printing. It's kind of cool in it's own right. It kind of feels like a cross between a tire and a brand new leather shoe.

The pack itself is not all that impressive, but I doubt many people save them, as I do.

The very first card out of the box is an insert printed on clear acetate plastic. It would turn out there was one clear insert per pack.

The second card out turned out to be my favorite in the box. Dale Earnhardt Jr. has been my driver since 1999, when my first favorite Ernie Irvan retired, and this dual relic is a nice one, with large pieces of firesuit and sheet metal.

The next card out of the pack was the only base card. Oddly enough I got Mark Martin. Somebody had sent me Mark's base card from the 2009 or 2010 set several years ago, I don't remember who or which set off the top of my head, but it was the only other Showcase base card in my collection.

The penultimate card is a subset and I happened to get Tony Stewart. The serially numbering on this one is hard to see, but each and every card in the set is numbered, with base cards being numbered to 349.

The last card out of the set is the parallel. Each pack had one parallel, and all three of mine in the box were the most common, gold parallel. The golds are numbered to 99. I was able to pick up a red numbered to 10 as a single a week after I got the box. Being a Dale Jr. parallel, I was happy.

And that was the first pack. I was overall happy with the pack, however I probably would not have been particularly happy with the box at $225. There simply aren't enough cards to make that price point justifiable to me.
If you'd like to see the other two packs, I detailed the entire box here. Fronts only, though.

Thanks for reading, and I'm looking forward to sharing more pack breaks with A Pack to Be Named Later in the future!
Billy