2015-16 Panini Revolution Basketball

 Panini has resurrected another great Pacific brand of old, Revolution and this set is all about the shiny. There are autographed cards to be had, but there are no autos guaranteed per box.  As a matter of fact I think autos fall 5 per case or so.  Anyways I've included the odds from the wrapper below and to be honest you might need Panini's guide to the parallels you can find it here on their blog

 So 5 cards per pack so this won't take long.  I got three base cards.

 This Johnson Stanley rookie is an Infinite parallel, 1:6 packs.

 And this Chris Bosch is Cosmic Parallel numbered to 100.

Overall the cards look nice and are super shiny, much like the cards were in the original Revolution sets.  But I found a lot of my cards had a lot of edge issues on the back.

1988 Topps Big Baseball Series 2

Topps introduced Big Baseball set in 1988 splitting it to three series. The cards are slightly much larger than regular cards they put. The back consist of player highlights and tidbits in cartoon picture form. Inaugural set consist of 264 cards. Series 2 consist of cards 89-176.

For those who open packs of 1988 and 1989 Topps will get these ad cards selling you items such as t-shirts. They now evolved to cardboard art.

154 - Mike Davis - enlarged player's face on one side while action shot in the other. Back of card shows his full name along with one line stat and cartoons. Notice the fielding stat box on lower right corner. That is ahead of its time where they now cram how many different stats on back of card these days. Nice shot of Davis swinging. Looks to be at spring training site.

132 - Curt Wilkerson

173 - Pat Tabler - when I think of him I immediately go to 1988 Fleer card of him and Mark McGwire together.

93 - Tom Candiotti - knuckleballing

158 - Kevin McReynolds

114 - Mel Hall - got picked off and into prison

99 - Lou Whitaker - along with Alan Trammel made one of greatest 2B-SS combo of the game.

So far this pack is a dud

2016 Topps Opening Day Jumbo rack pack

 Ah it's right around the corner.  Baseball!  So why not celebrate with a nice big pack of Opening Day??!

 All of us know that Opening Day is just Topps lite.  Smaller checklist and the Opening Day logo.  Here's my lone Brewers card.

 And the rest of the base.

 The Horizontals

 And a few more that didn't fit on the scanner in the first round.

 I didn't end up getting one of those rare Opening Day hits or even a mascot card, but here are the three inserts I did get.

I always think it's kind of sad that I like the inserts from Opening Day better than those from the Topps Baseball.  There you go, nothing too exciting, but were only a little over a week away from the real Opening Day.

2016 Donruss Baseball Jumbo Pack

Donruss is back for another year.  Will Panini surprise us with a Series 2 like they did in 2014 or not bother like they did last year?  Who knows?

 While I was out shopping I notice they had both the jumbo rack packs and a box of regular retail packs.  The retail packs were $2.99 for 6 cards, the jumbo was $4.99.  I think we can all see the reason I picked the jumbo pack.  Plus in the jumbos you pretty much get one of each insert also a big selling point.  Lets have a look.

 Once again Panini does a great job recreating the boring borders used by Donruss in the 80's.  Like years past there is also a smattering of retired and HOF players mixed in the checklist.  195 cards in the set seems like an odd number, why not just bump that up to an even 200?

 Here's what the backs look like.

 Like years past Diamond Kings and Rated Rookies are numbered into the base set and both are short printed again.  But it looks like you do get one per jumbo pack.  The first 30 cards in the set are DK's and the next 15 are Rated Rookies.  I ended up pulling the Bison and the other guy they're excited about in Chicago.

The one thing Panini sure didn't do was shake things up.  Pretty much all the inserts they brought back for the 2014 and 2015 releases are featured in this set again.

The Prospects

The Rookies

Studio.  Huh this guy again.  For some reason I'm a fan of the Studio inserts.  Maybe it's because Panini really doesn't have to do any airbrushing or color changing.

The one of the new inserts are the Donruss 1982's or D82's. I got Paul Goldschmidt.

Like all major releases there are plenty of parallels to find.  I ended up pulling a nice bubblegum pink D82 Trout.  Not too shabby.

When I buy retail I'm not looking for hits.  They are few and far between, but it's always nice when you find one.  I had to go look up Snell here.  Blake has won some pretty significant minor league awards the last two years and was promoted to the Ray's 40 Man roster this year.  And from what I've read is a promising young talent.  Plus that's a decent size swatch.