2013 Topps Pro Debut

One of those packs that was hard to get for some reason. Never found it in hobby shops til I went to place around Grapevine, TX. Eight cards in a pack. I will post their current whereabouts along with major league stints.

124 - Mark Montgomery - still with Yankees organization; currently in AAA

55 - Matt Magill - currently with Reds AAA team. Played 6 games with Dodgers in 2013

125 - Javier Baez - in the majors with Cubs after tearing up minor league level. Got pop but have hot and cold streaks at the plate.

PDA-LB - Lisalverto Bonilla - nice autograph card. Currently with Dodgers AAA club. Played 5 games in the majors for the Rangers in 2014 with 3-0 record.

212 - J.R. Graham - picked up by Twins in Rule 5 draft getting in 39 games last year. Played one game this year before getting sent down to the minors. Traded few weeks ago to Yankees who sent him down to AAA team.

100 - Gerrit Cole - in the majors as the Pirates ace and an All-Star appearance last year

6 - Nick Williams - one of five players traded to Phillies for Cole Hammels and Jake Diekman last year. Currently in Phillies AAA team.

28 - Robert Stephenson - still with Reds organization playing for AAA club. Got small taste of the majors playing 2 games this year before getting sent down.

Six of eight cards been to the majors, but two of them currently on major league roster.

2004 Pacific Hockey

One team has punched their ticket to the final round. Congrats San Jose. One more game left for the other conference. And Random selected 2004 Pacific Hockey.

Pulled this from a hockey repack box I picked up at Target. This was released the year after the Devils won the Cup, so not sure why the Stars got the cover. A whopping 8 cards in each pack and you get a variation or insert in each pack. Chance of a game used. Did I hit one? Well, let's look.

Very Score in it's look. The player's name is in foil, along with the logo at the top. Nice full bleed cards, and the photos are decent. Just short of UD in quality.

Yeah - a Blackhawk. But it's Zhamnov. At least you have the best sweater in all sports on the card. Bonus points for the Sunoco logo. Being this is a photo from the 02-03 season, this is actually a road game for the Hawks. If was the 03-04 season that the teams switched to color at home. Sunoco is the giveaway as there are no Sunoco gas stations in this neck of the woods.

Decent old sweater for the Wild, but the pants being a lighter color than the top is not right.

Got an insert. Decent one in Selanne.

You may know his more talented older brother. Marcel is currently playing in Europe.

Who? Mattias had just 127 games in the NHL with New York and the Wild. He finished his career in Sweden and Russia.

Pavol was a semi successful player for five different teams in the NHL. In 2010 he left the league and signed on with Lokomotiv Yaroslavl, becoming an unfortunate member of the doomed club.

I really didn't have much to say about Jeff here. Yes, the sweaters are ugly, but I didn't want to beat that horse. Then Jeff's Wikipedia page mentioned his wife is a former Redskins cheerleader. Which gives an excuse for this:

And if you still give a crap about the back of the card...

New photo. Full career stats. Short paragraph about his playing time. No mention of his cheerleader wife.

I'm in the wrong career.

2016 Score Football Jumbo Retail Pack

I do believe this is the first NFL product of the year and Panini's first as the sole NFL card manufacturer.  Panini taking a cue from Topps and making sure you know all about it with it being printed all over the pack.  By far the best value if your just looking for base cards and a few inserts are these retail jumbo packs.  Over the last couple of years Panini has transitioned Score from it's bottom of the barrel low end football product to it's flagship football set.  330 base cards and 110 "rookies".  I used the term rookies loosely as this product was released a week before the NFL draft so all the "rookies" are featured in their college uniforms with their college teams.  So I have a hard time calling their cards rookie cards until there listed under their NFL team.  Ahem.  Lets have a look.

Mr. Jones here was my lone Packer of the set.  Overall the design looks very Toppish.  Still probably a little too much border, but it's getting there.

The backs too have a nice clean look.  It would have been nice to have a second photo on the back instead of a crop copy of the front.  Here are the rest of the base cards.

You might have noticed that there were a bunch of player from the same team right next to each other in the scans.  That's how they came out of the pack.  You get 6 "rookie" cards per jumbo pack, at that rate I'd have to open 18.3 packs to get them all and hope for no dups. Yikes

There are a bunch of inserts to chase if you're a completist.  And there are a gazillion parallels as well.  First up the man of glass Tony Romo and his Signal Callers base insert.

Out of the 5 inserts in the pack 3 were parallels. I'm glad I'm not chasing any of these.  Here is Jarvis Landry's Green Chain Reaction insert.  All these insert parallels are unnumbered, but there are jumbo versions that I'll assume come as hobby box toppers that are numbered.

Here is a gold version of a Chain Reaction insert.

And a gold version of the Franchise insert.

I'm probably going to do the fool hardy thing and try and put this set together.  So if you have any "rookies" you want to get rid of let me know.

2013 Topps Series 2 Rack Pack

Greetings!

Hope everyone is doing well and enjoying their weekend.  Long time, no type, but every time I saw no new posts on the site, there'd be a new one up from one of our esteemed contributors by the time I got around to accessing Blogger.  And as I said before, I'd rather let a new post have it's day in the sun.

Here a pack gathering e-dust in the Scan Folder...it's a 2013 Topps Series 2 Rack Pack!

Borrowed from the Interwebs because I can't find my scan.  Thanks Interwebs!

You've all seen the cards before (and I apparently was the official poster for 2013 Flagship cards on APTBNL), so these won't be a big deal.  It's been gathering e-dust because apparently did not type up a card list when I first scanned them, so who knows if these are actually in order (I'm just going by the file number).  So, using the picture and a checklist...here's what I got:

#506 - Andy Pettitte
#563 - Nate Eovaldi 
#389 - Phil Hughes
#548 - John Lackey
#644 - Ryan Lavarnway
#397 - Mike Aviles

Moving on...

#551 - Wellington Castillo
#592 - Nick Markakis
#343 - Alex Avila

#557 - Adam Lind
#661 - Hyun-Jin Ryu (RC)
#474 - Brian Omogrosso (RC)
#390 - James McDonald
 

#541 - Jon Lester
#652 - Jonathan Lucroy
#510 - Nate McLouth
#375 - Wilin Rosario

#484 - JohanSantana
#527 - Carlos Beltran
#553 - Josh Rutledge

#654 - Brandon Barnes (RC)
#359 - CC Sabathia
#CH-79 - Hank Aaron (Chasing History)
#CH-60 - Derek Jeter (Chasing History)

If I remember right, the Chasing History inserts in the rack packs had a tint to them.  The Aaron looks pretty nice.
 

#TM-96 - Jason Heyward (Topps Mini)
#430 - Josh Harrison (Target Red Variation)
#621 - Steve Cishek (Target Red Variation)
#594 - Carl Crawford (Target Red Variation)

#CH-59 - Fred Lynn (Chasing History)
#MM-10 - Wilin Rosario (Making Their Mark)
#CD-6 - Mike Moustakas (Chase It Down)
#419 - Matt Moore (Gold #???? / 2013)

My quest to organize my collection has taken a hit, so I have no idea where the Moore card is.  When I find it, I'll update the post.

#363 - Sergio Santos
#603 - Chris Perez
#415 - Leonys Martin
#403 - Hisashi Iwakuma

That took longer than I thought it would.  Finally, here are the backs:

Anyway, that's the pack.  Enjoy the rest of the weekend, and thanks for reading!