Friday, August 31, 2018

2017-18 Panini Prizm NBA


Last time, we looked at a Prizm pack from a few years back. This time, let's look at one from the most recent season. This was from a blaster purchase. Those things really flew off the shelf!


155 - DeMarre Carroll - Carroll is a solid player on a very sad Brooklyn team. He notched career highs in points and rebounds per game, and shot at a decent clip from the 3 point line. He's shown with his previous team here.


269 - Raymond Felton - Another player who switched teams to begin last season. I have nothing good to say about him.


37 - Kawhi Leonard Fundamentals - Leonard famously feuded with Spurs management and didn't really play last season. It'll be interesting to see what he can contribute with a new team.


59 - James Johnson - I'm not sure what's going on with the uniform here. Did he make it himself at home?


Here's a look at the back. It's nice and clean and unfortunately shows the same photo as the front. Good ol' Panini.

Sunday, August 26, 2018

2014-15 Panini Prizm


Panini Prizm is all the rage these days in basketball cards. Star player rookie cards and their various parallel versions are going for outrageous prices, so the packs themselves can be difficult to find. I happened upon an older Prizm pack recently (repack? I think?) and saw that one from 2014-15 hadn't been posted here yet.


189 - Eddie Jones - Like many of their other sets, Panini pads these with retired players, and not always obvious names like Eddie Jones.


139 - Cody Zeller - One of the tall Zeller brothers. I think this was the first season of Charlotte's rebranding as the Hornets, the namesake of their old franchise that moved to New Orleans.


28 - P.J. Hairston Rookie Autographs Prizm (250/499) - Hey, this is interesting. I'm never all that excited about sticker autographs, though, but it's better than nothing. Some Charlotte fan would have been pretty pleased with this pack. I'm more of a Blazers guy, though.


60 - Nikola Vucevic - Vucevic is still one of Orlando's top players. He's wearing a '90s throwback jersey on this one.


Here's a look at the back!

Saturday, August 25, 2018

2018 Topps Big League Rack Pack

Greetings!

Hope everyone is doing well and is ready for the weekend.  Being on a pretty strict retail card budget means some sets get priority over others.  During the course of the year I stick to Opening Day, Topps Flagship, and the occasional Stadium Club purchase (because of the quality of the set).  I pretty much stay away from the other sets because of price (Heritage, Archives), the unknown (Bowman), and the logo-less (Panini).  Sure, a sale or phenom could cause me to make a brief detour, but that's usually the plan.

I did buy some Bunt when it was around, because it was a cheap get.  When I found out Bunt was being replaced by Big League, I figured a brief detour would be necessary, since it should be cheap, as it was targeted to the kiddos.  Unfortunately, it wasn't the case...2 bucks for 10 cards and 5 bucks for the 30-card Rack Pack.  Still, I tried a few.  Here's the best of the Rack Packs!

The best?  Foreshadowing...
There's 400 cards in the checklist, and there's not a whole lot of inserts...that's kinda kid friendly, right?  I mean you don't want your 10 year old to have to hunt down 25 parallels of his or her favorite team's middle reliever.  Anyway, here's what I got:



#90 – Didi Gregorius
#312 – 2017 AL Walks Leaders

The card border isn't bad, and I believe the blogosphere prefers the 3 players on 1 League Leaguers 
card as opposed to the current setup in Flagship.  

More foreshadowing...
#19 – Matt Olson
#353 – Ballpark Landmarks:  Guaranteed Rate Field

The Ballpark Landmarks are a cool subset (not an insert).  Unfortunately, there's only 15 cards for it 
and the Cubs gets two cards.  Too bad all the ballparks aren't represented.




#123 – Jorge Polanco
#364 – Ballpark Landmarks:  Oriole Park at Camden Yards

The B&O Warehouse was constructed by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad...yes, the Railroad on the
Monopoly board I could never land on.


#223 – Mike Zunino
#188 – Orlando Arcia
#170 – Daniel Murphy
#179 – Reynaldo Lopez

The blogosphere also appears to approve of the player breaking out of the picture and into the 
border.  I still can't believe Murphy made it through waivers to the Cubs.


#65 – Matt Harvey
#376 – Edwin Diaz
#68 – Edwin Encarnacion

Harvey was already on the Reds by the time Big League was released, and he was almost 
traded to the Brewers by the I got around to posting this.  Nice bat flip shot on the Encarnacion card.


#269 – Justin Verlander
#237 – Ben Gamel
#209 – Andrelton Simmons

Verlander had a pricey bill to pay off today.  I mean, thirty bucks for pancakes?


#286 – Yuli Gurriel
#62 – Robinson Cano

Cano is one of the players who has a Players Weekend Nickname Image Variation in the set.  The 
Variation is part of the set and uses the card number of the featured player.  Oh hey, it's Players 
Weekend this weekend!


#112 – Clint Frazier (RC)
#363 – Ballpark Landmarks:  Miller Park


#144 – Nelson Cruz
#304 – 2017 AL Runs Scored Leaders

Good for Topps for using a different picture for Judge.

OK, enough foreshadowing...

#1 – Aaron Judge
#315 – 2017 NL Batting Average Leaders
#40 – Yoan Moncada

It's an Aaron Judge hot pack!

Big League puts the insert / parallel cards at the end of the pack, as opposed to the middle...


#353 – Ballpark Landmarks:  Guaranteed Rate Field (Red Foil Parallel 1/1)

Correction...it's a Big Hurt Hot Pack!

When I came across this, I was initially pleased to get a Red Foil parallel of a pretty nice card, but I 
did not know the Red Foils are 1/1s!  I did a triple take when I saw the 1/1 in the upper right.  This is 
probably the best card I have ever pulled from a retail pack.  If I read it right, according the back of 
the pack, the odds of pulling a Red Foil is 1:1015.


#104 – Jose Altuve (Players Weekend Image Variation) 
#111 – Paul Goldschmidt (Gold Parallel) 
#349 – Mariano Rivera (Gold Parallel) 

#265 – Stephen Piscotty (Gold Parallel) 

The Players Weekend card comes 1 in 3 packs.  You get 3 Gold Parallels in a Rack Pack.

Here are the backs.  The "Did You Know?" blurbs are a fun read, so I stacked several cards so those 
with excellent vision can read up on some of the players in the pack:


Anyway, that's the pack.  The excitement of pulling a 1/1 has yet to die down, and the fact that these cards can be found in retail packs certainly gives hope to the regular collector.  Have a great weekend, and thanks for reading!

Tuesday, August 21, 2018

2009-10 Donruss Elite


In 2009, Panini had just been granted an NBA license and took over some brands from Donruss/Leaf/Playoff/whatever. This is one of their earlier efforts. I believe I found this pack on a Bi-Mart shelf just this year, which is interesting.


34 - Corey Maggette - The Warriors uniform here really dates this set. Also, Corey Maggette! He was one of the original one-and-done players at Duke.


91 - Thaddeus Young - Young is still a rotation player in the league and played 81 games last season for the Pacers.


18 - LaMarcus Aldridge Prime Targets - At some point, I would have been pretty excited to pull this card. That was before Aldridge spurned the Blazers and went to San Antonio. I miss those red uniforms.


59 - Daequan Cook - Perhaps it's from their decades of making album stickers, but Panini cannot design a decent card back to save their life.


17 - Shaquille O'Neal - Hey, it's Shaq! Shaq was on his late career tour of random teams at this point. Next stop, Boston?! Did that really happen?

Thursday, August 16, 2018

50 Assorted Texas Rangers cards

I got a pack 50 random Texas Rangers cards at Fannz shop in Arlington. Let's see what randomness comes out of it. Will be split by year and set. I end up getting one extra card.
1981 Topps: 339 - John Ellis
1982 Topps: 335 - Jim Sundberg
1983 Donruss: 163 - Steve Comer; 215 -Buddy Bell
1984 Topps: 12 - Billy Sample
1985 Donruss: 587 - Jeff Kunkel
1986 Topps Traded: 68T - Mickey Mahler; 125T - Mitch Williams
19 Fleer Minis: Rangers Logo; 76 - Pete O'Brien; 81 - Larry Parrish - I didn't know Fleer came out the mini version of this set
1987 Topps: 497 - Dale Mohorcic; 514 - Orlando Mercado; 550 - Pete Incaviglia - Ink managing Sugar Land Skeeters of Atlantic League where they are on top of division standings
1987 Donruss: 136 - Don Slaught
1988 Topps: 26 - Mitch Williams
1988 Score: 251 - Scott Fletcher
1988 Donruss: 346 - Bob Brower; 347 - Larry Parrish; 470 - Dale Mohorcic
1989 Topps: 137 - Geno Petralli; 345 - Charlie Hough; 565 - Jeff Russell
1989 Donruss: 521 - Ray Hayward; 529 - Jerry Browne
1990 Fleer: 305 - Rick Leach; 306 - Fred Manrique
1990 Donruss: 142 - Julio Franco; 343 - Kevin Brown
1990 Leaf: 311 - Kenny Rogers
1991 Topps: 277 - Scott Coolbaugh
1991 Donruss: 46 - Kevin Belcher - his 16 games in 1990 is his only MLB experience
1991 Fleer: 294 - Jamie Moyer - I swear "ageless" players have played for Rangers once.
1991 Score: 377 - Bill Haselman - current manger of Oklahoma City Dodgers
1992 Topps: 398 - Julio Franco; 567 - Dean Palmer
1992 Topps Stadium Club: 57 - Kevin Reimer
1992 Fleer: 690 - Julio Franco - led the AL in batting average in 1991
1992 Upper Deck: 179 - Gary Pettis - sliding into Billy Ripken
1992 Leaf: 119 - Julio Franco - showing frustration. Not the only time a Rangers player showing attitude in this set. See Geno Petralli.
1992 Score: 767 - Rob Maurer - only got 21 MLB games in two seasons
1993 Donruss: 27 - Brian Bohanon
1994 Upper Deck Collector Choice: 142 - David Hulse - am I safe?
1995 Upper Deck Collector Choice: 397 - Rick Helling - got the "silver signature" card
1997 Donruss Preferred: 26 - John Wetteland
1998 Fleer Ultra (Notables): 5M - Juan Gonzalez - Insert set card
1999 Upper Deck: 502 - Juan Gonzalez - about crank one of the park
2003 Victory: 96 - Hank Blalock - they turned this set to playing cards



2016 Topps Bunt: 88 - Cole Hamels
2017 Topps: 233 - Nomar Mazara

A very random 50 cards.