A Pack To Be Named Later: 2006 Topps Series 2 Rack Pack

Tuesday, July 08, 2014

2006 Topps Series 2 Rack Pack

Greetings!

Hope everyone had a fun 4th of July weekend. Let's put a quick one up tonight. Time to clean out the scanned pictures folder a little...it's a rack pack of 2006 Topps Series 2!

This is the 6th (!?!?!?!) pack of 2006 on the site, not counting the Update series. A couple of years ago, Madding posted a Series 2 rack pack in a different configuration. This one has 18 cards and 3 vintage (aka junk wax) cards that were ever so much popular to include in packs back in the day. Let's see what we got:

Top Section:

#505 – Jason Schmidt

#510 – J.D. Drew (back)

#615 – Arizona Diamondbacks

#494 – Kip Wells

#539 – Juan Rincon

#508 – Danny Haren

#530 – Carlos Guillen

Back in 2006, you could call Dan Haren Danny. These days, we still refer to Kip Wells as, er, Kip...or does he go by Robert now since he's out of baseball?

Middle Section (covered in an extra wrapper to protect those vintage cards):

#544 – Mark Bellhorn

#501 – Emil Brown

#TP-JT – Jim Thome (Trading Places)

#MHR46 – Mickey Mantle Home Run History

No# - Sluggers Fantasy Baseball card (not pictured)

1989 Topps #724 – Jerry Don Gleaton

1989 Topps #509 – Bud Black

1989 Topps #627 – Greg Harris

Checklist 3 of 3

No# - Work Hard, Get Cards (not pictured)

It's real 1989 Topps cards! And real late '80s mustaches!

Bottom Section:

#549 – Erik Bedard

#486 – Wily Mo Pena

#453 – Daniel Cabrera

#648 – Brothers Orlando

#512 – Eric Milton

#526 – Ryan Wagner

#450 – Derrek Lee

Anyway, that's the pack. Hopefully we can close the book on 2006 Topps. More later...thanks for reading!

Wednesday, March 07, 2012

2006 Topps Series 2 Rack Pack

Written by madding at 1:26 AM

Long before the internet was a thing and before online redemptions were a byproduct of said thing, Topps was celebrating their 40th Anniversary by supposedly randomly inserting vintage cards in their (no longer) wax packs. Not only was 1991 the height of the gluttony of the junk wax era, but it was also the year I spent working in a card shop as a young, impressionable high school teen with vices like candy, MTV and arcade games. I bought enough of those packs to fill up half of a monster box and sold enough of those packs to other customers and friends to fill up a closet or two. I didn't know anyone or even hear of anyone who pulled any of the vintage cards.

Still, I assumed that every pack held a small chance of pulling a pristine Mickey Mantle card from the '50s, no matter how preposterous that may have seemed even at that time. They've tried some things recently that have taken a bit of the luster off of that dream, but one of the things that brought me back into this baseball card thing was the shiny rack packs Topps produced in 2006 that included three "vintage" cards in every pack. This was the perfect thing for someone willing to toss around a few bucks for old time's sake. I get to see the latest players of the day and get a few familiar reminders of my past collecting days.

Well, the last thing I need right now in 2012 is more 2006 Topps cards, but seeing one of these rack packs with a "power pack" price of just $1.59 on the shelf at Target means that I'm stuck with it anyway. We may as well take a look...

590 - Joe Maddon (Maddon's picture was either taken on a really foggy day or inside of a Biodome. Buuuudddy.)

466 - Jay Payton

520 - Carlos Beltran (Beltran is one of the newest Cardinals. It will be interesting to see how much he can contribute. The Cards struck gold with Lance Berkman last season, but Beltran doesn't quite have the track record that Lance did.)

611 - Colorado Rockies

592 - Mike Hargrove

400 - Vladimir Guerrero (Guerrero might be the most underrated slugger of the past twenty years, if you simply look at traditional stats.)

460 - Randy Johnson

392 - Sidney Ponson (Nothing is more 2006 than seeing a Sidney Ponson baseball card.)

442 - Craig Monroe

422 - Aaron Cook Gold 0448/2006 (I'll never get sick of the Topps gold parallels.)

MHR99 - Mickey Mantle Home Run History 99 (These, however...)

219 - Joe Coleman 1977 Topps (Hey, it's the '70s. I can't complain about that, even though Coleman's a Cub.)

414 - John Pacella 1981 Topps (I seem to remember that the vintage cards were usually all from the same set, but maybe my fuzzy memories are fuzzier than I thought.)