2013 Panini Hometown Heroes

When all is said and done, it really should be me ripping and opening a pack with "heroes" in the name. 2013 Panini Hometown Heroes is a jumbo packs only release - you get a handful of cards with each purchase. We have the usual lack of logos, but it's such a fun set that most of the cards don't bother me.

Such a good retro-ish look to the wrapper. 24 cards in a pack and inserts galore. I'm not up for 24 scans, so let's triple our eye candy with each pass of the scanner.

With the pennant, you have the feel of 1965 Topps, but the background has a bit of '58 in it. Throw the bright colors of Delong Gum and here you have '13 Hometown Heroes. Good mix of current with some of the 2nd tier stars of the late 60's through today.

Case in point. When is the last time Walton, Samuel or Coleman had a release in a set? The lack of logos is pretty evident, as well as a city only designation for each player.

The La Russa is one of the few where the lack of a full MLB license can produce a really bad card.

Andre Thornton. Does it get more B "celebrity" than that?

There are times I wonder who was cropping these pictures. Sheets, Heyward (and Utley in the last group) are way too far left and it feels like the card will topple over.

Hit the Yankee New York trifecta with those three cards.

Sorry LA fans - get your own Lopes. Here are a couple backs.

As you see, it doesn't matter your length of MLB service, you get one line of your career totals with a nice bio paragraph. So that is the base of the pack. Of the packs I have bought, it seems to be 21 base and 3 inserts. The inserts for this pack...

I have bought 9 packs (10 to a box) and have pulled a total of 4 autographs. They come three to a box, so I am ahead of the odds. Some autographs are stickers, but a far amount are hard signed. I like this set. I hope to complete it via dime boxes. Nick - let me know where you find some.

Topps Best of WWE 2013

Topps with another WWE product. It's called Best of WWE 2013 Edition. Decide to be make this different featuring cards of top 10 "moments" of this fed voted on WWE.com and stuff that happened on shows from 2012 and 2013.

Top Ten Rivalries - Triple H vs Randy Orton - no. 7. I remember this feud in 2009 because Randy Orton booked like a psycho attacking every McMahon including Stephanie who finally revealed to be Triple H wife in real life. After a great build (who didn't enjoy Orton RKOing Stephanie or kissing her in front of Triple H who was handcuffed to the ropes?) they proceed to have a boring main event at Wrestlemania 25.

For those who don't keep up both are now friends (don't ask, its wrestling where friendships are broken and remade) because Triple H thinks Randy Orton is best for the business.

 Top Ten WWE Champions (Modern Era 2002-2013) - Eddie Guerrero - No. 8 on this list. A feel good story after escaping his personal demons. I enjoy his championship run on Smackdown and help made JBL whom he lost the title to. Sadly he passed away in eight years ago.

Top Ten WWE Champions (Modern Era 2002-2013) - The Miz - really? Other than main eventing Wrestlemania 27 he been on downhill slide. He's currently on ill-fated babyface (that's good guy) run.

Ted DiBiase Rejects The Prime Time Players - footage from RAW Classic episode where RAW went retro with classic old logo and blue ring, ropes, and apron. DiBiase was on ringside with PTP who end up losing to Team Hell No. After the match DiBiase shoved $100 in mouth of Darren Young. I'm pretty sure Young has more things enter his mouth than bills. Just a nothing moment.

Mick Foley Pins Chris Jericho at the Hall of Fame Ceremony - another lame nothing moment

 Triple H defeats Brock Lesnar at Wrestlemania 29 - strangely I still haven't seen WM29 to this day. I heard this match was good. This was second of third match they have within 9 month span.

CM Punk vs Vince McMahon - now this moment deserves to on Best of set.Cocky champion who claims to be the best in the world vs owner of WWE. Both had fun match together which was throwback to Attitude Era.

Promising set but missed the execution of it. Maybe they add extra "useless" best of moments to fill out a card set.

2001 Topps Archives Series 2

Long ago, Topps Archives was a beautiful thing, rather than the floppy mess of a tribute set that it is today. I think we're still better off with it in its current state than without it, but it's never going to be my favorite set to collect until they somehow find a way to not make it seems like it's a compromise. This set is all about thick reproductions of older Topps cards with a glossy finish for some reason. And there's the gold logo. Not bad!

348 - Clete Boyer (1971) - Like many of these cards, the classicly fickle 1971 design looks a little weird with all of the gloss.

398 - Bill Buckner (1988) - When you think of Bill Buckner, you think of him as an Angel on an '88 Topps card, right? No? Didn't he do something in the playoffs at some point?

397 - Cecil Cooper (1988) - It's weird that 1988 Topps was considered worth "archiving". I have a full 1988 Topps set that I would sell to anyone for $5 if it didn't cost triple that amount just to ship.

433 - 1961 AL Batting Leaders (1962) - I think I got the card number right. They are seriously hard to read as Topps tried to make them as small as possible as to not intrude on the design of the original card they were remaking. Floating heads = always great.

449 - Robert Clemente World Series (1972) - Such a great card and... hey, look, that's somebody's blurry backside!

231 - George Kell (1952) - George Kell was a famous broadcaster and Hall of Fame player. The 1952 design never gets old... just ask Topps!

242 - Roy Face (1953) - I do prefer the 1952 set design to the first(ish) Topps issue. My girlfriend loves Roy Face, or his name at least, for reasons which I cannot really explain here.

229 - Bob Feller (1952) - Whenever I think of Feller, I think of an article from an old Beckett magazine that I had when I was a kid that was titled "He was a pretty fast Feller".

2003 Fleer Tradition Retail

Greetings!

Ten years ago today, this happened:

The Wifey and I were sitting on the first base side and we all thought briefly that Moises Alou caught the ball.  It's a shame what happened to that kid.  That's all I have to say about that.

Here's a pack from that year...2003 Fleer Tradition Retail!

I don't see the old Target discount sticker on the back, so I assume it's from a repack box.  It's a 485 card set with 100 of those cards being Short Printed.  Here's what I got:

No # - Sluggers Card (not pictured, but you can see it in the picture of the pack above)
#162 - Felix Escalona
#192 - Shea Hillenbrand
No # - Checklist (some player's knee)
No # - Fleer dummy card (not pictured).

Pretty plain-looking cards, but that's the point since they were honoring the 1963 set.  My 2 year old Beckett says there are checklist cards of Derek Jeter and Barry Bonds, so I guess you have to get a bunch of checklists in order to put the puzzle together.  I'm assuming I got a Jeter card.

#273 - Mark Kotsay
#232 - Damon Minor
#215 - Jeromy Burnitz

Sorry for the scanner eating the borders again.  Moving on...

#301 - Roger Clemens
#321 - Fernando Tatis
#413 - Jose Rijo
#448 - Marcus Thames (Prospect)

Not a very exciting pack.  I did get Jeter's leg and a one-time sure Hall of Famer, so at one time it was a decent pack.  Here are a couple of card backs:

Anyway, that's all for now.  Enjoy the playoffs (how about that Ortiz grand slam with Torii Hunter flipping over the wall?) and thanks for reading!

1997 Skybox Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Profiles

Greetings!

Hope everyone is doing well.  Yesterday marked my 2 year anniversary posting for APTBNL.  In keeping with tradition, I must briefly veer away from posting a sports pack and move into the realm of television entertainment.  I found a pack of this at the local Dollar Tree a while back...it's a pack of 1997 Skybox Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Profiles!

At first I was pretty excited to find this pack there, as this set came out towards the tail end of my TV show card set buying days, and I did not get many packs of this.  I had a glimmer of hope that there'd be more of these packs lying around and I could pick more up.  Unfortunately, when opening the pack, I heard the familiar cracking sound us card collections hate to hear.  You all know what happened next.  Here's the pack:

 #7 - Kai Opaka's Memoirs of Sisko
#17 - Gowron's Memoirs of Worf
#25 - Shakaar's Memoirs of Kira
#44 - Changeling's Memoirs of Odo

As expected, the Sisko card came out fine, but the rest have that glossy stain on them.  This pack's the victim of being packed in and untouched for what, years?  Ouch, quite depressing.  Here's the rest:

#1 of 9 - Quark's Bar (O'Brien & Bashir)
#59 - Episode Synopsis:  Tribunal
#68 - Episode Synopsis:  Little Green Men
#79 - Mardah's Memoirs of Jake

According to the back, this is an 81-card set.  The Quark's Bar cards come 1 in every 3 packs.  As you can tell by some of the card descriptions, this set is meant to give insights into the DS9 characters, given by his or her co-workers, friends, and enemies.  The episode cards are specific to the character, helping to further flesh them out.  For some reason, I enjoy the Jake Sisko showing his mack-daddy skills card.

Here are some of the backs:

Since the Jake card was the last card in the pack, the back of his card is spared from the damage.

Anyway, that's the pack.  More later.  Here's to the next year of posting on this site.  Thanks for reading these past couple of years!

2007 Upper Deck Series 2 Fat Pack

Greetings!

Hope everyone is doing well.  OK, so you know by the post's title that this is from that repack staple, 2007 Upper Deck.  This is the 4th pack from that set...but then again, this is a bigger pack.  It's a Fat Pack!  I bought it on clearance!  Upper Deck was still pretty decent back then, right?  At least the players still have logos on their uniforms!  OK, enough with the intro, here's a 2007 Upper Deck Series 2 Fat Pack!

See?  Clearance!

Just like before, I did not scan all of the cards, just enough to prove there were cards in the pack.  These Fat Packs come with 2 exclusive insert cards, just like in Series 1.  Here's what I got:

Top Pack

#986 – Kenny Lofton (Rangers)

#923 – Rich Aurilia (Giants)

#847 – Hideki Matsui (Yankees)

#843 – Doug Mientkiewicz (Yankees)

#777 – Jeff Kent (Dodgers)

#705 – Mike Jacobs (Marlins)

#888 – Damaso Marte (Pirates)

#811 – Lew Ford (Twins)

#749 – Brandon Duckworth (Royals)

#625 – Jermaine Dye (White Sox)

#538 – Randy Johnson (Diamondbacks Team Checklist)

#834 – Dave Williams (Mets)

#573 – Josh Beckett (Red Sox)

#1002 – Jason Smith (Blue Jays)

#590 – David Ortiz (Red Sox)

#MVP34 – Carlos Beltran (Mets)

Bottom Pack

#719 – Roy Oswalt (Astros)

#639 – Jeff Conine (Reds)

#575 – Hideki Okajima (Red Sox RC)

#576 – Javier Lopez (Red Sox)

#984 – Mark Teixeira (Rangers)

#920 – Russ Ortiz (Giants)

#602 – Henry Blanco (Cubs)

#783 – Nomar Garciaparra (Dodgers)

#959 – Scott Spiezio (Cardinals)

#866 – Mike Piazza (Athletics Team Checklist)

#933 – George Sherrill (Mariners)

#660 – Victor Martinez (Indians)

#708 – Jorge Julio (Marlins)

#677 – Jason Hirsh (Rockies)

#637 – Javier Valentin (Reds)

#MVP7 – J.D. Drew (Red Sox)

 

If I did not show the inserts, I feel I would be banned from the site - for crimes against the blogosphere by posting a 4th 2007 Upper Deck pack.  Here they are, front and back:
 

 

Anyway, that's all for now.  Quick shout out to my brother on his birthday, playing a gig in Oakland to try to console the disappointed A's fans.  More later...thanks for reading!

2001-2002 Upper Deck Honor Roll

Greetings!

Hope everyone is enjoying the weekend.  Today is my 12th wedding anniversary.  I cannot believe it has been 12 years since saying "I do" to the now-Wifey.

The occasion needs to be marked with a pack from the year we got hitched.  Yes, I ignored my own rule from last year, but I had the free time.  Perhaps I shouldn't make such definitive statements.  From the (then) $1.49 Target bin, it's a pack of 2001-2002 Upper Deck Honor Roll!

Blasphemy!  Be gone Air Wiz!

This was a 130 card set, 5 cards per pack, with the last 40 cards being short printed.  This tells me that this was a hard set to complete.  The big rookies were Pau Gasol, Zach Randolph, and Joe Johnson.  As usual, I did not get a big time rookie.  Here's what I got:
 

#82 - Desmond Mason
#47 - Stephon Marbury
#55 - Jason Kidd

These would have been nice fronts, if it weren't for the Honor Roll all over it. 

#1 - Shareef Abdur-Rahim
#15 - Lamond Murray

The player and team name could have been a little bigger, but I guess Upper Deck felt it necessary to make sure you know what set you were looking at.  Here are a couple of backs:

Not too bad, I guess.  They did reuse the picture from the front, and as usual, you only get to see the last 5 years of stats.

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

2000 Impact

Every company at some point has taken their turn at putting out a product to "bring back the kids" to the hobby, so to speak. This was Fleer/Skybox's effort, apparently, as they offered up an affordable product with few frills.

12 of 40 MF - Chuck Knoblauch Mighty Fine in '99 - This is an every pack insert that I probably don't need to explain. All I can think of when I see Knoblauch's name is lame Chris Berman puns.

- Acclaim Sports ad - This folds in half and advertises a game I never would have played in 2000. I was loyal to the Triple Play series and, later, the 2K games because of NBA2K. Of course, now I wouldn't mind giving it a spin.

- Milwaukee Brewers Temporary Tattoo - Now we're talkin'! I love stuff like this in packs, though I could've certainly asked for a better team. These are apparently a 1:4 pull.

181 - Adam Piatt Prospects - Piatt failed to live up to a promising rookie season and ended up in the Mitchell Report. Somehow.

194 - Jason Schmidt - This is the standard base card look. It isn't the worst thing I've ever seen, but is definitely pretty dated looking.

81 - Pedro Martinez - Great pitcher. Not too sure about his broadcast analysis skills yet.

122 - Michael Barrett - I didn't know that Barrett mostly played 3B for his first couple of seasons before becoming a full time catcher.

31 - Frank Thomas - Simply one of the best offensive players of his era.

130 - Brian Giles - Here's what the backs look like. Full color, different picture, decent amount of stats. Not bad.

103 - Carlos Beltran - I hate to admit that I had no idea who Beltran was until the Astros picked him up for a playoff run some nine years ago.

 84 - Rick Ankiel Prospects - I can't believe that it's been 13 years since the Ankiel playoff meltdown.
 

184 - Kevin Brown - He won a World Series, pitched a no-hitter, and made 6 All-Star teams. And no one talks about him. No one even collects Kevin Brown. Is his name too boring?