2014-15 O-Pee-Chee hockey

I am on a mission to clear out my scan folder for APTBNL, so you will be seeing a lot of me and a lot of the randomizer. Today, we get a recent release - 14/15 O-Pee-Chee.

Carey Price gets the Glamour Shots as the face on the pack. 8 cartes par paquet. Errr - 8 cards in the pack. I believe the hits in these are pretty rare.

OPC is kind of like Bowman baseball. All the designs seem to play off the last. It's not that they do, mind you, but it feels like it. OPC is clean. A bit unexciting, but it still has Canadian feel about it, in that is about the players and not what's on the cards. It's still a huge set. And still printed on chipboard.

Borders change based on the team. Past releases on OPC had colored background. I prefer the white.

The border colors don't match the teams. Sure - the Sabres used to be red, but they dropped that color 10 years ago. Let's blast through the rest of the pack...

Here's one of the insert sets. Nice to see Ollie the Goalie getting some props. Those old Caps sweaters, though.....

Here is the back of Olaf's card. Even though it's an insert, the regular base cards have a similar back. How sweet are full career stats? I like that they used the Capitals logo from that time frame in the watermark. +10 O-Pee-Chee.

2004 Upper Deck Legends Timeless Teams

I first fell in love with 04 Upper Deck Legends Timeless Teams in 2010 when I was on the Mass Pike en route to Boston Medical Center to have surgery. There were packs of these at one of the gas stations. You can't make this stuff up.

The set is great for (at least) three reasons.

1) The set is 100% retro players.
2) There is 1 on-card auto in every 9 packs.
3) The non-auto'd cards are gorgeous and make for great TTM/In Person autographs. I have sent and received many cards from this set. In fact, at some point this week I'm going to put all of my autographed (certified, TTM, IP) cards from this set on my blog.

First we have a memorable moments insert of the legendary Frank Robinson.

 Sid Fernandez, the Mets legend.

John Hiller played from 1965 until 1971, had a heart attack, and then came back to play through 1980. I had never heard of this guy before just now. You learn something new every day. Definitely one for the resilience Hall of Fame. Not to be confused with John Hillerman, who played Higgins on Magnum P.I.

And finally, a Lenny Dykstra auto.
 

2010-11 Panini Zenith

Been too long since I tried to clear out the scan folder, so let's get working. Randomizer choose #20, which means you get a pack of 2010-11 Panini Zenith. Originally a Donruss brand, Panini picked up the name and did a one shot release of this set.

No Ovechkin, Crosby or Malkin on the wrapper. PK Subban and Tyler Seguin are the cover boys. The pack is as black as you see it - not an issue with the scanner. Just 5 cards within, and all the autos are on card. Let's have a look.

Kind of Bowman-ish in the style of the card. Again, Panini wipes out the background and just focuses on the player. It doesn't work for me. On a relic or an auto card, okay. But put the player in his element. The box with the team logo looks bad when the team has a long straight logo.

With a simple logo like the Flames, it fills the space nicely. The black frame feels forced, like they looked at the card and it needed something. Yeah - THE REST OF THE BACKGROUND, MAYBE?!

Wow. Imagine Black Diamond on meth. That's about what this card is. I'm going to say that in person, it looks about the same - a hot mess.

Right after winning the 2010 Cup, GM Doug Wilson with the Sharks signed an offer sheet with Niklas Hjalmarsson. The belief in Chicago was the Sharks knew the Hawks couldn't sign both Ham Sandwich and Niemi, so we would have to let one go. I was surprised when we matched the offer for Niklas and let Antti go west. Two more Cups later, you see why I write a baseball card blog and Bowman is the Hawks GM.

Most unsurprising card back ever. Recycled image, career stats, bio and an odd number font.

Yes, I did pull an auto in this pack.

Sharks hot pack! I added this auto to my collection as Wingels is a local boy from Evanston. Always like the fade on a card when it has an autograph. They also added foil at the top of the card. I am not sure if that is because it's an autograph or because he is a rookie. Like, does Wingels' base card have that same foil? According to an ebay search, his base has the foil as well, so it's a rookie thing.

2015 Topps Gypsy Queen Baseball Retail

Today we have a retail pack of 2015 Topps Gypsy Queen.

 Here is Kennys Vargas, who just walked off for the Twins a few days ago.

 It feels like Fernando Rodney has been on a different team every year.

 Hisashi Iwakuma came to the US in 2012 at age 31. He was an All-Star in 2013.

 Jacob deGrom. This card doesn't do his hair justice.

 Former ROY Wil Myers.

 Here is a Stephen Strasburg Mini Parallel.

Serial numbered 63/99. Too bad it isn't 2010.

2015 Leaf Heroes of Baseball

2015 Leaf Heroes of Baseball is only available in retail. Each blaster box comes with 20 packs and 1 Stan Musial autograph.

I did a bit of a double take when I saw "1 Stan Musial Autograph Per Box", given the fact that the product is from 2015 and he died in 2013. I went to scan the price of the box, figuring it would be priced at $75 or something ridiculous. It scanned at $40 which I figured was probably fair enough given the guaranteed hit. I didn't have a Musial in my collection so I figured I would give it a shot.

Here is one of the packs from the blaster box.

Here is Don Sutton. As you can see, these cards are sanitized because Leaf doesn't have an MLB license. I don't really blame Leaf. I think it is stupid that only Topps has the MLB license.

There is a subset of Stan Musial cards (How many times am I going to say Stan Musial today?) to go with the regular set.

 Pete Rose, another Leaf favorite, appears in this set.

Here is Bruce Sutter. Pretty sure that guy in the background has an uncensored logo on his cap. Somebody call the MLB Lawyers!


Much like in the Pete Rose set, the guaranteed hit doesn't come in one of the packs, it comes by itself in a toploader. Here is the one I got in my box.

This is about what I expected. Clearly these are left over stickers Stan must have signed a couple years ago that they wanted to do something with. Not exactly a gorgeous autograph but its a guaranteed late HOF-er hit in a $40 retail box.

The cards in the product aren't particularly exciting, there aren't any special parallels or anything, at least there aren't any that I came across.

My overall impression is... buy one if you see one. If you are a huge Musial fan maybe you can chase the autograph set or subset. If you are just an auto collector like me, its worth it to have the hit in your collection. But the cards in the set appear to be thrown together just to have some substance to go with the hit.

2014 BenchWarmer Eclectic

Grabbed from hasty google search, because my box is still full of cards and thus cannot be scanned.

Hey gang!  Now that the Stanley Cup and NBA Finals are over (Congrats to the Chicago Blackhawks on officially putting themselves in the dynasty discussion with their San Francisco Giants-esque third title in six years and also to the the Golden State Warriors on their first championship since the year my dad graduated high school!), and the actual, official start of summer is right around the corner, and there's nothing but baseball happening for the next 2-3 months, depending on the level of cynicism clouding your view of preseason fartball, how do you feel about breaking up the monotony with a whole mess of packs featuring cards of gorgeous, barely famous women wearing almost nothing?

...

...

I'll take your bored, distracted indifference as a positive sign. :)

Anyway, at the end of May, I put some eBay sale funds towards a couple relatively cheap boxes, DC Women of Legend (I'll do a post with a few packs of that over the summer too), and the subject of today's post, a monster repack-ish behemoth of 2014 BenchWarmer Eclectic, which promises 8 hits, as well as 60(!) packs of older product from factory sealed boxes.

BenchWarmer, if you aren't aware, is kind of like your Maxim/FHM/etc magazines, without all the bad writing and general dudebro-ness.  It's just the pretty ladies wearing not much, with some vague sports and card themes and tropes thrown in there for funsies.  At least during the era we're looking at.  Like what usually happens when Leaf comes a-calling, it quickly jumped the rails into almost exclusive high end tomfoolery and completely fell off my radar for the past couple years.  But I digress...

As the title indicates, today we'll be posting the loose, Eclectic-specific single items, which, aside from the jumbo laying on top, were just in a team bag nestled snugly amongst the endless sea of old packs.  Before we finally, mercifully get to that though, I have prepared a a rundown of the older packs I have set aside for future postings you'll be seeing over the coming weeks.  So get ready, because the "BenchWarmer Summer of Sexy 2015"/"How much mileage can Lonestarr get out of one box of cards?" starts now!

• 1992 BenchWarmer Premier Edition (4 packs)
• 1994 BenchWarmer Series II (3 packs)
• 1994 BenchWarmer Series II Factory Set (Yes, you will get to see all 105 cards!)
• 1997 BenchWarmer (3 packs)
• 2002 BenchWarmer Series 1 (1 pack)
• 2002 BenchWarmer Series 2 (3 packs)
• 2003 BenchWarmer Series 2 (1 pack)
• 2003 BenchWarmer Series 3 (2 packs)
• 2004 BenchWarmer Series 1 (1 pack)
• 2005 BenchWarmer Series 1 (3 packs)
• 2005 BenchWarmer Signature Series (1 pack; guaranteed hit)
• 2006 BenchWarmer Series 2 (1 pack)
• 2013 BenchWarmer Bubblegum (5 packs)

So after this, there will be another baker's dozen of beautiful breaks featuring nearly half of the packs in the box to share!  My box was consistent with other breaks I saw on Youtube landing 3-7 extra hits in the 60 older packs (I hit four), so there will be a little extra incentive beyond the excessive amount of obscenely beautiful women to look forward to, if you even needed it.  With that all tediously said, here's the promised stuff that comes in every box of BenchWarmer Eclectic!

Carmen Electra- Card #9

Promos- Lisa Gleave and Shay Lyn

Gleave is a keeper.

4x5" Jumbo- Lori Smith

Past Release Autos- Jessica Landon and Andrea Lowell

Commemorative Autos- Jaime Hammer and Maria Kanellis (who you may remember from her lengthy run as a ditzy wrestler & valet in WWE)

I can definitely keep these two, because I actually know who they are!

Eclectic Autos- April Scott, Cecille Gahr, Lisa Lakatos, and Bobbi Billard

I just now realized there was an extra auto in there.  Don't remember if that was the standard in all the box breaks I watched or not.  Some had a #'ed parallel auto on top though, which this did not.

Eclectic Relic- Cassandra Lynn!

And there ye have it.  No crazy hits or #'ed stuff or Brooke Morales, but I'm still pretty pleased with the box.  Lots of content, lots of hits.  Would definitely recommend if you can find it for $40 or less.  The commemorative autos were easily the best of the bunch for me, and they and the Lisa Gleave promo are the only things I'm intent on keeping.  Everything else is available, so hit me up if you see something you like.  Here's to more posts soon.  Seeya!

Until our next...