2014 Rittenhouse James Bond 007 Archives

I forgot I even scanned this, considering the year. Random picked a pack of James Bond I ripped at my LCS pack wars a good year ago. Interesting set for sure, but definitely for that niche market of Bond film fans.

Gold foil wrapper. Who is surprised about that? This is the 2014 edition, but I have no clue is there was a 2013 or 2015 releases. Cardboard Connection says YES - 2015 edition was released. Well, you get six cards to a pack, let's have at it.

The 2014 set celebrates 5 different Bond films. The main is Casino Royale, but there are insert sets for Thunderball, Live And Let Die and Tomorrow Never Dies. Plus the base set has some Skyfall cards to complete it. Each box has autographs as well as gold foil parallels. Two autographs and one gold parallel per box. I do believe this is Eva Green as Vesper Lynd. Horrible Bond girl name.

007 Daniel Craig with villian Le Chiffre.

Some beefcake for you lady readers. And what the hell is he drinking? That is NOT a vodka martini, shaken not stirred!

This is a gold foil parallel, as you can see the movie name in the lower right. The cards for Tomorrow Never Dies also have gold parallels in the box. These are numbered to /99.

More of Bond and Vesper Lynd. What, no "Pussy Galore"? "Holly Goodhead"? "Mary Goodnight"? "Kissy Suzuki"? "Octopussy"??????? So much for the good ol' days.

And the tables get turned on the bad guy. Don't they always lose to Bond and his partners? WIll they ever learn?

All the back are horizontal with a different image. The description ties in the picture on the back with the image on the front. The card stock in nice on these, but all in all the design is very bland.

2009 Upper Deck O-Pee-Chee Hobby

As you can see, my "to be ripped and reviewed" stack for A Pack To Be Named Later is getting a little out of hand so I need to get back into the habit of regularly ripping packs. So let's start today with an odd ball one-off product from Upper Deck, 2009 O-Pee-Chee Baseball. In 2010, Upper Deck lost its baseball license and so we never got to see this product's true potential. I think I really did buy this for $1 from a clearance box at a card shop in Minnesota during a visit. And as TraderCracks says "when you find 2009 O-Pee-Chee Baseball, you buy 2009 OPC Baseball."

In my my six cards I was able to pull two stadium cards which is a subset of baseball cards that I collect! As you'll notice my card of Progressive Stadium in Cleveland has a black border which fell one per pack.

2015 Topps Chrome

Topps switched a few things up with Chrome this year, but this set is largely familiar. Sepia refractors are the new retail exclusive, replacing orange and/or purple. Prism has replaced the X-fractor that is always so awkward to attempt to spell. Here's my first (non-sepia) pack from the blaster I bought over the weekend.

81 - Bryce Harper - Yeah, it's Bryce. Harper has really started to deliver on his athletic promise this year. Does that endear him more to me? Not really. Also, his team has woefully underachieved according to most.

180 - Jose Abreu - With the rookie cup.

81 - Bryce Harper Prism Refractor - Yeah, it's Bryce. Again. The Prism look is pretty subtle, especially when scanned, but it looks nice in the light as pretty much all refractors do.

2 - Ryan Rua - Rua is completely unknown to me. He's only logged about 80 plate appearances or so and hasn't produced yet.

2015 Topps Allen & Ginter Baseball Hobby

It is the 10th anniversary of the Topps Allen & Ginter Set!

Today I'll rip a hobby pack.

 Troy Tulowitzki. Now a Jay.

 Former Red Sox Rubby De La Rosa.

 I guess the Dory Spear was used by Greek Infantry. This is probably a cool subset for people into weapons. Personally I was more into the cats subset.

 This guy is a mythical trickster who turns into a rabbit.

 Dj LeMahieu.

Here's flavor of the year Matt Harvey. The red text leads me to believe this might be a parallel? My eyes aren't good enough to read the package.

Aaaand a Justin Verlander 10th Anniversary Road Uni Relic!

Not bad.

2003 Pacific Quest For The Cup hockey

Jeff back. Jeff back into the scan folder. Jeff back at Random.org. Random selected #12, and that means you get to see a pack of Pacific Quest For The Cup. I realize I put "hockey" is the subject bar - a bit of a "duh" moment, but best to be safe. This was a pack from a Target box of repacks. In fact, I believe I scanned 4 other packs from that box as none have been posted. We'll see when Random decides to give them a day in the sun.

Technically, this is 2002-03, though that is not listed on the pack. Just 2003. But some good ol' junk wax, when they were passing out licenses left and right. Kind of hard to see, but this is a 6 card pack. You can pull serialed rookie cards out of every 5 packs or a jersey card every 9 packs. Pretty nice relic card odds 12 years ago. Marty Turco earns the pack photo - interesting choice as the Stars straight up stunk the previous year. But they must have received some mojo from the pack as the Stars topped the West in 2003, falling just 2 points short of the President's Cup.

Lots of card designs in this pack, so we have a few back images to go along. This is a Pacific Complete card. I can't find a checklist for the set, so I am not sure how many are in this sub set. From a video I found, it appears you get one of there per pack, and there are variations. Pretty straight forward design. Maybe too much foil, but that was a whole new thing in the early 2000's, so the manufacturers overused it (and still do to this day).

Back of the Complete card. Not sure what the deal is with the empty net. I assume that is the standard back design for this product. One year of stats and the total career with a little bio. The rear is dreadful.

Here's your base, and it is all foil and scans like total shite. As a design, for the name of the product, though - it's good. Nice view of the Cup off to the left and a good image of the player. His name is right below, but hard to pick up in the scan. Team logo looks strange as it stands out from the foil design, but in all it's a decent card. I forget Mogilny was a Leaf for a while.

Doug Weight. Man, he just fell off the NHL map. Injuries didn't help him.

Chasing the Cup is an insert set. And sorry Fuji, but the Sharks will continue to just be chasing it and not raising it. Not unless they can figure out why they always hit a slump in late May of each year. This design is a bit busy.

WOW! A second photo, and not of an empty net. Just a bio for the player.

Good pack for me, as it had an Indian head sweater. Bad pack as it was Theo Fleury. Not sure what the Hawks were thinking when they signed him as he was such a head case back in the early 00's. Then again, when his story came out, it all made sense the demons he was battling. Don't hear much from Theo lately, and that was a shame because he was a decent player when he was on his game. I'm going to get this TTM'd.

NICE!!! While you are only getting the past year and a career total, this is a great card back. Only complaint is the location and size of the card number. Otherwise, this is the kind of look a specialty set should have.

Close out the pack with Jeff Friesen, who got his name on the Cup the year this product was released.

2013 Topps Qubi

It's been a while since I've ripped a pack for APTBNL. Since I was ripping for my Pack-A-Daily Circus, I thought I would cross-post here because it looks like no has done one of these before. Today, I present 2013 Topps Qubi:

Each pack of Qubis (Qubiis? Qubii?) contains one (1) cube. My pack was a special offering so we actually had two in our package.

We ended up with Starlin Castro and Ryan Howard. The cubes feature three images that you can see one at a time, depending on how you turn the cube. Okay, technically, you can see all three if you hold it just right, but the idea is to focus on one at a time. On the backside of one image, we see the player's last name and uniform number.

The bottom of the cube has a plastic cover that removes to reveal the stamp you got. There are three variations and not every player has every variation. There are portraits (10 players), signatures (50 players), and logos (15 players). We pulled a Castro signature and a Howard portrait.

 These are interesting bits of collectibles. As of the date of this writing, you can buy a box of 18 packs (1 stamper per pack) for about $20 - more or less, depending on your shopping prowess I suppose.

The name of disclosure: I got the images of the qubis from online. They are not my own images.

2015 Bulls-I-Toy Minions

Greetings!

Hope everyone's doing well.  Printer/scanner problems were the culprit for my latest mini-vacation from posting; some error message popping up I've never seen before.  Then one day, poof, it's gone...the error message, not the printer.

Anyway, here's hoping I can get back to semi-regular posts, because the never-ending reorganization project started up again kinda, and I've got packs to publish.  Like this one...2015 Bulls-I-Toy Minions!

WWWWWAAAAAAASSSSSSSSUUUUUUUPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!

While I was happy to avoid paying the regular movie price, I was disappointed we had to pay extra for the 3-D format because it was the only movie time left at the non-regular movie price.  I enjoy a good 3-D movie, but being a movie directed at the kiddies, I was pretty sure the Mini-Me's weren't going to know the difference (I was right).  Here's the back of the pack for your perusal:

Bob is the name of the Minion on the front of the pack. Maybe there are packs with different minions on them, I don't know.  You get to see a plot summary and the types of cards you can collect also.  Take a look at the base set...54 cards???  That's it?  OK, you could try to get the gold parallel set as well, but I got 1 in the pack (sorry about the spoilers), so good luck building that.  6 puzzles is nothing, because you build the puzzles by completing the base set (darn it, spoiled you all again).  The scanner did cut off the last line, 18 Foil Character Cards, which come 1 in 4 packs (ha ha, didn't spoil you there, you gotta keep reading to see if I got one!).

I think it was 3 bucks for the pack...let's see what I got:

#27 - Minions!
#18 - 3 Minions!
#9 - Dead Dracula & Minions!
#51 - Sandra Bullock & a Minion!

As you can see, these are images from the movie.  They're colorful and detailed, because it's an animated movie, and that's what gets the kids into the theater.  If you're wondering if the cards are following the movie, the answer is I don't know.  The Scarlett Overkill (Bullock's character) scene happens in the middle of the movie, not towards the end.  Then again, I haven't seen the complete set, so I don't know the distribution of images in the set and this is too much analysis for a movie about Minions.

#42 - Baby & 2 Minions!
#33 - 2 Banana Minions!
#24 - Minions!
#15 - Minion Shrink and Minion Patient!

Again, I haven't seen a list of the images used in the set, but it sure does seem like most of the shots used for the set was from the "exile" phase of the movie, where the Minions lived in the caves after losing their latest master (Napoleon, I think).  I enjoyed these scenes the most; the rest of the movie was a pretty standard plot. 

#6 - Egyptian Minions!
#48 - Name Tag Minion!
#25 - Minions! (Gold Parallel)
#15 of 18 - Vive Le Minion!

The Bob card above was from a nice sequence where the three Minions go to Villain Con to find a new master.  It was an obvious send-up of Comic Con, complete with vendors and big presentations.  IMDB notes a quick cameo of Gargamel from the Smurfs, so that's something.

As you can see, the gold parallel is just the Minions name covered in gold foil.  And I did get a shiny Character Card.  Hooray!

The backs of the cards are puzzle pieces that when put in pages will complete the picture.  Here's the #24 and #27 together, as well as the back of the foil card:

 
Anyway, that's the pack.  I picked up the pack for the Mini-Me's to see if this would be something they would want to collect.  They liked the cards (especially the foil card), but I haven't heard a peep about it since then.  Oh well.  That's all for now...thanks for reading!

1994-95 Upper Deck Collector's Choice Basketball Series 2

This mid-'90s Collector's Choice set was produced bilingually in several different formats. I posted a pack of the German version a number of years ago. I believe this is the version intended for USA release, although there is copyright information on the back in Italian as well as English. The Italian version has Italian text on the back to go with the English text, however, and this has no such thing on the actual cards. In any case, Shawn Kemp looks perplexed, man.

408 - Jason Kidd 1994 Draft Class - In 1994, I was heckling Jason Kidd as he was trolling the Pit Crew (before that name really took hold) in McArthur Court when he was a member of the Cal Bears. We didn't like him. Later that year, he would appear on basketball cards and TV sets as a pro.

414 - Eric Montross 1994 Draft Class - Montross, the former North Carolina star, was kind of a weird looking dude.

328 - Carlos Rogers - Is he trying to look a little sexy or a little tough? Or maybe a little of both?

246 - Monty Williams - I have no memory of Monty Williams as a player, but he did go on to coach, first as an assistant with the Blazers and later as the head coach of a doomed Pelicans team.

239 - Charlie Ward - The former Heisman winner.

262 - Dickey Simpkins - Here's what the backs look like. What a goofy name.

348 - Vern Fleming - Here's the first non-rookie of the pack.

353 - Anthony Miller - Another rook.

252 - Matt Geiger

258 - Byron Russell - Russell became a key cog of some of those Jazz teams as the Stockton-to-Malone thing entered the latter half of the '90s.

285 - Sam Mitchell

375 - Scottie Pippen Blueprint For Success Silver Signature - The one-per-pack facsimile signature parallel rounds out the pack.