Tuesday, September 28, 2021

1996 Skybox Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 5

Trip to antique store in another area few months back can netted me finds like this pack. I'm going where no pack ripper on this site have gone before. Skybox produced Star Trek cards going be to Impel days. Research showed this is a 108 card set featuring cards 421-528. The set started off with ST: TNG season 1 in 1994. In 1995 they released season 2 and 3. In 1996 they released 4 and 5 (which is this pack). Season 6 came out in 1997 then skipped a year before finishing with season 7 in 1999. It feature screen shot of the episode along with summaries and crew info. For me I've watched 1/3 of the episodes of this series. Now on to pack ripping and beyond.


503 - Episode 125: The Inner Light - I remember this episode and so do the fans! It's consider not one of the best but an iconic episode of the series. Picard get beamed by a probe object and for 20 minutes he lived the life of Kamin from a planet who's home no longer exist after the star system gone supernova thousands years ago. A must watch episode.

453 - Episode 108: Unification Part II - It's Spock and Picard with Data in the middle! This is from two-part Reunification episodes. The episodes is known for first appearance of Leonard Nimoy as Spock on TNG series. Ambassador Spock leads to reunite Romulans and Vulcans but a certain Romulan uses his idea in attempt to invade Vulcan.

485 - Episode: 119: The First Duty - Wesley Crusher is the main focus of this episode. He's being questioned after the squadron he's on suffered a catastrophe.

490 - Episode 121: The Perfect Mate - never seen this episode before.

449 - Episode 107: Unification Part I - got the two Unification cards in the same pack. While known for first appearance of Spock in TNG series the two-parter is the highest rated TV episode since the pilot.

524 - Ensign Ro Laren - the Bajoran was a focus on episode 103. She would defect to Maquis.

456 - Episode 109: A Matter of Time - episode featuring a guy from the future only for the crew to found out how much a fraud he is. It's the Enterprise firing their phaser beams.

463 - Episode 112: Violations - this episode features an Ullian invading crew members memories sending them to a coma.

I wonder if there's a collector who collected all the cards from all seven seasons card releases. If you are fan of the show this is for you.

Sunday, September 19, 2021

2021 Topps Luminaires

I won this box/pack from Topps it's high end and contains a single card Think I did pretty well on this one.  See the link to the post I did on my personal blog.

http://dionsipautosonly.blogspot.com/2021/08/2021-topps-luminaries.html

Saturday, September 18, 2021

2021 Topps Chrome Blaster Pack

Greetings...

Hope everyone is doing well.  Apologies for the lack of posts from me recently.  I'd love to say that life got in the way or I've been real busy, yada, yada, yada, but in actuality I've just been lazy.  Which makes it ironic that I'm posting this now, since this this past week has been the most eventful in a while.

[Scroll down if you're just here for the pretty pictures.]

Last Saturday, besides it being the 20th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, my family found out my uncle (who is also my godfather) was being put into hospice care after recently being diagnosed with Stage 4 gall bladder cancer.  My brother, whose wife could have gone into labor at any moment, was the only one available to drive my parents out to Iowa to see him (dad is dealing with cataracts).  Fortunately, the baby decided to wait until they came back, and made her appearance on the 13th.  My parents now have 4 granddaughters and 2 grandsons (my contribution).  

Anyway, I was free this week to bring my parents back to Iowa whenever they wanted, but they opted for this weekend, and unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) my godfather didn't make it to the weekend, declaring "a draw" to his battle with cancer (reference to Norm Macdonald, RIP) on the 16th.  Finally, while the impromptu trip to Iowa has been delayed while funeral arrangements get straightened out, we got to celebrate my eldest son's 14th birthday earlier today.  He had his last two fall ball games earlier today and also had to figure out how to avoid going 0 for 2 in his first fantasy football league (could he lose to his uncle after being humiliated by his father?).  See?  Eventful week.

Retail outlets are still skittish when it comes to trading cards.  I've read posts from bloggers who have reported getting packs from Wal-Mart, but I haven't seen any, or any evidence that I "just missed the card guy."  As far as I know, they were still selling cards at the Customer Service desk.  The Meijer kinda close to me still has the sign up saying they only sell cards from their service desk but it may be letting up (foreshadowing).  Target still has their ban, but Pokemon cards appear to be making a comeback.  One option I started looking into was the Target website; I check the site in the morning when the overnight job is done, and recent Thursday mornings have been successful in finding new product.  Here's one now!

Top of the box included to show the 4 guaranteed cards.

Topps Chrome was released on August 20.  The Target website had blaster boxes for $30.  There were 8 packs in the box with 4 cards per pack, so it's essentially a buck a card.  The boxes were available on the site for almost a week; it's still there, but now the price has gone up to $40, and are unavailable to ship.  The site claims some stores have them, but it has to be an error; the individual store doesn't keep track of trading card inventory.

Here's what the packs look like.  There's 220 cards in the set.  I chose 2 packs to show off; here's what I got:


#105 - DJ LeMahieu
#136 - Nate Pearson (RC)

The Pandemic and the rise of the Card Bros made sure last year's Topps Chrome was virtually unavailable to the commoner so it's nice to have the option of getting this year's release.  But that price hike, though...it's why I only got one box.


#215 - Ramon Laureano (Purple Refractor #190/299)
#92 - Cristian Javier (RC) (Sepia Parallel)

According to the wrapper, the Purples come one in 177 packs.  The wrapper also says the Sepias come one in 4 packs, which makes sense since the box itself says there's 2 Sepias and 2 Pink Refractors in the box.

Here's the second pack:


#101 - Jesus Sanchez
#128 - Cavan Biggio

The unfortunate thing about buying from the Target website is that Target doesn't have the other options for these releases.  No rack packs, no single packs, etc. to choose from.  Some some reason, the Target website does have a 3 pack of 2021 Heritage Hangar boxes available for purchase but nothing else.  I'm sure Topps made those different options; I wonder what happened to them.

 
#PP-10 - Luke Voit (Prismic Power)
#86BC-4 - Juan Soto (1986 Topps Baseball Insert)

The wrapper says the Prismic Power comes one in 14 packs, and the 1986 Tribute comes one in 4 packs.  The Prismic Power looks real nice.

Here's a couple other cards from the blaster, since you all have been patient with my ramblings:


#74 - Adalberto Mondesi (Pink Refractor)
#FS-5 - Jesus Luzardo (Future Stars)

As mentioned before, the box guaranteed there would be 2 Pink Refractors, so this is one of them.  The wrapper confirms they come one in every 4 packs.  The very pretty Future Stars insert come one in 7 packs.

Here are some backs because son's birthday:




Anyway, those are the packs.  After I open anything more than 5 or 6 bucks, I always ask myself if I had the chance would I roll the dice and risk the contents of the purchase for a completely new set.  In this case, I had to say yes; I didn't get any major stars, either in the base or in the inserts.  And at basically a dollar a card, almost immediate buyer's remorse set in.  The things I do for APTBNL!

That's all for now...thanks for reading!

Monday, September 06, 2021

1996 Fleer Metal Football

Happy Labor Day! NFL regular season starts in few days. Let's start with a pack from 25 years ago. It's Fleer iconic brand set Metal. This set is still a hit with collectors to this day for being out of the box different and its shiny cardboard design. Trent Dilfer is on the cover. There are six cards in a pack. Let's rip!

6 - Craig Heyward - its Ironhead

135 - Marvin Harrison - its Harrison rookie card. He would add another 8 on his jersey and became a favorite target of Peyton Manning by the turn of the millennium.

98 - Kordell Stewart - back would show Slash's QB stats. Not shown is his rushing and receiving stats from his rookie season.

104 - Aaron Hayden

60 - Marcus Allen - Hall of Famer running around with the Chiefs

39 - Herman Moore - in his prime leading the league in receptions with 123. His 1686 reception yards ranked 3rd in the NFL behind Hall of Famers Jerry Rice and Isaac Bruce.

Another classic pack and another NFL season awaits. Who's ready for some football?