2012 Bowman Baseball

Currently, Bowman Baseball's annual first release is considered the most important set for prospects and rookies. This years set will again revolve around Bryce Harper, as well as #1 Draft Pick Gerrit Cole. Key rookies will include Jesus Montero, Brett Lawrie, Yu Darvish, and Matt Moore. Lets see what we got!



Prospects Joc Pederson and Levi Michael start things off. Pederson hit 11 dingers and had 65 ribeyes in the minors last year. Levi Michael played 65 games for North Carolina last year, with a collegiate career BA of .306.



Here are my two chromes, both Mariner pitchers. Fernandez has been floating around a while, while Hultzen was the second overall draft pick in 2011. Not too shabby.



Some veterans in the form of Howie Kendrick and Tim Hudson.



Some more veterans in the form of JJ Hardy and Albert Pujols.

My gold card is Yankees RC Dellin Betances. A native of Brooklyn.

This is, by far, the hit of the pack. A silver ice RC parallel of Brett Lawrie. Awesome card. Will be interesting to see what these will be going for.

Pretty nice pack! I'll be reviewing more from the blaster box this came from over at my blog http://www.waxpackgeek.com

1998 Topps Stadium Club Baseball (Odds)

Continuing the trend of shiny fancy cards started by the previous 1996 Pacific Pack, Here is a pack of 1998 Stadium Club Hobby.



Not unlike many Topps products that come in different series throughout the season, 98 Stadium Club came in two series. Unlike those products, this was distributed in "odds" and "evens". Weird. This is the "odds".



Starting it off is Scott Karl. Six seasons in the bigs, 54-56 record.



Next is Todd Greene and Jose Valentin. Greene's most impressive accomplishments are being struck out by Wade Boggs and a career-ending collision with Prince Fielder.



Here are a couple of A's, Ariel Prieto and Chris Enochs. And I use the term "A's" loosely since Enochs never actually made the bigs.



Kirk Reuter and Andy Benes are next. Compared to the rest of this pack so far, these two are legends. Reuter recorded 130 wins and Benes was a 1x all star.



Here is "future star" Dermal Brown. He floated around the bigs for a few years before playing in Japan.



And finally, Chipper Jones. I'm glad I got one noteworthy player in this pack. It was pretty much a dud otherwise. Pretty bad.

1996 Pacific Invincible

I am back and hopefully I will be contributing more regularly.  Ironically, I am featuring a pack that I would never buy.
The 1996 Pacific Invincible Football Trading Cards are everything I hate about modern day cards.  They are high gloss cards with an overly flashy design and they contain no stats on the back.  In addition, the three cards in my pack are numbered differently (SM 31, SM110 and I-113).  I looked for info on this set and found many parallel sets and enough misinformation that I gave up and decided to post what I had and end the farce.

First up is Wayne Martin, New Orleans Saints Defensive Tackle.  Martin is shown bursting through the card front, but I have no idea what he is doing on the play because of the cropping (nor do I even know if he has a left arm).

The second card was Robert Green, Chicago Bears Running Back.  Just like these cards, Green was one of many who made an appearance, but not an impression.

Finally, we have Charlie Garner, Philadelphia Eagles Running Back.  Who wouldn't want a shiny card with an oval shaped clear spot containing a headshot?  Yes, that oval is actually see-through.

I enjoyed showing these cards more than I ever will owning them.  In fact, I am bringing them back to AU Sports, where I bought them, and dumping them in the once cent bin (and that is overpriced).

2012 Wax Eye Cereal Killers Stickers Series 1

Ahhh... my very first post on this amazing blog. Before I tear into this pack, let me introduce myself. My name is Fuji and I've been collecting cards for over three decades. A couple of years ago I started a blog called The Chronicles of Fuji to document my cardboard experiences. Since then, I've met a bunch of people and swapped a ton of cards with various bloggers.

Hopefully my experience on A Pack To Be Named Later will allow me to make even more acquaintances in our amazing hobby. That being said... I feel truly honored to rip packs among some of the finest cardboard bloggers on the net.

Now let's move on to the pack I'll be sharing with you today. I recently stumbled across a company called Wax Eye and their Cereal Killer cards. The parody cards combine classic cereal brands and some of the greatest horror movies.

And if you think the artwork is reminiscent of the classic Wacky Packages cards from the 80's, then I must say... you sure have a keen eye. All of the cards were designed by artist Joe Simko, who has his work featured in various Garbage Pail Kids and Wacky Packages products.

Wax Eye currently has two different products available to collectors: Cereal Killers Trading Cards & Cereal Killers Stickers.

Today we'll be opening a pack of the latter. Each pack contains 5 stickers or 4 stickers and an insert. Here's a list of the inserts collectors can pull:

Silver Spoon Foil Fusion Cards (8 designs) - 1:12 packs

Magnet Gross-ery Aisle Tryptic (3 designs) - 1:48 packs

Sketch Cards - 1:48 packs

Time to start rippin'!

First card... #48 Peanut Blooder Crunch

How often do you see someone committing suicide on a trading card... I mean sticker?

Second card... #54 Black Christmas Crunch

Another Captain Crunch parody, except this time... I don't get it. Is there a horror movie called Black Christmas?

Third card... #28 Death

Hmmm... maybe they're not all based on movies. Or maybe I just haven't seen the movie, Death.

Fourth card... #35 Alien-Bits

Now that's more like it. Alpha Bits + Alien = Alien-Bits. Alien-Bits = Awesome!

Fifth card... #6 Halloweeties

Out of the designs I've seen so far, this is one of my personal favorites. I guess they saved the best for last.

I know that this sort of product isn't for everyone. But I was excited about this product the first time I saw it. If you're interested in seeing more of this product, head over to my blog in a few days. I'll be busting several boxes of this product in search of Simko's sketch cards.

Thanks for taking the time to read my first post. I look forward to busting more packs and posting the results on this awesome blog.

Have a great week & sayonara!

2003 Fleer Platinum Hobby

Today, I have for you some 2003 Fleer Platinum. I'm not entirely sure what the logic is in calling this product "Platinum"... its nothing like Bowman Platinum... it looks pretty much like Fleer's version of Topps Heritage.



Here are the first two base cards, Eric Chavez and Gabe Kapler. As you can see, the base set is almost a hybrid between the 1987 and 1989 Fleer sets (taking the colors from the former and stripes from the latter).



Next are a couple star cards in the form of Bobby Abreu and Pedro Martinez. I love me some Red Sox Pedro mojo.



Here is Roy Halladay in the early 00's ugly Jays Uniform, and Bret Boone from his second stint in Seattle (he would go on to win a Gold Glove in 2003).



Some more base, in the form of Juan Pierre and Brian Giles. Juan Pierre has historically been a very good TTM auto signer, perhaps I'll send this one his way... these are nice TTM cards.



Next we have a couple inserts... first is Shea Hillenbrand (this kinda has the Greats of the Game theme) and the second is a Jamey Carroll prospect card in the style of Fleer's less-than-spectacular 1988 offering.



This was on okay pack. I like the design. Not blown away.

2012 Topps Series 1 Retail (Toys R Us)

Greetings!

Hope everyone's doing well.  I am loving the increased posts on the site.  Keep it up, everybody!

Real quick, a shout out to Wax Pack Geek…welcome aboard!  Looking forward to your continued contributions to the site.  Better yet, I get to hand off the title of Rookie to you.  I’ll send over the My Little Pony backpack so you can carry it around on the team plane.

Without further adieu, here’s a pack of 2012 Topps Series 1 Baseball…Toys R Us edition!

For the last couple of years, they have been having a buy one, get one half off promotion during Baseball’s Opening Week.  I was able to get two packs as part of an Easter gift.  These are regular packs with 3 extra cards…those cards are purple-bordered versions of the base cards.  Notice the attention-grabbing ad at the top of the package, encouraging you to complete the entire set (sorry for the bad scan).  So, wait, 330 cards in Series 1, with 3 cards in a pack.  I gotta buy 110 packs of cards to have a shot of getting the set (and that’s assuming no duplicates)?  At 3 bucks a pack, that’s $330!!!  Fortunately for me, I only paid $4.50 for the two packs, kinda justifying 6 purple-bordered cards for $.50.  Sorry Toys R Us, I ain’t falling for your marketing tricks!

Anyway, here’s the pack:

#276 - Scott Baker

#254 – Philip Humber

#209 – A.J. Burnett

The newest member of the Perfect Game club helps start things off.  Anyone listening to the radio call of the game heard that Humber pitched the perfecto at U.S. Cellular Field, in Chicago, instead of Safeco Field, where they actually were.  Word did get to Ed Farmer, the Sox’s play-by-play man, about the error, and I guess he was pretty amused by the mistake.

#GG-71 – Babe Ruth (Golden Greats)

#GGC-1 – Topps Golden Giveaway

#220 – Jay Bruce

I’m with most everyone on the set.  The shots are pretty good overall, the typos on the columns on the backs of the cards are unforgivable, and the inserts aren't too good.  Too much empty space on them.  But again, the shots are pretty good for the most part, as evidenced by the Jay Bruce card.

#5 – Desmond Jennings

#118 – Miguel Olivo

#66 – Nyjer Morgan

A couple more examples of good shots with Jennings and Morgan.  Seeing the Jennings and Olivo cards back to back made me wish that the Olivo card was a shot after Jennings tried to score.

#150 – Roy Halladay (back)

#264 – Chris Carpenter (NLDS Game 5)

#185 – Pablo Sandoval

I like the playoff cards in this year’s set, although I don’t know why they used the World Series logo instead of the NLDS logo.  That and why they shot they chose was Carpenter being consumed by Cardinal zombies.

#71 – Jeff Karstens

#169 – Brett Myers

#150 – Roy Halladay

And there’s the 3 “Exclusive Inserts.”  Now you know why I showed the back of the Halladay card earlier.  I will admit, I could clearly see that Halladay was the third card when I held the package just right.  Does that count as pack-searching?

Just for the record, the 3 “Exclusive Inserts” in the other pack I got were the Mariano Rivera checklist (#109), Kevin Youkilis (#160), and Justin DeFratus (#243).  I forgot to scan them in and I’m too lazy to do so now, so if you have those three cards, imagine a purple border around them.

Anyway, that’s the pack.  More later.  Thanks for reading!

1994 Bon Air Fire Engines

To say I was anticipating the arrival of my pack of 1994 Bon Air Fire Engines would be an understatement. I mean who wouldn’t want to spend a Monday afternoon breaking a sealed pack of Fire Trucks… especially with the chance to pull a Fireographic Insert!



I’m not sure what the first set to include redemption cards was, but this set had to have been one of them. There are 24 Carat Gold Redemption cards in this set which can be redeemed for a 24 Carat Gold Fire Engine card. Would I be so lucky? Would Virginia Hobby Supply redeem it if I did? Do they even exist anymore? Let’s find out…





Kicking things off is Plymouth, MN’s ’91 Ford and Lebanon, OR’s ’89 Western States Autocar. What is an Autocar? Google doesn’t point me to anything that relates to fire trucks.





Here are a couple from Oregon and North Carolina… a ‘91 Spartan and ‘90 Ford. Its not unheard of for fire engines to last 20 years, some of these could still be in service!



Here’s a throwback… banana yellow ’73 Imperial. This looks like a scene out of “Emergency!”.



Check out that one. It looks like you could live in it!



This ’68 Crown Firecoach takes the cake for baddest truck in the pack. I would love to cruise around in one of these.



Here’s a 1990 Sutphen… I wonder if some of these manufacturers just make fire trucks? I’ve never heard of this one.



This is the back of one of the cards, just to give you an idea. A lot of info on these cards. I never knew “Jake Brake” was short for “Jacob” but it makes sense.



I know what you are thinking. And I’m thinking it too. A fire boat?!?! I guess if you can access a fire by boat, a boat would be the ideal way to fight a fire… no worries about finding a fire hydrant, right?



Rounding things off is Jacksonville, FL’s ’93 Saulsbury.

Given the fact that I have 0 knowledge about anything relating to fire engines, I have to admit this was a fun pack to break. As far as educational value goes, these cards fare pretty well, with a lot of interesting details on fire engines and the cities in which they run. I was expecting to just make fun of this pack when I bought it but I can’t deny the fact that I enjoy the cards.