2021 Adventures in Repacks Part 29 - A Baseball Surprise

 

Let's do another one of these!

Here's the contents.  

I am not going to highlight the entire pack, but I'll show off my personal highlights. I like the casualness of the Jose Lind card. Whatever defensive play he made looks totally routine. The Saberhagen was the only Mets content in the whole repack, and the Kruk is so close to moment-of-impact greatness. I had absolutely no memories of either Figueroa or Levis.

As always, 70s/80s was all 80s, but that glossy McCovey makes up for it. 

Last time, a 90s repack got me a CC Sabathia rookie card from 1999 Update. Here, there was nothing close to that level of awesomeness. I guess I'll highlight a Jays alum, a minor league card, and some Stadium Club.

The Pitchers Pack was probably the most interesting to me. Pitcher at the plate (even if it was hidden on the back of the card, a couple Blue Jays (Perdomo wouldn't see the bigs until 2020 with the Brewers), and one of the finest players ever to be born in Saudi Arabia.

But the 2000s pack was pretty solid as well. Surprisingly, only one flagship set card appeared here. The Padres appearances is pretty nice, with the ticket motif and some camo options. The Eric Young looks fairly normal based on the photo on the front.

But on the back, he looks to be the only person who looks terrified to be heading into the batting cage.

There you have it!

Lotta Lowry

 

I did say there was a significant Kyle Lowry component to my latest COMC shipment. How much ido I consider significant? This much!

It was entirely cards in this, with this pre #7 sticker being the sole exception. As I wrote yesterday, the best multiple image cards are ones that showcase multiple jerseys. He switched to the more familiar number in the 2013 offseason after Bargnani was traded, so his 2013 entries have both options.

The name being repeated on the right looks odd when the name is right there on the top. But again, no repeated image on the front, and different jerseys make it a winner.

Why is an insert out of Totally Certified named 'Registered Mail' as opposed to 'Certified Mail'? 

Out of this whole group, I only duped up once on the insert set/parallel combo. The shinier one is a Horizon parallel.

Court Vision did make multiple appearances, but it was spread across two different sets and years.

No hits in the mix, but there were a pair of numbered cards in there. The Excalibur is /149. 

And the rest of 'em! Stretching from 2012-13 all the way through 19-20 for a nice cardboard summary of his time in Toronto - whatever may happen this offseason. 

There you have it!

Recapping Raptors

 

While I planned to recap the Raptors portion of some recent group breaks, I opted to also throw in this card into this recap out of my most recent COMC arrivals. For the simple reason that all the other Raptors content in the shipment were Kyle Lowry cards, and I really didn't want to shoehorn this into a post that was entirely one guy. 

A pretty nice design for a card out of a set named Mosaic, and the montage doesn't re-use the same photos on the front. Even better - 3 different unis as well!

A break of Contenders didn't work out so well. But at least here's a base set of the three players you expect to find when a base set is limited to 3-4 cards per team.

But at least I got one numbered parallel from the mix. 

Unlike contenders, I did not land a complete base set of Raptors from Crown Royale. 

But the missing player did show up in a beautifully gaudy Crystal Blue parallel. 

And I landed a hit this time around, with my first Malachi Flynn relic. It joins an auto of his I got earlier this season. A nice way to mix things up in the binder. 

Nothing super rare from the breaks, but the Raptors aren't that expensive this season in breaks. Unlike next year, where it will balance out with them having the #4 pick in the draft, and will be priced accordingly. 

There you have it!

Blue Jays Catch-Up

 I've been having cards from various team select group breaks show up lately, and I might as well get around to showing them off. Up first, some Jays stuff from breaks of Diamond Kings and Stadium Club.

These are decent enough representation of the early 90s design. And that super yellow background is garish enough to remind one of the 80s backgrounds.

Not exactly the most voluminous base card content. 

But at least there were a couple framed parallels to go along with them. I think the plum ones are rarer than the grey, but I'm not really going to check.

Aficianado does bring back the double images that one expected in the 80s, but they lose major points for repeating the base and Debut Diamond Kings images on Pearson's.

Here's the lowest numbered card from either break, and as close as I'd come to a hit - this /25 of Alejandro Kirk. But it isn't just any ol' parallel - this is an Artist Proof Litho Proof parallel.

Nothing numbered or a hit among the Stadium Club content, but at least I have a lot of nice base cards to show off.

The classic powder-blues making an appearance always make for an enjoyable thumb through of the team set, but it did remind me of how strange the collation was. It was a half-case, and I got 6 Springers out of it, but only one Biggio.

I also note Roberto Alomar's presence in this group. Which means this obviously went to the presses in too-late-to-replace now mode in April or earlier. This will probably be his last appearance in any sort of MLB licensed set for a long time, if ever.

I like that there was a perfect combo of 6 each in terms of horizontal/vertical cards. I like the oddness of seeing a player more-hyped for his bat getting a defensive photo on their card, something that applies to Vladdy, but also to Marcus as well. There was another collation issue among this group, with 6 Pearsons in the mix as opposed to just a single Gurriel. 

And while there was no numbered card, I did get one of those black & white parallels.

There you have it!

Build My Own Rookie Anthology Box

As it goes further in the past, the prices of one of my favourite products to bust, 13-14 Rookie Anthology, goes to far beyond what I'm willing to pay for it. 

So, instead of shelling out for a box, why don't I put my own together, and try to emulate the contents as closely as possible. Since I'd already pulled plenty of base cards and Score update base cards, I'd exclude them from this purchase. 

I gauged a typical box of RA would encompass this make up, minus what I listed above.

1 Rookie Selection

1 Score Gold

1 Score Auto

2 Prizm Base

2 Select Base

1 Silver Prizm or Prizm Select

1 Prizm or Select auto

1 Titanium Base Relic

3 Additional hits or Parallels

I set a few rules for myself, saying I wouldn't buy dupes, unless they were PC cards or tradeable to my various partners, and set a budget of about $50-$60 at COMC, and worked from there. What did I select for my custom box?

The fun thing about this is I can pick up PC cards as part of this, and consider it either an addition to this set, or to the PC. A 2/14 addition is the perfect way to start this, with the gold parallel.

Since I've got all the Rookie Selection portion of the base set, I'm pretty much limited to the prime/patch parallels. So, here's Tanner Pearson along with a stickergraph and a couple two colour swatches. I don't have too much purple on modern Kings swatches, so there's also that.

I'm also hitting the PC with this gold parallel - Clarkson was a Kitchener Rangers alum.

Another theme I might explore is to re-acquire cards that I'm certain I pulled previously, but traded away. This Jon Merrill replaces one that went to Ann Arbor at some undetermined time in the past. 

The one challenge for this if I go forward with more of these might be the Prizm and Select portions of this. I'm only about a dozen away from finishing the base set of each, mostly rookies, so finding the cards that fit in that set, and staying within my imaginary budget might be a challenge. But here's a pair of Columbus rookies to move towards that set.

I have a little more to work with for Select, since there are a few more veterans here that I didn't have. 

And the shiny Prizms in this set are plentiful, and cheap at COMC.

Doubling up on Matthew Dumba, because it is my build-a-box, and my rules. Interestingly, all three of the rookie autos I've added so far are all still in the league. 

Much like with the Merrill, this is a dupe up of a card that I'd previously sent another parallel of elsewhere in a trade. I can't remember where, but I'm sure a Blue Jackets fan liked getting this tri-colour swatch in a trade. 

More red, white and blue! The Silhouette design is always a favourite of mine, so let's make the big item in this come from this release. Sometimes, the design is such the player's picture hides the most interesting part of the swatch, but not so here. The autograph is a little more stylish than your typical initials-only sig, so there's also that. 

While it may not provide that rush of opening a pack, this was kinda fun to do. Even if I'm not overly crazy about waiting 4 months to have to results of the 'break' in hand. Maybe ebay next time. 

The Rest of the Box

 

What else was hiding in that box that contained the Namath auto/patch? Let's find out!

Some Bills content! There's a 2019 Topps vibe here with the last name on top of the first. 

Traded players get the photoshop treatment here. 

The cards scan a little lighter than they are in hand. The photos can be pretty nice in this set with the full-bleed look, and here's my favourite in this box.

There's a player (nick)named Whop this year.

While this box didn't land me the top pick, there were a couple afterwards. I like that the Trey Lance photo has him scrambling instead of him throwing since it is something different. And the bright uniform works nicely with the darker design.

The other Bills content was among the inserts. That's a rather savage stiff-arm.

Much like with the Lance photo, the Flash inserts contrast nicely with the rest of the set.

More shininess! In fact, this is case-hit shiny.

There's one hit per pack in this, with there being one relic and three autos. It is noticeable which pack contains which type of hit, so I knew I'd be getting at least one auto/relic as soon as I removed the packs from the box, since there were two thicker packs. As with the Namath, these were player-worn swatches as opposed to game-worn.

And the autos. Rashod Bateman was a first-rounder, going 27th overall to Baltimore. The sticker placement seems like an afterthought here. They probably could have dropped the logo at the bottom, raised the name a bit, and placed the sticker there instead of the last-second look they have here.

And the second auto is some Canadian content! The pride of Edmonton went to the Panthers in the fourth round. This means that 2 of my 3 autos in this were green parallels, although one could find 23 more of these than the Namath.

A first round draft, a Canadian and a case-hit? Even without Broadway Joe, that's a really solid box of cards.

There you have it!