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.