Just one pack of 2014 WWE

Hey! The big dance goes tonight in New Orleans with Wrestlemania 30. What a perfect excuse to pick up a rack pack of 2014 WWE at Target!

And my first card from this rack pack is:

Daniel Bryan - That's a nice way to start the pack.  YES! YES! YES !

Bray Wyatt RC - Why is this considered an RC when there are cards of Husky Harris out there?

Andre The Giant - A nice look at the legends portion of the set, which comprise the last 15 cards of the 110 card set.
The Great Khali

Alexander Rusev - NXT prospect cards are from a 20 card subset. I think they fall in these at 1:3 ratio. Assuming wrestling fans are unable to tell the difference between Bulgaria and Russia, he should get some good heat for his in-ring debut.

Steve Austin defeats The Rock for his 3rd reign as WWE Champion - This is another subset, a 10 card set that covers Stone Cold's career.
Santino Marella
R-Truth
Kofi Kingston

Layla - The Divas have slightly separate designs, just like the legends, although these are distributed throughout the main set. I'm not sure why there are separate red and blue borders, since there really isn't a separate roster for RAW and Smackdown any more.
Cameron
Titus O'Neil

Eva Marie - Now I believe the RC is accurate on her card.
Road Dogg

Rey Misterio - Much like with flagship baseball, there are some horizontal cards in this set as well.

Big E. Langston - Here are what the backs look like. I was wondering if these cards really were written by Jim Ross, but since this one does mention Langston's football background, I guess it was legit.

X-Pac (black bordered) - Not serial #'d, but these do fall at 1:3 ratio as well.
AJ Lee

Zeb Colter - Given that Zeb wasn't around for the release of last year's set, I'm amazed they don't have the RC designation on his card.

William Regal - I'm happy he's considered a Superstar instead of a legend.
Sheamus

And there we go with another pack break.

Not quite dime-box goodies - Part 9

Because I really should get through this before the Expo (less than a month to go). And it beats boring  you with all the set builders that have arrived in the mail for '14 Heritage. These are all cards I pulled from a 12 for $1 bin in January.

When I saw this, I was certain I already had the card. I grabbed it anyhow, deciding that if it was dupe, Nick @ Dime Boxes would enjoy a pitcher at the plate card, especially one that salutes a decistion to bat Todd Stottlemyre in the 8th position. But, I didn't have it, so this one is a keeper.

Random Ginter pick-up!

It's a Yankee card, so I should really not be interested in it. But, Yogi is always a hard card to pass on picking up for less than a dime. And I can pretend I grabbed it since he did have a stop with the Mets.

And a completely random reprint! What is it with me picking up Yankees cards that day?

I'm really moving in the indefensible territory now. A picture of a pitcher at the plate, or practicing his bunts, or just posing as if he's bunting. With this background, nobody can really know for sure.

It was numbered to /250, and I wanted to see if this number was required for serial #d insanity. It wasn't.

Time to cleanse my palate with a card of one of my favourite Buffalo Bills. Whew. No more Yankees. No more Ryan Braun. No more Roger Clemens. All is right.

1992 Bowman wasn't just about horrific fashion choices made by draft picks, there were still some interesting cards in the set, such as this interesting view of a play at second.

And to wrap things up, here's a nice photo choice that shows the stadium behind the action. I've really started to enjoy cards with this particular view as of late.

Hey, that's 9 cards! Enough to fill a page! Sounds like a good number to wrap up today's post.

2014 Adventures in Repacks: Part 20 - Part 2

Now, for the non-Topps portion of the repack.

2007 Upper Deck S1

Clay Hensley - A nice start with Padres brown.
Todd Coffey
Joe Nathan
Ian Kinsler
Zach Duke

Carlos Zambrano - This might be a dream card for Nick @ Dime Boxes. A Cub. A pitcher at the plate. And a broken bat.

Placido Polanco - And here's an appearance of an award I really haven't seen much of on cardboards. It is the L.S. MacPhail Jr. award for the AL Championship Series MVP.
Tom Gorzelanny

2008 Documentary

Angels - Game 31 (At least one was a new Vladdy)
Diamondbacks - Game 41
Marlins - Game 78
Tigers - Game 78
Phillies - Game 59
Mariners - Game 58
Astros - Game 103
Marlins - Game 103
Tigers - Game 103
Angels - Game 64 (Gold)

1988 Fleer

Steve Lombardozzi
Tom Hume

Kelly Gruber - WOO-HOO! A Blue Jay!
John Davis
Danny Cox
Spike Owen

Randy St. Claire - WOO-HOO! An Expo!
Jay Bell
Les Lancaster
Harold Baines
Orel Hershiser
Jay Aldrich
Jeff Blauser
Eric Bell
Kevin Bass

2007 Upper Deck S2 Rack

Eric Hinske
Joe Borowski

Jimmy Gobble - Jimmy Gobble! One of my favourite names in baseball history!

Kevin Mench - Another twofer Dime Boxes mini-collection. Throwback uniform and signing autographs. It even has a nice photo of the stadium in the background.
Hanley Ramirez

Mike Piazza - Not an oddball, but seeing Piazza in anything but a Mets or Dodgers uniform still seems strange.
Ichiro
Shawn Hill
Jeremy Guthrie
Neal Cotts
Logan Kensing
Aubrey Huff
Kevin Gregg

Elmer Dessens - Baseball seriously needs more people named Elmer.
MVP Potential - Magglio Ordonez

Jon Lieber - There aren't too many play at the plate cards that feature the pitcher as opposed to the catcher showing off the ball.
Ryan Franklin
Ryan Zimmerman

Mike Lowell - This would have been an "Out of Bounds" parallel had this photo shown up in Topps S1 last year.

Vernon Wells - A Blue Jay! WOO-HOO! I don't know if he's circling the bases after a home run, or trotting back to the dugout after a pop-up. I assume I could look up day games in 2006 featuring Oakland at Toronto, but I'll pass.
Barry Zito
David Delucci
Octavio Dotel

Tony Graffanino - There's an Italian name for you! PAISANO!
Rob Bowen
Bruce Chen

Pete Orr - CanCon!

Brad Eldred - Unlike Vernon, you know this is after a home run.
Edwin Jackson
Jeff DaVanon
MVP Potential - Jermaine Dye

Lots of photographic keepers makes this a great repack busting session. I'll have to keep look for ones with UD rack packs visible, as they seem filled with keepers.

2014 Adventures in Repacks: Part 20 - Part 1

More repack fun. I busted one of those 10 pack repacks. The contents were:

1988 Fleer
2007 Upper Deck S1
2007 Upper Deck S2 Rack Pack
2008 Upper Deck Documentary
2012 Bowman
2012 Bowman Chrome
2012 Topps S1
2012 Opening Day
2012 Topps Update
2012 Allen & Ginter Rack Pack

An interesting breakdown. Let's start with all the 2012 products in this post, and then I'll hit the rest tomorrow.

2012 Bowman

Alex Gordon - It's always nice to start off with a filthy uniform.
Heath Bell
Clay Bucholz - How can a uniform on someone who, for whom every inning he pitched in the majors was in a Red Sox uniform have a card where the uniform looks photoshopped?
Heath Bell
Michael Fiers RC
Zach Walters - Chrome
Michael Crouse - Chrome
Pablo Sandoval - Gold
Jorge Osuna
Anthony Rendon

Oh well, at least the first two were needs for my '12 Bowman base set.

2012 Bowman Chrome

Colby Rasmus
Gary Apelian
Josh Hamilton - Refractor

3 cards in a pack - might as well scan all of them. A Blue Jay is a nice start. Apelian had 8 homers in 55 games to start off his pro career, which got him some cards. Unfortunately, he slid to a batting average around 200 in '12, and doesn't appear to have played at all in '13.

2012 Topps S1
Nyjer Morgan - One of my favourite base photos in '12.
Roy Halladay
Johnny Cueto
Miguel Olivo
Eli Whiteside
Devin Mesoraco
Jordan Pacheco
Golden Greats Roberto Clemente - How can anybody hate pulling a card of Clemente?
Nate Schierholtz
Mike Napoli
John Danks

2012 Topps Update

Joe Smith
Craig Stammen
Yu Darvish
Carlos Beltran
David Wright - I think this was my only Mets card among the Topps products.

Jay Bruce - Gold 319/2012 - Finally, a serial numbered card I can send off to serial numbered insanity. Assuming I don't forget about it between now and then. Which I'll probably do.
Austin Kearns - Gold Sparkle
Jordan Danks
Edward Mujica
Bobby Abreu
Jason Hammel
Chad Durbin

2012 Opening Day

Justin Morneau - WOO-HOO! CanCon!
Drew Pomeranz
Hanley Ramirez
Joey Votto - On Deck Preparation - I hadn't bought too much Opening Day, so I didn't know about this subset. A nice idea, and also another piece of CanCon. This one is my favourite card from these packs.
Casey Mcgehee
Jeff Niemann
Albert Pujols

2012 A&G Rack Pack

Joakim Soria
Wade Davis

Todd Helton - What a beautiful horizontal card.
Adam Lind
Kirk Herbstreit - Ginter Back Mini - I had no idea who this was, and being a Ginter back made it so I had to google it.

Jackie Roosevelt Robinson - What's In a Name? - Much like the Clemente, Robinson is always someone who it is nice to pull a card of. Even if both of them make a lot of appearances in modern products.
Carlos Santana

Chipper Jones - Mini - The Horizontal cards in this product were beauties.
Jeff Niemann
Annie Duke
Jhoulys Chacin

And that's 6 packs. I'll hope some photographic awesomeness improves things with tomorrow's UD packs.

Edit: It looks like blogger ate all of my solo vertical scans. Oops.

2/14 binder newness

It seems like a good follow-up to this morning's post to highlight the newest card in the 2/14 binder, since it came from the same rack pack.

And here he is! I'm guessing this will be the first of many this year, since he'll be all over a lot of products after the draft. I'm just disappointed he isn't wearing a 'Piss Excellence' shirt.

But, there's more than just that one on their way to the binder. Here are four more!

I would have bet that I had this card already, but all my checklists told be otherwise. So, let's add it.

There's always room for new cards of 'Perfect Match' Viktor Kozlov.

This is my 4th Larry Milbourne card from a Topps traded set. Not counting the Tiffany '84, that's all of them. I still need 5 to complete all of his Topps base cards. That sounds like a reasonable goal for the rest of the year.

Here's my 2nd auto-ed manu-patch!

Total cards in the binder as of 4-2-14: 688. My goal of 800 by year end is still very reachable.

Fun with licensing (or the lack thereof)

On Monday, I picked up a rack pack of 2014 Sage Hit football. While busting too many of it during the busting of a pair of 20 pack football repacks didn't make me a fan, there was someone for whom I was hunting for a base card of for my 2/14 collection. On that front, I got what I was looking for, and will post it along with some other new cards for the binder tonight.

But, that was not my favourite card.

2/14 cards usually are, so it has to be something amazing to surpass it.

And it was. I pulled an auto from the retail product.

It wasn't a major card of someone likely to go high in the NFL draft, although he is projected to be drafted in the high-to-middle rounds.

Out of the University of Wyoming, here's Brett Smith!

And yes, he's wearing a Piss Excellence t-shirt.

Said shirt is even more obvious on the base card.

I'm guessing his Big Johnson shirt was in the wash.

2014 Adventures in Repacks: Part 19

Now, some of the highlights of the non-goalie portion of the flea market repack.

The visible card on the other side of the repack was this Spezza. A Senator on one side and a mask binder card on the other is always a good way to start for me.

Within the middle of the pack, I came across a pair of cards for a couple of my PCs. A new Gaborik card for the 2-14 collection, and a new Landeskog for my Rangers alum collection.

However, perhaps I should consider starting a Dustin Byfuglien (Ebullient is a suggested spelling correction on his last name, FWIW) collection. There were 4 of his cards in this repack. The easy winner is the 79 retro.

Here is some more retro content in terms of the players represented. The Bobby Clarke features a spectacular photo with everything a picture of a hockey player should have. Missing teeth and a long flowing mop of a mullet. It is all spectacular, but how can I vote against a card featuring someone from the Quebec Bulldogs? They're only represented on a few pieces of cardboard - so any appearances of them are welcome. It wasn't just my favourite retro card - it was my favourite in the whole repack.

There's always a Gretzky or similar superstar in one of these repacks. Here's this repack's card in question. It's an interesting photo as he meets up with one of his old teammates on the ice, with both clad in uniforms that you really don't think of first (or probably even second) as having been sported by them.

When you're working a 100 card base set, Cal Clutterbuck is not the player you'd imagine as being a part of it.

My favourite in game photo goes to this nice celbration shot from Ultra.

And to wrap it up my favourites from the rest, here's a nice rookie card from a future Senator. As bad as this season has been for Ottawa, Kyle's leading the team in +/- with a +21. It's a nice rookie to add to my binders.

So, that's it for a flea market repack. Tomorrow, depending on your viewpoint, I'll show either the best thing or the worst thing imaginable about unlicensed sets.