2008 MLB A Piece of History

Another day, another $5 SRP UD product. This one is the ugly offspring of Donruss Americana and UD Artifacts.

8 cards per pack / 16 packs per box / 20 boxes per case

Hits: 3 GU/1 AU
Case Hits: 3 Patches
2 Autoed Memorabilia
5 Multi-Player Jersey Cards
1 Yankee Stadium Legacy Memorabilia
The Chase: Buttons /5

Of the three GU, one will be a Hollywood Memorabilia.

These card companies just don't get it, do they. Inserting President cuts, Hollywood star jerseys into EVERY product. It seems like the only untouched products are UD First Edition and Topps Opening Day. Now some collectors like those products. I don't. I want hits. If I want to build a set I'll build the Topps Heritage set. It's much more fun. I just want ONE baseball product without any impurities.

Cheap Cracks

Today I bought a couple of blaster boxes off a dealer for $9.99 each. They were

2008 UD Spectrum
2008 Tristar Projections Yankee Prospects
2008 Tristar Projections

UD Spectrum - 7 packs/4 cards per pack, 1 GU Guaranteed

1st pack is GU. GU is Shannon Stewart. Not good. Also got a couple of Derek Jeter Retrospectrums and a YSL with Bernie on it. As a Mets fan , this is not good at all.

Grade: C

2008 Projections Yankee Prospects: 5 packs/7 cards per pack, 1 AU Guaranteed

Well, if I'm a Mets fan, why am I buying this product? I like prospects as well.

Hit: Austin Romine Auto

WOOHOO! Romine isn't terrible. However the base design is.

Grade: B-

2008 Tristar Projections: 6 packs/8 cards per pack, 1 AU Guaranteed

This better be good. The Dealer specifically recommended it. 1st pack I get two /25 parallels stuck together. John Tolisano (heard of him) and Robert Fish (who????).

Hit: Hector Correa Auto/50

Grade: C

HAHA

Bad, Cheap Wax: 2007 Fleer Ultra SE

FLEER ULTRA SE!!! Remember when this product was $80 per box? Well, now it's $32. I don't think anyone is surprised. With only a few big hits (Ryan Braun, Tulowitzki, Gordon RC Logo Autos, Cal Ripken Jr. Autographs), dual patch cards /25.) and with the product loaded down with Miguel Montero, Kory Casto, and Joaquin Arias autos, it was doomed to fail. For $32, though, it was worth a shot.

Let's see what they advertise

5 PACKS PER BOX / 15 CARDS PER PACK (it says 5, but that's a typo)
AN AUTOGRAPH OR GAME-USED IN EVERY PACK
4 GAME USED CARDS PER BOX ON AVERAGE
1 AUTOGRAPH PER BOX ON AVERAGE

Price Paid: $32
BV Goal: 64

Pack One

Ervin Santana Dual Materials/75 (the gold parallel version)
Daisuke Matsuzaka Lucky 13 RC

Not bad. Santana is decent and there's always a market for him. Plus the card looks sweet (I've always had a fetish for dual jerseys).

Total BV of pack: 25

So far so good...

Pack Two

Swing Kings Materials Travis Hafner

God, does this guy have to improve.

Total BV of pack: 6

Pack Three

Faces of the Game Materials Jason Bay
Cal Ripken, Jr. Iron Man Insert #3

Cal sighting! Guess how much this books?

Total BV of pack: 9

We've slowed down considerably... aargh. Still, we're at 40 BV, trying to get to our goal of 64. And we haven't gotten the autograph yet.

Pack Four

holy shitt........

Cal Ripken Jr. Iron Man Autograph/10.

Total BV of pack: 150.

WINNNER!!!!!

Pack Five

Faces of the Game Materials CC Sabathia

Total BV of pack: 6

TOTAL BV: 196
GOAL BV: 64

I beat my goal by 132 BV. Sweet. While getting the best hit possible from this box.

SPX- New Title: Waste of $PX

$PX is a crappy, $160 a box product. The autos sell for 99 cents on eBay and the game used cards, excluding the patches, are crummy. What happened to this product? Every year it gets worse and worse. You can start by reviewing the checklist. They have a couple of "Young Star autos" which are essentially ugly looking autographs of Nate McLouth, Joaquin Arias, Mike Fontenot and a couple of other scrubs (yeah, McLouth is off to a hot start, but I mean, come on). This is along with other minor stars that sell for $4 on eBay. Cases in point: Joel Zumaya, Tom Gorzelanny, Stephen Drew. This is what you would expect out of a $70 product, not a $160 one. But at least the checklist has some money-bringers: Ryan Braun, Troy Tulowitzki, Phil Hughes. But even those rare gems are in the $15-20 range, simply because they are standard autos of good players with lots of autos. The rookie autograph checklist is simply atrocious. There's Buchholz and Ian Kennedy, and to a lesser extent Votto, Daric Barton, JR Towles, and Wladimir Balentien. The checklist says it has Bruce, Rasmus, Longoria, Fukudome, and Carlos Gonzalez. Sure. I haven't seen any of those pulled. Okay, so they're in the Rookie Redemption cards, I guess. Those should be going for a lot. WRONG!!!!!! They're going for less than 50 dollars and the checklist hasn't been released yet. And those, along with the crappy 1/1 Babe Ruth (yes, crappy 1/1 Babe Ruths) and crappy 1/1 Ken Griffey American hero (which, by the way, are going for a ridiculous 70 dollars even though they're just rare pieces of cardboard with absolutely nothing but a reprinted box score on them) are the CASE hits.

The patches aren't doing so hot either. Sick patches of Chase Utley and Eric Chavez are going for less than 10 dollars.

Sure there are the Derek Jeter autos. Sure there are the Griffey autos. But these are less than one per case hits its starting to look like.

I will say this: if it goes to $100 it's a damn good buy. Anything above that is insane. $160? I don't think so.

Oh, but the base is sweet.

Product Grade: C-

2008 Topps Opening Day

Config:

36 packs per box
6 cards / stick o' gum per pack

2008's crappy parallel edition of the best brand ever.

Base Set

220 players/rookies. They are red.

Parallels/Inserts

White - 220 players/rookies serially numbered to 2008. They are white.
Printing Plates - 220 players/rookies serially numbered to 1. They are crappy.
Flappers - "Individual cards that transform into multiple cards" proudly brags Topps.
Puzzle - Rip 400 packs and you can complete the puzzle!

the Chase is on!

AUTOGRAPHED CHECKLIST BABY!

	Anthony Lerew	Atlanta Braves
	Glen Perkins	Minnesota Twins
	Jason Bartlett	Minnesota Twins
	Jason Botts	Texas Rangers
	Jeff Baker	Colorado Rockies
	John Buck	Kansas City Royals
	John Rheinecker	Texas Rangers
	Kevin Gregg	Florida Marlins
	Nate Schierholtz	San Francisco Giants

Whole buncha stars right there. One per case.

Is it worth it?

Dacardworld.com has it at $33 delivered using coupons. You couldn't pay me $33 to take this kind of shit.

2008 Topps Series One

2008's edition of the best brand ever.

The Base Set Breakdown

330 cards, of which

255 veterans
15 managers
30 rookies
10 league leaders
8 postseason highlights
2 CYA
2 MVP
2 ROY's
5 Classic Combos
1 Barry Bonds

in other words, A-Rod has no less than three cards in this set, possibly four if you count the postseason.

Inserts/Parallels

Year in Review - So that Topps can tell us what we already know. There will be one for every day of the season. June 14, 2007 - Vladimir Guerrero has sacrifice fly, 2 RBI vs. Cincinnati.

Own the Game - This has been running for 234782347928374 years now. Isn't it time Topps did a different format for league leaders?

Barry Bonds Home Run History - This time, its only cards 757-762. This means that the odds are only 1:10 of pulling one of these "player-collector" dream cards.

Replica "Mini-Jersey" Red Sox/All Stars - #'d to 499, these cards feature a MINI JERSEY seeded one per pack in a worthless UD Hokkey product. Note, this is not game-used

Gold - Standard worthless player collector parallel. this year #'d/2008 (for the year, isn't that clever)

Black - Standard worthless player collector rare parallel. this year #'d/57. And they took the Blacks away from HTA.

Platinum - Expensive card with a strange triangular sticker, that despite being not a rookie, a relic, or an autograph, and all together a shitty looking card, commands a high premium.

AU/GU Corner

2007 Highlights - Year in Review, featuring such stars as Dallas McPherson, Carlos Villanueva, and Eulogio De La Cruz, along with scrubs like Jake Peavy and Albert Pujols.

Projected odds : 1 in 120 packs (1 in every 3-4 boxes)

World Champion Autograph Relics - Featuring swatches from June, and featuring stickers signed in July. Only 500 of these were made, so it might be more appropriate to put these cards in the "chase" section.

Projected odds : 1 in 6080 packs (1 in every 4 cases or so)

Barry Bonds Home Run Triple Relic Cards - Showing that we are enticed by "keywords", such as "home run", "triple", "relic", "heritage", and "chrome". Odd. #'d/250.

Projected odds : 1 in 12160 packs (1 in every 8 cases or so)

World Champion Relics - Featuring swatches from June. Despite this, and the relatively high serial numbering, a JD Drew World Champion Relic went for $75.

2007 Highlights - 13 base set relic cards, white swatch, grey swatch, black swatch, you know the picture by now.

All-Rookie Team Autographs/Relics - #'d to 50 cards of Dwight Gooden and other phenomenal rookies. If you are super lucky, you can pull Dwight Gooden game-used cocaine residue.

MICKEY MANTLE
MICKEY MANTLE
MICKEY MANTLE
MICKEY MANTLE
MICKEY MANTLE
MICKEY MANTLE
MICKEY MANTLE
MICKEY MANTLE
MICKEY MANTLE

Okay, so now we're over that fetish. There are more Mickey Mantle inserts.

WHAT TOPPS THINKS

"YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYYAYAYAYAY!" - random kid after pulling Mickey Mantle.

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS

"Fuck. All I got was a shitty Mantle Home Run history." - real kid, after pulling Mickey Mantle.

Let's face it. All these Mantle cards have been devalued more than the Zimbabwean currency.

now, for the ever-popular

CHASE CHASE CHASE CHASE CHASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11

In the Name - cut-off, nasty looking game used all-star lettermen. 1/1's.
Campaign 2008 Cut Signatures - autos of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John McCain, John Edwards, and... Fred Thompson? WTF? No Mitt or Mike Huckabee? Mitt even would have gone in with the baseball theme.

2007 Bowman DP&P Break

Store open. Paul think, "hmmm. store sell draft 60 dollar. paul has 60 dollar. paul buy draft". That's when Paul got perhaps the greatest hit of his life, barring all other days except this day. What did I really get?

Notable Chromes: Moustakas, Heyward, Parker, Bumgarner, Fairley
Refractors: Jon Danks, Yovani Gallardo, Ryan Braun (MIL)
Xfractors: Wendell Fairley
Auto: BDPP129 Matt Mangini AU

BDP is one of the rare products in which the auto is half the time not the best hit. The Mangini goes for around $8 on eBay and the Fairley $14. Adding that to the Braun ($3) the Gallardo ($0.27), the Danks ($0.02) and the chromes (about $9 put together), we have

$34.29 worth of hits! Woohoo! Ah well. Perhaps I can convince someone to trade the Mangini for a Michael Main chrome, using the constant yell of SAME BV to make them trade with me. Oh, and by the way that Beckett video was hilarious. eBay values really are the only values anymore.

2007 Bowman Chrome

1 Retail Pack at Target - $2.99
Contents of Pack - $0.22
Experience of opening the pack - $2.77

By this logic, Topps should charge $2.49 for people to open little foil packs. Anyway, rip coming up

35 Johan Santana

1995-1999 Houston Astros (Minors)
1999-2007 Minnesota Twins
2008 NEW YORK METS! YEAH BITCH!

Also worth mentioning: his cursive "J's" are exactly the same as mine.

BC113 Joe Ness

Hasn't it always bothered you that all these Bowman Chrome cards aren't flat? Ness is 23, 4-3, and has a 6.17 ERA. Florida bullpen, here we come!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BC172 O.D. "Overdose" Gonzalez

Real first name is "Oscar", and he used his wheels to spark Idaho Falls to the Pioneer League title in 2006. He is a "menace", "gets to everything", "jump-starter", and "devil-god". All but the last were actually on the card.

207 Adam Lind (RC) Refractor

Meh. No fun comments about him. Like Brian Burres and Angel Sanchez and Joaquin Arias, he plagued the 2007 RC Logo releases, only he's actually good.

2 Packs of Topps Heritage

I finally decided to pick some of this up, didn't want to buy the $2.99 retail and come away with not a single SP, so I got 2 hobby packs at the shop for $8. Let's commence with the break

45 Chris Ray

In the minors, Chris played for Aberdeen, Delmarva, Frederick, and Bowie. That reads more like a list of last names. The nerdy, repressed Ray is wearing glasses while reading a book and being laughed at by the jocks. Finally, a baseball card that represents the AV club!

302 Wily Mo Pena

Is Mo in his last name or his first name? I think first, but I have really no clue.

185 Brad Hawpe

Hawpe had 116 RBI's last year and gets no love? Reminds me of the season Jorge Cantu had a couple of years ago with the Devil Rays.

109 David "Grit" Eckstein

"David makes up for his size with grit" says the picture. David has no power. Every person on earth must now know that David Eckstein is a small man, as this has been mentioned no less than 6,522 times in the past year. However, Eckstein led the league in grit with a ridiculous .822, the most grit since his record breaking 2002. Some speculate Eckstein uses steroids to increase his grit quotient, but nothing can be proven. Nothing.

295 Josh Johnson

Just another young, talented, injured Marlins starter.

131 Brandon Jones (RC)

I like the design of these cards. As someone who owns an authentic "gasp" rookie card of this year, the design stays pretty true to form. Brandon Jones appears to be a competitor for the grit NL title: but wait, far too many RBI's.

116 Black Back SP Wladimir Balentien

He's good and underrated. Wladdy was born in Willemstad and played winor weague ball for Wisconsin.

414 J.D. Drew

Drew only has 173 HR in his career: I thought he had around 250. Guess that's what happens when you bat like 370 times a year.

173 Ronny Paulino

Last year, J.D. Drew had the same amount of home runs as this Pittsburgh "scrub", with 11. In fact, they had similar stat lines

.263/11/55 with 25 2B, 120 H, 457 AB for Paulino
.270/11/64 with 30 2B, 126 H, 460 AB for J.D Drew

50 Ken Griffey Jr.

No picture? All stats? Goddammit, I want to see the damn pictures!

460 Tom Gorzelanny

Serious made up statistic here... among NL Lefties with at least 40 starts over the past 2 years, Gorzelanny's ERA is the 2nd lowest... at 3.68, a good ERA, but not even close to the stuff of legends. Who's first, you ask? Cole Hamels is apparently tied for second with a 3.68 ERA, and there's no other lefty. Maybe there's something I'm missing, but 3.68 is not greater than 3.68. Perhaps they gave Hamels the edge because he plays in a little league park.

296 Josh Banks

He likes to fish. Ummm what else is there that's interesting about Josh Banks.

342 Matt Chico

Now we're talking, baby! Ace of the Washington Nationals right here with these fine stats

31 Starts
167 Innings Pitched
94 Strikeouts / 74 Walks
7-9 W/L
4.63 ERA

The Pirates are looking really good at pitching now with Snell and Gorzelanny.

59 John Patterson

He was SUPPOSED to be the Nationals ace, but had an ERA of almost double Chico's before going on the DL. Oops.

63 Eric Chavez

Eric Chavez's picture indicates that he likes to hug men. Whatever. Chavez is one of only three household names on the A's, the other two being Rich Harden. (Joe Blanton gets no love, despite being a damn good average pitcher) Now that Chavez is out, the A's have fewer name players than any other team in the majors. Try it. The Royals have Alex Gordon and Gil Meche. The Pirates have Jason Bay and Freddy Sanchez. The Marlins have Hanley Ramirez and Dan Uggla. The Nationals, well, the Nationals have Ryan Zimmerman, and, um... Dmitri Young? Yeah, let's go with that. Okay, so the Nationals have only one name player too. Big whoop.

Burgess- Overrated

Michael Burgess

Burgess is the highest priced Bowman Draft Picks auto as of the moment, going for over $35 dollars. But he's just not that good IMO. First of all, he has put up results in RK and A-. But he K'd 60 times in just 198 at-bats. This would translate to 180+ strikeouts in a regular season, and in A- facing tougher competition his K-rate was 28.4%. Also, Burgess's BABIP (batting average per balls in play) was an unsustainable .422 in Rookie Level play, and a slightly more plausible but still very high .386 BABIP in A-. Worse yet, with just a .320 BABIP in August, Burgess hit just .225 with a .300 SLG. His swing is also long, and it looks like when he struggles, his swing will become even longer.

Topps Chrome Pack Break

1 Pack Topps Chrome Hobby - $3

This product was horrible this year. I mean, really horrible. How many people outside of Troy Tulowitzki and Alex Gordon can you name in the checklist? Tim Gradoville? Angel Sanchez? Brian Burres? Burres in particular is one of the great banes of my existence. I pulled a letterman of him, a Topps Chrome auto of him, and a SP Rookie Edition. No Andrew Miller (or AOMO as his signature would seem to indicate). No Daisuke Matsuzaka. They should just make Topps Chrome later in the season so that they can catch more of the "Rookies". With the new MLBPA restrictions its starting to get ridiculous with the early-season releases like Bowman and Topps Chrome.

Anyway, here are my cards

128 Chad "Why the Fuck is My BC Auto going for $35" Billingsley
212 David "Scrappy" Eckstein

When you think of David, you think of a high average, low power player with good defense. His statistics would indicate that he has actually no tangible skills besides his average. He has batted .286 over his career, but that is balanced out by below average offensive performances every year except 2002. Kudos to JP Ricciardi who signed Eckstein to a 1Y/4.5M contract that looks ridiculous when you already have a much better shortstop. His name is John McDonald and he kicks ass.

217 Brett "The Wife Beater" Myers

Apparently, Brett is one of just 3 National League pitchers to win more than 10 games each of the last 4 years without having a losing season along with Carlos Zambrano and Jason Schmidt. Then he became a reliever. 2008 bio:

"Brett went from being one of just 3 National League pitchers to win more than 10 games each of the last 4 years to a successful reliever who struck out 83 batters in just 68 2/3 innings"

310 Travis "6 Months Too Late" Buck Refractor

Travis went 338-56 last season and has a career record of 497-80 despite pitching just 108 innings last season and only striking out 15 batters all the time. He also has more shutouts than complete games. I have reached a conclusion- Travis Buck is God.

Stay tuned for a break of 2006 Greats of the Game for $50.

My thought on gimmicks

I think that gimmicks are good. There. I said it. The Rudy Giuliani Sox card is great. It draws more attention to the hobby, and more people are interested in buying a pack of cards when they know they could get a cool card like that. I myself was drawn to the hobby after a 15 year hiatus because of the Alex Gordon cut-out card, and mistakenly purchased a 2005 Topps Updates and Highlights blaster box instead of the 2006 Series One. (I also got the box at Target instead of Wal-Mart). Anyway, I pulled a Brian Roberts jersey card and fell in love immediately with the hobby again. That would be the one card that would stay in my PC forever. Gimmicks drew me back into the hobby and I'm sure that there are many people just like me who start liking the hobby because they are allured by the possibility of pulling an "in-demand" card. The Rudy card is good for the hobby. Period.

Two Pack Break of Future Stars

Alright, here's what I got out of two packs of UD Future Stars

Couldn't pass up like a 1:3 shot at an auto for 6 bucks, even though I know this product is crappy. Cards will be judged on their future star rating.

21 Jon Garland

Future Star? AGE: 29. Maybe he'll have 150 wins by the end of his career. Not really a future star though.

GRADE: C

82 Matt Cain

AGE: 24. Great year last season, although 2007 was his third year in the majors. I think he might become a future star.

GRADE: A-

14 Curt Schilling

AGE: 38. W...T...F. Why are they putting guy as old as me in this crappy product? This product should be for age 25 and younger. I didn't pull one RC logo out of my so far four packs. That is unacceptable. Also what's with the 4 cards per pack? All brands should have a minimum of 6 cards per pack. That way you can actually open the pack without bending the cards.

GRADE: F

33 Magglio Ordonez

AGE: 34. No. Just no. He had his best year in 2007. A career year. He'll be productive, but not really at star level the next few years.

GRADE: D

99 Ryan Zimmerman

AGE: 24. FINALLY! A FUTURE STAR! This is the second and last future star I pulled in 4 packs. That's a seeding ratio of 1:2 packs. Not good if your product's name is FUTURE STARS! Perhaps Topps should do the same with their hideous '52 Rookie Edition and seed rookies 1 in every 3 packs.

GRADE: A

65 Johnny Damon

AGE: 35. God this guy is old. I thought for sure that Schilling was at least 5 years older than this guy. Did I mention that the photography on these cards is horrible? Look closely at Damon's face. It looks as if he's just seen Babe Ruth come out of the sky.

GRADE: D

38 Dontrelle Willis

AGE: 26. His best years IMO are behind him. Still, however, his age and reputation give him an average grade for this class. Terrible photography on this one as well. It looks like he has a massive wad of tobacco in his mouth.

GRADE: B

107 Sean Henn AU Clear Path to Greatness

Not a future star. I believe he gave up 4 straight home runs on 4 pitches in a row to the Boston Red Sox. Not that that will necessarily define his career, but more likely than not is that's how he's going to be remembered. Also, what happened to the "Clear" part of Clear Path to Greatness? The card isn't see through at all. Very disappointing. At least I actually like the design of this card.

Two Posts? Unthinkable...

5 Mid-Range to Expensive Players Who You Wish You'd Have Invested In by October 2008

1. David Price
2. Colby Rasmus
3. Chad Billingsley
4. Chris Davis
5. Tim Alderson

I'm going to TRY and not be biased....

Justin Reed and Greg Reynolds are the two most underrated prospects in this year's Bowman Chrome set. Greg Reynolds had a great season before shutting down to injury. 9 BB in 50 IP, a miniscule 0.81 WHIP and a 1.42 ERA, and just 2 homers allowed in 50 innings, a nice stat for a Rockie pitcher. This was also accomplished in the Texas League, in AA, not a pitcher's haven. Reynolds is going for $8. That is astoundingly low. Reed is probably the most raw player in the entire group. Right now, its hard to tell what he could become, but I can tell you that when Justin Reed refractors are going for less than 5 dollars on eBay, something is very, very wrong. He walks, he has speed, and played in mostly pitcher's leagues in 2007. He had 19 XBH in 60 games, or about 60 extrapolated along the whole season. Right now the only problem with Reed is he strikes out WAY too much. 72 times in 60 games is right around 210 in 160. Still though, he's a great investment because he's really, really cheap.

Oh, and by the way I only own one card combined between these two, a Justin Reed X-Fractor auto.

Pack Break- 2006 Bowman Chrome

Target must be the hell of the whole baseball collecting hobby. You go in for your new TV and you buy a couple of packs. Well, let's commence with the mini-break

2006 Bowman Chrome- 1 Pack

124 Adam Eaton
210 Ian Kinsler (RC LOGO PIECE OF BS)
BC172 Manuel Corpas

Woohoo a real RC of a closer! Big money, right. Nope. Manuel Corpas gold refractors can be found for $17. Wow. At least this thing was $1.59.

2007 Bowman Chrome- 1 Pack

BC111 Mike Carp

I'm not going to even bother telling you the other two pieces of OC crap that I got in the pack. Well, all right. It's Chase Utley and Nick Swisher. Not bad players at all. The centering is literally 90/10 on these cards.

Oh yeah, what is up with the 2007 BC Prospects set? It went from a great 2007 black bordered Bowman w/Chrome Prospects set to a hideous set that didn't even feature the 1st Bowman Chrome Card logo on it. I mean, come on, half of the reason I buy the cards are because they have that awesome logo on it. And the 2007 Draft is almost as bad with those white borders. Bowman is a black bordered set. Plain and simple.

2007 Bowman and Lessons to Be Learned

Alright, well 2007 Bowman sucked. I think everyone can agree on that. It's been relegated to the junk wax section of the hobby shop and collectors can pick them up for about $30 a piece. The autographed cards were especially terrible. Only two autos booked for $40 or more, (Okajima Japanese and Miller), and there were only two prospects, Betances and Desmond Jennings, that were worth anything. In my personal box break I got a Kasey Kiker Bowman Auto (sold for $7.57, which must have been a world record), and a Bryan Hansen X-Fractor.

Total Book Value:

Kiker AU $10 BV
Hansen X $5 BV
Betances Chrome x2- $8 BV
Jennings Chrome- $3 BV

Together my box was $26 BV, and I was reasonably lucky in pulling the X-Fractor and the Betances dupe. Basically there was only one in-demand autograph, the Miller.

2006 Bowman has Blanks AND Maybin as chase cards. Those boxes are $60 and certainly not junk. They also featured chromes of Gordon.

What Bowman has to do to be successful is put Bowman, Bowman Chrome, and Bowman Draft as such

Autos
#1- Draft
#2- Chrome
#3- Bowman
#4- Draft
#5- Chrome
#6- Bowman

or something along those lines, with perhaps #7 being a Sterling exclusive auto. It doesn't look like they learned their lesson in 2008, however, because all of their autographs are going to be Price, Moustakas, et al. No one wants a second year of Price, auto or not. Bowman's going to have to change their ways.



Free Counter

Topps '52 Edition- Horrible Stuff

Year after year, Topps relies on "the oldie" brands as a fallback. While products such as Topps Heritage have been nice, 2007 Topps '52 Rookie Edition is completely worthless. First of all, Upper Deck already has a nicer product, SP Rookie Edition, which uses some neat designs. Second of all, they SHORT-PRINTED the good autos! What the hell are they thinking? I want a chance to pull a nice Joba or Lincecum and not a Ben Francisco which can be found on eBay for 99 cents. I mean, if you're going to have to drop $80 on a box of cards, at least make the checklist nice. There are 3 autos in one box, but who cares if those autos are going to be Brian Esposito, Troy Cate, and Zach Segovia. To make matters worse, Topps.com doesn't even have a checklist for the product.

Also, I've grown to hate the 1952 Topps design. In my opinion, the 52 design is no better than the 54, 56, 57, or 58 designs. It's massively overproduced and now we have yet another year of what is essentially the same product.

Not to mention that there's no need for another stupid Rookie Logo product. I don't want expensive short-printed autos of Hunter Pence when he has one in 2004 SP Rookie Edition. I don't want RC's of Joe Smith. By my estimate, an average collector ripping this $80 box of crap would gain 3 $3 autos and about $10 worth in rookies (of which a Joba SP makes up $8). Stay far away from this product. Very far away. My best card in two packs was a Sean Gallagher rookie that makes him look like a freaking zombie. He has a glazed expression on his face and is deathly pale. Complete waste of 6 bucks.