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-