Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun

Two boxes of 2008 Heritage are better than one! Here's a double box break:

Box 1:

I opened up the box to find a 3 panel strip and a buy back. Here's my buy back:

Joe played in the Major Leagues for 13 seasons (1948-1962) with his best season being in 1951 when he had 304 at-bats, hit .260 with 8 home runs and 37 RBI. Not the best card, but I love having old cards, no matter how good the player. 

Now the 3 card strip:OH...MY...GOSH! I about crapped myself when I pulled this out. This is like the best box topper EVER. Tex, Smoltz, The Jones Boys....this has it all. Dayf, eat your heart out.

Now, the box stats:
Base Set: 154/500 (30.8%)
Doubles: 0
Black Backs: 24
Chrome Parallel: 3 (Matt Cain 1141/1959, Vernon Wells 1159/1959, Miguel Cabrera 1176/1959)
Refractor Parallel: 1 (Felix Hernandez 85/559)
News Flashbacks: 2 (Clutter Family, Fidel Castro)
Baseball Flashbacks: 1 (Orlando Cepeda)
Then and Now: 2 (Eddie Matthews and A-Rod, Johnny Podres and Eric Bedard)
Clubhouse Collection Relics: 2 (David Ortiz, Eric Chavez)
I really don't know if I could have asked more of this box. If they would have thrown me an auto and a relic instead of 2 relics, it might have made it better, but I'm not really sure. But this was a great box. OK on to Box 2

No buy back in this one, but here is my 3 card strip from the 2nd box:

Goodness, that's a strip of straight suck. And a Matt Capps pink card. Ugh. Ok, box stats:

Base Set: 157/500 (31.4%)
Black Backs: 24
Chrome Parallel: 3 (Ben Sheets 1150/1959, Jose Valverde 1160/1959, Francisco Rodriguez 1456/1959)
Refractor Parallel: 1 (James Shields 76/559)
News Flashbacks: 2 (Luna 2, Dalai Lama)
Baseball Flashbacks: 2 (Mickey Mantle, Ernie Banks)
Then & Now: 1 (Orlando Cepeda and Magglio Ordonez)
New Age Performers: 1 (Brandon Webb)
Real One Autographs: 1 (Bob Blaylock)




















The second box was nowhere as good as the first, however I did get an autograph which is an on-card signature. Bob only appeared in 17 Major League games in his career with 3 of those coming in 1959. He pitched 9 innings, gave up 8 hits, struck out 3 and had an ERA of 4.00. Once again, not a great player, but I'm very glad to have his signature.

This set is going to be a complete beast to put together especially if you're trying to do the master set (which I am). It'll take a minimum of 4 boxes to get the complete set and with the short prints and all, it'll take more than 4. Since there isn't a clear short print checklist out yet and only postulations (actually, Beckett.com has a listing, but I'm too lazy to go through everything again), I held off on listing how many of those I got, but they're 1:3 packs so I should have gotten 8 or so in each box. I'm going to put all these cards in pages and I'll update everyone on what the combined total of the completed set is once I've finished.  And just so everyone knows, this is a really hot product right now.  My dealer told me that wholesale prices on boxes have gone up $17 since Wednesday.  Get 'em quick!

Why I Love This Hobby, Pt. 1

When I first got into this hobby, I was collecting because I loved (and still do) the Braves.  I wanted to have all their cards, to have the players that were horrible in the 80's, the ones that went from worst to first and pretty much anything that featured blue, red and a tomahawk.  But I also got cards that weren't of Braves and so I began to delve deeper into the world of baseball, statistics and everything that it had to offer.

Now there are many reasons why I love collecting and hopefully in a series or posts or articles or whatever you want to call them, I will highlight a few of my reasons that I love this hobby and always have even during my hiatus.  

Nothing makes me happier than taking an old box of cards that I have long neglected and shuffling through them.  To feel the tension of the glossy cards sticking together as you gently try to pry them apart with your fingers, to get the residue of 80's cardboard dust on your hands that was still on the card from the cutter, there's no better feeling.  Except for one: looking through a box and finding a card that turned from "who?" into "Wow!"  You know those cards, the Topps prospects you've never heard of or the random player on a Bowman card.  Most of the time, there are maybe around 5 prospects that the average collector knows about.  Of course you have those that are prospect fiends, but for the average joe collector, the prospect list for collecting is around 5 players or so.  Like this year, most collectors would have known Joba and Phil Hughes.  The rest kind of get jumbled past there.  Most team collectors know about these prospects and the prospects on the team they collect.  There are, however, very few collectors that can know every single prospect and what his chances of success will be.  This is a reason why I love this hobby.  You can have hidden treasures right in front of you and not know it until 5, 10 even 15 years down the road.  This is what happened to me.  Over Christmas, I was going through some of my cards that are my parents' house and among other things I found this:

For those who can't tell, it's a 1994 Sportflix Rookie-Traded A-Rod rookie card.  Now it's no 1994 Score Rookie-Traded A-Rod, but I was still really happy.  Back in 1994, I probably had no idea who Alex Rodriguez really was.  I had probably heard the name, but had no idea how good of a prospect he was or the player he was going to turn into.  In the same week, I also found in my cards 4 Kevin Garnett rookies, a Marvin Harrison rookie, a Kobe Bryant rookie, an Allen Iverson rookie and lots of other things.  So why do I love this hobby?  Delayed gratification.