2010 Topps Chrome Baseball Value Pack Break

I went to Wal-Mart this morning to pick up some random stuff. I had no intention of purchasing cards, I swear, but what kind of person would I be if I didn't just take a peek at the selection? To date, I've not been able to find any substantial amount of 2010 Topps Chrome Baseball value racks. I'd had no problem finding football but baseball had eluded me. There was a full hook this morning so I grabbed four of them.

The offering is exactly the same as the football version. Each rack comes with three retail packs of 2010 Topps Chrome Baseball (4 cards per pack) and one bonus pack of three orange refractors. The price is $8.95 per rack, just like football.

Every break that I've read online speaks of the poor quality of Topps Chrome Baseball this year. I can confirm these claims. The first thing I noticed was the curve of the retail packs. All the cards have the familiar chrome curve to them, but worse than usual. Football didn't seem to have this problem, at least not this bad. The surface defects of the cards I've reading about is there too. There are lines, scratches and dimples on the surface of at least half the cards. I can handle refractor lines, they've always been around. The scratches and dimples are just poor quality control by Topps. The centering on some of these cards is pretty bad too.

On to more important things, the cards. I think I did really well on the orange refractors. The highlights were Mickey Mantle, Carlos Santana, Starlin Castro, Ike Davis and Joe Mauer. In the retail packs I didn't fair as well, the highlight was a Stephen Strasburg. I also pulled four refractors and four x-fractors. Check out all of the pictures below as well as the pack odds.

Speaking of the pack odds, I did find my refractor pulls from the retail packs a bit strange. Odds for refractors and x-fractors are 1:3. I pulled four of each in twelve total packs, clearly beating the odds. Purple refractors are 1:12 but I did not receive one of those. I pretty much saw these same rates in the football value packs too.

07-08 UD Hockey Series 2 Box Break - Sometimes You're Lucky

I got a really great deal on some 2007-2008 Upper Deck Series 2 Hockey retail boxes on eBay this week. The UPS man came through and delivered them so I have something to open over the weekend. I love when that happens.

2007-2008 Upper Deck Series 2 Hockey has one great Young Guns rookie card, Jonathan Toews. That card is the only reason I bought the boxes. Tuuka Rask has a rookie in here too, nice card, but not what I'm looking for. The Rookie Materials jersey cards are nice too, but again, not what I'm looking for.

I couldn't stop myself from opening a box right when I got home. I'm sure you know where this is going... I ended up pulling a Jonathan Toews Young Guns rookie in the first box. Awesome! Each pack comes with an Upper Deck Victory Update card inside, pulled a Toews rookie from those too. My jersey card (1:24) was a Rookie Materials of Andrew Cogliano. Cogliano isn't a great one but I'd rather get a Rookie Materials than a Game Jersey card. The other five Young Guns and the various inserts aren't worth mentioning.

Now, the question, should I open the other three boxes that I bought or store them away? I got the one card that I wanted.

2010 Topps Chrome Football Value Rack Pack Break

I stopped by Target tonight in search of 2010 Topps Chrome Football value rack packs. I've been reading about the great breaks on the forums and it got me excited to go buy some. Luckily, there were three racks left and I snatched them up. There were no shortage of blaster boxes but that wasn't what I was in search of tonight.

Each value rack pack comes with three 4-card retail packs and one 3-card orange refractor pack. The special orange refractor pack is obviously the allure of these packs. The cost for one of the racks is $8.99. That's a bargain in my mind.

I'll list below how many of each type of card I received in the three racks combined. I've included scans of the best cards below, I think I did pretty well. I've also included a scan of the odds from the back of the rack pack.

Orange Refractors: 9
X-Fractors: 2
Refractors: 2
Bowman Chrome Rookie: 2
Legendary Lineage: 3
Rookie Base: 16
Veteran Base: 11

Demaryius Thomas Mail Day

I'm a Broncos fan. It's been a tough go since Josh McDaniels became head coach. Jay Cutler, Brandon Marshall and Tony Scheffler all were traded away after having differences with McDaniels. For that reason, the offense was entering the season with only two skill players to be excited about, in my opinion, Eddie Royal and Knowshon Moreno. The rest of the skill players are cast-off's from other teams.

Well, this is what I thought before seeing Demaryius Thomas play. In his first game against Seattle he had 8 catches for 97 yards and a touchdown. Last week against Indianapolis he only caught two balls but made the most of them going for 43 yards. He's a big, strong kid that looks to have all the skills needed to excel in the NFL.

I knew that I had to pick up at least a couple cards of his as soon as I watched the Seattle game. I opted to go for his 2010 Topps Rookie Variation and his 2010 Topps Platinum Autograph. Both cards only set me back just over $20 combined. I'm pretty happy with both deals.

On a side note, I love Topps Platinum Football. It was fun product to break last year and it remains as fun this year. The card design on the autographs is fantastic and some of the patches I've seen on eBay are amazing. I'd highly recommend breaking a box or a blaster of this stuff if you're looking to open up some football.

2010 Topps Red Hot Rookie Redemption #10 is Brett Wallace

Well, how's that for timing? Just last night I posted about this redemption and today it was announced. I swear that I didn't have any inside information. If I did, I wouldn't have purchased two additional #10 redemption cards the day before if I had known it was going to be Brett Wallace.

Don't get me wrong, I think Brett Wallace is going to to be a solid big league player. I lived in Phoenix, AZ for a couple years and saw Wallace play for Arizona State. I liked him then and I still do. He's had just over 100 at-bats with the Astros this year, hitting just .215 in that time.

The strange thing about Wallace is his path to the big leagues. He was drafted by the Cardinals 13th overall in the 2008 draft. He rose quickly through the ranks in the minors, by July 2009 he was already in AAA. This is just about the time the Cardinals decided they needed a bat for a playoff run and traded Wallace to the A's on July 24, 2009 as the key part of their package for Matt Holliday. He lasted just under five months in the A's organization before was traded to Toronto for prospect Michael Taylor. Strange enough yet? Wait, there's more. Just over one year after joining the Toronto organization, he was traded to Houston for prospect Anthony Gose. Wallace was assigned to AAA for one day and then was immediately called up to the Astros after Lance Berkman was traded to the Yankees.

Whew, back to the redemption cards. I have three #10 redemptions. Only 10% of the cards redeemed are going to be autographed. I'm hoping that at least one of my three will turn up autographed. I'm going to redeem a full set tonight so I'll report back with my results.

2010 Topps Red Hot Rookie Redemption #10

I've never participated in the Red Hot Rookie Redemption in past years. I've always just sold any redemption card that I had before the player was announced. This year is different. The rookie crop this season is so strong that I couldn't resist putting together a set of these.

The assumption is that the 10th card will be the autographed card. Last year had Gordon Beckham (only 10% signed), 2008 had Jay Bruce and Evan Longoria.

I purchased #1-9 on eBay and sportlots.com. I got my #10 from a hobby box of 2010 Topps Series 2 that I purchased. I really don't have much money in my set. That being said, the excitement of the pending announcement got the best of me today and I purchased two more #10's for $15 each on eBay.

Are you anxiously awaiting the announcement like I am? If so, who are you hoping for?

2 Wal-Mart Topps Value Box Break

I didn't specifically go to Wal-Mart for cards this morning but couldn't resist checking them out. I bought two of the $15 Topps Value Boxes. They had about six of them and none appeared searched. I've read on some of the forums that people will shake the boxes to expose the refractor card. You'll see from the picture below that this obviously hasn't happened at my Wal-Mart.

Each value box comes with one hobby pack of 2010 Allen & Ginter, six retail packs of Topps Series 2 Baseball, one Million Card Giveaway code card and a Topps Chrome Refractor of either Stephen Strasburg, Cal Ripken Jr. or Babe Ruth.

I did pretty well, the better cards pictured below. I got a lot of inserts from the Topps Series 2 packs but nothing really of note. I was surprised to get hits in both Ginter packs, as minor as they are. It was nice to get an extra code card from the 12 Topps packs as well.