2010 Bowman Draft Retail Break

I didn't find any of this while I was on vacation in Phoenix. When I saw some at my local Target this morning I couldn't resist picking some up. I picked up four rack packs and two blaster boxes. You'll see scans of the odds for each pack below. The rack packs have far better odds, just as 2010 Bowman did.

Blaster Pack Odds

Rack Pack Odds


I've included a scan of the base chrome, base chrome prospect, base chrome USA, blue refractor, purple refractor and USA jersey card below. The best card I got out of all the packs was a Manny Machado purple refractor. I really like the look of the USA jersey cards, even if they do use the same photo as the base card.

Vacation Breaks

I've been on vacation for the last five days in sunny Phoenix, AZ. That's the reason for the lack of updates to the blog. Reality punched me in the face last night when I returned to temperatures in the 20's in Washington DC.

While I was in Phoenix I couldn't resist the urge to check out a Target and Wal-Mart to see what they had. I ended up buying a blaster of 2010 Bowman Platinum Baseball and a 2010 Best of Chrome value pack.

Bowman Platinum Blaster These come with 8 packs for $19.99. I've been seeing some great breaks in the various forums and figured I would give one a try. I really don't like the base cards. They're not chrome stock, just regular cardboard. The cards are flat silver but come off cheap looking to me. The nice thing is that these packs are loaded with prospects and rookies. It gives you a good shot at getting a base rookie or prospect card of many different players. I did end of getting an autographed refractor in my blaster, like many others that I've seen. Mine was Justin Marks of the Oakland A's. You'll see the card design below. I included a base rookie, base USA and the autographed refractor. The scan made the base cards look really dark, sorry for that.




Best of Chrome Value Pack These come with a nice looking 5-card refractor set of Stephen Strasburg, Jason Heyward, Starlin Castro, Jackie Robinson and Mickey Mantle. You also get 2 Million Card Giveaway Redemption code cards, 5 packs of 2010 Bowman Chrome Baseball retail packs, 5 Topps Chrome Baseball retail packs and 1 2010 Bowman Platinum Baseball hobby pack. All of this will set you back $29.99. I like this assortment. Kudos to Topps for putting a great Christmas gift out there for a young collector at a reasonable price. I would much rather open one of these than a blaster.

I didn't fair so well from these packs. The hobby pack of Bowman Platinum yielded all base cards. The best card from Topps Chrome packs was a Roy Oswalt National Chicle refractor. The Bowman Chrome packs did yield an orange refractor but it was Ryan Dempster. Still pretty nice to hit a refractor that rare from retail.

My Friend's Amazing Topps Chrome Football Value Rack Break

I just got this picture in my email and couldn't believe it. My buddy Bill presumably stopped at Target or Wal-Mart tonight and bought a single value rack of 2010 Topps Chrome Football. We should all have this luck. Congrats Bill!

Target Half Price Blaster Saturday - 2008 Bowman Football

I know what you're thinking, how could I be buying blasters when I bought all that stuff at the Blowout Cards Black Friday Sale yesterday. Well, trust me, I thought the same thing. Although, the cards from Blowout won't arrive until Tuesday at the earliest. So this purchase is justified... right?

Anyway, I went to Target specifically looking for 50% off blasters. I wasn't going to buy anything that was full price today. I settled on two blasters of 2008 Bowman Football because the only other choices were 2008 Upper Deck Heroes Football and 2008 Upper Deck Series 2 Baseball. I've been on a football kick lately so I figured I'd stick with it. I also needed to see if the two 2008 Bowman Football Hobby boxes I got from Blowout are worth opening.

To my surprise, the "One Authentic Memorabilia Card" they mention on the front of the box is a 2008 Topps Rookie Premiere Jersey card. I just figured it would be a jersey card from the 2008 Bowman set. As you'll see below, I did very well on these. I got a Matt Ryan and a Joe Flacco. I can't complain about that at all.

As for the rest of the cards, nothing exciting. You basically get two Bowman rookies, one Bowman base, one Bowman Gold and one Bowman Chrome rookie per pack. I also ended with two Bowman Blue cards, each numbered to 500. The best card I got out of all of that was a Tim Hightower Bowman Chrome rookie. There really wasn't anything else exciting. I thought it was really funny that one of my Bowman Blue cards was Tony Sparano. I didn't know they made coach cards in this set.

The Bowman/Bowman Chrome design is boring to me. The Bowman singles have black borders and many of them have chipping straight out of the pack. I'd have been very disappointed with the condition if I'd paid full price. Bottom line, I'm not a fan of this product at all and won't be opening the boxes from Blowout. Those will be Christmas gifts or eBay items.

Fun Retail Box Break From Target

It's been a very long time since I've posted. What compelled me to get back on the horse, you ask? It was a box of cards that I bought this morning at Target. Rarely is a retail purchase something to write about but this one inspired me.

Target has full retail boxes (24 packs/5 cards per pack) of 2008 Playoff Absolute Memorabilia Football for $24.99 each. That's right, this is a full box, not a blaster. As I was staring at the 2009 Topps Chrome Football blasters for $19.99 each, I just couldn't justify buying another with this Absolute Memorbilia box and its $24.99 price tag staring me in the face. The box claims to yield at least one jersey or autograph per box on average. Let's see how I did.

This was a really fun break, that's why I'm posting and recommending you go pick up a box. Overall, I got four jersey cards, 7 red spectrum parallels, 2 blue spectrum parallels, 1 Gridiron Force insert, 1 Star Gazing insert and the #101 Brett Favre card (short print?). Here are the jersey details:

Rookie Jersey Collection
Early Doucet
Matt Forte
Dustin Keller

Star Gazing Jersey /250
Limas Sweed

As you'll see from the scan below, I got Colt Brennan and Peyton Manning in the red spectum parallel cards. Could I get $24.99 for all this on eBay? Probably not. Could I squeeze $24.99 out of it on COMC? I bet I can.

All in all, this was a fun box to break and there's potential to get some really good cards. For just $5.00 more than a blaster box I think this is a great purchase. Target also has some new half price blasters on the shelf. I saw 2008 Goudey Baseball and 2008 Upper Deck Series 2 Baseball. There was probably some more stuff too that I didn't notice.

I'll be posting more frequently from here on out. I've got some good stuff coming in the mail soon to break, including a 2009 Bowman Chrome Football case. Check back soon for the results of that and some other breaks.

Upper Deck Baseball Series 2 Review

I had to run some errands on the way home from work today. I had to go to the drop off some packages at the post office, buy a birthday card and buy some groceries. I could have bought the birthday card at the grocery store but they don't have baseball cards. I went to Target instead and bought four packs of 2009 Upper Deck Series 2 Baseball. Oh yeah, I got the birthday card too.

I'm going to start a new series in the next couple of days for new product reviews so this post will just be to show the "hits" that I got and a quick first impression of the product.

The packs were $2.99 each and come with 18 cards per pack. Target also had blasters for $19.99 each. Those have 10 packs with 8 cards per pack. They also had the fat packs of 36 cards for $4.99 each. The fat pack is the best deal in terms of price per card but I'm not sure if those include all the inserts available in the blasters and retail packs.

The cards are pretty much what I expected as they're not much different from series one. I actually got a few doubles in only four packs from the same box. That's not very impressive. On the flip side, I think I got some good "hits" for only purchasing four packs. I got a Michael Jordan Goodwin Champions preview card, a 20th Anniversary Retrospective Pedro Martinez and an Emerald StarQuest (Ultra Rare or something) Nick Markakis. These are all pictured below. I also four common StarQuest cards and a Team USA card that aren't pictured.

I don't know that I'll purchase more of this product. I have no interest in building the set and the insert cards aren't that interesting to me. Getting a StarQuest card in every pack is a bit much. The Goodwin Champions cards look nice but I'd rather buy that product when it comes out than to buy Upper Deck 2 to chase the preview cards.

2009 Topps Heritage Blaster Break

I've waited far too long to open my first packs of 2009 Topps Heritage Baseball. It wasn't by choice, I just couldn't find any blasters locally. I was really excited when I found them at my local Target the other night. The design of this product is fantastic. The 1960 Topps set is my favorite card design of all time. I started putting together a set of it around the age of 12. I still haven't finished it but it's about 75% complete. The 2009 Topps Heritage set will be far easier and cheaper to complete than my 1960 Topps set.

I've read reviews of breaks on other blogs and one of the common complaints was the lack of "hits" in this set. I'd have to say that I have the same opinion. I did get two chrome cards, one was a refractor. I also ended up with three short-print cards. There were a few insert cards in the box as well (not pictured). The lack of "hits" comment doesn't relate to my specific box, just the set in general. I don't think the possible "hits" are all that impressive. That said, I think the fantastic design more than makes up for this.

Would I purchase another blaster? Possibly. I'm debating whether I should purchase boxes and blasters until I complete a set or just purchase a set outright on eBay. Purchasing it on eBay would be cheaper than putting it together myself but far less fun.

2008 Topps Series 1 Blaster Break

I stopped at Target on the way home tonight searching for the elusive 2009 Topps Heritage blasters. All my friends are able to find these easily but my local Target and Wal-Mart never have them, until today. I saw them on the bottom shelf and quickly snatched one up. I've been waiting to open one for so long. I love the design!

Anyway, as I'm looking at the rest of their stuff I noticed quite a few blasters that were 50% off. They had a bunch of 2008 Topps Series 1 which were the Target exclusives with the T205 inserts. They had 10-pack $19.99 blasters but also had one 5-pack $9.99 blaster. It was only $4.99 after the discount. How could I pass that up?

I wasn't expecting much out of a $4.99 blaster but as you can see from the picture I did pretty well. The Obama card isn't near as popular as it used to be but it's still cool. Any Mickey Mantle card is good in my opinion. I also got the Isringhausen gold card and the Manny All-Rookie. The T205's aren't pictured but I got Albert Pujols, Joey Votto and Chin-Lung Hu.

I don't think I'll have time to open the Heritage blaster and post the results tonight so check back tomorrow for that.

2009 Topps Series 1 Target Exclusive Retro

I went to Target this morning and purchased two blasters of their exclusive Topps retro designed cards. You can identify these only by the number on the bar code box. The number you're looking for is 1-825-50-12-9. The boxes come with 10 packs of 8 cards per pack plus a bonus pack with one historical commemorative patch card. The retail price is $19.99 per blaster.

I personally like the design of these cards. I've read many opinions on these and most people prefer the Wal-Mart exclusive all-black design. I still prefer these. They have the cool retro Topps logo on the front and the grey cardboard backs. I agree with those that say Topps could have done more to change the front of the card. That would have been nice but I'll take them as they are. I think they're much sharper than the regular base cards.

Here are scans of the front and back of the retro design as well as both patch cards that I got: