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!

2010 Topps Chrome Football Value Rack Break - 5 Racks

I thought that the 2010 Topps Chrome Baseball case I broke last week would feed the beast until my 2010 Bowman Chrome Baseball cases arrive this week. Wrong, I went out to Wal-Mart this morning in search of 2010 Topps Chrome Football value racks. The first Wal-Mart I hit had plenty, but the orange refractors had obviously been searched. I went to a different Wal-Mart and they had five that showed no signs of searching.


Most of my nice pulls to date on this product have come from the orange refractors so I didn't want anyone breaking my streak. This break was different, the biggest hit came from the retail packs. There aren't any odds of the back of the pack for this pull but I can imagine it's pretty rare in retail. The pull was a Bowman Chrome Refractor of Jimmy Clausen numbered 08/99. There weren't any other great pulls this time. I did pull an orange refractor of Jahvid Best as well as a base rookie of him, Sam Bradford and Ryan Mathews. Pictures of the better cards below.

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.

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

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.

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: