Case Closed

Well, now that I've wasted three weeks and a lot of you have probably forgotten about it, and that Heritage is now past and largely irrelevant, here is my case break recap.

Here's what a whole case looks like sorted by card type and stacked up together.  12 piles of base on the right and all the inserts, short prints, hits, parallels and shiny things.

All the base fit neatly into a four row box that Stuart brought.  We sorted it all into sets later.  That was an interesting exercise - as we were making six sets at the same time.  Keeping the wants for each one straight was challenging, but we did it.

There were about 96 short prints, as we had calculated.  But since we wanted two full sets, we had to decide how to split them up.  We ended up putting them in order and then dealing them into two piles - first card on the left, second one on the right, third on the left, and so on.  We did have a few dupes that we split first, including the Ohtani Highlight, which was nice.

I'm gonna torture you (or at least make you scroll to the end) by leaving the mojo for last.

Three buyback box toppers.  Larry went to Night Owl.  Astros hot case....

Rounding out the other nine box toppers - the jumbos.  These are really nice.

News Flashback inserts.  Probably the flashiest design these have ever had.  Didn't get two of them and had a double and a triple.  The triple was handy since I needed another one of those for my space binder.

Baseball Flashbacks - again with a dupe and two no-shows.  The downside of these is that we needed two full sets since we each build them all.  So basically I let Stuart take the majority of the inserts in general and I traded for what I needed.  That way neither of us spent money on them after all this.  I had dibs on my player guys, but didn't get too many others.  But since trading on the TCDB is what it is, it was fine.

Same collation with the Then & Nows.  I got dibs on the Palmers since he's a PC.

The Nappy's (New Age Performers) were much more plentiful than the rest.  Stuart got 'em all and my missing count was a single digit number.  Nice design too.

All but one purple was from the "hot box".  A few of these have been traded away.  Elly looks different because he's in a toploader.  Should have sold him quickly after the break, he was going for $100.  Now he's around $30-40...

Only got one black chrome refractor /75.

One silver refractor /375...

And one missing signature.

 Oops, found another one later when we were sorting the base...

A single black & white image as well.

Three chrome refractors /575...

Four (different) image swaps - one twice.  Matos hot box.

Only three regular black bordered ones.  Seemed like there were more...

Three color swaps - Owen's base on the left

Nick's base on the right....

And Curtis' base (chrome) on the right.  It was easier to find than digging for a regular base card.  

There were more than one regular Chrome, but I've traded away all but Max Scherzer, so I don't have an image of them.  There were Mead, Scherzer (in the purple hot box), Lindor, Evan Carter, and Gavin Williams.

And the white borders - minus a couple Orioles that went to my set.  Which is sitting here too, but I already took the picture and uploaded it.  I really do like the way the MVP's look in white.

OK without further delay,

The relics.  Nice mix of colors and bat pieces at least.  A nice, clean design with great colors.  These would have fit right in if they'd have done relics in '75.  Good job, Topps!

Not in order of pull, but here are the autographs!

I kept Fisk & Oliver.  Stuart took Simmons, Blomberg & Volpe.  I told him he should sell Volpe right away since he was going for three digits.  But he said no, he'll keep him in his "PC".  He's a Tigers fan who likes older players, so I don't see the point, but to each his own.

And finally, the location of each pull - now listed in order.

(left to right - first, second, third, fourth stack)

Box 1 - Jose Ramirez bat - (location not recorded).

Box 2 - Fisk auto - Top pack on third stack

Box 3 - Cousin Bryan Reynolds bat - Top pack of fourth stack

Box 4 - Eloy Jimenez relic - Bottom of fourth stack (Last Pack Mojo)

Box 5 - Al Oliver auto - Top pack of second stack

Box 6 - Charlie Blackmon bat - Top pack of second stack

Box 7 - Sandy Alcantara jsy - Top pack of fourth stack

Box 8 - Zeke Tovar jsy - Top pack of fourth stack

Box 9 - Ted Simmons auto - Bottom pack of first stack

Box 10 - Anthony Volpe auto - Third pack of fourth stack

Box 11 - JT Realmuto jsy - Bottom of fourth stack (Last Pack Mojo)

Box 12 - Ron Blomberg auto - Third pack of third stack

So the most frequent position of hits seems to be the fourth stack, or the one all the way to the right.  I'm guessing that the first pull was in the first stack just going by the law of averages.  There were two hits in the second stack and two in the third, so it's a logical assumption that there would be two in the first as well.

Not sure that gives any insight on where to fish for hits now, since Heritage is probably sold out of all the shops anyway.  But it was an interesting investigation.

Hope you enjoyed us playing Deal Or No Deal - Heritage edition and following the order to "Open The Case!"