Still Missing The Models, But Winning The Game

Continuing on with the case of 2024 Heritage, my PC's got a nice boost, and things got colorful.

Box 2

Alright!  I've got seven PC guys in the box toppers, and Fisk is one of the two Hall Of Famers.  Strike him off my want list!

Got another of the Luis Matos image variants.  

Dupes already!

 

Also pulled a "Missing signature" flavor Jordyn Adams.  

But the biggest highlight was the "hit":

Fisk Hot Box!  Oh Yeah!   Hit location - Top of 3rd stack.

Here's the whole box.

Also had a couple good Orioles pulls - Gunnar SP and the white border Adley.

But these are still the best.

Box 8

Meanwhile, on Stuart's side....

Another 70's star box topper.  These are one of my favorite parts of the set, even though Stuart called dibs on them.

Color swap Owen White (blue & green is the variation). 

Refractor Davis /575...

His hit was a little more typical of what I see most often.  If it wasn't Rockies, I'd expect Mariners, Rays, or maybe Giants.  At least it's a purple swatch.

Interestingly got three white borders.  Same numbers on all the rest though.  A lot of purple, but not as much as the next one...

Box 3

Boom!  Two of my PC guys in a row!  I don't recall this color combo on the original '75 A's, but it's not bad.  Could I possibly pull his auto too?!

Silver refractor /375 of Jarren Duran.  I think he's a popular player isn't he?  He must be...

...He's a short print too.

We may have found another color or no-sig later, because this is all I have from this box.  No Vida auto - pulled a "Cousin Bryan" bat piece.  (Stuart and Bryan have the same last name.)

Box 9

Dang!  I should get another one of these to fill out the Adley Rainbow....

The MVP's look really good in white border!

But after a couple packs, we realized this was a special box....

Because these just kept showing up!  One in each pack.  Purple Chrome Hot Box for real!

Castellanos in a red & yellow swapped flavor...

But this one was mostly grape flavor overall.  Some decent names too, and a few of our fun nicknames - Colts & Cows the farmer, and Max "my brain is" Fried.  Nice to get De La Cruz.  Is he still worth something?

And another HoF hit!  Hit location - Bottom 1st

One of the better boxes of the dozen, for sure.

Summarizing the hits so far:

Box #1:  jersey - unknown
Box #2: auto - top 3rd
Box #3: bat - top 4th

Box #7: jersey - top 4th
Box #8: jersey - top 4th
Box #9: auto - bottom 1st

Something to keep in mind if you're picking packs from a fresh hobby box...  Stay tuned for the rest of the case.  The hits keep coming...

We Did What Howie Says On That Game Show

Let me get this rolling - it's gonna take a while...

2024 Heritage is the annual tribute to one of the most popular vintage Topps designs.  (Just ask Night Owl).  1975 is also the birth year of my trading buddy and new blogger Stuart.  So, of course, this was going to be a big deal.  He said "Let's get a case!".

I said, "OK, what the hell...", even though I haven't been really into the current players since 2020.  At least the inserts will have a lot of the older guys I like.  So I ordered it.  It came in about a week.  

Two layers = 12 boxes

Unfortunately, Stuart wasn't going to be here in Maryland until June.  So we'd have to wait until he came for the shop and show tour culminating in Chantilly.  Finally mid-June came around and we could finally open the case.

Since this was an entire case, I figured we should document where the hits, etc. came out in which box and which pack within the box.  Not that many people care by this time, but it was interesting to me.  Just in case there was a pattern.

So I numbered each box - top and bottom layer in order.  I will open 1 thru 6, and Stuart will open 7 thru 12.

Each box is 24 packs - four stacks of six packs each.  

Stuart likes to open them a stack at a time.  I like to go by layers - top of each stack, then second pack, etc.  See if you think one method gave us better luck...

Stuart unwraps his first box...

And I pop the lid on mine....

As we went along ripping packs, we would take turns briefly announcing the cards we were finding.   We'd each open a pack and then listen to the other open his.   We were sort of mocking the hype of typical box breakers on YouTube, though we weren't recording.  And as we went, we gave goofy nicknames and other silly things to certain cards.

Just to spice it up a bit, since you can't watch and hear us do this, let me add some people who are good at this for other reasons.  Sorry, we're not nearly as pretty as the girls on Deal Or No Deal, but they are pros at opening cases.  :)

I'll mark each box opening with the girl and briefcase of that box number...

Box #1

Each box has some kind of box topper, either a jumbo copy of a Heritage card, or a '75 regular sized buyback card.  

First one out was the oversize local star Gunnar.  Stuart called dibs on the box toppers that weren't my player collections (seven out of 48 total boxloaders).  

First base cards we saw - Box 1 and 7.

First hit out of Box #1, Bat piece from Jose Ramirez of the Guardians.  Of course, we were just getting wound up and I forgot to write down which pack it came from.  I got the rest of them documented though.  Hit Location - Unknown

Pulled a couple white border parallels - which look really nice.  Also got one black...

...which as it turns out does not picture Hagen Danner, but Bradin Hagens.  So from then on, we announced this card as "Not Hagen Danner".

Also of note, the parallels are all marked above the card number as to what they are, but in the case of the black borders, they are marked "White Border".

Here are the final contents of Box #1.  Eight short prints (turned over), the jersey and the boxloader, the parallels (that Scherzer is a chrome /999), and the inserts.  The New Age Performers seem to be the most plentiful.  I do like the colors they used for the insert designs.  They go well with the '75 theme.  Those pink-framed Sensations and the mascot/nickname stickers are retail-only, so we didn't get any of those.

Box #7

Some of you might say "Why are you going out of order?", but it's just easier to do these as we opened them.  And it's the top box on the second stack anyway.

Stuart's first box topper was a buyback of Mike Caldwell.  I do like the Heritage buyback stamp the best of all of their various stamps, but they still put it in stupid places.  They really should come up with a better method of application.  I guess it's tough when you have to produce so many of them.

He also got two white borders and a black, but his was a chromey refractor out of 75.

He also got an image swap of Luis Matos.  

Luis Matos Hot Box!  The other white border was my guy Gunnar.

His first hit - Alcantara jersey.  It came from the top pack on the fourth (or rightmost) stack in the box.  Hit Location - Top 4th.

The rest of Box #7.  Eight short prints again, and similar quatities of the inserts.   Four "Nappy's", one or two Flashbacks, and a Then & Now.

Topps did a pretty nice job on the base cards.  There are only a few teams that look a little funky as far as the fonts, etc.  Every now and then I'd find this:

A run of three of the same color scheme back-to-back-to-back in the same pack.  But other than that, there are really no major complaints besides agreeing with the common observation that the backs are much harder to read than their original counterparts.  And I still don't know who most of these guys are....

Stay Tuned for the next few box breaks.  We get some great stuff...

Saved From The Hype Monster

Before I get into the case break, I want to share another box opening that I did a few weeks ago.  

This one was part of the hoard that I am liquidating which is composed of mostly basketball.  If you know me, you know that is the one sport I don't really delve into.  I have a small Michael Jordan collection, but that is all baseball.  I have a couple other sets in one binder, but that's it.

Anyway, this collection has a lot of wax boxes, but the majority of them have already been opened.  There are, however, a few that weren't.  One was this 1999-2000 Upper Deck flagship box.  It's the size of a hobby box of the time, but it's more like a blaster in that it's priced at $20 and only has eight packs of ten cards.

I looked up the odds on the Database and put them in my eBay description:

Possible Inserts:

Basketball Heroes: Julius Erving (1:23 packs)
Future Charge (1:8 packs)
     Quantum Silver (/100), Gold (/25)
Game Jersey swatch
     (Kidd, Shaq, Duncan, Barkley, Garnett, Stockton, Van Horn, Olajuwon, Pierce, and Jordan 1:2500 packs)
     (Kobe, Pippen, Hill, Payton, Carter, Miller, Iverson, Robinson, Walker, Malone 1:288 packs)
Game Jersey Patches (1:7500 packs), Super (/25)
History Class (1:11 packs)
     Quantum Silver (/100), Gold (/25)
Jamboree (1:11 packs)
     Quantum Silver (/100), Gold (/25)
MJ: A Higher Power (1:23 packs)
     Quantum Silver (/100), Gold (/25)
MJ's Final Floor relics (1:2500 packs)
Now Showing (1:4 packs)
     Quantum Silver (/100), Gold (/25)

Pulling a jersey would be epic!  Especially if it was Jordan, Shaq, or Bryant!  The big names garner three and four digit crooked number prices on eBay!  

So full hobby boxes go for $750 or so on there.  Since this was just about a third of a hobby box, I put mine at $275 initially, I think.

It sat.  There were some followers.  But it sat.  I got a low ball offer the first few days.  But then nothing.  I figured it might get snatched up quick.  Nope.

So I let it on there for about two months at a lower price.  After that, I figured it isn't going anywhere.  So I took it down.  Thought there might be someone who messages me wanting to get it after it was taken down, but no.

After all that, I couldn't take the suspense.  

I opened it.

I'm ultimately glad I didn't sell it to someone for $245!

I snapped photos as I went, so they're not quite in logical order.  Here's the box topper ad.

"7 Packs plus 1 extra pack".  No UD - It's eight freakin' packs, OK?  Stop it.

So this is a typical pack, from what I recall.  Eight silver foil base cards (as opposed to the bronze foil in baseball and football) and two inserts.

Some decent names in the base cards.  And there were inserts that contained Jordan, et al, or were all Jordan.

Other insert sets were rookie-centric, of course.

The Jordan on the left is the most valuable card found in this box.  It goes for about $15.  No jersey, sorry.  No blockbuster pulls here.

I should have expected the absence of a big hit.  But what I really didn't expect was the absolutely HORRIBLE collation of the base cards within this box.  As you can see here, there were TRIPLES of a few cards, and doubles of a significant number as well.  I've lost track of the exact numbers, but out of 80 cards, 12 were inserts, and only about 50 couple were unique base cards.  Over a third of them were dupes within the same box!

I wouldn't have been surprised if the buyer immediately asked for a refund after blowing almost $250 for this.  It's really only worth about a tenth of that.  

I probably should have taken pictures of all the inserts at the end, but they'll likely end up trade bait on the Database after a while anyway.

Let me know if you've ever pulled something awesome from a small box like this, or ended up with jack squat from one.

A New Voice And A Lot To Talk About

A few of my regular readers have found it already, but let me announce to the other few dozen of you that my friend and great constant trader Stuart has plunged into the blogging pool.

His writings can be found at https://sr75cards.blogspot.com/.  Bear with him as he learns the inner workings of Blogger and Google. For now, his posts will be simple, but in time he'll figure out pictures and links.  (And spaces after commas 😜.)

Also, stay tuned as I chronicle our first official case break.  We cracked 12 boxes of 2024 Heritage and are just now trading for the rest of the inserts and shortprints.  We hope there are some of you that aren't finished with Heritage yet.  Some nice pulls came from that case.

We also did the annual shop and show tour in my local area (MD, PA, VA).  If I don't end up putting it all away first, I'll try to sprinkle in some of the interesting pickups I got.

Thanks for stopping by!  More to come when I recover from starting back to 4x10 hour work days....

When The Cardboard Gods Smile Upon You

You ever had the experience of beating the odds while handling your cards?  

I don't mean pulling that 1/1 out of a pack - that's collation and doesn't have much to do with you.  Unless you just paid for one pack out of a box and then reached in and randomly selected the third one in the center stack and it had the case hit...

But I'm not even talking about that much of a win.  More like the subtle little things that happen that just seem lucky or almost supernatural.

What inspired me was the other day when I was pulling cards for the TCDB trades that had stacked up late in the week.  One collector wanted a single card from my 1994 Pacifics among a whole line of other cards.  They are in a three row box, separate from my other trade stock.  It was a number in the 300's, so it would likely be right in the middle.  I reached in and flipped the center row forward, and the first card was the exact card I was looking for.  There was only one, even though so many of my dupes have multiple copies of the same card - up to double digits.  I hit the one card in the entire box that was the one I needed.  What are the chances?

I can't think of what these kind of experiences are called.  My knee-jerk reaction is usually "Damn, I'm good!"  I won't say it happens a lot, but it happens often enough that I either think I've been doing this so long that I've developed psychic powers, or that I need to get out more.

Like when you open a book (or a binder of cards in pages) to the exact page you want without it being marked.  Do things like that happen to you too?

Let me know in the comments.