Blaster urges

Trying to fend off the urge to buy a blaster or a pack or two to bust is a hard thing for me some weekends. I have little free time these days to buy anything, much less to blog about it, but whenever I get the chance I try to go out and get something. I've been really happy with the few Heritage Chrome cards that I've come across and I'd like to try and do a Mets team set of just the chrome cards. Plus I really like to try to buy something new for a change and Heritage would be just about right.



I like that they have these desaturated backgrounds that highlights the players better.


I picked up two so far. One on ebay and one on a trade. They also have this "wood grain" sort of thing going on in the backgrounds as well as being de-saturated. Little slashes dug into the surface of the card. I'm not sure what to make of it, but the player and the border is all smooth and colorful unlike the rest of the card.

The sad thing is, I can't seem to find any blasters or packs around. I even searched out some online and couldn't find any hobby boxes. I'm not sure if that's the right way to go. I need to go by the real hobby shop in town and see if they have any available.

But anyway, I couldn't find Heritage so I picked up another blaster of Goodwin Champions.

This is another product that I sort of like a few of the cards, but I don't really like the set overall. Last blaster I pulled some really cool stuff so this time I'm hoping to get something nice again.




I pulled a surfer. Not so excited about that. I have no idea who this is, apparently he's married to Gabrielle Reece the famous volley ball player. Her, I know. It'd be nice to have a card of her instead,don't you think?

I also pulled a few martial arts and non-baseball cards.


Silva


Lewis.



Matt Ryan


.. and another Manning. Last time I pulled big brother.

These cards are okay I guess.


A Lincoln..


... and an Obama.



I pulled lot of hockey cards in this box.




Two Gretskys.



Gordie Howe.




A guy holding a hockey puck.



..and for good measure one of those 2oth anniversary cards featuring a hockey player.

I know nothing about hockey except Wayne Gretsky and a lot of highlights on ESPN seemed to show a lot of fighting. That's pretty cool in my book, but I'm not sure if I could sit through a whole game. or fight or whatever they call it.




So far I've gotten at least one relic or auto per box as well as one of the Gypsy Queen minis.

I like this a LOT better than the A-rod I pulled last time.


This was a pretty good box for Mets though. I didn't pull any last time so it was nice to get some in this box.



Sheffield. Okay, at least in a Met uniform.


Delgado. That guy always seems to have cool cards.




David Wright. Whoo Hoo!! I like this one a lot, especially the Mr. Met.



This Jose Reyes card is now one of my newest cards that sits on my desk in a top loader. The dirt stain is nice, and the Mets logo is really sharp looking. The expression in his face, everything makes this card so cool to me.



The Matt Holiday card was on my radar. I'm sort of trying to track down cards of guys from Oklahoma. He's one of the easier ones to collect, simply because he's currently playing. Matt Kemp would be another fave.



Love the retired player cards. The old school logos are nice. In this case it looks nice...


... in this Zambrano card not so nice. I have no idea what that is supposed to be on the upper right. They're the Cubs, right? That looks like some sort of cartoon gerbil or rat. I'm really trying to figure out what that reminds me of. I vaguely recall something like that on a Saturday Night Live cartoon or something. It's driving me nuts trying to think of where I've seen that before.



Another cool retired player.



This is a cool card of Utley.


I mentioned early about the Delgado cards I have all being pretty cool cards? Well, I only have like 3 of them, so theirs probably a lot more that aren't cool, but ignorance is bliss, right?

Anyway, I've got a new theory that all Jermaine Dye cards are pretty interesting looking. I'm basing that on an Upper Deck card from maybe 2008, Allen and Ginter base and relic cards and now this one.



This is my big hit from the blaster. Last blaster I pulled an auto. Gavin Floyd.
I guess White Sox hits are the only mojo I get out of Goodwin.


I think this is my first relic that has a stripe in it. I like that you can see his face clearly. They didn't spend much time photoshoping the stadium reflection out of his sunglasses though. Kind of an interesting contrast from the trees and stuff in the background.

I didn't mean to spend this much time posting, but it's hard to stop when you get started. Hope I didn't bore anybody too much with my ramblings. If anybody sees anything worth trading for let me know. At some point I'll get around to putting some of this stuff over to my other blog dedicated to my trade/want list.

Topps Chrome Football 2008-Blaster

The past week or so I've read a lot of blogs with bloggers reporting on the new chrome offerings and I've only had one real experience with chrome cards. Besides the few that I've received in trades I bought a pack of 07 Bowman chrome once. That was nice, but a little expensive for a small pack of cards.

I noticed that Walmart had the new chrome out, but I didn't want to pick up chrome versions of the base cards. Or at least that's what it seems to be about. I'm still trying to finish the base Topps set, so I'm not really much interested in chrome. Maybe a chrome team set would be nice. Or maybe I could get lucky and get some chrome cards that I don't have and put them in the binder with the Walmart black outs, Target retro and the regular base cards. I already have a couple of gold parallels in the base set so maybe I can just put these in the binder and have a decent cross section of the different versions of these cards. Hmmm, well maybe not, but it's something to consider.

Anyway, they had something new at Walmart which is to say an older blaster of 2008 Topps Chrome Football. Since I'm a new collector pretty much everything is all new to me and it was 35% off so I had to try it out.




The blaster contains 7 packs with a bonus pack. It also mentioned only having 30 cards. 8 X 4 = 32 not 30 so I had hoped that it would be short some cards because of an auto or something cool.

The first pack that I pulled out of the box was the bonus pack.


They weren't kidding; It's actually labelled "Bonus Pack". Cool, maybe there will be something really nice inserted inside.

I'm going to do this a little differently (at least for me) and actually post the pack by pack breakdown.

First pack:



TC50 Joseph Addai




TC146 Reggie Wayne (pro bowl)

TC212 Andre Caldwell
TC229 Sedrick Ellis

That's cool that their are a few guys that I recognize. Two Colts in a row. Not a big Colts fan, but I like to watch them play especially on offense.

I was confused as to who Caldwell was, I think maybe he has an older brother who also played at Florida.

Second Pack:
TC69 Santonio Holmes (wearing a throwback uniform)



DYNC-JM2 NFL dynasties tribute Joe Montana
I really like the fact that Joe is looking into the sun on this shot. This is a really nice card.




HR-CB Chuck Bednarik
He has an award for the nations best college linebacker.

TC174 Erik Ainge
Once again I'm confused as to who Erik Ainge is. I sort of remember him at Tennessee, but I think his dad might have played basketball or something.

Third Pack:
TC198 DeSean Jackson


BFC-253 Brett Farve flight to 420 card


TC234 Red Bryant I'm guessing this is some sort of blue parallel. I'm not sure why they chose a shot of him eyeballing his teammate that way.

TC77 Andre Johnson

I think I might already have the exact same non-chrome version of that Farve card.

It's actually taken me opening up the third pack to realize that the '08 set mirrors the same design as the baseball set that I've complained about here and here.

The design doesn't seem to bother me as much as the baseball cards though, and I'm not sure why, but I think it has to do with the borders in chrome being black instead of white. The black blends in better with the background so that only the guy stands out from the background and the border.

Fourth Pack:

TC36 Ron Dayne
TC189 Kevin Smith



TC21 Marc Bulger




TC169 Chad Henne

I'm really happy to get a Bulger card. I really liked watching him play especially when Kurt Warner was hurt. I want to say it was in the '02 or '03 season when he got a lot more playing time. Actually I really liked to watch the Rams at that time. They had Warner, Bulger, Tory Holt and of course my favorite Marshall Faulk. They had a few other guys I really liked to watch. When they drafted Stephen Jackson and got rid of Faulk and Mike Martz the offense seemed to loose a lot of what I liked about it. It seemed to be more of a power running game with a typical kind of NFL offense instead of a more finesse offense which was more fun for me to watch.

The Henne card is nice, it looks like a retro card in a way because of the uncluttered background with just the shadow and horizontal yard lines behind him.

Fifth Pack:




TC166 Matt Ryan
Cool! I'm glad I got a Matt Ryan card. He's doing pretty well. The card looks like he's playing at some empty high school stadium.



HOF-AT Hall of Fame Andre Tippett

The Tippett card is nice. They put more detail in his leg pads. You probably can't see it in the scan, but it's cool. Trust me.



This is one of those weird type of refractor things.
TC252 Keith Rivers



TC101 Tony Scheffler
Here is the one example of what I was talking about earlier. The only cards I have for comparison are these two Scheffler cards.

Sixth Pack:

TC5 David Garrard
TC185 Jamaal Charles


TC17 Jeff Garcia
The Garcia card is nice. Cool pose and it's another one of those weird refractor things.

TC224 Jeff Otah

Seventh Pack:
TC196 Thomas Brown
BFC-335 Road to Perdition card
TC197 Justin Forsett
TC119 Bob Sanders

I would have really liked these Farve cards more like two years ago. I'm really looking forward to seeing him play with A.D. I was hoping that the Packers would have drafted Peterson so that I could see the two of them on the same team and now I have that chance. I really don't like the way Farve does things lately. He seems to have no consideration for the other people on the team that he's playing for and I think it's going to come back and bite him later.



As for the bonus pack it did seem a little thin.


TC148 Devin Hester


TC39 Adrian Peterson

Cool. I'm really glad I finally pulled a Peterson. He's my favorite player. I kind of wish it was a home jersey instead of a road jersey, but oh well it's still a nice card. I really like watching Devin Hester as a kick/punt returner. Two really nice cards to end the box.

Looking at the cards I also like the colored circles behind the team name. I think it looks so much better on black than white.

The cards are also notable thicker than the non-chrome ones. I noticed this when I was scanning the two Scheffler cards. It was a pretty good buy, I like chrome a lot, but I'm not sure if I have the money to shell out for a box or blaster of this stuff to try and complete a set. I have a feeling I'll be buying more chrome to see if I can pull a few players that I like. It would be nice to find some football buddies to trade for some of this stuff and get some more cards that I actually want to keep.