2009 Topps Allen & Ginter Two Box Break

Although this year's Allen & Ginter has been out for about a month, I wanted to post my own review and add to the plethora of opinions about one of Topps' most popular sets each year.

Product: 2008 Bowman Chrome - Hobby Box
Packs/Cards: 24 packs/8 cards a pack
Price: $95 per box

Overview: I already know what I was getting when I bought these two boxes... and if you have bought any Allen & Ginter from past years... you probably know what you are getting when in this product. The Allen & Ginter set is a tribute to the original tobacco cards from the late 19th century. Although the majority of subjects are all baseball related, the set also features cards of champions from other sports and historic figures, places and events.

Allen & Ginter is not a set I am looking to complete. While many people love building the A & G set, I decline mostly because, as a baseball card collector, I want to build a set about baseball. Currently, the set is about 80% baseball and 20% everything else. Despite this view, I would like to see an A & G set that is a greater mix of atheletes across all sports, as well as historical figures and events. Topps was pretty successful with the American Heritage and I don't see why they wouldn't be successful with a real tribute to the Allen & Ginter legacy.

With that being written, it was the hits that drew me in to this product. Three guaranteed hits per box and with the wide variety of hits... not just baseball, but other venues... I just had to give it a try.

Results: Box #1
- 131 Base Cards (out of 350)
--- 11 Short Prints (out of 50)

- 3 Code Variations

- 23 National Pride (out of 75) - plus 1 double
- 4 Allen & Ginter Highlight Sketches (out of 25)

- 24 Minis

--- 12 Base

--- 2 Black Border
--- Heinrich Hertz (Scientist)
--- Cat Osterman (Softball)

--- 5 Allen & Ginter Back
--- Diasuke Matsuzaka
--- Loren Opstedahl (Sculpting)
--- Kazuo Matsui
--- Brett Myers
--- Kenshin Kawakami

--- 2 Hoaxes, Hoodwinks & Bamboozles
--- The Bathtub Hoax
--- The Cottingley Fairies

--- 2 National Heroes
--- Switzerland - William Tell
--- Albania - Skanderbeg

--- 1 Inventions of the Future
--- Mental Movies

- 3 Relics
--- Ryan Doumit - Jersey
--- Mark Mulder - Pants
--- Jered Weaver - Jersey

- Box Topper
--- N43 Josh Hamilton

- TWINS
--- Delmon Young
--- Francisco Liriano - National Pride



I will admit that the first box left a very bad taste in my mouth. Still, was I a glutton for punishment or did I figure I couldn't do any worse that this first box? Here's the second one.

Results: Box #1
- 130 Base Cards (out of 350)
--- 12 Short Prints (out of 50)

- 2 Code Variations

- 24 National Pride (out of 75)
- 4 Allen & Ginter Highlight Sketches (out of 25)

- 24 Minis

--- 12 Base

--- 2 Black Border
--- Dexter Fowler
--- Evereth Cabrera

--- 4 Allen & Ginter Back
--- Jason Jaramillo
--- Johnny Damon
--- Todd Wellemeyer
--- Vincent Van Gogh (Artist)

--- 1 Bazooka Back
--- John Danks #02/25

--- 2 Hoaxes, Hoodwinks & Bamboozles
--- The Turk
--- Victor Lustig

--- 2 National Heroes
--- Iceland - Jon Sigurosson
--- Jamaica - Marcus Garvey

--- 1 Legend, Myth & Terror
--- Kraken

- 2 Relics
--- Mike Cameron - Bat
--- Ryan Doumit - Jersey

- 1 Autograph
--- Joba Chamberlain (Short printed to 49 copies according to Topps)

- 1 Printing Plate
--- Simpson/Bunker Magenta Plate

- Box Topper
--- N43 Albert Pujols

- TWINS
--- Francisco Liriano - Mini
--- Francisco Liriano - National Pride



This second box total redeemed any sour feelings I had about the first box.

Joba Chamberlain is probably the most overrated player in the Major Leagues today, but I know this auto will pay for the box. This card is now sold on eBay. I will put it this way: if Nick Blackburn played for the Yankees, he would have an autographed card short printed to 49 copies.

I also pulled my first printing plate ever from a box. Perhaps there is an equestrian fan would will want this. This card is also now sold on eBay.

The Bazooka Back is also a bonus. Too bad it's a White Sox pitcher.

(Honestly, I was hoping for either an autograph, printing plate or Bazooka back and I got all three! (Honestly, I wanted a rip card, but I can't always get what I want.)

Set Builders Perspective:
Out of an average 8-card pack, there will be 6 base cards, 1 National Pride card and 1 mini. If a pack contains an Allen & Ginter highlight sketch, you have five base cards. If a pack contains an framed relic or autograph, there will be four base cards. The short prints are packaged one out of every two pack. Assuming you get minimal doubles, you could possibly complete the base set (with short prints) in three boxes.

Of course, the added inserts: National Pride and Allen & Ginter Highlight Sketches, as well as the mini inserts, also adds lots of appeal for a set completist.

Although, from the two boxes I opened, the regular base and the National Pride were almost duplicates. If I were building the set, my progress would look like this.

Set Total:

- Total: 161/350 - 46% complete
--- Base: 138/300
--- Short Prints: 23/50

- National Pride: 26/75
- Allen & Ginter Highlight Sketches: 5/25

Twins Perspective:
I have not had a lot of luck with Twins cards in any of this year's products. Out of these two cards, I only pulled three unique Twins cards, and none of them feature a player named Mauer or Morneau.

Grade: Major League Minnesota Twins

2008 Bowman Chrome Box Break

Product: 2008 Bowman Chrome - Hobby Box
Packs/Cards: 18 packs/4 cards a pack
Price: $54

Overview: Bowman Chrome is a prospect heavy product. While the set includes 220 MLB players, it also features another 110 prospects currently in the minor leagues. Bowman Chrome includes refractor variations of each card, as well as the long sought after superfractor. Autographed cards of prospects are a highlight of Bowman Chrome, with one autographed card per box.

The appeal of Bowman Chrome are the prospects. I am not a prospect collector, but I do look for the Twins, both with the big leagues and those in the farm system.

Results:
- 64 Base Cards (out of 330)
--- 30 MLB Veterans and Rookies (out of 220)
--- 34 Prospects (out of 110)

- 1 Autographed Prospect: Daniel Bard (Red Sox)

- 6 Refractors: Billy Butler, Jermaine Dye, Kosuke Fukudome, Vladimir Guerrero, Brad Hawpe, Lyle Overbay.
- 1 Xfractor: Glenn Gibson (Rays)

- 1 Kosuke Fukudome Japan variation

There were a total of 73 cards. One pack contained five cards and that pack contained the Fukudome variation. Sometimes the variations are cool and sometimes they are not. The Fukudome variation is definitely cool. Last year, Fukudome was the next big Japanese baseball star to jump to the Major Leagues. While I am not a fan of Fukudome, I liked the idea of the Japanese variation being included in the set.







Set Builders Perspective:
The cards are packaged 2 MLB Players and 2 Prospects per pack. With 220 MLB Players total and 110 Prospects total, it will be easier to complete the Prospects set than it would the MLB Players set. (This is the complete opposite for the regular Bowman set.) If each box includes about 30 MLB Players, not counting refractors, it would take a minimum of eight boxes to complete the set. The Prosects set would take a minimum of four. If you are a set completist, Bowman Chrome would take a lot of effort to complete.

Twins Perspective:
While the MLB chrome cards are typically parallels of the regular Bowman counterparts, there are a couple of Twins in Bowman Chrome that were not in Bowman: Denard Span and Matt Tolbert. In addition to the base MLB and prospect cards, there are also six autographed Twins prospect cards include as part of the product. However, in my box, I only received one Twin: Nick Blackburn. Even so, I had already had the Nick Blackburn.



If not an autographed Twin, I was hoping for at least a refractor. Though, a superfractor would be very nice. Not a lucky box for me, but I don't have reason to believe another box wouldn't go in the Twins favor.

Grade: Double-A New Britian Rock Cats

1998 Pacific Online Box Break

Note: Why do a review of a box break for a product that is more than 10 years old? One of the things I wanted to do on this box was to post my own box breaks, but with a Twins angle. I'm still experimenting with a format. There are some formats I have seen on other blogs that I like and will work on incorporating it to my own. Of course, as a collector, I don't want to limit myself on opening only new cards. Sometimes, I like to go back and open old product as well. Some people may have already seen this break, others may not, and others may just want to feel nostalgic.

Product: 1998 Pacific Online - Hobby Box
Packs/Cards: 24 packs/9 cards a pack
Price: $15

Overview:
I stopped at one of the local card shops in the area looking for a card fix. In their bargain section was this box. Since there were still some Twins cards I still needed from the set, as well as possible gold foil variations and the cheap price, I jumped on it.

For me I thought Pacific cards generally look like they were designed by a high school art student. Pacific Online looks like that high school art student graduated and applied to vo-tech. At least the design was better than I used to seeing from Pacific, but I wouldn't see anything better than so-so.

At a time when card companies were making smaller sets, Pacific Online went the opposite direction with a larger set that included 750 players. Pacific Online also happened to be the largest base set they had made.

The Online part of the set are long URLs for each player and each team at the top of each card. Consider the gold foil variations of each card with a code on the pack and it encourages an interactive feel to the card. However, the URLs were always a distraction to a so-so design in 1998 and are now a huge eye sore over time with old inactive links.



Another facet about this set is that there are 20 players who have two versions of the same card.




All Twins cards will either go in my collection or be forwarded on to my Tier 2. All other cards will go to respective Team Collectors.

Set Builders Perspective:
The set consists of 800 cards total with 750 players (20 players have two versions) and 30 team checklists. This comes down to a 25-man roster for each team. Each pack also includes one gold foil web variation.

In this box, I ended up with 186 base cards, 24 gold cards and 6 doubles. With a large set, I would have hoped that I would have had absolutely no doubles, but, considering the number of doubles I've seen in other boxes from 1998, only 6 doubles is not too bad.

Part of my set building perspective is that I am a fan of big sets with many different players. From that point, building a Pacific Online set satisfies it. However, with a possible 192 different base cards, you would need to open a minimum of 5 boxes to complete a set. At this point, boxes of Pacific Online are difficult to find, but very inexpensive once you find them.

Twins Perspective:
The box included 7 Twins cards: Eddie Guardado, Mike Morgan, Alex Ochoa, David Ortiz, Terry Steinbach, Mike Trombley and Twins Checklist featuring Paul Molitor. No gold cards.









For a set like this, other players who did not normally have cards made, such as Mike Morgan, are included. Including the Pacific Online cards already in the collection, I am 11 cards short of the complete team set. I have not sought out the Twins cards actively from this set, so I am not sure how easily I can attain the remaining cards from the set.

Grade: Triple-A Rochester Red Wings

2009 Topps Heritage - Box 2

Now for Box 2.

Base Set: 177/500
SP's: 7
New Age Performers:
Manny Ramirez
Dustin Pedroia
Then and Now:
Banks/Howard
Ford/Sabathia
Baseball Flashbacks:
Brooks Robinson
Bobby Richardson
News Flashbacks:
Fifty-Star Flag
John F. Kennedy
Chrome:
Nick Markakis
Mat Gamel
Jay Bruce
Carlos Zambrano
Brad Penny (refractor)
Clubhouse Collection Relic:
Dustin Pedroia

Twins:



As one of my team collector buddies had described his box, I would compare this box to a $70 blaster. While I do like the Flashback Relics, I don't really care much for the Clubhouse Collection Relics. The Clubhouse Collection Relics have no theme: just random jersey and bat relics from random players. One thing I do like about this year's set is that the SP's are easy to identify: all SP's are numbered 426-500 and all have brown backs. With the second box, I did end up with about 90 doubles.

I'm trying to remember from the checklist, but Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau are both short prints, meaning they will be a lot more difficult to obtain than the other cards. All of the Twins cards in this set, except for the extra Delmon Young, will be going towards building the box. I'm sure I will get Twins card as I continue buying more cards and also from trading with the team collectors.

2009 Topps Heritage - Box 1

I bought my first two boxes of 2009 Topps Heritage more than a week ago and now I've finally gotten around to posting the results. One of the things I've wanted to do on my blog was to share box breaks. This is my first one, it may take some time to figure out a format, but I'll give it a shot. Since this is my Twins collection blog, there will be a special emphasis on Twins.

I will start with in this post with the first box and then start a second post with the second box.

Base Set: 176/500
SP's: 7
New Age Performers:
Mark Teixeira
Ryan Braun
Then and Now:
Banks/Howard
Friend/Santana
Baseball Flashbacks:
Bill Mazeroski
Ernie Banks
News Flashbacks:
Aswan High Dam
Weather Satellite Tiros-1
Chrome:
Jonathan Papelbon
Kosuke Fukudome
Kila Ka'aihue
Carlos Quentin
Gio Gonzalez (refractor)
Flashback Relic:
Luis Aparicio
Box Topper:
1960 Topps Al Smith

Twins:


Topps Heritage is always fun to open every year and challenging set to try an build. I do love the look of this year's set (based on the original 1960 Topps set) and I do not see any glaring errors so far. I like box toppers that are included in every other box (an original 1960 Topps card), although I wish Topps would not foil stamp them. The Luis Aparicio Flashback Relic (a relic from Briggs Field) is a fun card to have; I have grown bored of non-themed relic cards, but I like the Flashback relics with pieces from past stadiums. Overall, a good start for the set.

Box 2 coming next.