System Update Required

I finally found some cards out in the wild! 

While I was at the local Walmart a week or so ago, I decided to take a look at the card section. I'd set myself up for disappointment as every single time I've looked at a card aisle be it at Walmart, Target, or even Meijer, the shelves are completely bare (or there's loads of hockey cards which no one can be bothered with). This time though, I was surprised! There was exactly one blaster of Topps Update and one blaster of Topps WWE Finest. I was tempted to get the WWE cards but settled on the blaster of Update.

I didn't care if the box was awesome or if was a bust, I was just so excited to finally find cards in the wild again and open some packs!

I won't go pack by pack but I'll show some of my favorites and just some general neat cards. Starting off, here's the obligatory Reds lot. The Eric Davis card you'll see in an upcoming post about my most recent Card Barrel order from the holidays. The most curious card in the here is Matt Davidson, who became a footnote in Reds history on Opening Day to be the first-ever Reds DH on Opening Day.

Rangers cards that have the "Inaugural Season" logo. I heard about a a whole kerfuffle about there only being one Rangers card or something like that in Series 1 last year. Not sure if it had anything to do with the "Inaugural Season" logo or uniform change or something

One of my absolute favorite things about both Flagship/Update are the stats on the back. I especially love it when I get cards from players like these two who have been around forever. I mean, look how small the stat lines are on Rich Hill's card. You'd need a magnifying glass to see it.

Nothing special about these cards. I just thought they were neat, especially Bartolo Colon. It's not often that you see a player noted as a "free agent" on a card.

These guys look weird in these uniforms. 

With there being no All-Star Game and no Home Run Derby this year, Topps included images from ASGs and Derbys past. I actually kind of like these. The Mike Trout is from the 2015 game in Cincinnati and I wonder if there are others. I'm still also working on putting together all the All-Star Game and Derby cards from 2015 Update.

Here are some parallels. I think the blue ones are Wal-Mart exclusives.

Each pack had a Turkey Red card. The action ones are nice but I just find the posed shot ones boring.

Inserts were prevalent. I've been meaning to get some of those "Decades Best" cards.

I was really excited that this Turkey Red Chrome Derek Jeter card came out of the box. Getting cool inserts like this is honestly pretty rare for me when I get blaster boxes.

The same pack that held the Turkey Red Chrome card also held this nice foil parallel as well. If you're keeping track, that's two nice Derek Jeter cards in the same pack. Those were definitely worth the price of admission here.

Lastly, as is the usual case with blasters there's some sort of manu-relic. This time is a collectible coin card of some sort. The honestly looks better in person that it does here. The problem is that these things are about the size of a brick in thickness (ok, maybe not but they are super thick) so finding something to put this in will be a bit of an issue.

Overall though, I enjoyed this blaster a lot. I got a lot of fun cards, had a blast opening a few packs, and was pretty happy overall. I'm looking forward to the 2021 cards coming out soon and if I find a blaster or some retail packs in the wild, I'll grab those.

2019 Allen & Ginter Blaster Box

I'll come right out and say it, Allen and Ginter isn't exactly my favorite product of the year. However, after seeing the cards around the blogs, I thought it looked like a pretty good set this year. So, I bit. While at Walmart the other day, I grabbed one of the random boxes of Ginter as I figured a blaster would be enough to satisfy my interest.

I'm sure by now everyone has seen the base cards. The one thing I like about this year as opposed to previous years is that there's actually a background. It doesn't feel like the player is just floating in space. And the backgrounds are pretty colorful and unique. That's a win for me.

Toukki Toussaint looks like he's standing in front of the warehouse at Camden Yards. I like the background of the Jose Altuve card as well, looks like he's mingling with some old school players as well.

Four short prints per blaster box and I got these. Not a bad batch.

Some old school players. I really like the fact that Reggie Jackson is shown with the Angels, which is a team he's not really known for. He played for the Angels from 1982-1986, was an All-Star for three of those five seasons and finished 6th in MVP voting in the 1982 season.

More old school, this time with some Expos (Vlad and Gary Carter), then Bob Feller and one of my favorite cards in the whole blaster, a card of the original 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings. I can see why they were included in the set because of the whole 150th Anniversary of MLB thing and all.

Each pack had a mini. I'll be completely honest and say that mini's aren't my thing. These will probably be going to Night Owl at some point for his A&G mini frankenset.

On to the inserts now. Each pack had some sort of insert. I really like these "Ginter Greats" inserts. 

Another cool insert, Baseball Star Signs featuring the zodiac signs of top players. I've never really delved much into astrology or sign of the zodiac but I really dig the designs of these cards. For the record, my zodiac sign is Sagittarius.

Of course, with Ginter, there are non-baseball subjects. I got two of the "Mares and Stallions" inserts. These are pretty neat.

Other inserts in the blaster. One of the "Incredible Equipment" of the Pied Piper's Pipe (kind of made me think of Roddy Piper) and one piece of the history of flight series. I would really like to put together the whole "history of flight" series.

And then there's this ... a framed mini-relic of Vladimir Guerrero. I'll be honest, I'm really thrilled to have found this!

For grabbing a random blaster from the display in Walmart and going into this just for some fun, this is probably the best blaster I could've gotten for the money. It was light on the non-baseball content but still had some, some fun inserts, and a Vlad relic. I may splurge on some more A&G this year just because I really enjoyed this. For now, this will definitely suffice on my A&G curiosity.

Opening Day Scan Dump

I was cleaning up my card corner the other day and came across this box of Opening Day I forgot I bought. It's the jumbo box variety and has the red parallels so that's a dead giveaway it came from Target. I had some time and ripped into it. While I didn't find anything groundbreaking, I did come away with some keepers and a few neat things. This will be pretty scan heavy and I guess could qualify as a "scan dump" and will also probably be quite brief.

Red parallels ... keeping most of these although I might send the Merrifield off to Dime Box Nick. Not sure yet.

Scenes of Opening Day. I was pretty happy to get the Reds card, even though it mentions last year's Opening Day was a rain-out.

Mascot cards are always fun!

Other inserts, parallels, etc. The "150 Years of Fun" cards are interesting but not really my thing, although I'm keeping the Aaron and the Carter pictured.

Reds and Indians highlights.

The best horizontal cards of the box. 

And lots of fun base cards. 

So that's the highlights from a box of Opening Day I'd forgotten about. Like I mentioned earlier, quick and painless, right?

The Hills Have Eyes

I picked up some of these box sets for a buck each at the most recent card show I went to back in April. Since then, they've been sitting around waiting to get explored. I thought now would be a good time to do so.

This is a Hills Team MVPs set from 1989. It's a 33-card set of some of the top names in baseball at the time. I love these old retail oddball sets from defunct retailers like Hills, Kaybee Toys, Toys R Us,  K-Mart, Revco, etc. There's just something about them that speaks to me. 

Here's the back of the box. I love the fact it's still got the original price on it ($1.97) and the checklist.

Now, as far as Hills goes, I grew up with a Hills store that my grandparents would go to occasionally. My grandma mostly went there because of it being a department store and she was able to get sewing supplies like pins, needles, fabric, etc. I remember going there a few times looking at video games and toys. Ames took over Hills, which was having financial trouble, at the end of 1998 and lasted until 2002 when they met their demise due to money troubles of their own.

This is what the local Hills store looks like now. Over the years, since Ames closed, it's housed numerous discount outlets. I'm not sure if the store itself is still open as I haven't been by there in a long time. 

Anyway, enough reminiscing, here's what the box of cards contained. I'm showing these in the order that they came out of the box.

Some pretty good names here with Orel Hershiser and Dennis Eckersley ... Johnny Ray seems out of place but judging by the stats from the 1988 Angels club, he lead the team in batting average so I can see why he was included.

Oooh! Fred McGriff in the all blue Blue Jays uniform! Yes please!

In regards to the cards themselves, I like the design a lot. The banner at the bottom, the giant Hills logo at the top left of the card. The pictures are pretty good as well. This batch features Andres Galarraga with the Expos and Joe Carter with the Indians, which are always a pleasant find.

Next to last batch here. I love the photo on Mike Greenwell's card with the Green Monster looming in the background.

Final batch here. Only one Reds player in the whole set, that being Danny Jackson, who probably would've won the Cy Young in 1988 had it not been for Orel Hershiser's scoreless inning streak. Jackson won 23 games in 1988, with 15 complete games.

If you're interested, here's the back of the card. Not very impressive if you ask me as it only has the player's 1988 stats with vitals and a brief blurb about their 1988 season.

This was a really cool pickup for a buck and I've got another Hills set to go through, this time from 1990. I think every team had at least one player in the set as well, which is another plus. It'll look even better once I put them in order and page them up in my "oddball sets" binder.

2019 Donruss Blaster

I've had this blaster of 2019 Donruss sitting around for a while now. I actually bought it a week or so before Opening Day but due to other things, I haven't had the chance to open it until now. 

If you remember last year, I bought three packs of Donruss from the card shop and thought they were horrible. The pictures, the design, everything except the 1984 style cards was bad. Let's see if Donruss redeemed themselves this year.

Here are the base cards. As is the case with Donruss, there are no logos or nicknames. Not that I mind that too much when photos like this do their best to hide that that. The Rhys Hoskins card is a throwback uniform variation that I noticed after sorting these to be scanned. As far as the design this year goes, I don't really mind it. It's pretty simple and doesn't try to be something it's not (and doesn't have wavy lines all over the place either like last year).

Of course, there are nickname variations. These are painless enough.

The two Reds cards I got in my box. Scooter Gennett is inching closer to coming back and re-joining the team after injuring his quad right at the end of spring camp. It makes me wonder though, who will be the odd man out in the infield since Jose Iglesias has been a heck of a fill-in with both his glove and his bat, and Derek Dietrich I think may have usurped Jose Peraza as the everyday second baseman.

Here are a few of the Rated Rookies. I think there was one of these in every pack. These were literally chosen at random. Garrett Hampson is currently hitting .194/.224/.269 with Colorado and was actually optioned back to Triple-A as I write this. Kopech was 1-1 in only four games with the White Sox and will miss the entire 2019 season due to Tommy John surgery.

I think even the most ardent Donruss/Panini hater can probably find some good in the Diamond Kings cards.

Every year since Panini brought Donruss back, they've had the back end of the base set devoted to old designs. This year it's 1985, which I sort of enjoy. As a matter of fact, my favorite Donruss designs are probably from the years 1982-1987. I wonder what they'll do when they reach 1990 as they've already used it for a base set design in 2017.

As it is with Donruss, there's a boatload of parallels and the the like. The Rizzo is numbered to 484 and the design on the Ryan O'Hearn card is called "Independence Day". The back also feels like it's a vintage stock card or something.

Purple parallels! Very cool and very shiny.

Speaking of shiny, there's a four card "bonus" pack with the blasters and inside contained these super shiny cards. I think my favorite of these is the Jose Altuve "Action All-Stars" card. One thing I didn't notice until scanning these is that the Franchise Features cards have a different player on the reverse side.

And would you look at who's on the back of the Kris Bryant, that being Reds top prospect Nick Senzel, who is doing quite well for himself both at the plate and in the field. After seeing him play, I can see why the Reds released Matt Kemp.

So that's a blaster of 2019 Donruss. It's a definite improvement from last year. I like the inserts and parallels, and especially the "Action All-Stars" set.