Video Box Battle of Co-Signers Baseball 2008

Yo,

For about the past month Mario and I have been planning a friendly box battle of co-signers 2008. Well the product just so happened to release today so I went and picked up my box. I was lucky enough to get a free box from All C's which is a great local hobby shop here in Colorado. Since they gave me a free box I will be posting their Ebay name, email, and business cards on my sidebar. They sell 100-300 cards a day up on Ebay or in the shop. I have known them for almost 11 years and feel honored to get a free box from this family owned/operated business.

The Rules(subject to change):
Mario and I both post video breaks of our boxes.
We both do a little review of the breaks.
Post a voters poll so people can vote on the best box.
2 guest judges write a post about who's they think is better.

My Video Break (sorry I had to rush through to save some time)



My Thoughts:

This is your standard co-signers baseball. 12 packs per box, 6 cards per pack, 3 autos including 1 co-signer. This year instead of 9 parallel cards you get 12 and there is a chance to get a quad singed or cowhide signed card. The base cards are similar to last years co-signers gray and white background with a color action photo of the player. The parallels are still colored and shiny with the color determining the serial number. Some of the parallels changed to only having one player instead of 2 which is probably the reason you get 12 now instead of 9. The back of the card didn't change much either. They still have a nice color picture on the back and the previous 3 years of stats. Lastly, instead of Moonshots autos they have an array of boxers which alot of collectors have been very interested in.

My hits:

Co-signed Jack Cust and Mark Ellis from the Athletics
Solo Signed RC of David Davidson #230/400 from the Pirates (who just walloped the Mets 13-1 WOW)
Solo Signed Boxer Joan Guzman 28-0-0 with 17 KOs
12 parallels including an A-rod numbered to 200



From talking to Mario at Wax Heaven, it sounded like he was going to be picking up a box today. Be sure to keep your eyes peeled from his break in the near future. Since I really like co-signers I'm very happy with this box and the product. I really hope that Mario gets a better box though he hasnt opened cards in a while.

Thanks for watching be sure to think about who's box you like better, voters polls should be up soon!!

-Word

Three Days is a Long Time to Go Without Seeing Cards...

Exhausted,

I finally arrived back at home today after a 15 hour drive back from Rolla, Missouri. I spent my weekend playing the last lacrosse game of the regular season. I have never been so relieved to get some time off(unless we get a bid for nationals). The best season I have had in my career aside from playing with injuries that will come back to haunt me in old age *uneasy chuckle*.

Even though I was only away for 3 days I felt so detached from cards. Without the internet I was unable to check out any blogs or make a blog of my own. For that I apologize. This week is looking up with the release of Co-Signers '08 which my local hobby shop is hooking me up with. As most of you know, Mario from Wax Heaven and I will be doing a video box battle in which our loyal fans will be able to vote on the winner. I's expecting everything to be posted on that either later in the week or early next week. Other than that I should have a few boxes of Topps '08 coming in the mail for my gold collection. In addition I will be sending out all the trades I have been working on. So people have been waiting for over a month for cards and to be honest school and lacrosse have been destroying my time. Luckily that is all coming to an end in the next couple weeks.

With all that said I can barely keep my eyes open...

-Till Monday

Holy First Ebay Sale, Waxman

Woot,

After 7 grueling days of watching people bid on my best card so far, its finally time to say goodbye. Today a little after 3pm eastern my 2/2 Derek Jeter Spectrum auto sold for 228.50 for my first Ebay sale ever. The price is about what I figured it would go for and I am very happy to get some money into the baseball card fund before the box battle with Mario.

I must say that even though selling something on Ebay can be risky it is really fun at the same time. I sat glued to my computer hitting the reload button for the last hour of the auction. I'm glad that a feeling like that will never lose its gusto seeing as I don't plan on selling many cards I don't like to open cards and see dollar signs I like to open cards and see heroes,history, and a pastime.



Bye Bye Mr. Jeter I hope you find a good home :)

Terrible Thomas Timing

FFRRRAAANNNKKKK,

Today was a tough day for me after waking up to the news about the big hurt being released. Ever since I was a kid playing little league ball I have looked up to him. I remember the days where the only baseball I would watch was if ol Frank was playing. I also recall my dads disgust when I would pick Thomas for the home run derby on World Series Baseball 1995(with 11+ homers every time how could you not pick him?)

Of course his release comes the day after J.C.F. at Tulo Trader handed me a sick Thomas card. Oh well I'm sure he will get picked up by some AL team that will get to see the Hurts middle and late season 302 or so average. Personally I'm hoping to see him go to the A's to pick up where Mike Piazza left off or to the Orioles so he can look like a big pumpkin.

I hear that there is a lot of talk about bad blood between the Jays and Thomas. However on baseball tonight he was interviewed about the subject. At the end of the interview he assured Chris Berman and the baseball nation that there are no problems. I'm sure we will get statements from both parties again in the next few days.

I still plan on collecting Frank Thomas and Mike Piazza cards even though both of them will be watching baseball on their couches for a little bit.

-have a good weekend

p.s. I would add scans but at the moment I'm exhausted from lacrosse yesterday

Where is my mail?!?!

It has been a almost a month since I purchased a regular old box of Topps 08 Series 1 on ebay. Ever since then I have been checking my mail box like a little kid shaking presents around Christmas time. So far I've got nothing. So like any good ebayer I contacted the seller before I got to worried. The email was nice, I told the seller that I live in an apartment and sometimes it takes them a day to sort through all the packages. After a week I got no response so I emailed again. This time I got a response stating that the package had been sent and that they would send another on Monday. Wait..... what? Someone tells you they didn't receive their item so you bite the bullet on a 50 dollar box and send another one? I'm worried that I might be getting burned on only my 3rd ebay purchase ever.

If anyone can offer some suggestions or their input on this it would be greatly appreciated.

-Spud

Baseball card makers putting in half the effort?

HI,

I'm sure that it has come to some of your attention that cards lately are not matching up. Many cards I have been looking at lately have players that have been traded. Them being traded doesn't bother me at all. The thing that bothers me is the players being in their old uniforms while the card has the new team name on it.





One that bothers me the most thus far is Johan Santana. He was dealt to the Mets at the beginning of the year. I know that most pictures had already been taken of him in a Twins uniform but i feel that in the later sets coming out, they could take a new picture. Another player I see often in the wrong jersey is Miguel Cabrera. He has been with the Tigers for some time now but in every card I get of him has a big ol fish on it. Now I know the finest card shown is a finest moments card that he achieved when he was with the Marlins. Its cards like that I can except as having the wrong uni.

I'm sure there are some key facts/secrets about cards I'm missing. However as a new collector it annoys me a bit. In hindsight I guess its better to see them in an old jersey than a victim of a shotty airbrush job.

-Good Day

A Sunday I Will Never Forget

Heyo,

Sorry its been a few days since the last post, Ive been getting flooded with baseball cards.

My father and I had a talk recently about cards. He said he had been holding onto about sixty 1000 count boxes of cards from 69' to 98'. He told me that he always wanted to pass on his cards to me and with the responsibility I was showing with my own cards, he decided the time was now. So after a 25-5 win in my lacrosse game on Sunday I made the trip up to his house to check them out.

When I arrived he took me into his office to haul out five plastic tubs of cards. Each tub must have weighed 100-120 pounds. After that grueling ordeal I opened my first box. Wow, a complete set of 1969 Topps Baseball in mint condition. Every card was in order by number with a checklist or two at the end. The box opening continued 60' Topps, 75' Topps, 90' upperdeck. Every time I opened a new one my dad would be standing over my shoulder talking about the rookies, studs, prospects and so on. I looked like a kid that had just been given the keys to a toy store. One of my favorite moments was talking to my dad about how the hobby has evolved. He was very interested in trading card history in which some of his favorite sets held new players where some of his heroes used to be.

As the evening continued I got down to an incomplete set of Topps 1972 Baseball. Thrown off I asked my dad why the set was incomplete. In a choked up tone he responded "that was the year that your grandfather died, I guess I just lost interest for a while." At that moment i realized the unspoken sometimes unseen bond that cards bring to a father and son. My grandpa was killed in a car accident when my dad was only 9 years old. Up until then my grandpa and dad shared the same moment that my dad and I were sharing every time my dad bought a pack of cards. After we shared a few tears which is rare in my family, I gave my dad a hug... one which I will cherish for the rest of my days.

The night ended with me having a very enlightened sense of why I collect cards. I don't plan on putting any scans of the cards up but as I promised to some collectors, I pulled a few cards to send out.

Dedicated to my dad, Kelly Thornton, and to all the father/son duos out there.

-Spud

Wax Breaker Gets Another Case Hit... I Think

Word,

I have been searching for Upper Deck Spectrum now since it came out. I call the hobby shop close to me everyday, but it always seems like they have no idea what I'm talking about. So after traveling down to Aurora to another card shop, I hit my big break (haha get it, Spectrum has famous actor/singer autos aww I'm a goober).

Anyhow you get 24 packs in a box, 4 cards a pack, and 4 hits on average. The cards are nice and snazzy with a blue background and a nice big picture of the player on the front. The back is something that I have never seen from UD....STATS YOU CAN READ. In addition there are different colored parallel cards with color indicating how high numbered it is. A box also promises an auto of a famous actor or recording artist, another auto which can be a player or famous person, and 2 game used cards which can be dual from 2 pieces from each player and so on.

Here is what some of the parallels look like:


The pulls:

Vince Neil from Motley Crue:



Christopher McDonald with the edges cut out numbered 17/25



"I was in the woods on 13 and I saw 2 fat bikers having sex....how am i supposed to chip with that going on!!"

Derek Lee Spectrum Swatch #65/99:


My first pinstripe... YAY

Last hit of the box.... 4 piece game used #62/99 of 2 Cy Young winners:



After all of this I thought I was done but I remembered that I grabbed a random pack of Spectrum.



Boy was I excited. Its numbered 2/2 but there is a catch. There are 100 Jeter RetroSpectrum cards. Each card has 2 autos(at least its not like Moments and Milestones. Still a great auto its my lowest numbered card yet.

I really enjoyed this set after not buying UD for a while. Yeah its another premium type set in which I will probably only buy packs of because of the 100.00 price tag but its nice none the less.

-Hope you all enjoyed

Football Curiosity gets a hit

Happy Friday,

I don't fancy myself a football card collector but at times I get curious at what it has to offer.

J.C.F. and I headed down to Bill's today and fed our card addiction with a couple packs of cards. It was nothing fancy just some heritage from previous years. While I was at the counter I noticed that they were reloading their stock of co-signers football from last year. Packs were 10.00 with fewer odds of getting a hit then baseball. I figured what the heck and bought 1 pack.

When I got into the car I cracked the pack open and to my surprise there was a rookie dual auto in it!!



Brandon Jackson and David Clowney co-signer

As far as I know Jackson is still with the Packers after posting some good numbers last season. As for Clowney I saw he was with the jets but for the life of me could find any stats.

Regardless its of card of one of my favorite teams, and will go nicely into my personal collection.

Don't worry... This curious football pack will not kill this baseball card collecting cat.

Topps 08 Gold parallels

Ahoy,

Its snowing here today in Colorado. While I was in class I got a text saying that there would be no practice today. With the day wide open I went down to Bill Sports Memorabilia to trade some cards and work on my Gold parallel set from Topps 08 Series 1.

With my trade I was able to pick up a box of hobby packs knowing full well that I would get 4 gold parallels. To my surprise I still have yet to get a double of any of them.

The Pulls:
Justin Morneau #110
Kevin Frandsen #117
Josh Beckett postseason highlights #217
Alfredo Amezaga #227

With these four cards my total on the set comes to 77. If anyone has some gold/black parallels to trade let me know I have a lot of 08 cards to offer.

-Thats all for now

The Scum of card collectors...

I'm Pissed,

Things are kind of slow tonight so I decided to watch some box breaks on youtube. Ive have never seen such scummy, skeezy, lame, I don't even want to call them card collectors. I may have only been in the game for a couple of months but I can pick them out just as good as a seasoned veteran.

These specific skeezballs were opening everything from Moments and Milestones to Topps Heritage 08. Instead of talking about the cards and appreciating a chance to relax and open cards, they ripped through the packs like a wood chipper. These scumbags would shuffle through each pack only breaking to breathe and search for relics or autos. The rest of the cards would go unheard of and stacked up in a leaning tower of cardboard. Once a relic or auto was found they would immediately judge its value instead of appreciating its beauty. Of course they didn't know half of what they were talking about and were usually wrong about there pricing predictions. They were also terribly star struck getting excited only about the players they knew instead of taking a chance on a player they have never heard of.

Its people like this that are ruining the hobby. Dr. Wax Battle even mentioned something about these types of people in his broadcast on April 2nd. It can be viewed at his website thebackstop.net under his video archives. I recommend that every collector serious or casual take a listen. You will be surprised at how wise he is.

PLEASE...IF YOU ARE GOING TO OPEN CARDS TAKE A MOMENT TO ENJOY THEM. It's amazing how much fun you can have.

-ugh

Topps '07 Co-Signers Baseball Review

What a day,

Today I had probably the greatest bit of pulls I'm going to have for some time. I finally mustered up enough guts to do my first video box break. The box chosen was Topps Co-signers 07. When I bought the box I was a bit worried that all the good cards had been bought up. To my delight I was totally wrong.

The box guarantees 3 autos with one of them being a co-signer. In addition the box guarantees 9 numbered parallels. Each pack contains 6 cards with 12 packs in a box.

The cards looked great! Each card is somewhat mirrored much like Moments and Milestones. The parallels have 2 players, one is a mirror image and the other is a regular colored in picture.

As always the dust and scratches are from the top loaders and scanner...

The First auto I pulled was a rookie parallel numbered to 125... Angel Sanchez. i don't know much about him but I plan to research this Kansas City Royal.



The second was the best hit I have ever had... Ortiz, Wright, Howard Tri-signer...WOW



After that pull I figured that card was my "co-signer"...how wrong I was.



I have to say that this set is my favorite so far. I am looking forward to a co-signer 08 friendly box break war with Mario from Wax Heaven that we are trying to set up.

Thats not all...
While I was waiting to do my box break I opened up a Topps Finest mini and got some exciting pulls.

Finest Moments Miguel Cabrera:



Rookie Redemption Card #5:



Lastly RACHEAL THE RIP GIRL...OY:



I don't know if you can see it well in the scans but it looks like somebody at Topps got a little "excited" with this card. One of the corners is bent, the ink is running, on the back it looks as it someone tried to stab a chunk out of it. I'm not upset about it but I got a really good laugh out of the whole thing. The best part of the card is a question on the back that reads "what is your favorite part of being a rip girl?" The answer... "having fun with the rip master and the other rip girls" HAHAHAHAHA my feeble 20 year old mind thinks that is priceless.

-I hope you all enjoyed

Here is the first box break on Wax Breaker. Hope you all enjoy!!



Part 2



Look for a review later tonight with scans of the autos that I pulled. As always if there is anything anyone wants let me know and I'll see what I can do.

-Happy Breaking

Just when I think I'm out, they drag me back in.

WOW Topps Finest,

I stumbled upon some extra cash today so I made a trip down to my favorite hobby shop. As I looked around I randomly grabbed some Topps 08, an M&M pack to see if I could help J.C.F. with his Tulo collection, and to top it all off I decided to see if I could grab a good auto or two out of some finest minis.

Every pack paid off...even the finest which I have been bashing on recently.

The Topps '08 had a gold parallel that I didn't have yet. This card brings my total up to 72 of the gold numbered parallels. If I havn't mentioned previously, I'm trying to put together the entire numbered gold parallel set from Topps 08. So far things are looking good. The Moments and Milestones pack had a Tulo as the first card in the pack. To finish it all i opened my finest packs. I picked them totally at random out of the 12 minis available. The 2 that I picked had some great cards for my collection. A Frank Thomas base card wooohoo didn't have that one yet, a Joba base card that looks exactly like his bowman prospects card, and a grip of Rockies. The first auto was one of my best ever a Clay Buchholz rookie auto. I have liked the kid since I started collecting. I think he has a lot of potential to be a full time stud for the bosox. THE SECOND AUTO. . . hmmm thats weird ANOTHER CLAY BUCHHOLZ ROOKIE AUTO. How weird but how nice when you think about how much these cards could be worth in the future. Hopefully the odds of getting this auto are high and I just got really lucky. I'm sure however that its the other way around.

Here are the scans of both cards:





Something I just noticed is the chain that he is wearing in the picture makes it look like clay has a dube in his mouth...

-Thats it for today

Something I think should be fixed

Just a quick note. . .

To all the baseball card creators out there,

If you are going to honor a man by making a game used jersey card for him, make sure you give him the right number, or team.... please.



-Spud

Topps "Overpriced" Review

I still don't know how to feel,

I bought some of Topps Finest yesterday. i thought about writing about it right after practice but i decided to think about it for another day. I'm really glad I did...

Master boxes at my hobby shop are going for 145.00 with the minis going for 50.00. With my discount I got about 20 bucks knocked off. Each mini pack promises an auto and each master includes 4-5 numbered parallels. In addition each mini has 6 packs with 5 cards.

Being a new collector this year I enjoyed that all the cards are chrome refractors. The base cards were refreshing to me all with nice photos of some of my favorite players. After thinking about it for a while I came to realize that a lot of the parallels look very very cheesy.



The almost neon green, blue, and red colors just don't do it for me. Another problem I have is that the Topps Finest logo is gigantic and very distracting to the eye. I feel that they could have made it smaller to allow more room for a picture. The back of the card leaves me with a bad Moments and Milestone taste in my mouth. The back of the card features only last years and the players overall career stats. Being a Topps 08 collector I was very disappointed in the lack of stats. I also happened upon about 8 dupes including inserts. With how large the set is I didn't expect to pay 150.00 to have doubles in my first box. The last thing that upset me was the whole point of the box... the Autos. The autos I pulled will not give me enough return to want to buy another mini. It may sound selfish but selling off the cards I don't want gives me a nice fund to buy cards with.

After all this complaining this is what I liked. The team favorites inserts are well done and appealing to the eye. The base cards are good looking to me seeing that Ive never pulled any chrome cards. Along with the base cards I got my favorite player, Frank Thomas. As far as autos and parallels go I pulled a Brandon Phillips auto that looks like he had a seizer while signing it and a gold numbered to 50 Dice K. To end it all I pulled a rookie redemption card #4. Glad I get to wait till November to get that one.

Phillips goes 30/30


Gold Dice K



Well thats all i got I hope you all enjoyed. The box may say "Topps Finest" but to me it seems like "Topps Overpriced".

Wait a second whats this. . .
AAAAAHHHHH rookie auto blue parallel make it stop!!!


-Spud