Repack Wars: The Phantom Timeline

Up for another Repack Wars? You know the rules - best card of the pack. We have another 20 pack box for $20. Can I get my money back? Here we go!

Lead off pack is good old 2011 Topps. Pretty uneventful (remember that word - I'll be using it a lot this post), so I am giving the win to a great shot of a sawed off piece of lumber. I will start a binder page of these types of cards - they're pretty sweet.

The gods looked down on me this repack around and only saddled me with one pack of O-Pee-Chee. Sucked as usual, but at least they picked out one decent shot of Roy here.

2009 Upper Deck X. I'm picking the shiny out of this pack. The rest weren't so great and the die cut? More on that later. Keep reading.

Another 2011 Topps. Did better in this pack. A Cobb Topps 60 I need, so in the collection it goes.

Going back one year to the 2010 Topps release. Very blah pack. Let's give the nod to a presidential insert. Don't look too long into his eyes, though. Trust me.

2008 UD Piece of History. Never had a pack of these in an insert before (I don't recall). Since I picked a nobody rookie card as the best of the pack, you can guess how I feel about getting more of these. Zzzzzzzzz....

 

2009 Goodwin. Here was a great pack. The mini was nice. The other cards were great. But you can't beat a young Fisk.

Upper Deck Icons. This was a dreadful pack of boring players. I picked this card as the best because it's the worst. I get they don't want the Icons foil logo over the player, but did you need to make a card so incredibly off center? It took me four scans to get this image because the card kept tilting off to the left side and going unbalanced.

Ok - that last part is a lie, but you get my idea.

2010 Topps. They finally start "getting it" about their images. This card is pretty to all four corners. If you pay attention, you notice that is the home plate umpire making the call at 3rd. So we must be talking a drive to the left field corner that would pull the 3rd base ump away from the bag.

2011 Allen and Ginter. Talk about a pack of commons. That's all I have to say about this pack.

2011 Heritage. It's the Babe. That's all I SHOULD have to say about this pack.

2009 UD Timeline. If you have read my posts about repack boxes and all I have pulled and hit, you may have heard me say that the boxes are crap shoots at best. I say that now because this card is the best hit in the box. Rookie and serialed to /100. Unexciting, though.

2009 UD Baseball Heroes. When you have those three players on one card, with three vintage logos, you pass on the rest in the pack.

60's ORIOLE CARTOON LOGO BIRD HOT BOX! Seriously, we have a Jim Palmer from a 2010 Topps. Not a good pack, so this won by default.

Back to 2011 Topps Update. We have a diamond sparkle. Blah player, but the rest of the pack was worse. So congrats Rickie!

2011 Topps. See my comment about about Topps finally getting it with their images. Nice photo.

Above I showed an Adam Dunn as the best of a pack of Upper Deck X. Here is the other pack. My comment about the die cut? I am now the proud (?) owner of two Ryan Braun die cuts. Yup - same card in both packs. Ain't I a lucky guy....

Upper Deck Masterpieces. This was a great pack. I pulled another Clemente that I showed on a previous war, so I am going with Mr. Clinton here. His cap is a little goofy a-top his noggin, but it's a nice card.

The sunset card for Ivan Rodriguez in the 2011 Topps. You have to love the look of the old veteran giving tender advice to the up and coming youth. Ivan has been here before, so I like how he is just talking with Strasburg, trying to calm him down. Another example of the improvement with Topps picture selection.

Last pack is Upper Deck Spectrum. The purple on these are dreadful. And while I pulled a blue parallel of Pujols, a card of a pitcher at the plate kills. Right, Nick?

Well, that wraps up another repack. Not so great, and I probably didn't recoup all of the $20, but ripping twenty packs was a blast. It's kind of a guilty pleasure.

Repack wars!

Let's make this a new semi-whenever feature here at 2x3 Heroes. I have spoken enough of my love of a good repack box. A buck a pack or so? It makes for good fun to rip open that many packs, and there are gems to be found inside. So, when I pick me up a repack box, I will go through each pack and choose what I consider to be the best card and post it here. So you will get 10-20 cards to look at. It's a crap shoot on the purchase, so the posts will be a crap shoot at best. But enough jibber jabber - on with the scans!

We start with a pack of 09 Topps Attax, 08 Documentary and 08 Timeline. The Attax is a 20 card booster. Lot of meh in the pack, but you get one gold and one silver - the Dunn in the silver. The gold of the pack was A-Rod. The Documentary was a TOTAL blah pack. This card won out only because of the foil. And the Timeline gave me a good hit with the Russell Martin prospect die cut card.

 

Next is 04 Flair, 08 Baseball Heroes and 11 Heritage. The Jason Schmidt won by default cuz the other three cards are all PED users (Sosa, A-Rod and Pettitte). Nice hit with the blue parallel from Heroes. The Big Hurt (as an Athletic) numbered 99/199. The Heritage had a couple rookies in there but the Bambino gets the nod from me. 

A pack of 2010 Topps and two packs of 2011. Mazeroski will always get extra points from me and beats out a Stan the Man "card you mom threw out" insert. Butler is shiny, and came from an 8 card pack that was shorted two cards. He was the best of 6, and it's really not much of a race. The Yaz is...well, a Yaz. I don't have to explain all my picks in detail!

Another pack of 08 Baseball Heroes between two packs of 08 X. Griffey wins over a die cut Jose Reyes. Another Griffey on the Heroes with Clemente and Joltin' Joe. Leave my blog now if you expect me to justify this card. And then a shiny Miggy insert beats the Fukudome rookie (who?).

Allen and Ginter from 2011 and 2010 paired with a 11 Topps series 2. I know it's a Yankee, but it's Mariano and he gets props. The Lincecum mini was the default winner in a weak pack (that had another Pettitte). Ditto goes for the gold Zambrano. If that pack had some kind of Pennant ad card, that would have knocked off the Zambrano.

10 and 11 Topps and a pack of 09 OPC (this things are ALWAYS in repacks.) The 10 Topps had a Tom Seaver Vintage Legends, which would have been the runaway winner, except Little Luis trumps everytime. Goldschmidt is the choice in a weak pack, defeating 2 cognac parallels. And ther is Butler again (BILLY BUTLER HOT POST!). OPC is such a boring product. He is only here because of it being a parallel. See my earlier comment about "Pennant ad card".

Ok - just two packs remain. 09 Icons and 07 Topps Update.

Winner winner winner!!! Not only did a get a nice low number serial with the Frank Thomas Baseball Heroes, I pulled two relics from this repack box. Nice Posada (scans like crap) and a Sanchez All Star relic.

All in all, I think I did pretty good for $20.

Meh.

We've all heard about them. Those über hot packs with nothing but stars; amazing cards of incredible rarity and sheer purity of soul that they transcend this mortal planet and elevate into the reaches of the heavens.

This post will talk about the opposite of that. For every ying, there must be a yang, right? The dark side that balances the light side. A Moriarty to counter Holmes. A blaster of Update with nothing decent to speak of in the packs contained, and a blaster with a Bryce Harper auto. I got the former, and not the latter. Proof? Here, in my opinion, is the best card of the box.

Sad when that card is choosen only cuz of the stylish orange unis. Could I have picked one of the stars with an All-Star logo? You bet. But whoopie do on those. No short prints. No players in their new uniforms. Nothing. And the manu-patch?

Sigh....

Out of reach...

With the release of Allen and Ginter 2012 edition, I took the opportunity to try and score a nice small mini set from the 2011 group. When I first pulled one of these flora cards from a blaster, it just caught me up. There's something really neat about these cards, and I was determined to complete the set. And then I saw the prices of the cards on eBay, and my heart sank. They are sweet cards, but not for the price range I was seeing. Well, I waited and when 2012 hit the stores, the prices on the 2011 cards really tanked, these flora included. I have picked up 3 of the 4 needed to finish off the 5 card set, and I think the 3 cards, total with shipping, have cost me under $15. I'll pay a fin for this card, as opposed to $20 plus a year ago. Well, as I said, I have 4 of 5. The fifth is proving to be a pain. I have now tried at 3 auctions for the Mexican Hat, and each time, something in my life keep me away from my computer when the auction ends, and I fail to land the card. The winning bids have been $1.54, $1.26 and $2.01. Ok - I usually start at like a buck eleven or something, just to put it on my radar, but then life becomes life, the auction ends and I get the email that makes me sick for how low someone snagged the card.

So if you have a Mexican Hat mini, think of me. My email is in my profile - let's talk. Otherwise, this song will be ringing through my ears for years. My eyes will be happy, but still...