2021-22 Wild Card Alumination Basketball

My wife was at a store and the had boxes of 4 packs 8 cards per pack for $8.50 so she picked up 2 for me.  These are all college guys Rookies in my opinion not a great checklist.  But lets see a pack.  First is the unopened pack, then the 6 base cards and then the back of the base.  Each 8 card pack is to include 2 inserts which there are a lot of, here is a link to the TCDB.com page for the set if interested in all that is possible https://www.tcdb.com/Checklist.cfm/sid/310348 .  The 2 insert I received were a Light Show & a Starbright.  The biggest name in the packs I opened was Josh Giddey and this pack had 2 different cards of him a Base and the Starbright.  

Pack

Base Card Design

Base Back Design

Starbright Insert Front design

Starbright Insert Back design

Light Show Insert Front design

Light Show Insert Back design

2024 ABD Yuto Horigome Quickstrike

I'm guessing there aren't a lot of collectors interested in Japanese skateboarders, but that's okay.  This blog's agenda is to rip at least one pack of every card product ever made.  So here you go...

Let's kick things off with the skater featured in this product.  Yuto Horigome is a twenty-five year old skater from Japan who has won three gold medals at the X Games and two gold medals at the Olympics in street skating.

Last month, I discovered ABD Collectibles produced cards for him as well as other skaters.  Collectors can either purchase individual packs or full boxes on their site.  Boxes are available for $126.90, while each pack costs $12.69.  The advantage of buying a box is that you are guaranteed an autograph.

Since I really wanted Yuto's signature, I grabbed a box.  If you're interested in seeing the autograph I pulled, click here.

Alright... enough mumbo jumbo... let's check out the first pack of the box:

I really like the logo.  Reminds me of a package of Pop Rocks from the 80's.

According to the back of the pack wrapper, each pack contains only three cards: two collectible cards and one redemption card.

Card #1:

English Hollywood 16 Non-Foil

There are only three different cards in this product:  Hollywood 16, Portrait, & Franklin Switch Tail.  

However each card has four different versions:

#1:  English Non-Foil

#2:  English Foil

#3:  Japanese Non-Foil

#4:  Japanese Foil

Based on my personal box break, I think that each of these versions were printed in equal quantities.  There are hand numbered parallels that are randomly inserted into packs that are much rarer.  Unfortunately, I did not pull any of these in my box. 

Card #2:

English Hollywood 16 Foil

Based on my scans, it's hard to tell the difference between the non-foil and foil versions.  However they're very easy to tell apart in hand.  Here's a photo of the cards side by side:

Card #3:

The third card in the pack is advertised as a redemption card, but it's actually more of a contest card since not ever card is redeemable for something.

Collectors can check to see if they won, by scanning the QR code.  Unfortunately... I couldn't find any information on odds of winning.

Well that's it.  Three cards for $12.69 (+ tax).

What are your thoughts on a product like this?  There has to be at least one other card collector out there that's also a fan of Yuto, right?

Happy Friday and sayonara!

2024 Topps National Trading Card Day Baseball

 

You are looking at a pack of 2024 Topps Trading Card Day baseball cards. The cards come in a cello wrapper, revealing one of the included cards. These were released on August 3, 2024, as part of National Trading Card Day and available through select hobby shops for free to anyone who asked. As of the writing of the post, a final checklist had not been published by Topps (that I could find anyway). The showing card is Dansby Swanson:

The front of each card features the team insignia in the upper left corner. There is a thin gradient border along the top of the card. The player is shown, taking up much of the front of the card and has a diagonal white stripe pattern to the left side of the card. The second card is Javier Baez:

Along the lower right side, a diagonal set of lines in white and the team’s primary colors is displayed along with a team color and white border near the bottom. The player’s name sits on the left bottom and the “Topps Trading Card Day” appears in the lower right. Up next, Carlos Correa:

This is followed by Mike Trout:

And the last player card in the pack is Zack Gelof:

The final card in the pack (which also serves as filler to hide the last player card), is a "Join the Hobby!" card encouraging collectors to visit the Topps website and buy merch.

The back of the cards repeat the insignia in the upper left. The team and player name are at the top. Card numbers are shown in the upper right and are labeled as “NTCD-B##.” As there are various sport and non-sport versions, I presume the “B” is for baseball.

Below the player name is biographical information, and on some cards, a paragraph detailing fun facts about the player, and then statistical information. The bottom has the Topps logo and various copyright information.

I haven’t been able to visit a hobby shop in years, and didn’t even realize there was one in Little Rock until I searched the NTCD list for participating shops. My wife and I were in LR to help my daughter move apartments, so I grabbed the chance to drop in for a free pack! Now that I know central Arkansas has a shop, I’ll be visiting the place as I am able when we make trips in that direction. As I was going in, a couple presumably in their 30s was walking out with their free packs as was a guy about my age. The shop had a large stack of cards and I picked the top one. Not sure what they do with leftover packs. Do they just keep giving them away? Do they sell them? Rip them? No idea.

2023 Panini Donruss Optic Football

Here's another new-ish quick one. Similar to yesterday's pack design, we have the football counterpart of Panini's Donruss Optic product. Once again, it's four cards for slightly over a dollar per card. Yikes!

31 - Brian Urlacher - Right off the bat, we start with a HOFer.

292 - Devon Witherspoon - Unlike the NBA pack, I didn't luck out with any inserts. I did end up with a Rated Rookie card, however. These have a slightly darker tint to them, apparently.

143 - Dexter Lawrence - A big dude in Giants blue (and red.)

101 - Austin Ekeler - I'm not much of a fantasy football player, but I did play last year and Ekeler was my top draft pick. He was frustratingly inconsistent. (I autodrafted, so I guess I deserved it.)

2023-24 Panini Donruss Optic Basketball

One of the latest Panini NBA offerings is a short and sweet one. I picked up a loose pack of their most recent Donruss Optic set for the low, low price of slightly more than a dollar per card. You know how it is these days.

12 - Scottie Barnes - Barnes made his first All-Star team this past February, improving slightly upon a very solid first couple of seasons.

69 - Dorian Finney-Smith - Like watching them on TV, this monochrome-dominant team's cards look like they're some weird black & white parallel.

189 - Klay Thompson - Thompson moved on from the Warriors in the offseason and signed up with the Dallas Mavericks. I can't imagine that going very well for Dallas considering how one dimensional and streaky that Klay is these days, although clearly the Warriors best years are far behind them as well.

19 - Donovan Mitchell Express Lane Prizm - This wasn't a bad pull from such a small pack, as I ended up with a parallel version of an insert of one of the league's premier guards.

2024 Topps Series 2 Retail

Greetings!

Hope everyone is doing well.  Ol' Jafronius was MIA from posting and blog reading for a couple of weeks; from June 8th through the 22nd the whole family was in the Philippines see family and partake in island hopping hyjinxs.  My parents wanted their 6 grandkids to see their homeland before they got too old to travel.  We all enjoyed out time there, even though there was some pretty oppressive heat when we were more inland and not by the ocean (there it was just hot).

I was overseas when Topps Series 2 was released, but there was plenty of packs to pick up when I returned, including the standalone variety:

The Angels in Order reported a $4 price tag for a Series 1 pack found at a Five Below.  This one cost me $3.50 at Target, so it appears Five Below upped the price a little.  Let's see what I got:

#672 - Wilyer Abreu (RC)

#684 - Tyler Stephenson

There are 350 cards in Series 2, continuing the excellent design.  Here's the checklist if you need it.

#456 - Cristian Pache

#506 - Nick Loftin (RC)

Nick's sporting the Royals' 2023 City Connect uniforms.  They say it's supposed to remind you of the fountains in Kauffman Stadium.  I say it reminds me that City Connect uniforms are generally silly.

#555 - Ezequiel Duran

#599 - Nick Allen

I do like the image busting out of the border.  You can barely see it with Ezequiel but it's quite evident with Nick.

#378 - Baltimore Brotherhood (Checklist)

#619 - Teoscar Hernández

I haven't been able to see the Home Run Derby the last couple of years due to work, but I heard this year was a nail-biter, maybe because Judge and Ohtani weren't playing.

#625 - Paul DeJong

#531 - Estevan Florial

#541 - Miguel Vargas

#FP-3 - Mallory Swanson (First Pitch)

The inserts start with First Pitch.  While I'm glad this insert is back, I'm bummed that there's only 5 cards in the set (2 of them with the Cubs).

I'm still having issues reading the Topps PDF, so I don't know the First Pitch odds, it could be 1 in 48 packs or 96 packs.

#FF-19 - Juan Soto (Fantasy Favorites)

#SMLB-37 - Clayton Kershaw (Stars of MLB)

20 cards make up the Fantasy Favorites set, which is either 1 in every 10 packs or 21 packs.  As usual, you get a Stars of MLB in every pack.

Here are the backs because humidity:

Anyway, that's the pack.  No big stars here, but those colorful inserts and base design still makes this a tolerable rip.  Enjoy the rest of the week everyone, and thanks for reading!

2021 Historic Autograph and Card Company 1945 End of WWII

 

Here we have a pack of 2012 Historic Autograph and Card Company 1945 The End of WWII cards. The wrapper features stylized text and background. It's a foil wrapper and seems to be the same quality as one would find with a brand-name sports pack. Information regarding the number of cards in the set is a bit hard to come by, as there are multiple parallels and chase subsets. From my research, there are about 146 base cards. But, the base cards themselves are a parallel, as you will soon see below, so the base set is actually 292 cards. A "checklist" of sorts is provided at the end of the post.

Each pack contains 10 cards. Some of the chase/subsets include hair relics, uniform relics, signatures, dog tags, challenge coins, printing plates, 1945 coin cards, art cards, and "aurora" cards. Honestly, I probably forgot a subset or two. 

The cards themselves are borderless and feature black-and-white or color photos/images related to 1945. The top portion (or left side for vertical cards) features a wooden fence-like strip with the card's caption and "1945" on it. The main image/subject of the card takes up the majority of the space on the card.

Cards may feature significant places, events, and/or people. This Bob Hope card shows a VERY young Hope in uniform:

The cards are glossy, giving a nice shine. The "Aurora" cards (not found in this pack) have foil embossing on the caption section and are serially numbered to 45. There is another subset numbered to 199 that is also foil. Below is another base set card:

Considering many of the images are from 1945, the folks who put this set together did a very nice job of enhancing and detailing the images for presentation in the set:

As mention above, some of the cards are full color:

I even manged to pull a Cleveland Rams Professional Football League Championship ticket card from the pack. The ticket is just the image of the ticket and not a relic, but still pretty cool:

The next-to-last card in the pack features the V2 being launched:

And now, the last card in the pack: a Jackie Robinson Uniform Card (kinda)!

When I saw this card, I nearly fell out of my chair! That is a photo of Jackie Robinson, and that *IS* a WWII uniform relic. However, my heart sank a little when I flipped the card over:

There, near the bottom in small italics print: "The relic used to create this card comes from an authentic WWII era uniform or eqipment. The item was not worn by the individual that appears on the front of the card." Well, that's disappointing. 

For what it's worth, the backs of all the cards feature the caption from the front repeated and centered in bold. Under that is a paragraph giving information about the subject featured on front. The card number is shown in the upper right corner. At the bottom of the card, we see copyright information and the "HA" insignia. Parallels and inserts have additional information based on the relic/insert.

As I mentioned above, the base set is its own parallel. Each card in the base set is embossed with either "ALLIES" or "AXIS" and the entire set has both cards, according to my research. I tried to capture this embossing for both sides, but it is subtle:

This is a unique set of cards and packs, boxes, and even hobby boxes can still be bought (through auction sites, tiktok, and from the HA website). The hobby boxes include a checklist pamphlet with all the cards listed (include chase/parallels), a sticker, and potentially other goodies.

Checklist from the HA website (PDF) - https://www.historicautographcompany.com/_files/ugd/296681_463f98460e63427cafa69f99ec2c714c.pdf