2007 Topps Football Jumbo Pack

Once again, the bargain of lots’o’cards for little money does me in, thus today’s jumbo cello pack of 2007 Topps Football. 22 cards, which includes 6 rookies!

Here’s what I got:

#22 David Garrard
#75 Fred Taylor
#83 Corey Dillon
#89 Cedric Houston
#102 Shaun Alexander
#109 Ladell Betts
#113 Anquan Boldin
#129 Moshin Muhammad
#131 T.J. Houshmandzadeh
#137 Skyler Green
#202 Dallas Clark
#236 Rashean Mathis
#259 Jason Taylor
#262 Derrick Burgess
#312 Chris Henry [rookie]
#322 Dwayne Jarrett [rookie]
#356 Anthony Spencer [rookie]
#372 Prescott Burgess [rookie]
#378 Chris Houston [rookie]
#380 Jonathan Wade [rookie]
#411 Jason Taylor [all-pro]
#425 Ladainian Tomlinson [mvp]
..and a stick of gum.

Pack Stats:

What it cost me: $ 2.99
Beckett NM/MT worth: $15.95
Insert odds I beat: none
Most valuable card: #322 Dwayne Jarrett [rookie] @ $2.00

’07 Topps Total Football pack 3

Here’s what I got:

#3 Brandon Jones, Kerry Collins
#26 Terence Newman, Anthony Henry
#40 Peyton Manning
#88 Brandon Lloyd
#396 Rob Morris, Gary Brackett
#402 Reggie Williams
#410 Troy Williamson
#450 Isaiah Stanback [rookie]
#507 Jamaal Anderson [rookie]
#509 Jarvis Moss [blue parallel, rookie]

Pack Stats:

What it cost me: $ .91
Beckett NM/MT worth: $9.70
Insert odds I beat: 1 of 2 packs [blue parallel]
Most valuable card: #509 Jarvis Moss [blue parallel] @ $2.50

Always nice to see Peyton Manning.. and one of the better rookie cards as a blue parallel was nice too. So far, this is probably the best Topps Total pack so far.. but hopefully I’ll get something other than base set and parallels out of this box.

2007 Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects

I’ll admit, I don’t have time to remember all the hot future prospects in minor league baseball who might be a future all-star. I don’t even know if it would be humanly possible for me to. Even now, when my wife catches me watching the College World Series, she has murder in her eyes. If there was minor league baseball on TV, I would best avoid it if I knew what was good for me. Well, I do know what’s good for me, and it amazes even me that I can get away with watching (bits and pieces of) 2 bowl games a day for a week! Maybe, deep down, she really does love me more than her loathing of televised sports.. at least sometimes.

I bought a pack of 2007 Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects knowing that most likely I’ll have never heard of these guys, and maybe even never hear of them again. But I don’t care.. It’s a shiny pack of cards and I have to see what I get, right?

Here’s what I got:

#BDP3 Justin Upton [rookie]
#BDP31 Jessie Litsch [rookie]
#BDP45 Felix Pie [rookie, gold parallel]
#BDPP15 Eric Eiland [draft pick, chrome]
#BDPP27 Brant Rustich [draft pick]
#BDPP28 Andrew Lambo [draft pick, chrome]
#BDPP56 Brad Mills [draft pick]

Pack Stats:

What it cost me: $ 2.99
Beckett NM/MT worth: N/A
Insert odds I beat: none
Most valuable card: N/A

Well, I do recognize Felix Pie’s name.. I must have seen him play on WGN last year. Justin Upton sounds really promising. Yes, he’s Devil Rays BJ Upton’s little brother. Justin was a #1 Draft Pick for Arizona, and back in the day he was awarded the AFLAC National High School Player of the Year award and the 2007 USA Today Minor League Player of the Year award. He’s currently the youngest player in MLB and he’s reminding a lot of people of Ken Griffey Jr. Jessie Litsch sounds good too, last year for the Blue Jays he started against Josh Beckett and the Red Sox and came away with a 2-1 win after going 6.2 innings. This year he’ll be battling for a starting rotation spot for Toronto.

2006 Seibu Lions

Alright! I didn’t get home until about 8pm today, went straight to the mail box and there they were in that fun filled bubble envelope. I bought a pack of 2006 BBM (baseball magazine) Seibu Lions Japanese Baseball cards off of eBay last week. Mostly, I was hoping for a Japanese Dice-K card, but I didn’t get one. I still love these cards though with those pizza advertisements on their helmets. They make a fun addition to my collection and you never know, maybe I’ll see one of these guys on this side of the pond one day.

Here’s what I got:

#L006 Hideaki Wakui
#L019 Minori Yamagishi
#L020 Junji Nishikawa [rookie]
#L053 Haruki Kurose
#L065 Takumi Kuriyama
#L097 Takeya Nakamura

Pack Stats:

What it cost me: $ 5.58
Beckett NM/MT worth: N/A
Insert odds I beat: N/A
Most valuable card: N/A

The only player I could find any info on was this guy, Hideaki Wakui. Last year he lead the Pacific League with 17 wins for his Lions at the age of 21.

’07 Topps Total Football pack 2

Time to open up my second pack of Topps Total out of this box.

Here’s what I got:

#2 Marcel Shipp, Troy Walters
#7 Kyle Vanden Bosch, Travis Laboy, Andre Woolfolk
#21 Chris Gamble
#59 Matt Light, Logan Mankins, Dan Koppen
#124 Owen Daniels, Jeb Putzier, Mark Bruener
#379 Patrick Ramsey, Brandon Marshall, Daniel Graham
#390 John Lynch [blue parallel]
#398 Dwight Freeney
#455 Lester Ricard [rookie]
#473 Thomas Clayton [rookie]

Pack Stats:

What it cost me: $ .91
Beckett NM/MT worth: $8.20
Insert odds I beat: 1 of 2 packs [blue parallel]
Most valuable card: #390 John Lynch [blue parallel] @ $2.00

2008 Topps Baseball!

Wow, this looks like fun! 2-6-2008 is the scheduled release date. Topps recently released some info on the new set and it looks amazing. I love the base set design.. and some of the inserts are great.. like the “Year in Review” set which has a highlight card for every day of the season, 180 in all. A good handful more of Mantle cards are in this year’s set again. The “Replica Mini Jersey Cards” look awesome! The set of 35 cards will feature a player’s replica mini all-star or world series jersey.. and they’ll be numbered to 499. I’ll go out of my way to get some of those. Even the Campaign 2008, Campaign 2008 Signatures, and Presidential Stamp Collection cards look exciting to me.. yeah, I collected stamps as a kid too.. wanna fight about it?

Hoping for Monday

I was hoping this would come in the mail today. I bought one of these on eBay last week and I’m just waiting for it to show up. I like odd and unusual packs that aren’t your run of the mill cards. This is a 2006 Japanese BBM Seibu Lions foil pack which contains cards from that team only. There are 6 cards in the pack and 7 of the 100 cards in this set are of Dice’K! So.. hopefully Monday I’ll get this sucker.

Stadium Club’s 15th Anniversary

It was nice to see packs of Topps’ Stadium Club series for sale again. I’ve been out of the loop for a long while, but apparently they stopped making this series for some time. And now they’re making them again to celebrate 15 years since Stadium Club started. So I bought a pack of the ’07-’08 Basketball series. Looks like a great set, I pulled 3 retired veteran cards and two current players. I love the vintage Lakers logo on the back of Elgin Baylor’s card. My favorite card would definitely be Magic Johnson’s though, since he’s the most familiar to me. No inserts this time, but I’m really looking forward to delving into this set some more.

Here’s what I got:

#60 Dwight Howard
#75 Randy Foye
#89 Bob Lanier
#93 Magic Johnson
#95 Elgin Baylor

Pack Stats:

What it cost me: $2.99
Beckett NM/MT worth: N/A
Insert odds I beat: none
Most valuable card: N/A

Shopping Spree

The wife and I had to get some grocery shopping done today, so I’m going to stock up on several packs so I can hopefully spread out the days I actually open them up so they’ll last for a good while. It’s sad, really, but if I don’t do this right, I’ll go broke fast. And my baby girl won’t have any milk when my wife’s breasts run dry.

I decided on a $10 box of ’07 Topps Total Football because, hey, it’s 11 packs for 10 bucks! I’m a sucker for a bargain. Also got a pack of ’07 Bowman Baseball Draft Picks & Prospects and a cello pack of ’07 Topps Football with 22 cards, which will be a treat because it’s better than some packs that have only 4 or 5. Some new ones I haven’t seen too.. a pack of ’07 Topps Baseball Rookies: 1952 Edition and a pack of ’07-’08 Topps Stadium Club Basketball.

Today I went ahead and opened a pack of the Topps Total Football.. and was just a little disappointed because there were no cool inserts today. Sure there were 2 guaranteed rookies and I also pulled a silver parallel which is 1 of 6 packs, but the silver had a badly bent corner. I know I can’t expect much from the cheapest packs out there but I like to hope.

Here’s what I got:

#6 DeAngelo Hall
#68 Nate Washington
#52 Rosevelt Colvin, Mike Vrabel
#93 Reynaldo Hill, Cortland Finnegan, Bo Scaife
#221 Marty Booker [silver parallel]
#368 Derrick Mason
#417 Reggie Brown
#439 Cornelius Griffin, Rocky McIntosh
#465 Lorenzo Booker [rookie]
#525 Earl Everett [rookie]

Pack Stats:

What it cost me: $.91
Beckett NM/MT worth: $8.95
Insert odds I beat: 1 of 6 packs [silver parallel]
Most valuable card: #221 Marty Booker [silver parallel] @ $2.50

Kind of cool.. I pulled Miami’s “Booker & Booker” duo from the same pack.