2007 Topps Series 2 Jumbo pack

We've all kind of gotten away from the "A" Pack A Day concept in the past couple of weeks. There's been a whole lot of posts with two packs, three packs, even entire blasters. I've also transgressed the "singular pack" rule that this blog was founded on, and I recently had an entire week's worth of posts featuring Two Packs A Day, not A Pack A Day. I for one feel bad about this, the founding principle of this blog is being flaunted right and left simply because we can't open just one single pack per day. These aren't Lay's Potato Chips here, they're baseball cards. Surely we can rip just one? I for one am going to try to exercise some self control here and only rip one pack today. One little pack. One measly insignificant pack. With perhaps only three or four cards in it. Yep, I'll look at the entire case of packs at the hobby shop, literally hundreds and hundreds of packs and choose just one. One little pack. Among thousands, all possibly holding the best hit of my life. I'll pass them all up for one pack. One pack a day. I'll rip this one pack right here. A 50 card jumbo pack of Series Two Topps. Hey, you gotta ease into these things.

649 Brian Barden RC
468 Kerry Wood
539 Eric Milton
341 Akinori Iwamura
622 Matt Chico
503 Jeff Cirillo
640 Kei Igawa
392 Craig Wilson
497 Fausto Carmona
595 Cleveland Indians
TPR-BZ Barry Zito's Pants
535 Gold Jon Lieber 1516/2007
660 Yadier Molina No Sig variation
522 Anthony Reyes
486 Wandy Rodriguez
358 Jason Tyner
378 Ramon Hernandez
368 Mark Prior
600 Ryan Zimmerman
557 Scott Olsen
542 Omar Infante
523 Derrek Lee
DS22 Distinguished Service Warren Spahn
Gn201 Ryan Howard Home Run #51
JSDF28 Joe Dimaggio Streak Before The Streak #28
TS2 Topps Stars Alfonso Soriano
TP1 Trading Places Jeff Weaver
MHR35 Mickey Mantle Home Run #385
JD13 Joe DiMaggio The Streak #13
505 Jose Bautista Red 365 Tim Hudson Red 367 Christian Guzman Red 454 Milwaukee Brewers Red 541 David DeJesus Red 506 Akinori Otsuka Red 361 Adam Kennedy Red 336 Woody Williams Red 517 Craig Biggio Red 390 Roy Oswalt Red
534 Terrmel Sledge
492 Michael Barrett
575 Seth McClung
380 Jason Schmidt
589 Brad Wilkerson
333 Mark Kotsay
568 Carlos Guillen
487 Eric Chavez
430 Justin Morneau

OK, overly dramatic attempt at ironic humor aside, this is a freakin' fantastic pack. I had absolutely no intention of buying another series 2 pack ever again either, since I had already completed the set. A seller I frequent got a jumbo box of this stuff dirt cheap though and was selling packs for five bucks each. I couldn't pass it up. My reasoning was, there's a one in five chance at a hit, there will be minimum two or three inserts in there and I'll at the very least get 10 red cards I don't have. Plus I still don't have a Dice-K Japanese card so that's another hit I could chase. Well, I sure got the inserts and the red cards all right. Craig Biggio and Roy Oswalt make for a successful lot of red parallels by themselves, top it off with Tim Hudson and you have a happy camper right here. I also got TEN inserts. Ten! This is madness! I will now go over each insert one by one, just so this post is completely ridiculous.

Barry Zito's Pants:

Relic cards are awesome, and I'm a fan of Barry Zito, but why pants? I mean, he could have pooted through these at some point in time. Do card manufacturers specifically omit the seats when creating game used pants cards to avoid this sort of thing? This could be the next great scandal in the industry: FARTY RELICS.

Gold Jon Lieber

This could be a very unique card if Lieber ends up with 1,516 strikeouts. Oh wait. He already has 1,526. This card is rubbish.

660 Yadier Molina No Sig variation

For any of you who don't know (or care) Topps foreshadowed their sig/no sig variations in owman Heritage by having 6 cards in the series two set that were missing the signature in a one per box insert. The variations were on cards of Molina, Thome, Dice-K, and... three others I don't recall. At least you could tell what the short print was, unlike their insanely scarce photo variation cards inserted into Wal-Mart packs.

DS22 Distinguished Service Warren Spahn

This card was actually the subject of my very first Card of the Week, so yeah, I really like this one.

GN201 Ryan Howard Home Run #51

Howard is one of the few GenNow crap mirrors I don't mind pulling. Even better, the pack shows that he hit this homer off of Tim Hudson. There is a perverse part of my soul that wants to collect all of the Barry Bonds Home Run mirror cards that he hit off of Braves pitchers just so every time I stop caring about Bonds I can look through that collection and have my hatred burn anew.

JSDF28 Joe Dimaggio Streak Before The Streak #28

A nice idea, but Topps bungled it like they did with the Josh Gibson set from series one by using exactly one photo for a 61 card set. Here's how you can create your own Joe DiMaggio Streak Before The Streak virtual set:

1. Save the image.
2. Copy the image 60 more times.
3. Edit one of the copies in MSPaint to change number 28 to number 1.
4. Repeat to add numbers 2-27 and 29-61 to each of the other copies.

Voilà!! Instant DiMaggio set!

TS2 Topps Stars Alfonso Soriano

Nice looking card, plus it's a hobby only insert so I don't have it already.

TP1 Trading Places Jeff Weaver

Jeff Weaver is quickly becoming one of my favorite players simply because of the ridiculous faces he makes on his trading cards. Loot at that sneaky face in his Mariners photo. Jeff is up to no good and I for one approve.

MHR35 Mickey Mantle Home Run #385

Yeah it's another mirror card, but come on, It's Mickey Mantle. If I were to travel in time back to the 80's and tell my card-collecting kid self that one day, I would have PILES of Topps Mantle cards, my childhood version would have wet himself in ecstasy. Your younger self would have too and you know it.

JD13 Joe DiMaggio The Streak #13

I really like this set. One of these days I'm going to try to complete it. Not today though.