2005 Zenith

I haven't done a pack rip on here in a while to I need something quick and awful to shake out the cobwebs. 2005 is both quick (only 4 cards per pack) and awful (just see for yourself).

129 Mark Kotsay
183 Lew Ford
196 Angel Berroa silver foil?? argh
79 Victor Martinez

Yeah, I paid real money for this. I should have bought some GM stock instead. Somewhere out there I believe George Brett has just felt a brief vague uneasy feeling now that he has been associated with a mess like this. So, what to say about this junk? First, the design is terrible even for Donruss standards. The "insert card in every pack" this time is a lousy parallel with silver foil instead of gold. This set had a lot of Dufex inserts and parallels in it so pulling this was a real letdown. The player selection is pretty dicey too. This thing cost three bucks at one point! On the bright side, the VMart card will go to one of the many Indians fans out there and the uniforms on Kotsay and Berroa are pretty cool. Kotsay shows off a Radioactive A's jersey while Angel does it old school Monarchs style.

Ahh, felt good to get a pack rip posted again. I'll be sure to do it again quickly as I don't want this mess being my last rip on this blog for long.

1998 Pinnacle Dare-to-Tear (Talk about JUMBOmania...)

When I saw the post over on "Cardboard Junkie" for one of these (read it here), I knew I had to find some and hopefully increase my Indians collection a bit. I found a box of these online, so I bought the box and opened it up to see what hidden treasures I could find. Hey, think this is where Tristar came up with the name of their "find the Ruth" campaign? Probably not...

The cards are big - like 5x7 sized. In this pack, I have Mark Grace, Junior, and Junior. Two Juniors in a pack of three cards? But, wait! One of the Juniors is silver foil. The other and the Grace are gold foil. I smell inserts here, folks!


There is also an instruction sheet to help you rip open the big card (if you so choose to do so) without tearing the little card inside. Basically, you smack the big card on the table to help 'settle' the little one to the bottom. I guess, since you are going to tear it anyway, smacking the big one around will have no less affect on the condition, so why not?

If you want to see what's inside one of these, head on over to "Things Done To Cards" for a peek inside...

Toys R' Us Variety Box

This morning after coaching a 4th/5th grade soccer game, I headed out to Toys R' Us in search of some material for the blog. I'm excited to report that I did not come away disappointed. Actually, they had a very large selection of "Championship Collection" wax pack boxes.

Ten packs, ten bucks, plus a "Free Bonus in Every Box." Awesome, this will keep me going for the next few weeks. All I had to do was steer clear of the store's Geoffrey the Giraffe's Birthday Party Parade that commenced literally the very second I entered the establishment.

What you get from a box like this is a bunch of old wax that appears to be hot glued to central cardboard structure. Really, you have to yank pretty hard to remove each pack. Let's take a look at what else was inside.

Ooh, a Vince Carter Upper Deck mini-Card Clip, featuring his 2000-01 UD MVP card inside a clear plastic holder and attached to a key clip. The suggestions for use on the rear of the packaging is the best part, one of them being, "Hang it from a belt loop." Yes. I will do this.

Also inside were four clear-wrapped packs of either 1998 Score or 1997 Pinnacle Zenith baseball cards. These were all incredibly warped and stuck together. I'm having a hard time even considering them a vital part of the box, so I won't even list who I got here.

Shoot, I changed my mind. There were too many blasts form the past and players wearing unfamiliar uniforms not to comment.

Score Pack #1:
191 Shannon Stewart
169 Bobby Estrella
97 Bobby Bonilla
82 Ryan Klesko
117 Steve Finley

212 Fred McGriff (How can you argue with pulling a Crime Dog? Today is going to be a very pretty day!)
228 Chan Ho Park
74 David Ortiz (Sweet pull of an early card.)
190 Will Clark
49 Ken Caminiti (You can actually tell from his picture that his testicles have retracted several inches into his body cavity.)

Score Pack #2:
102 Brian Rose
157 John Smoltz
133 Rondell White
86 Robin Ventura
118 Jose Canseco (In a Blue Jays uni!)

263 Mike Piazza Spring Training (Looking like a Randy "Macho Man" Savage wannabe.)
265 Scott Rolen Spring Training
154 Shawn Estes (In what is apparently both halves of a Sportflics photograph.)
132 Bob Abreu (Bob?)
39 Larry Walker(Probably biggest stick in the game at time of printing.)

Zenith Pack #1:
6 Mike Piazza
8 Greg Maddux (I get a Maddux in every effing pack! Jiminy Christmas! What did I do to deserve this?)
27 Javier Lopez
38 Jay Buhner
29 Gary Sheffield

Zenith Pack #2:

20 Ken Griffey, Jr. (Awesome shot!)
2 Tony Gwynn (Classy pic for a classy guy.)
49 Scott Rolen
41 Mo Vaughn (What in the world happened to this guy? For a few years there, he could do no wrong. He would regularly hit 40-plus HRs, bat in a ton of runs, save kittens from trees, deliver babies for mothers stuck in elevators, and cure entire Third-World villages with some very strong medicine. Then...he was just gone.)
19 Roger Clemens (You heard it here first: He goes into the Hall as a Blue Jay.)

Not a bad way to kick off the box. Can't wait for the rest!

2005 Donruss Zenith

Here's another one of those packs I picked up in a blister, opened up and forgot about. The Zenith set was Donruss' attempt to resurrect an old Pinnacle product they acquired when they bought out Score. The brand is a bit cursed, 1998 Zenith (the set that pioneered the 'rip card' concept used in Allen & Ginter) was one of the last sets released by Pinnacle before they went belly-up. This set also ended up being one of the last baseball sets released by Donruss before their license got unceremoniously yanked out from under them.


The pack looks pretty good unopened at least. It's a nice shiny gold, always good to attract pack foragers in the wilds of the Target baseball card rack. George Brett is prominently featured, good to see a KC Royal get some love from a card company. Wooo... an insert card in every pack! That worked out pretty well for Fleer in the mid nineties, didn't it? Ug, 4 cards per pack. Me no likey 4 cards for 3 bucks. Oh well, lets crack it open anyway.


148 Mike Sweeney
187 Jeremy Bonderman
M13 Florida Marlins Mosaic - Dontrelle Willis, Mike Lowell and AJ Burnett
229 Delmon Young


Mike Sweeney keeps up the Royals theme and even has a shout out to Brett on the back:

National Baseball Hall of Fame member George Brett and Sweeney own three of the top five single-season batting averages in Royals franchise history.

This isn't entirely accurate, as Sweeney and Brett own five of the top five batting averages in Royals history. The two are tied for #4 all time with a .333 average. Not bad, I guess you have to be a die-hard Royals fan to realize what a good player Sweeney was before the injury bug bit.

Poor Jeremy Bonderman. The one-time phenom had to suffer through the dreadful times of the Tigers, and his reward was to end up completely overshadowed by Justin Verlander. He's building a lot of character at least.

The Mosaic card is the promised insert out of the pack. It's made out of that Dufex stuff that Pinnacle overused and abused back in the '90s in all their sets. It looks really nice but it dings like crazy. This one came out of the pack with a nice bug chunk squashed up on the edge by Dontrelle. Still not a bad insert even though two of the three have already been run out of Florida.

The Delmon Young card made me do a double take. I'm so used to pulling Delmons this year with that official Rookie Card logo, that pulling his card from two years ago without one confused the hell out of me. You mean those other Delmons aren't really his first card?? Looks like Donruss weren't the only ones to get screwed in the Great License Shakeup of Aught-Six.