2005 All Star Classics

Shane Diaz of Shoebox Legends sent me this pack along with a John Smoltz patch recently. Shane has sent these packs to me before, I guess he bought a case of 'em one time. This is a really nice set that flew under the radar when it was first released but holds up well. It has a mix of veterans, rookies and legends in the base set the normal bunch of inserts and parallels and of course hits. Memorabilia cards in one per 12 packs and patch cards numbered to 25. A lack of autographs might have ultimately sunk the set. That just means you can pick it up cheap now. Let's open 'er up.

32 Mark Prior

Mark will be 28 next year, hasn't pitched since 2006 and is a free agent. 2009 is a pretty critical year for ol' Mark.

35 Mike Piazza

I don't mind seeing Piazza in a Mets jersey. He was looking kind of odd in those yellow and green A's unis. He'll be a Hall of Famer in 2013.

MSP-IS Ichiro Suzuki Midsummer Patches #03/25

Wha-wha-WHAAAT?? Holy shnikes!

There's six colors on that patch! The only time you see a patch like that is in fake patch reports on forums and blogs. I gotta send Shane something good. This pull was a bit of a shock to me, here is an approximation of my reaction upon seeing this card:



I was way less coherent than Batman though. That would have been a fun one to get on video.

62 Jason Bay

Who cares about Jason Bay? I wanna look at that patch again.

Dayum! that's a nice patch!

91 Lou Brock

I love the legends in this set. Lou's been really underrated since Rickey danced all over his records in the '80s. The guy had 3000 hits, 900 RBIs and scored 1600 runs. He also hit .391 in the World Series with 14 stolen bases. That's clutch right there.

70 Mark Teixeira

Not even moneybags can spoil this pack. What a freaking hit, I've never pulled a patch like that before. It's pretty obviously a bit off the top of their compass logo. I opened this pack last week but I'm still kind of speechless about it. Go click on Shoebox Legends and, um there's no ads to click, so uh, leave a nice comment or send him something for being generous. Or at least try to get him to trade you one of these packs!

2005 Upper Deck All Star Classics

Here's the last type of pack I got from Shane Diaz in the package he sent. This set appears to be a contemporary players and legends hybrid set with an All Star game theme. There's 50 all stars, 25 "future" All-Stars and 25 Legends in the set. Inserts include All Star Matchups, All Star MVPs, All Star Box Scores... you get the point. I got three of these, here's the first one I ripped.

9 Curt Schilling
16 Greg Maddux
11 Derek Jeter
MSC-1 Derek Jeter Midsummer Classics
76 Al Kaline
58 Grady Sizemore
81 Cal Ripken Jr.
67 Jose Capellan

Looks like I ripped the Jeter pack. This was a really nice group of players with a couple of Hall of Famers and a bunch more who are knocking on the door. The only clunker in this pack (and all three packs to be honest) was Capellan, who has never harnessed that flamethrower arm of his. Out of the three packs I opened all the "Future All-Stars" cards other than Jose actually are All Stars. Alex Rios, Jose Reyes, Ryan Howard, Johan Santana and Grady Sizemore. None of 'em are rookie cards or anything, but it is nice to see some future stars that actually pan out in a set. All the Legends were Hall of Famers and the 'worst' base card was Sean Casey who is a fan favorite at least. The Jeter insert is just gravy on top of all this. I even pulled a Tim Hudson card that I didn't have already which is nice. I ignored this set when it came out, but if you find a pack or two floating around I'd suggest you give it a try. There's some pretty good stuff in there by the look of these packs.