Halloween Special

For Halloween night, I found the scariest pack imaginable to open. The pack that sane men fear. The pack that causes collectors to wail in dismay and horror. The pack that has lured many a soul to its lair before GOBBLING up their money and KILLING their hopes and dreams. You know what I'm talking about... That most evil and nefarious of packs....



TRISTAR HIDDEN TREASURES!!!

Find the Wagner my ass! YOU'LL FIND NOTHING BUT SORROW!!! So let's open it already!

1992 Upper Deck Pete Harnisch #635

Pete suffers from clinical depression that started when he quit chewing tobacco. See? I told you - this will all end in tears.

1992 Upper Deck Wally Backman #350

Phillies cards make Tampa Rays fans cry. Woe! Woe and despair!

1984 Topps Bill Almon #241 1984 Topps Bill Almon #241

AAAAAAH! Bill Almon has a doppelgänger! He's a Pod Person! Ruuuuuun!

1985 Topps Gary Carter #230

A world where Gary Carter is in the Hall of Fame and Dale Murphy isn't even allowed to enter the city limits of Cooperstown is a world that scares me. This must be the 1 per pack "Star" card. Meh. Even if he is an Expo and not a Met.

1986 Donruss Paul Molitor #124

Wait! A happy ending!An '86 Mollie card! JOOOOOY! Everything turned out all right in the end. And you were so worried.

SPECIAL BONUS!

A 1991 mini three card pack like what I opened up for Halloween last year! Hooray!

Willie Stargell Puzzle .52 .53 .54

Dick Perez' signature.

176 Brook Jacoby

The trade of Brook, Brett Butler and Rick Behenna for Len Barker was a bloodbath for the Braves.

41 Phil Plantier

For everyone who bought up piles of his rookie cards, this card is a nightmare.

91 Dickie Thon!

There is nothing but joy and candy and happiness and rainbows with Dickie Thon! SAY IT WITH ME! DICKIE THON!

Happy Halloween!

Hidden Treasures "Uncover the Babe"

I got paged at 4:30 in the morning so now I'm up and groggy and mostly incoherent so this is obviously the best time to write a post for this excellent blog. I'm not in a good enough mood to write about a decent pack. Instead I will foist upon my unsuspecting readers a Hidden Treasures garbage pack I pulled out of a repack box. This is from the "Uncover the Babe" series of crap, where the odds are astronomically against pulling one of the Babe Ruth cards prominently featured on the wrapper, and even if you did actually pull one of the golden redemption tickets it's probably just enough of a big ticket item to get the IRS to stick their nose in and tax you hard enough that you'd have to sell the card to pay them off anyway. Don't believe me? Ask Patricia Gibbs. I don't like these packs and I really hate getting them in repack boxes. I don't want to open one of those boxes up and get a pile of these things that I wouldn't pay a buck each for in the first place. It's enough to put me off repack boxes and then I'd have to work to find junk wax to open on this site. Let's go through this pack card by card.

First card ain't too bad, a 2005 Bowman Edgar Renteria. An ex-Brave in a pre-Brave uniform. Dude got us Jair Jurrjens so I love me some Edgar. I wonder if this is the 'star' card that is guaranteed in every pack. The top left corner has a big ding on it, so hopefully not.


Ah, a 1995 Fleer card of Terry Steinbach. I'm one of maybe three people in the world who likes '95 Fleer's lysergic acid diethylamide inspired designs. Incidentally, this is the only card in the pack that can be legitimately considered 'mint'.

'88 Donruss: check. New York Met: check. Evidence of a mouse nibbling on the top right corner: check. You can't get cards like this in any old pack.

Watch where you're pointing that thing, Scott.

This must be the star card. Bedrock won the Cy Young Award in '87 so his '88 Topps card is definitely starry. The corners are quite mooshy though. I'd put up with this in a card from the 70's but not '88 Topps.

Ugh. I'm going back to sleep.

Hidden Treasures: World's Greatest Card Chase

On a whim yesterday I stopped by the last outpost of card collecting as we know it: K-Mart. I was surprised to find blasters of 2008 Topps and Upper Deck, but since I will not be pack-collecting either of those, I picked up a nice little item instead.
This Hidden Treasure box is sort of like a lottery ticket where you get to rip packs. (Come to think of it, what pack of cards isn't, right?)

Apparently someone might could possibly maybe have a slight possible chance of pulling some sort of unnamed Babe Ruth card, "worth over $100,000!" Of course.

The back of the pack wrapper gives the odds, which are fairly telling.
Diamond Ticket 1:1,000,000
Autographed Memorabilia 1:10,000
Specialty Insert 1:500
Star Player 1:1
Other 4:1

These are five-card packs, folks, and those odds don't leave too much room for error. I like the up-front honesty actually. They're basically telling you that each pack has 1 star player and 4 scrubs.

Let's tear in.

Pack #1
1984 Topps 780 Steve Carlton

1993 Topps 231 John Wetteland
1987 Donruss 544 Jeff Sellers
1991 Upper Deck 342 David Segui
1991 Upper Deck 44 Blue Jays Checklist


Pack #2
1994 Score Select 39 Scott Cooper
1994 Score Select 38 Derrick May
1996 Fleer Ultra 169 Rey Sanchez
1992 Upper Deck 46 Scott Kamienecki
2000 Skybox Metal 20 Carlos Lee

Grade: B
I basically got what I expected. It's good to see that I'll have the chance of pulling at least something from before 1986, but who knows how long that'll hold out. I'll keep the blog posted on whether or not I pull a card that will allow for an early retirement.

On a side note, the voting turned out to be 4-2 in favor of posting the girlie cards. Actually, the opposition made me think that this might not be such a good idea. When it came down to it, I just couldn't bring myself to open any more subsistence packs before my two hobby boxes of Heritage arrive in a couple of weeks. If you want to see what's on the cards, email me and you can buy a pack from me. $3.50 including shipping will cover the cost of the whole thing.
And if it's exposed skin you're after, click here. (Don't worry, it's a PG-rated football card from the 1990s.)