2008 Moments and Milestones

Ok, it sucks! I know it sucks! It's the worst set ever in the history of the multiverse! It sucks worse than 8 billion black holes all squashed into one, given the starring role in an M. Night Shyamalan film, shacking up with Britney Spears and then accepting the nomination of Vice President for a major political party! You pick which party! It's a really really really bad set, but I still like it! Take the stupid numbers off it and leave the funky art nouveau design and it would be good! YES IT WOULD! At least it's not 2001 Donruss! Screw you guys! I'm ripping it anyway!! I don't know what we're yelling about!


43 Aramis Ramirez 46 Runs Batted In #141/150
12 Albert Pujols 29 Runs #091/150
108 Freddy Sanchez 45 Hits #089/150
RA-CB Clay Buchholz autograph
137 Tom Glavine 215 Career Wins Blue parallel #9/10
123 Mark Teixeira 176 Hits #118/150
Hey I didn't know there were checklists in these packs

See! I got an autograph! And a pretty blue Tom Glavine card! And Albert Pujols! Who is eleven points behind Chipper Jones for the batting title as of the writing of this post! Ha! Ha! Ha! And I got my 47th Mark Teixeira card from this set! Seriously! I get a Teixeira card in every single pack of this stuff! One time I got two! LOUD NOISES!!! I'm going to buy 17 cases of this stuff and rip it all right here because I think this set is

2008 Moments & Milestones and housekeeping stuff

Ok, I just wanted to update everyone on the contest from last week... All the prizes have been shipped, the last one went out today. Yeah, I know, it's been like two weeks. Four went out on Wednesday and burnsee2 's was mailed today because I screwed up the zip code the first time. I'm slow, but it's free, so tough. Everyone received a bubble mailer full of cards of their (hopefully) favorite team and mmosely won first prize for guessing the pack with the hit. Here's what he won:

Woooooo a relic card! That's not all though, darkship guessed who was on the jersey card I pulled (or half of it anyway) and he gets the Grande Premio:

I really hope the 'ship is a Royals fan because he'll be in for a bit of a shock otherwise. I hope everyone who won enjoys their prize, I'll be doing another one of these box breaks around the All-Star Game or maybe a little soon, who knows. Here's a pack of junk for anyone who made it through reading about someone else's cards.

Yes, I bought another pack of 2008 Moments & Milestones:

34 Travis Hafner 92 RBIs 132/150
3 Frank Thomas 449 Home Runs 145/150
85 Jim Thome 62 Home Runs 103/150
123 Mark Teixeira 115 hits 037/150
87 Johan Santana 212 Strikeouts 05/25
86 Johan Santana 1 Win 066/150

Why do I keep buying this crap? It used to be a guilty pleasure, but since I keep getting the same 10 cards in every pack the pleasure bit is starting to fade. You see the higher the number they use for the stat, the easier it is to pull the card because they printed more of them. Frank Thomas' 500 Home Runs stat card is roughly twice as easy to get as Johan Santana's 245 Strikeouts and five time easier to pull than Travis Hafner's 100 RBIs. As a result, I've gotten a few Thomas and Thome cards in the few packs I've ripped. The silver lining is that there are at least three different versions of each card for the different teams they've played for but still, doubles are not what I want when I pony up for these packs. I'm also attracting Johan Santana cards like crazy. Evey pack I open seems to have card #86 or #87 in there. This one had BOTH. Meh. Why can't I pull Chipper Jones cards like this? I did get a Tex which saved the pack. At least the packs haven't jumped in price since they were first released. I'm not sure if they're selling at all to be honest with you. Hey more for me, although I'm not sure that's a good thing. I'm really just biding time until Allen and Ginter comes out anyway.

Sox Or No Sox: 3-10-08

Let's play America’s favorite pack opening game, Sox Or No Sox.

The rules are simple. We take one unopened pack of baseball cards that was randomly selected by yours truly. We then go through the pack card by card looking for those elusive White Sox cards.

Our player in tonight's game is a 2008 Topps Moments And Milestones pack. The pack contains 6 cards and every card is numbered. Let's begin.

#1: John Smoltz – 84 – Braves (42 Wins) 082/150
I swear, dayf and I should trade teams. I pull all the Braves cards and he pulls all the White Sox!

#2: Frank Thomas – 3 – White Sox (285 Home Runs) 131/150
Maybe I spoke too soon! Frank in a White Sox uniform is always a good thing.

#3: Trevor Hoffman – 32 – Padres (335 Career Saves) 041/150
The first pitcher to save 500 games. If he doesn’t get into the Hall of Fame, then there’s no hope for Lee Smith.

A White Sox card a third of the way through the pack! That’s awesome! No trap cards either. 3 cards left to go. Let’s see if we can get a White Sox card!

#4: Nick Swisher – 104 – Athletics (91 Walks) 022/150
A current member of the White Sox! Too bad that doesn’t count.

#5: Radhames Liz – 161 – Orioles (2008 Rookie) 1/25
Nice rookie numbered to 25!

#6: Troy Tulowitzki – 9 – Rockies (98 RBI) 150/150
He bested Nomar by 1 RBI in his rookie season! Cool.

OK, our pack opening is complete. Not too shabby. A rookie numbered to 25 and a Frank Thomas White Sox card. Very cool! The cards look nice too. If I come into a little extra cash, maybe I’ll pick a box up.

So, that’s ½ point for each card in the pack. 2 points for the White Sox card.

Final score: 5 points

A cool Frank Thomas White Sox card in this game, I’ll search for more next time on Sox Or No Sox.

2008 Topps Moments and Milestones

I went to the hobby shop today and found that the Heritage boxes are about 15 bucks more expensive than last week. Meh. Moments and Milestones was the only other new product out, Upper Deck seems to be lagging behind Topps in the release department. Last year I was tempted to buy a pack, but ultimately didn't. This year I wanted to see what the fuss was about and since there was no way in hell I was buying a box of the now overpriced Heritage I gave it a shot. The pack has A-Rod jumping around like a fool on the front with "Added Value in Every Pack" underneath. This is what I think about "Added Value". Enough with the moralizing, Let's rip a pack of overpriced gimmicky Mirror card crap. Okay, now enough with the moralizing.

142 Daisuke Matsuzaka - 125 strikeouts - #089/150
3 Frank Thomas - 384 Home Runs - #100/150
75 Vernon Wells - 6 Doubles - #142/150
137 Tom Glavine - 155 Wins - #023/150
13 black parallel Albert Pujols - 87 Hits - #05/25
140 Miguel Cabrera - 20 Doubles - #178/150

I'll say this, the cards are really nice looking. They have a Donruss Classics feel to them. Lots of white, black and silver on them, a sort of art deco design and the cards are really sturdy. Probably at least twice as thick as your average Topps base card. Good players in there too, Vernon Wells is probably the common of the bunch and he's a damn good player. Everything looks great, but I just can't get past the fact that the whole set is a bunch of gimmicky artificially scarce bunk. Without the fracturing of the base set so that each card can be numbered to 150, it's just another mid-level Hobby only product, like Co-Signers or SP. Now, normally if I would have pulled an Albert Pujols numbered to 25, I would have had a stroke. The thing is, I know that there are 195 other cards out there (one for each hit) all numbered to 25 for the black parallel. so instead of pulling one of only 25 Albert Pujols cards in the world, I pulled one of 4,875 Pujols cards with the black border and /25 on them. Not as spectacular anymore is it? Still a cool card, at least until Albert's elbow falls off, but once you figure out how the bewildering checklist works (and I'm still not entirely sure I have it right) it's just not quite the same feeling.

The pulls are good though. The Dice-K would have been nicer if this was a 2007 pack but still nice. Big Hurt is in a Sox uni , so a certain someone might be e-mailing me soon. Albert goes without saying. It's a shame we'll all be on "Albert Elbow Implosion Alert" all year long. Maybe he'll beat the odds and make it through the year. Cabrera and Wells are both nice players, but why did they pick Doubles for a stat? No one cares about doubles, Marcus Giles is a great doubles hitter and look where it got him. An invite to Rockies camp to push Jayson Nix. The Glavine card is sweet and would have been sweeter had I not just spent a buck on the exact same card when I bought the pack. Well, not the exact same card, it's for win 238 and is serial numbered 14/150, but everything else is the same. I almost wish (almost mind you) I had gotten the Mets version just so I'd have two noticeably different cards. I shouldn't gripe about pulling a Brave though.

So to sum up: Really nice looking cards. Great players out of this pack. Really tedious and confusing set. It's not bad stuff by any means, just know exactly what you're getting.