After sitting on the box I finally got the chance to bust it with my son and came away with mixed feelings. I really like the base set and pulled a good portion of the base checklist with no duplicates. An area of concern with Finest products, besides the bend, is the chipping along the edges and scratches from the sorting machine and fortunately none of my cards were damaged so a positive there. The hits I pulled were a bit disappointing but that is the chance you take and I cannot complain because I paid less than $70 shipped (boxes are now running around $85 plus shipping).

This is a follow up to my "Best Break Ever" post a couple of days ago. I actually thought I hit the Publish button to post it the other day but I must have hit the Save button instead so I am posting it now.

Upper Deck decided to continue building on the popularity of the 2001 SP Legendary Cuts release and came on strong with the 2002 version but with some slight changes. The price was increase a bit, the pack count dropped from 18 packs to 12 packs a box (still 4 cards a pack) and the biggest change was the hits. Now boxes were only guaranteed one, SP Legendary Bat but two different jersey cards were seeded in 1:24 packs so most boxes contained two hits, a bat relic and one of the two jersey cards. The hits were:


SP Legendary Bat (1:8 packs)
SP Legendary Game Jersey (1:24 packs)
SP Legendary Swatches (1:24 packs)
SP Legendary Cuts Cards (1:128 packs)
Plus redemptions for Bat Barrels and McGwire autographs

I was not as big a fan of the 2002 base cards, gone were the sweet designs and in their place was a sepia player image surrounded by mist. The backs used a similar sepia design but like 2001 included the player's name, team logo, short bio, a player write up and career stats. I no longer have any of the base cards, having traded some and donated the rest so I used images from Check Out My Cards and eBay.
When the product was released I had my wife pick out the box hoping that her luck from the previous year would carry over. When we got home we split the packs and started opening. In my stack I pulled a Pee Wee Reese Legendary Bat card, a card that I traded to Greg from Plaschke, Thy Sweater Is Argyle last year, along with another Reese bat relic I pulled from a 2006 SP Legendary Cuts box. A Dodger relic needs to be in the hands of a true Dodger fan like Greg.
My wife proved to have the magic once again when she pulled a jersey relic from another Yankee legend...

In two years I (my wife actually) pulled relics from 3 Yankee greats and a Dodger legend from 2 boxes purchased at the same shop. Over 7 years, until I moved back to Arizona, I pulled a nice collection of cards from boxes all bought as this shop. I miss not having a local card shop to visit now.

Schedule Release Date: June 19, 2012

My all-time greatest box break goes back 11 years ago, I had just started a new job and to save on driving an hour each way to work every day we moved to the other side of Puget Sound to a town called Silverdale in early 2001. I was fortunate enough to find a small card shop down the street from work and quickly became friends with the owners and a handful of their regulars. It was nice having a true local card shop, something I hadn’t had since 1993.




Plain and simple…Best Box Break Ever!

Henderson Base

Sport King is finishing up the final stages of Sportkings Series E and is set to hit shelves on May 3, 2012. The price for each 5 card box is $100 and you will pull 3 Base cards (with the possibility of pulling a mini version) one Base card Premium Back and one insert (Game Used Memorabilia card or on-card Autograph card). Cases include 48-box/packs and are actually broken up in to 3 separate 16-box inner cases. Each 16-box inner case will include a Cut Signature card, a Spectacular Patch card or a 1/1 Art card painted by Jared Kelley.

Thomas Mini

The set includes a 48-card checklist and each base card has a mini parallel (1:2 boxes) and there are also Silver (#/7) and Gold (#/3) mini parallels. The Premium Back base cards will include a letter on the back, collect all the letters to spell “Sportkings” and you can win a Quad Game-Used Memorabilia card, a 1/1 Sketch card or a 1/1 Art Card.

Navratilova Mini Gold

Sport Kings may not have licensing, so all of the athletes included are retired, but Dr. Price has worked serious magic and got some of the greatest sports stars every to sign for this product. Some of the people who signed (on-card autographs) for Series E include Ken Griffey Jr., Bill Walton and Kyle Petty.

Griffey Gold Auto

I have seen a handful of the 1/1 painting cards that Jared Kelley has done for the release, so far the Magic Johnson, Ivan Lendl, Rocky Marciano Seabiscuit and Angelo Dundee preview images have been released.




 The rest of these cards are Case Hits, along with the Kelley Painted cards above, include Cut Signatures and Spectacular Patches.

This afternoon, after a couple days of guessing and rumors, the NY Jets have pulled the trigger on a trade with the Denver Broncos for celebrity RB QB Tim Tebow. The Jets are giving the Broncos their 4^th and 6^th Round picks in the 2012 NFL Draft and in return get Tebow and the Broncos 7^th Round pick in the 2012 NFL Draft.

Looking from the outside in on this trade you have to admit it is a circus plain and simple. The Jets are a team that is dysfunctional that is going to get significantly more dysfunctional.

Mr. Sanchez is a player looking to get paid and laid and came off of his worst season yet and to show their lack of support the Jets went after Peyton Manning. When that fell through, to appease the thin-skinned QB, they offered up an extension on his contract, which he still had two years left remaining.

The locker room is split and possibly shattered and when back-up (possibly out of a job now) QB Greg McElroy talked about it on the radio after the season the team tried to play it off like McElroy was just talking to make a name for himself, but all anyone had to do was watch the Twitter spat between Sanchez and Holmes and you know something is seriously wrong in the land of Oz.

Now toss in a Head Coach who tried to re-invigorate the team late last season with the Wildcat offense and a new Offensive Coordinator in Tony Sparano, who made the Wildcat work wonders in Miami, and suddenly it appears that the game plan is going to be altered to use the abilities of Tebow.

So here we have a broken team, a QB with no support or confidence, an incoming QB who’s abilities favors the potentially new offense and things are going to get F*&%#D quickly. To add to the fracture, Tebow was a starting QB and you can be assured he is coming in to New York expecting to have a fair chance at earning the Jets starting job while the team's management knows they have to avoid any QB conflict or they will completely loose Sanchez, whose confidence will be wavering.

While John Elway may have feigned support for Tebow in Denver (proving his true feelings the minute Manning showed up in town) another Hall of Fame QB is not sharing the same sentiment. Broadway Joe, speaking to ESPN NY 1050 today, stated his feelings about the potential trade. He said that he felt that this was an entire publicity stunt by the Jets and that bringing in Tebow could hurt the team and would add serious pressure on Mark Sanchez especially coming on the heels of the team signing QB Drew Stanton the other day.

In less than 2 weeks Panini is releasing the 2011 Prime Cuts baseball set. This high-end product, which runs $270/box, will contain 1 pack of 5 cards per box (all hits) and guarantee at least 2 autographs.