Rating the Rookie Cups 2.0 - 1974

 

 

 

 

Welcome to the relaunch of Rating the Rookie Cups 2.0.  I am calling it 2.0 because I intend to reexamine all of my choices from the past and because there are a few changes as well.  Before I begin my analysis of the team, I want to address a topic brought forth by the great Fuji.  Fuji posed a question in last week's prelude post about how I determine who the Rookie All Stars were in the years that Topps did not add cups to the cards.  I really wish I had a profound answer to that very good question, but I simply got them off of Wikipedia.  Many of my college professors would threaten to take back my degrees for admitting to using that site as a source of information, but it's quick and easy.  I do recall that the 1982 team was identified in the 1983 Topps sticker album.  Not with a cup, but with bold text beneath their sticker.  Some of the more notable players excluded from cups were included in the 2005 Topps Rookie Cup set as well.

 

With that topic in mind, instead of beginning with a reexamined team I decided to go with a team that has not yet been featured here at the Quarry, the 1973 team which was shown on 1974 Topps cards.  The most notable trait of this particular team is that it is the first one that did not put cups or trophies on the cards.  I don't really know why the cups were omitted in 1974 because they added them back the next year.  I'm sure there was a reason though, even if it probably doesn't make sense now.  

Let's take a look at the 1973 Topps Rookie All Star Team.

 

Bob Boone - C - Phillies - Rookie Rank (16 of 61) - Career Rank (14 of 61)

Gary Thomasson - 1B - Giants - Rookie Rank (50 of 61) - Career Rank (39 of 61)

Dave Lopes - 2B - Dodgers - Rookie Rank (19 of 62) - Career Rank (12 of 62)

 

Dan Driessen - 3B - Reds - Rookie Rank (40 of 61) - Career Rank (13 of 61)

 

Jerry Terrell - SS - Twins - Rookie Rank (46 of 61) - Career Rank (50 of 60)

 

Rich Coggins - OF - Orioles - Rookie Rank (83 of 184) - Career Rank (169 of 184)

Gary Matthews - OF - Giants - Rookie Rank (20 of 184) - Career Rank (22 of 184)

John Grubb - OF - Padres - Rookie Rank (101 of 184) - Career Rank (81 of 184)

 

Steve Rogers - RHP - Expos - Rookie Rank (23 of 50) - Career Rank (8 of 50)

 

Randy Jones - LHP - Padres - Rookie Rank (33 of 49) - Career Rank (13 of 49)

WOULDA, COULDA, SHOULDA

Here are the players I feel should have made the team.  This is based solely on rookie years stats and is a straight up "battle of the stats" with my opinion not factoring into the decision.  I give a chance to all rookies from that season that either played in 100 games, started 15 games, or had at least 10 saves.  If there happen to be less than 2 rookies that meet those qualifications at a position, then I will just compare the top two that don't meet parameters.  In this case, and all cases before 2011, I am retroactively adding a relief pitcher spot to the team.

Catcher - Darrell Porter - Brewers

This was essentially a two man race between actual choice Bob Boone and Porter.  I know that Boone was a far better defender at the position, but for the purposes here, offense matters more.  If I was building a team from scratch in 1973, I would definitely pick Boone over Porter as my catcher.  But for this Rookie All Star Team, Porter narrowly edges him out.

First Base - Tony Muser - White Sox

There were three positions that stood out as weak on this club no matter who was chosen.  First base was one of them.  There were three candidates for this spot among actual winner Thomasson, Tony Muser of the White Sox, and slugger Hal Breeden of the Expos.  In a close battle, the future Royals manager came out on top.

Second Base - Dave Lopes - Dodgers

I went into this thinking there were a couple of positions that probably were not going to be close.  Second base was one because of Lopes' notability.  But as it turned out this was a really close race between Lopes and the career year of runner up Pedro Garcia of the Brewers.  Lopes hung on by the skin of his teeth over Garcia and strong third place finisher Jorge Orta of the White Sox.

Third Base - Ron Cey - Dodgers

According to my criteria, there were four candidates for this position: Topps pick Dan Driessen, Ron  Cey of the Dodgers, future HOFer Mike Schmidt of the Phillies, and Ken Reitz of the Cardinals.  This was not even really close as Cey should have easily been the selection.  I guess it was a sign of the time that the only thing Driessen had over Cey was a better batting average.  Even though he was a clear third in the race, everyone was just lucky that Schmidt did not really acclimate to the majors until his sophomore year.

Shortstop - Jerry Terrell - Twins

I mentioned earlier that there were three weak positions in 1973, well here is the second.  There was no dearth of candidates though as five players met the criteria, but not of them were really that good.  In the end, it came down to a tiebreaker between Topps choice Terrell and the guy whose name became much more famous in the future for a different athlete, Mike Tyson of the Cardinals.  Terrell barely held on, but he did hold the spot.

Outfield - Gary Matthews - Giants, Al Bumbry - Orioles, Rich Coggins - Orioles

In this competition among eight candidates, two rose to the top, the respective Rookie of the Year in each league, Matthews and Bumbry.  Honestly, I could not find any reason that Bumbry was not one of the real life choices.  Out of the six remaining candidates , any of five of them would have been a nearly equally good choice for the spot.  However, Coggins outlasted strong challenges from fellow Topps choice Johnny Grubb, Bob Coluccio of the Brewers, Charlie Spikes of the Indians, and Richie Zisk of the Pirates.  Ironically, the outfielder that was clearly at the bottom ended up with the best career of the lot, Dwight Evans of the Reds Sox.

RH Starter - Doc Medich - Yankees

Among six starters that met criteria, it turned into a three man race between Medich, Topps pick Steve Rogers, and Steve Busby of the Royals.  Busby was quickly shown to be third in the race.  The battle between the remaining two is the somewhat classic pairing of the solid full season rookie and the player that performs better on a per game basis, but that only plays half the season.  I have found that match up to be a virtual coin flip in most cases, but as was the case here Topps usually awards the half season guy.  My stats say otherwise, although it was very close.

LH Starter - Randy Jones - Padres

Aside from the top two outfield spots, this was the easiest choice of all positions.  It was not so much a case of the future Cy Young winner being dominant as much as it was a lack of competition.  The only other candidates for the spot were hybrid starter/reliever Rich Troedson also of the Padres and the half season of the minor league skipping 18 year old overall #1 draft pick David Clyde of the Rangers.  Jones won easily over both.

Relief Pitcher - Doug Bird - Royals

This was a very strong year for relievers as there were six rookie pitchers with more than 10 saves along with a few more that were close to 10.  I kept this match up to only those with 10 or more though.  Doug Bird won a very close 3 man race over Elias Sosa of the Giants and Cy Acosta of the White Sox.  

HOW'D TOPPS DO?

100% - Perfect, 80-90% - Great, 60-70% - Good, 40-50% - Poor, < 40% - Utter Failure

POOR

With this group, Topps got 5 out of 10 correct for a 50% average.  A couple of the ones they got incorrect were pretty much toss ups, but so were a couple of the one they got right.  So it all pretty much evens out.  Ron Cey and Al Bumbry being excluded are two of the all time biggest blunders, so I can't justify giving Topps any extra credit here.

Final Thoughts on the Team

Strongest Team Members (rookie) - Gary Matthews, Bob Boone, Dave Lopes

 
Strongest Team Members (career) - Gary Matthews, Steve Rogers, Dave Lopes

 
Weakest Team Members (rookie) - Gary Thomasson, Jerry Terrell, Randy Jones

 
Weakest Team Members (career) - Rich Coggins, Jerry Terrell, Gary Thomasson

 
Rockies on the team (Present and future) - 0 (all were retired before Colorado existed)

Best Card (IMHO) - Gary Matthews (as much as I hate the horizontal 74s, this is the best)

Worst Card (IMHO) - Randy Jones (the Grubb is almost as bad, but Jones adds a weird shadow)

All in all, this team did not have any Hall of Fame players, but it had over half the team with long successful careers.  Even the weakest players ended up with fairly long careers.  Only Rich Coggins peaked with his rookie year.  The strange thing about this year is that every single position other than LHP had at least two rookies that could have easily won.  Most years there are a lot of close battles, but there are also usually 2-3 runaways.  Even the LHP was not a runaway in 1973, it was more of a win by default.  Although to be fair, Gary Matthews would have been a runaway winner if there weren't 3 spots in the OF.  

I hope you all enjoyed the slightly new format.  It's a lot of fun for me.  I enjoyed it so much, I even maintained my database during my blog hiatus when I didn't even have an outlet other than myself.  Although if I am being 100% honest, this post annoyed me.  I had most of the text typed in and was putting in the photos when everything went blank and auto-saved, so I had to start over.  Luckily I had a preview post open, so I at least had a copy of the text on screen to retype.  It wouldn't let me cut and paste though.  Took an extra hour, but hey it's a labor of love.

NEXT WEEK'S PREVIEW

The 1998 team pictured on 1999 Topps cards.

Thanx for reading.

Send me your 86s PLEASE!

Time for a begging post.  I love to do those mainly because I get things due to the incredible generosity of the blogging community.  Don't get me wrong I do enjoy giving just as much and I intend to give here as well, but for now I am just asking for stuff you might not want.  Despite what the title says, please don't send me ACTUAL 1986 cards because I have had that one completed for about 12 years now.  It was the first set I completed when I got back into cards as an adult.

Longtime readers will remember that my favorite flagship set of all time is 1986 Topps.  Most of you will probably scoff at that notion, but 86 was the first set that I truly tried to collect rather than just buy a few packs.  I never completed it as a kid, but I got really close.  More importantly I had so much fun with those cards.  Like many card collectors, I learned math with the stats on the back.  But I also learned geography by looking up all the player's birthplaces in an atlas.  When else are you going to want to know where San Pedro de Macoris is?  I learned organizational skills by constantly putting the cards in order by number, team, birth state, alphabetically, and just about every other way possible.  The set truly means a lot to me.

One of my favorite blog projects of all time is my 2012 Quarry Unlimited set which was based on the 1986 Topps design.  If you weren't around back then, it was a custom card set that featured a card for every single player that suited up in MLB during the 2012 season.  I didn't get the player name font exactly right and I didn't really know what I was doing with photo resizing for the most part, but I am still very proud of my first real attempt at custom cards from an existing mainstream design. 

I collected the 1986 Topps inspired cards from 2014 Topps Archives which I mentioned in this post from way back when.  I am still missing several of the ridiculously hard to find (for a decent price) SPs.  Although there were several flaws with that attempt (looking at you blue Yankees name) along with the flimsy card stock and using Athletics instead of the abbreviated A's name on the original set.  The Athletics problem does continue in the 2021 set, but the Yankees are back to a white name and the card stock is much better I believe.

 

I also even collected the 2016 Topps Heritage WWE set.  I casually like wrestling, but I don't really love it and I rarely collect the cards.  But I actually bought a couple of hobby boxes of this set back in late 2016/early 2017.  I pulled the autographed version of that Kofi Kingston card, but I sold it back when he was champ for a good price.

As you can see, I really love this design.  

Which brings me to the point of the post.  The cards I want you to send me are the 1986 inserts from 2021 Topps.  I am also collecting the 1986 silver pack chromes as well.  I may even try to build the blue and black parallel sets that Topps seems to think collectors really want.  I am going to collect them throughout the year through all three series if they are included.  Boy, I really hope Topps numbers these cards continuously in Series 2 and Update, but I am not holding my breath.  I will be creating a want list in the right hand sidebar for this set along with the 2014 Archives version soon.  But as of right now, I have exactly zero of the 2021s, so if you have it, I need it.

These should be an easy thing for you guys to track down to use in my Sunday PWE trade bait posts either as the main course or as a side dish for additional cards.  I plan to continue those posts for a long while because I have a lot of trade stuff.  Maybe I can even get enough trades going to complete the sets.  Stranger things have happened.

Thanx for reading.

Taste the Rainbow - A Reboot

 

I am pulling one of my old features out of mothballs and doing the only thing Hollywood really knows how to do anymore, giving it a reboot.  This particular series never really got off the ground, because I only had two posts with it.  What can I say, rainbows are hard to complete.  But I am still trying regardless.  Plus I really like both the title of the series and the header photo.

That brings me to the point of this.  The reason I am calling a "reboot" instead of a "relaunch" or a "continuation" is because there is going to be a slight format change.  Originally this series was showcasing rainbows that I have collected of Rockies across various sets.  That still appeals to me, but the end result can be a much less structured end product.  Meaning I have no idea when I am going to complete a rainbow and I really don't even know what player or set will be involved.  

Instead I have decided to devote this series to showcasing my newest card pursuit, the 2020 Donruss rainbow set.  It is a ridiculous idea to be honest.  I am attempting to collect full sets of 9 different sets.  They are the base, independence day, baby shark, blue, orange, pink, purple, red, and yellow sets.  There are 300 cards per set, although the numbering and structure is different than a simple 1-300 setup.  Cards # 1-260 are relatively normal 1-30 are Diamond Kings, 31-60 are Rated Rookies, 61-210 are the vet base cards, 211-235 are the retired retros, and 236-260 are the rookie retros.  

Then it gets all Panini'd to death.  Cards #261 and 262 are short prints of the San Diego Chicken, world's greatest mascot, and Domingo Ayala, some Youtube baseball comedian.   I am not considering these two as part of any of the sets for two reasons, one they are SPs which I hate in base sets and two they are not in any of the parallel sets.  The whole point of this project is to have a rainbow set, not to have a rainbow set along with two cards that don't fit anywhere else.

Then you come to cards #263 and 264 which are Rated Rookies of Yoshihiro Tsutsugo and Luis Robert.  They ARE part of the set and all the parallel sets.  I assume they were added on at the end due to the fact that neither had appeared in a big league game before 2020.  Anyway, that gives us a total of 262 cards.  

The other 38 are Panini's world famous variants.  I don't call them photo variations because not all of them are.  There are actually 4 categories of variations, the nickname, the photo, the team name, and the world series champs.  The WS champs are 3 Washington Nationals that have a different photo and team name on the back.  There are 7 team name variants which have the same photo as the base but instead of team city, a different caption is used.  There are 13 regular photo variations which use only a different photo with everything else the same.  Finally there are 15 nickname variations which changes only the player's name to a nickname.  

The parallels all came in different packs.  3 of the sets, base, independence day, and baby sharks were available to get in all forms of retail and hobby packaging.  Each of the colored parallels were available only through a certain type of pack.  Blue were hobby box exclusives.  Pinks were exclusive to the retail mega boxes.  Purples were exclusive to retail blasters.  Oranges were retail hanger box exclusives.  Reds were fat pack exclusives.  And finally yellows were exclusive to Dollar Tree retail packs. 

There you have the background on the set, now for the background of my decision to take on such a daunting task of building a 2700 card set.  

The pandemic was the main cause.  When the card industry was shut down in late March of 2020, there were only a handful of 2020 sets that had been released up to that point.  If I remember correctly, retail was basically only Topps Series 1, Gypsy Queen, Opening Day, and Donruss.  Retail bandits gobbled up all of these products in quick fashion, so my only outlet was eBay.  But, instead of buying retail at inflated prices online, I decided to just buy lots from people searching for whatever.  After a bit of research, I noticed Donruss parallel lots were selling for far less than Topps or GQ, so I started buying up the ones that had Rockies players in them.  I figured I could get the card I wanted and then sell the rest to recoup.  Except I never got around to listing the excess cards.  So by the time I got pretty close to having full parallels on my Rockies team set, I noticed I had a large collection of parallels, specifically the yellows which were the most expensive colors on the secondary market.  So I decided to build the yellow set.  Yellows were plentiful then because this was about the time they were first released to Dollar Tree and the supply was very high.  Once I gathered about 200 of the 300 card set, the supply of yellows started drying up.  So I decided to go for other colors.  Then as those sets got bigger, I thought about what to do with them.  I had six different sets working, so why not up it to 9 and have a full page set?  What can I say, it made sense at the time.  

I started selling on Sportlots in September of 2018.  It was never intended as a career or anything, just a way to pay for my own card habit.  I would slowly add to my inventory and even more slowly, sell cards.  This continued for a year.  I had decent sales months, I had bad sales months, I even had one month where I had a grand total of $8 for the whole month.  Needless to say, I wasn't quitting my day job.  The one positive thing about the pandemic is that my fledgling Sportlots business took off.  I assume it had to do with people being stuck at home unable to spend their disposable income at restaurants and movies.  That and a combination of people trying to flip rookies to supplement their own income.  Whatever the reason, I had high sales in the summer.  Still not nearly good enough to let me quit my day job, but I had a decent amount of card money to play with last summer.   

The intersection of me having excess card money, no new cards being made by anyone, COMC's warehouse basically being located at COVID ground zero, and the availability of large cheap Donruss lots led to this project.  That and I really like the design as well, it's good for a Panini Donruss set anyway.  I love borders and Topps seems to be going away from that.  

To make a long story even longer, the point of this is the reboot of Taste the Rainbow.  I have finished the 9 card rainbow for 13 cards thus far with another 4 that are finished, but not in hand.  I also have 60  at the 8 card level, so I should have plenty of ammo to keep this series going regularly for a while.  What I intend to do starting next week is to spotlight two cards from the 2020 Donruss set.  I will showcase them in the order I got the rainbow complete.  I am aiming for a regular Wednesday time slot for the feature, but who knows if I will be able to stick to that. 

Man I really didn't intend to write a novel here, but I tend to run on at times.  I hope you enjoyed the read regardless.  

Thanx for reading.

Just a quick question

I don't really have a real post tonight, but I do have a quick question for anyone that might know.  Most of the comments that come through the blog go straight to my email, but some don't.  Specifically Fuji, Night Owl, and the Diamond King never go to my email when they make comments.  I have checked my spam folder and my trash folder and still nothing.  This is especially troubling for me because they are 3 of my more chatty commenters.  I always enjoy getting comments and responding to them, but I sometimes miss them unless someone else comments after them.

Anyway, my question is, whose end is the problem on?  Have i done something wrong?  Do any other bloggers have this same problem?  Has anyone solved the problem?  

Feel free to comment with the answer, but if you are one the three I mentioned, it might take me a little longer to see.

Unwrapping the Sportlots Box #1

A few weeks back the great Night Owl wrote a post about the difference between saving your money vs. getting what you want quickly with the Sportlots box concept as the main character of the argument.  It's a great read like just about everything he puts out, but this is one of the few posts he has made that I vehemently disagree with.  Before I begin, I want to make crystal clear that this is not me calling Night Owl wrong, because that story is his opinion and by definition an opinion can never be wrong.  The way he collects, his way is right for him.  I just want to showcase one possible alternative way of using the Sportlots box to both get what you want and save money. 

I am a very eclectic collector.  My Rockies are main collection, but I have several other interests that I collect to varying degrees.  I collect my UK basketball guys.  I collect vintage Topps sets.  I collect insert sets that hold a particular appeal to me.  And I am currently working on a 9 rainbow parallel 2020 Donruss set, which I will go into greater detail about on a later day.  

Because I have so many interests, I get different hankerings when I visit Sportlots.  Most of the time I go there to find the Rockies team set for the most recent releases.  I have found that I can save 50% or even more by buying team sets individually instead of just getting one on eBay.  Most of the time I can get an entire team set from one seller, but not always.  This is where the box savings helps.  

 

Let's take the 2020 Bowman/Draft set for example.  The Rockies have one of the hot names in that set in Zac Veen so naturally his cards are drastically overpriced for a player that has never played a single minor league game.  I refuse to pay the "I think he will good" tax that so many have been charging.  But I still want the rest of the team set, so instead of paying $10 on eBay for a set including Veen, I got the rest of the set (+ 2 chrome parallels) for less than $2 including shipping by using box shipping.  It took two different sellers and if I used quicker shipping, the cost would have been over $8.  I am not a skinflint, but I am not wealthy to pay 300% more than I need to.  BTW, Case Williams is a real zero year guy because he has never and will never suit up for even a minor league game for the Rockies.  He was traded to the Reds in the Jeff Hoffman/Robert Stephenson deal after the season.

This also works for other minor league sets such as these examples from 2020 Topps/Heritage Minors and prospect heavy sets like 2020 Bowman/Platinum.  Of course, Tyler Nevin and "Jedi Master" Terrin Vavra were no longer Rockies by the time these cards came out.  They were sent to Baltimore in the still hard to understand Mychal Givens deal.

 

Inserts and parallels are also a very good thing to get through the box system, especially when buying from a smaller seller.  Most small sellers do not open enough product to get large quantities of inserts and parallels, but they could have that one that you want for a good price.  What I do is find a card I want such as these 2020 Bowman/Platinum ice parallel Trevor Story, 2020 Topps/Gallery rainbow Jesus Tinoco and 2020 Panini/Absolute Rookie Roundup Sam Hilliard.  Not many small sellers have multiple needed parallels and inserts for the Rockies, so I have to buy from several different to complete team sets.  

So many card sets were jammed into a very short time period.  There were at least 16 sets that were released in November and December.  Some of them I haven't completed checklists for, let alone picking up team sets.  But I was able to just add a few cards as filler to orders for other cards I truly wanted to buy that day.  This 2020 Stadium Club/Chrome Brendan Rodgers is an example of that.  I think the set, but did anyone truly have enough time to enjoy it?  Same with the 2020 Topps/Fire Flame Sam Hilliard.  Kind of a weird set, but it's not a bad design.  But there was no time to take it in before the next new thing came out.  Topps Gold Label is one of those sets that if it went away, would anyone really miss it or even notice?  But since it is around I grabbed this one.  The final Rockies card here is from a set I didn't even know contained MLB players for a while after its release.  2020 Panini/Contenders was written about on Baseballcardpedia as NOT containing MLB players.  Well, it does as shown by this Chuck Nazty.  Not a bad set, I like it in basketball, but again would anyone miss it if it disappeared in MLB?

 

 

Now we get to the actual greatness of the box orders.  With regular shipping, my cards would have likely ended there.  But with box shipping, I can look at additional cards that I otherwise wouldn't buy.  The one area of my collection that has benefited most is my vintage sets.  An example is with the Bowman Platinum Trevor Story from above.  I found it for around 30 cents or so.  With shipping at 75 cents, I could have gotten it a couple weeks ago for around a buck.  However, this seller offered box shipping of up to 25 cards shipped for $1.  So I checked his inventory and didn't see much more I needed with Rockies or NBA cards.  But I noticed he had a nice chunk of vintage for low prices.  So I added 23 1975 Topps and a 1982 Topps Dale Murphy to the order.  Not only did I get a few cards from two sets that I have little from, but the seller also benefited.  Instead of making a few cents off a dollar order that costs 75 cents to ship, the seller got a $5 order from me and was probably able to package my order with others to save shipping costs himself.  

I have been doing that regularly since the box system started.  Two sets that I have been steadily building with orders like that are 1974 Topps and 1981 Topps.  I have the 74 set within about 50 cards or so of completion.  This early Dwight Evans is one of the few I need that I found for decent prices.  The 74 Rangers checklist is one of 8 that I got from a seller, some of which were new to me and some were upgrades of others.  I very seriously doubt I would have bothered to collect the checklist set if it wasn't for shipping filler. 

By the way, is it possible that the Bob Knepper is the best mustache in the history of humanity?  Or is it the worst?  I can't decide whether I love it or hate it.

Another thing that I have been working on is my 2020 Donruss rainbow set.  It is another project that requires multiple sellers.  The orange parallels like the Yadier Molina only showed up at 4 per hanger box.  With a 300 card set, one guy is not likely to have all I need.  So you pop in one or two along with the rest of an order and before you know it, you are around 70% complete of a 2700 card project.  The Kershaw is one of the weird one that has a back variant with the same photo on the front.  I don't like that practice at all.  But anyway.  The main parallel that I am behind on is the Baby Sharks like the Kershaw.  I have a lot (50 I think), but there are a lot to go and they aren't cheap.  Although this time, I was able to add Kershaw along with 4 others.  

Let's end this thing by showing another couple of forms of shipping filler, my NBA collection and a really neat insert set that I have been very passively collecting, 2020 Topps/Big League Defensive Wizards.  First off is a 2019 Panini/Chronicles Panini Keldon Johnson.  I'm not a huge fan of Chronicles just because it is so limited on player selection.  It's a few superstars in the base set and then almost all rookies on 10-20 different designs.  Although the sheer number of cards per rookie do tend to help the collector afford them.  I got this Keldon before he has emerged as a future star in San Antonio this year.  I doubt I will get any more of his rooks as cheaply.  Finally, I added this Matt Chapman (along with a Bryce Harper) to my very passively collected set.  I have 13 of the 15 now.  I need the Trout and the Tater Tot (Fernando Tatis Jr.) cards to complete the set if you happen to have any laying around.

Most of those cards I would have never gotten to appreciate were it not for shipping filler and the Sportlots box system.  I love it both as a buyer and a seller.  It won't work if you just want to place one order from a single seller every so often.  In that case, just pay the full shipping, it will be better for you.  But if you are like me and buy from SL several times a month, the box system will save you money.  Actually that isn't true, because I still spend the same amount of money, but I get a lot more cards for that money.  And for me that is what is truly important.

Thanx for reading.