A place where Colorado Rockies baseball card collectors (all 3 of us) can waste some time reading about our favorite sport. The Rockies and their cards will be the primary focus, but I like to go off on tangents as well so anything and everything baseball related may be covered here.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Sunday's Afternoon Blaster - 2008 Upper Deck Timeline

Welcome once again to the Sunday Afternoon Blaster.  This past week has been a busy one for me as you have probably seen from my few posts this week.  I am mostly caught up, but I definitely did not want to miss my Sunday delight (well most Sundays its nice anyway).  Today's blaster is another Upper Deck discount blaster bringing it to 5 in a row.  This one could be good though because there is a guaranteed memorabilia card in the blaster.  There are 3 possible Rockies jerseys in this set, Scott Podsednik, Garrett Atkins, and Willy Taveras.  Wow, who made that checklist?  Either way I am going to root for a Rockie jersey along with my need for 6 of the 8 Colorado cards in this set.



Card coloration is it's availability

white = I'm keeping it
green = available for trade
red = already claimed/traded



Today's blaster is 2008 Upper Deck Timeline.  10 6 card packs, one guaranteed jersey.


On with the show.

pack one
23 Matt Kemp - Dodgers
5 Johan Santana - Mets
41 Justin Verlander - Tigers
316 Ian Kennedy - Yankees - Night Owl
109 David Murphy - Rangers
307 Brandon Boggs - Rangers - Night Owl

pack two
14 Derrek Lee - Cubs
32 Daisuke Matsuzaka - Red Sox - Spiegel
15 Jason Bay - Red Sox
96 Jeff Samardzija - Cubs
134 Vladimir Guerrero - Angels - Scott
191 James Loney - Dodgers (die cut) - Spiegel

pack three
33 B.J. Upton - Rays
6 Hanley Ramirez - Marlins - Scott
42 Joe Mauer - Twins
24 Matt Holliday - Rockies
118 Hernan Iribarren - Brewers - Night Owl
224 Manny Ramirez - Dodgers

pack four
43 Alex Gordon - Royals
16 Lance Berkman - Astros
34 Nick Markakis - Orioles - Scott
Yankee Stadium Legacy 759 - Bill Dickey
60 Luke Hochevar - Royals
179 Johnny Cueto - Reds - Night Owl

pack five
7 John Smoltz - Braves - Scott
25 Brandon Webb - Diamondbacks
22 Jake Peavy - Padres
127 Rico Washington - Cardinals - Night Owl
209 Steve Holm - Giants (die cut) - Night Owl
238 Brandon Phillips - Reds - Night Owl

pack six
40 Miguel Cabrera - Tigers
13 Alfonso Soriano - Cubs
49 Felix Hernandez - Mariners - Scott
4 Pedro Martinez - Mets
78 Clete Thomas - Tigers - Night Owl
170 Ryan Howard - Phillies

pack seven
31 Manny Ramirez - Dodgers
12 Jimmy Rollins - Phillies
48 Ichiro - Mariners - Scott
123 Max Scherzer - Diamondbacks - Night Owl
200 Micah Hoffpauir - Cubs (die cut) - Night Owl
252 Alex Gordon - Royals

pack eight
21 Tim Lincecum - Giants
39 C.C. Sabathia - Brewers
3 Carlos Beltran - Mets
29 Chien-Ming Wang - Yankees - Scott
83 Eugenio Velez - Giants - Night Owl
173 Chin-Lung Hu - Dodgers - Spiegel

pack nine
2 David Wright - Mets
TM-JD Jermaine Dye jersey - White Sox (you have to be kidding me)
105 Clay Timpner - Giants
266 Corey Hart - Brewers - Night Owl

pack ten
47 Josh Hamilton - Rangers
20 Albert Pujols - Cardinals
11 Ryan Howard - Phillies
56 Blake Dewitt - Dodgers - Spiegel
155 Carlos Zambrano - Cubs - Scott
210 Travis Hafner - Indians (die cut) - Night Owl










IMPRESSIONS
Design: B+
I like the design of this set.  The base veterans and rookies are nice looking with the team color as the secondary color (much like 2009 Icons).  The subsets from 101-385 are mostly well selected, especially the die cut SP Top Prospects design.  My only quibble with that one is why include veterans like Travis Hafner (7 year vet at the time) in a set designed for young players.

Inserts / Hits: D
This grade is an only for me grade.  The jersey card does not look bad at all, and if it was another player of equal caliber the grade would probably be a B or so.  However, my limited non-Rockies baseball jersey collection (trade bait) stands at 3 and Jermaine Dye is one of them.  So now have 4 total with 2 non-Strasburg or Zimmerman Nationals and 2 Jermaine Dyes (why couldn't it be a Dodger or Yankee or some other team I could trade away easily).

Value: B
This is yet another $11.99 blaster removed from my local Wal Mart's inventory and added to mine.  A good checklist and the guaranteed jersey in the box made it a must buy for me.  If there were more there I would probably pick up another.  I do have to bitch about the fact that 8 of the 10 packs had at least one Dodger or Giant in them (and one that didn't had a YSL card) including the awful pack 8 which had 3 of them.

Rox in the Box: 1
Continuing another streak at 3 is the lack of needed Rox in the Box.  The Matt Holliday is one of only 2 I have from this team set of 8.  I will keep plugging away and hopefully next week will bring me a new Rockie.  Or at least not 13 "other" NL West teams.

Will I Collect This Set: D
I am not collecting this set for one reason and one reason only...short prints.  The veterans (cards 1-50) are the only regular prints in this 385 card set.  The rookies (51-100) fall around 1:2 packs.  Cards 101-310 are inserted on average 2 per pack.  Cards 311-385 are the super short prints.  That equates to approximately 7 of the first 50 cards in every two packs.  Basically you will get the majority of veterans in every blaster plus a handful of the other 335 cards in this set.  This one is not for me.

Overall: B-
I liked everything about this set overall except the insanity of the printing.  If cards 1-310 were regular and the last 75 short prints, I probably would've started (and hopefully finished) this set 3 years ago.  Everything is for trade, but Spiegel gets first claim on everything (which he has done) because I owe him some cards.  Let the claiming begin.

2 comments:

Scott Crawford said...

Remind me to trade with you on Mondays for now on!

If Spiegel's spoken for what he needs, I'd be up for the following in our next deal:

Smoltz, Zambrano, Wang, Ichiro, Felix, Markakis, Hanley, Vlad

Vlad's the only short-ish print if I'm not mistaken. Actually had more of these than I thought (Lincecum is coming in a trade from Spiegel, funnily enough, and I had Hamilton, Upton and while you didn't pick one up here, I have the great Elijah Dukes as well).

night owl said...

I need a few of these:

78, 83, 118, 123, 127, 179, 200, 209, 210, 210, 266, 309, 316