Something a little different...

Normally I wouldn't do anything to distract from the progression of my quest, but today a box of packs rolled in which I had some fun busting. As a result since my next progress post will be at the end of the week I would make a post outlining the old school pack busting.

First we begin... with the box...

Here is the box in all it's glory. With address and distinguishing address stuff edited out... of course. It was actually a rather large box given that I purchased 6 rack packs and a pair of cellos. The part I really like though is the postage label attached. $6.70 to ship something nearly two pounds from Illinois to Canada is pretty darn good. This of course furthers my assertion that Canada Post is fleecing us all. I actually send a much smaller, lighter box to the US and all it took was almost $9 to send it via Airmail just like this one, but I digress... now to open the box...

Wow, that is a TON of packing material....

I actually intend to keep this stuff since I can use it the next time I need to send something out. So I guess I can thank my buddies at the Baseball Card Exchange for that little unexpected bonus.

I have to give them credit, they did a great packing job for a $20 order. It's clearly their intention to drum up repeat business by taking care of the customers product... how novel... Now to what's inside...

Awesome... For those keeping score at home, contained within the box was 4 rack packs of 1987 Donruss Baseball, 2 rack packs of 1987 Topps Football and 2 Cello Packs of 1983 Topps Football.

As you might imagine these packs did not last long after this photo was taken. Overall I was pretty pleased with the results, but there was some disappointment. So let's go through the breakdown:

1987 Donruss

There was some potential here. The inclusion of rookie cards of Greg Maddux, Barry Bonds, Bo Jackson, Will Clark, Rafael Palmeiro and some other lesser ones meant that there was a good chance with 180 cards of a 660 card set that I could hit something.

Alas it was mostly not to be. Obviously there were some hits:

I pulled really sharp cards of Tony Gwynn (2 infact), George Brett, Ozzie Smith, Joe Carter, Lee Smith, Don Mattingly and others. The rookie content however was a little bit on the lacking side.

Obviously there was a Will Clark (2 of them actually), as one was showing at the of a pack and the other was found inside one of the other racks. I did also pull some other minor rookies in David Cone, Duane Ward and others. Complete shutout on the big guys however... and I had my heart really set on a Bo Jackson...

The question at this point when one misses is usually, "was everything on the up and up with the rack?"

Based on what I found when I opened them, I would say yes.

While I managed to miss out on the bigger rookies, I pulled my fair share of star cards, and more important found that there was no discernable pattern to the Donruss racks. I actually tried to track the order of the cards and found that during one rack I actually had consecutive cards come out in sequence within the same part of the rack and more consecutive cards coming in the other racks. This is actually what produced a second Will Clark rookie and led me to conclude that these racks at least were completely random for their content.

So I moved on to the 1987 Topps Football racks which went notably better.

How can you not love having a William "Refrigerator" Perry out of your packs? I also got Lawrence Taylor, Phil Simms, Cris Collinsworth, Jim McMahon and this guy...

This of course dispels any notion about the packs having been searched. I know for a fact that all 80's Topps racks have a sequence, and even a rank amateur could figure them out well enough to extract all the Flutie and Kelly rookies as they were the two major rookies to be found in the set. I also got a Jim Everett rookie to round out the second tier rookie category.

Needless to say I really like this set and it will take all my will power not to immediately order another few racks, but time will tell.

This of course leaves me to my final set of packs in the 1983 Topps Football.

I'll preface this whole last section by stating that I now understand why people talk about Cellos as being the least desireable in terms of getting nice cards out of them.

There was little to talk about in the 1983 Topps packs... I love the design, but the cellos were wrapped so tight (which actually proves as well that they were good untouched cellos), that some corners felt their wrath, and worse was the effect of the tight wrap on the cards as half the pack would bow in one direction and the other half in another as the gum in the middle was being compressed between the two rows.

This effect produced some rather serious warping and a pair of lost cards through excessive gum residue.

Fortunately warping is at least something I can do something about. I have elected to take a bunch and put them flat with a phone book and a monster box weighing them down. Hopefully they can be flattened back to normal, but we'll see.

Anyway, as for the contents... it was more or less a shutout. Very few recognizable names, but I was able to secure this one...

Joe Theismann... pretty good... you can't complain about getting Joe in a pack, unfortunately Joe was the only one who came along... The card itself is actually pretty nice but as you can see centering is a bit of an issue with this set.

Overall I give this break a B average. The Kelly rookie was great, there was some decent star power in the 87 Donruss, but the 83 Topps cellos and lack of upper tier Donruss rookies brought the average down a little. The biggest lesson one can take away from this...

STAY AWAY FROM THE CELLOS!

Seriously... I also like the 1983 Topps design so I will likely go after a set, but you can rest assured that the next purchase I make will for wax or even a rack pack if I can find some available.

Anyway, hopefully that was somewhat entertaining and I hope you enjoyed...