Box break - 1990-91 Pro Set 1 Hockey

THE PRODUCT: 3 boxes of 1990-91 Pro Set Series 1 Hockey

Here are three boxes from the heart of the junk wax era.

1990-91 Pro Set Series 1 hockey boxes

Each box contains 36 packs.  Each pack contains 15 cards plus 1 NHL product discount card.

1990-91 Pro Set Series 1 hockey pack

THE BIG HITS: serial-numbered holographic Stanley Cup cards

Every sport has its holy grail card.  For hockey, the holographic Stanley Cup cards are right up there.  They are numbered to 10,000, and (I think) they are only found in Series 1 packs.  Due to overproduction, lots of these cards are almost certainly tucked away in unopened packs, boxes, and cases.

THE CONTENTS

I found plenty of cards but no holographic trophy cards.  Several packs were short a card, and one of the boxes contained an extra pack.  Otherwise, it was just lots and lots of base cards.  I'll show just a few cards.

Here is "The Great One."

118 - Wayne Gretzky

Patrick Roy.  I don't know why, but I couldn't stand him.  He was a really good goalie though.

157 - Patrick Roy

Finally, here is Brett Hull - the "Golden Brett."

263 - Brett Hull

In addition to the Stanley Cup card, these boxes can contain some very rare error cards.  I didn't do an exhaustive search, but I don't think I had any big rarities.  A great site for checking on the scarce varieties is over at Junk Wax Gems.

CONCLUSION

The best thing I'll say about this product is that these packs are very easy to rip.  Something about the plastic wrapper makes it easy to rip right along the back seam of the pack.  Otherwise, these cards are pretty boring.

Box break - 1997 Upper Deck Victory Circle Racing

THE PRODUCT: 1 boxes of 1997 Upper Deck Victory Circle Racing

This is a retail box, but I'm not completely sure what the differences are between the retail and hobby boxes are.  I think the insertion ratios are the same.

1997 Upper Deck Victory Circle Racing retail box

Each box contains 28 packs.  Each pack contains 10 cards.

1997 Upper Deck Victory Circle racing retail pack

THE BIG HITS: A Piece of the Action relic inserts

Inserted into these packs at a rate of 1:699 are early relic cards.  The "A Piece of the Action" set consists of nine cards.  Each card includes a race-used swatch of a racing suit, racing glove, or shoes from a NASCAR driver.

THE CONTENTS

At a rate of 1:699 packs, I had a 4% chance of finding a relic insert in this box.  I didn't find one.  What I did get was a near complete set of cards.  The full set is 120 base cards.  I got 118 different base cards with lots of duplicates.

The base cards consist of essentially three subsets.  The main set is the first 50 cards.  These are standard shots of drivers.

6 - Mark Martin

The next 50 cards are of the driver's cars.

56 - Mark Martin's Car

The last 20 cards are mostly Local Legend tribute cards listing the hometowns of different drivers.

109 - Mark Martin

The other cards in the packs were all inserts.  These are pretty standard fare, although all have horizontal formats.  The Predictor card has a die cut.

Championship Reflections '96 - 4 - Dale Earnhardt
Generation Excitement - 3 - Johnny Benson
Predictor - 1 - Jeff Gordon

 
CONCLUSION

I have never opened a box of racing cards.  These were alright, but they would have been better with a relic card.

How many 1991 Score Mantle autographs are there?

A little over a week ago I posted a break of three boxes of 1991 Score 2 in an attempt to get a Mickey Mantle autograph.  Of course, it was all for naught.  It's a needle in a haystack kind of search.  According to Beckett and the Score pack wrappers themselves, there are 2,500 autographs in the entire series, and the series is woefully overly printed.

The Mantle autographs are supposedly spread over seven different insert cards.  That seems a bit weird since 2,500 isn't evenly divisible by 7.  I did some poking around on eBay and found two surprising lots.

One is an autographed copy of the Speed and Grace Mantle card.  It has a serial number of 0007 out of 2,500.

1991 Score Mantle Autograph - 5 - Speed and Grace #0007/2500

The other interesting card is an autographed copy of the Twilight Mantle card.  It also has a serial number of 0007 out of 2,500.

1991 Score Mantle Autograph - 7 - Twilight #0007/2500

That's two cards with the same serial number.  Mantle didn't sign just 2,500 cards.  He signed 2,500 of each of the seven insert cards.  That's 17,500 autographs.  With a little more poking around on the web, I found an old thread on the Blowout Cards forum.  In this thread, one poster also came to the conclusion that there are 17,500 autographs (give or take).

That's a lot of autographs.  I mean, with that many autographs out there, it should be easy to pull one from a box.  The odds, however, still stand at 1:30,000.  Now that's overproduction.

Box break - 1998 Pinnacle Baseball

THE PRODUCT: 1 box of 1998 Pinnacle Baseball

This isn't just any 1998 Pinnacle box.  It's a Power Pack box.  This is basically Pinnacle's version of a jumbo pack.

1998 Pinnacle baseball Power Pack box

Each box contains 12 packs with 21 cards each.  The jumbo packs also contain an oversized card from the base set.  The oversized cards are 3.5"x5".

1998 Pinnacle baseball Power Pack

THE BIG HITS: printing plates

Pinnacle was the first company to put out printing plates.  The plates were first included in 1997 products, and continued into 1998.  (Pinnacle folded in late 1998.)  Pinnacle's plates were inserted at a rate of 1:1,250 packs.  Pinnacle's plates are interesting because samples were issued for both the front and back of the cards.  Also, plates were issued for all the insert sets.  In all, including fronts, backs, base cards, and inserts, Pinnacle produced 2,272 plates for their 1998 baseball set.

THE CONTENTS

No plates.  This box had lots of base cards - 170 of 200 for 85% of the set.  In 1998 Pinnacle issued it's base cards with three back styles that differ in what stats are shown.  One version has a player's full season stats, another has home stats, and the last has away stats.  This box was about a 50:50 mix of home and away.  I didn't get a single full season stats back in the box.

This is a nice, clean set with full bleed photographs.  I like it.

23 - Barry Bonds

64 - Derek Jeter

173 - Todd Helton

182 - Alex Rodriguez Field of Vision
193 - Ken Griffey Jr. Goin' Jake

Aside from the plates, there are no full parallel sets.  The two partial parallels are Museum Collection and Artist's Proofs.  These are very sparkly.

Museum Collection - 98 - Ray Lankford Goin' Jake
Artist's Proofs - 46 - Tim Salmon

The set includes a few insert sets as well.  The insertion rates on the partial parallels and inserts into Power Packs are higher than the standard 10-card hobby and retail packs.

Spellbound - 9 - Roger Clemens O
Hit It Here - 1 - Larry Walker
EPIX Orange Play - 23 - Paul Molitor

CONCLUSION

This was a great set.  It's too bad that Pinnacle couldn't stay afloat.  I will definitely break more of this product and enjoy hunting for some plate cards.

Box break - 1991 Score 2 Baseball

THE PRODUCT: 3 boxes of 1991 Score Series 2 Baseball

These three boxes show different players on the front - John Olerud, Kevin Mitchell, and Barry Larkin.  I don't know how many other box varieties exist.

1991 Score Series 2 baseball boxes

Each box contains 36 packs.  Each pack contains 16 cards plus 1 Magic Motion trivia card.

1991 Score Series 2 baseball pack

THE BIG HITS: serial-numbered Mickey Mantle autographs

In Series 2 boxes in 1991 Score inserted a special Mickey Mantle tribute set of seven cards.  A grand total of 38,500 cards were produced.  Mantle autographed 2,500 samples of the seven cards.  According to the pack wrappers, the odds of pulling a Mantle insert are "no less than 1 in 2,000."  The odds for pulling an autographed cards are "no less than 1 in 30,000."  Even with three boxes of 1991 Score 2, the odds are way against me for pulling something decent.

THE CONTENTS

As expected, this boxes had lots of base cards but no inserts, let alone autographed inserts.  The first box afforded 365 different cards of the 452 needed for Series 2.  That's 81% of the complete set.  I also picked up 31 different trivia cards toward the full set of 56 (55%). Once all the dust had settled I was short 5 base cards (447 of out 452) and lacking 4 of the trivia cards (52 out of 56).  (Note that Beckett says that there are 72 trivia cards, but that's just for Series 1.  The Series 2 trivia cards are complete at 56.)

Despite the fact these boxes only contain base cards, this is one wild and crazy set.  All the base cards have one of four different background colors - blue, teal, white, and black.  The blue and teal cards are all just vanilla player cards.  A couple are shown below.

550 - Orel Hershiser

554 - Fred Lynn

The white cards are exclusively a complete mess of subsets.

669 - Eric Davis
671 - Chipper Jones
685 - Doc Gooden

690 - Jose Canseco
702 - Dave Stewart
768 - Gary Disarcina

The black cards are largely simple player cards, but they also include a number of special tribute-type cards.

773 - Bo Jackson
788 - Curt Schilling
795 - Reds' October

815 - Ryne Sandberg
841 - The Griffeys
858 - Ken Griffey Jr.

The series ends with a handful of Dream Team cards.  These have a black-and-white or sepia appearance.  Most are nice shots, but the Rickey Henderson card is a bit creepy.  Are these baseball cards or a product of Playgirl?

890 - Rickey Henderson

CONCLUSION

I can't be surprised at striking out on this break, but there are plenty more 1991 Score 2 boxes on eBay.

Hello World

This blog is about my sports card collecting interests.  I collect the tough chase cards of the 90s (mostly) by ripping boxes of junk wax.  I hope to make posts on Mondays.  Hopefully I can stick to a schedule.  In the meantime, I need to do some housekeeping and work on the layout of this blog.