Buy One, Get Seven Free

Where, oh where, do I even begin? Stadium Club premiered in 1991 as one of the first, if not THE first, premium quality baseball card set. The cards were coated with gloss and contained a full bleed photo design, boasting of Kodak quality photos on the pack wrappers. As far as I can tell, Stadium Club enjoyed a run that lasted until 2003. I'm not sure what motivated the resurrection of Stadium Club this year, but it's back now.

So here's the weird part: packs of this stuff apparently were set for $25.00 a pop at your local hobby store. If you head down to your local big box retailer, however, you can find packs of 5 cards for $2.99 each. I can't recall what the supposed incentive is to buy hobby packs, but I assume it's a big deal, like guaranteed relics/autos or something. When I look at the cards, the overall design isn't bad, but the backs of the cards look pretty cheap. Setting all of this aside, however, I was pretty intrigued when I found out that you can pick up blasters of this stuff at a certain big box retailer for the price of a single pack. This set promises one rookie per pack, but as you can see below, it's not the most reliable indicator.

I ended up buying four boxes, and here are the contents of the first one:

Pack 1:
142 - Greg Smith (RC)
74 - Rich Harden
38 - Hunter Pence
41 - Adrian Gonzalez

132 - Kosuke Fukudome 1st Day Issue

Pack 2:
143 - Nick Blackburn (RC)
62 - Joba Chamberlain

92 - Mickey Mantle
43 - Felix Hernandez
105 - Chris Carter 1st Day Issue

Pack 3:
34 - Brian Roberts

136 - Jay Bruce (RC)
5 - "Russ" Martin
67 - Joe Mauer
90 - Carlos Zambrano 1st Day Issue

Pack 4:
28 - Ryan Church
35 - Ken Griffey Jr.

64 - Victor Martinez
16 - Jake Peavy
33 - Brandon Webb 1st Day Issue
- Checklist

Pack 5:
145 - Clay Buchholz (RC)
44 - Magglio Ordonez
100 - Tom Seaver
113 - Jeff Clement (RC)

60 - Scott Kazmir 1st Day Issue

Pack 6:
146 - German Duran (RC)
139 - Jayson Nix (RC)
70 - Brian McCann
49 - John Smoltz
81 - Lance Berkman 1st Day Issue

Pack 7:

134 - Wladimir Balentien (RC)
140 - Max Scherzer (RC)
137 - Brandon Jones (RC)
122 - Jonathan Herrera (RC)
102 - Daric Barton 1st Day Issue

Pack 8:
128 - Carlos Gonzalez

47 - Chris Young (Annoying.)
86 - Justin Morneau

40 - Eric Chavez (The photo on the front is not the same as the back. Usually this means it's a short print/variation card, but I don't think any such thing happened with this one. All of the listed variations are numbered 101 through 150.)

18 - Michael Young

Kudos to A Cardboard Problem for cluing me in last week on a chance at a super-cheap box. I will post more Stadium Club blasters in the coming days.