The March Radness winner revealed! Plus more @CrackinWax #CrackinWaxMailDay things.
The big college basketball tournament is in the books and, as a result, we have some prizes to award. It came down to Baylor vs. Gonzaga in the final, two of the very best teams in the sport this year. Baylor steamrolled the team from Spokane giving them their only loss of the season, which means The Diamond King has taken the top prize in both contests this year. Congrats! In second place came Bump and Run, with Stadium Fantasium (aka bbcardz) taking third. Bringing up the rear was Ape Island, aka i.hate.espn, who must also hate picking winning teams. If your name is in bold, please contact me as you've won some sort of prize!
The rest of you are probably here for the cards. I'm a bit behind on posting about stuff I've received in the mail, but there's a couple more rounds of Crackin' Wax breaks to get through. First up this time is a 2019 Topps Gallery break. I usually avoid this set because I really don't like most of the artwork, but I didn't get very close to finishing my team set whenever this first came out. The other incentive was that the Padres were only available as a random team due to Tatismania or whatever. I actually lucked out here and ended up with the Padres in addition to my actual team.
Yeah, I'm not a fan of these. Supposedly that's Manny Machado on the left?
Fernando Tatis Jr. rookie cards were at insane levels when I joined the break. I'm guessing there's been a bit of a selloff since the scary injury news with him hit. I can imagine the Padres are probably sweating a bit now after signing him to that massive contract, along with all of the other spending and maneuvering they did this past offseason.
Unfortunately, the 2020 Donruss Optic break was short on cards for me and short on cards I needed. I did end up with this holo Goldie parallel for my collection. It seems like Panini baseball cards are starting to be taken seriously in the market right now, though, because... well, everything else is. Maybe I should start making my own cards.
I also bought in to another 2021 Topps flagship break. The Diamondbacks are often the team that gets dumped on me. This flashy 1986-style silver pack card of Daulton Varsho (guessing he's Gary Varsho's son?) will be headed to my trade box.
The best thing from these breaks was this Harrison Bader black parallel, numbered to 70. Even though they don't look nearly as nice as they used to, I always love the black parallels that Topps puts out.
Woohoo! Third place for me. That's way better than I expected to do and way better than I've ever done in your March Madness contests. Thanks for the contest!
ReplyDeleteI'll sign up for the Varsho if no one else has asked. He's one of the handful that are in the chrome set, but not in the regular set. I have no idea why they chose to do that.
ReplyDeleteI assumed he was Gary Varsho's kid. I wound up with a (kinda lame) photo variation of him in one of my Series 1 hanger boxes, so go Team Varsho!
ReplyDeleteThanks again for the contest and congrats to the winners!
Thanks for the contest! And thanks for the box of cards. Looking forward to busting it open this afternoon.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations!
ReplyDeleteLol on "maybe I should make my own cards," it's definitely getting to that point.
ReplyDeleteI'm amazed by how little I pay attention to recent father-son players. Just found out that Ke'Bryan Hayes was Charlie Hayes' kid. How did I miss that?
That's a great looking Tatis card. Gallery really is hit or miss but that's a good looking card. The Bader card look good with that black border. Good post.
ReplyDeleteGallery really is hit or miss as Bulldog said. I am not sure why I thought Houston would beat Baylor, but that was what cost me the prize! Thanks for hosting the contest.
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