Nacho Value Meal

Catching up with some @Nachos_Grande group breaks. 

 

The only reason I haven't deleted the Facebook app on my phone once and for all (it's been deleted a few times) is because I belong to a couple of active card breaking groups including the excellent one run by Nachos Grande. It's another affordable option where you pay for breaks as you go, and decide when you want to have everything shipped. It cuts down on money spent on all sides. I still have a stack that I had shipped back in September that contains stuff from even earlier in 2022 and I'll show a few of the highlights here today.

The nice thing about these groups is that they lean towards older products that the fat cats at Big Breaker LLC won't ever touch. That occasionally means Pacific cards, which are weird and great! A long with some base needs, I snagged a pair of light blue parallels from the 1999 flagship set. 

Bazooka, you say? Yes, please! Again, I was able to knock off some base needs here, and I picked up one of these chunkier silver parallels as well.

There was also a pretty nice Albert Pujols insert to be found in the Bazooka box. These aren't super easy to come by, so this will be staying in a top loader instead of being used as the "stand-up" card the way it was intended to be.

Not all of the breaks were throwbacks, though. Here's a pair of Cardinals from the extra-fancy 2021 Allen & Ginter Chrome set. I haven't heard anything about a 2022 A&G Chrome set, but I suppose that's just as well because this stuff was stupidly expensive.

Next up we have a fake 1999 Donruss card. After Donruss went through their first bankruptcy and were dormant for a couple of years, the company that bought them revived the brand in 2001 and then made up some designs for the "lost years" where there weren't any Donruss cards. This Rick Ankiel "rookie" card was actually issued in the 2001 Donruss set. This company also eventually went bankrupt.

Speaking of weird fake card designs, I believe this Chance Caple card from 2000 Bowman is considered a "Retro Future" parallel. It uses a TV design on foilboard that completely fails to show up when scanned, although it doesn't look like much in direct light, either.

Last up is a rare autograph from the delayed 2021 Topps Big League set. I only say rare because I just haven't seen many autographs from this set at all, at least in comparison to previous seasons. Unfortunately, it looks like the Big League brand might be dead and buried, which is too bad considering that while it wasn't always the most attractive looking set, it actually felt like Topps put more than half of a second of thought into card design when coming up with these.