Crackin' Donruss Wax

#CrackinWaxMailDay 

Donruss '21 is another new product I'll probably never see in the stores. Fortunately, @CrackinWax had a couple of boxes up for breaking so I was able to at least sample this product that is usually cheap and readily available. As you can already see, I did pretty well with this break. It's so frustrating, however, to say that I'd probably trade it all for being able to actually open my own cards.

The base design is, with the usual caveat, fairly solid. It's very Donruss-y. When stacked against the current Topps flagship design, I feel like I actually prefer Panini's offering.

As usual, there are blue foil parallels. Blue and red always bounce off of each other to make a striking design.

There's a new crop of Independence Day themed parallels this year, which I've professed a fondness for in the past. These are just covered in blue stars and again have a sturdier cardstock.

The Panini rule is that catchers in full gear will always look better than the rest of the cards. Here's a good example.

On to the trade bait section of the post. This looks like some sort of parallel (purple?) and it's numbered to 2021.

This is a pretty fun one. This mimics the 1987 base design a little bit, includes an economical jersey piece and is a parallel version that I'll just go ahead and call Candy Cane.

Lastly, here's another Braves numbered card. If I recall, some of the hobby inserts are usually numbered to 999 while they have unnumbered retail counterparts. That might be what's going on here. In any case, it stands out pretty well.

Rooty Tooty Fresh & Looty

Ketel, anyone? 

June's @thelootlocker box arrived recently, once again bearing fruit. I had skipped a month of the hobby packs-a-month club because I ran out of time to buy in for the previous month. I have considered getting an automatic monthly subscription, but I probably should take a look at reducing other monthly recurring charges that are not card-related before I dive in with both feet.

This month's locker came with a pack of 2016 Gypsy Queen, and said pack had a numbered (19/50) framed mini of the Mariners rookie shortstop. I recently sent a hoard of M's stuff to Supertrader The Junior Junkie, so this didn't make the cut, and I honestly don't know if he actually likes the Mariners or is just hoping that some unusual Griffeys fall out of the flotsam.

The centerpiece of the box was a 2016 Finest pack. Topps pulled some last minute switcheroo on people with this product that got some high end feathers ruffled somewhere, turning it into an online only product. I think that's why the July box has gone back to 2015 Finest. In any case, I don't often get to bust packs that are in the $10 range, so I thought I'd show off everything here.

56 - Peter O'Brien - No indication that he's of any relation to former Ranger Pete O'Brien, though with all of the baseball Jr's running around these days, you can never tell.

83 - Carlos Carrasco - I've heard some say they weren't thrilled with the font here, but it's different and it's not like I'm going to have stacks and stacks of these cards and get totally sick of them. It's... something. I do like the lines that stretch across the card in abundance. Topps should feel free to do stuff like this with their fancier products and leave the digital effects out of their flagship set. (I can't hate that set with enough passion, folks.)

76 - Anthony Rizzo Purple Refractor (91/250) - It's a shiny numbered Cub. Someone else will like this more than me.

90 - Zack Greinke - Greinke seems to have a weird non-following for someone who is a great starting pitcher. Great but not otherworldly. Still, as the card back indicates, he's racked up 47 WAR over the course of his career. That is impressive, especially when you factor in his early career struggles with the Royals.

89 - Starling Marte - Marte is a beast in the field and a terror on the basepaths, especially when the Cardinals are facing his team. In another uniform, I'd probably be a pretty big fan.

Pack 3 was a 2016 Panini Diamond Kings pack. They are really nice looking overall, for an "art" set. I did manage to snag most of the Cardinals from this one at a card show earlier this year. I skipped all of the base cards (which, again, are pretty nice looking) and went straight to this King Felix Aficionado insert. Look, someone drew a flag on his cap! I think these are actually just "painted over" photographs, or at least I was hearing people grumble about that at the time they were released, but I don't hate them. They would run laps around that National Chicle disaster from years ago, especially if they had real logos.