Thursday, June 30, 2011

The Only Chrome I'll Buy

I had a full post written and saved last night, but Blogger decided to eat it and all I was left with was the images and a half-written intro paragraph. Now that all of the cards are sorted and put away in their respective places, I can no longer give you the blow-by-blow account of this discounted 2010 Topps Chrome blaster. Instead, you can look at the cards I did scan, I suppose.

I should also mention, as I attempted to mention last night, that these cards suffered from the curving "Pringles" effect that everyone has complained so loudly about. My theory is that this all happened in the packing process, as it seems like the pack wrappers are about two sizes too small to contain the 4 cards they're packed with.

Xfractors, for some reason, are seeded at the same rate as regular refractors now. I thought that they were supposed to be special or something. Each xfractor had some weird sort of filmy residue that felt kind of powdery to me, except that nothing actually rubs off.

I had never seen a dinged Chrome corner until I opened this box. I wasn't sure if it was even possible. Sadly, a number of the cards had minor dings.

Joe Mauer's xfractor came complete with a bunch of printing line indentations on the back of the card. It's off-center as well, but not nearly as much as the scan would indicate.

Good pitcher. Great 2010. Lousy 2011.

Here's the big hit. Normally, pulling a Ryan Dempster card does not evoke much feeling from me other than a sophomoric joke and the general amusement/dislike I feel for all things Cubs. However, just hours before pulling this card I exchanging ideas for a trade with Dempster collector Jon from Community Gum. This worked out well.

Here's the lone Cardinal representative. I believe I have a couple of these already.

Poor Chone Figgins really needs a change of scenery. He's been putrid in Seattle.

And there you have it. As I recall, one pack had no inserts or parallels but included all four cards. The seventh pack had both the Figgins refractor and the Michael Young xfractor to make five cards, while the last pack had only three cards and nothing special.

As a footnote, I should mention that Cards on Cards has officially entered Year Four. (I guess I missed the date by a few days.) Perhaps by Year Ten I will have all of my want lists up to date! Three years and still no Jamie Moyer Cardinals cards in my possession... how tragic.

4 comments :

  1. The lone box of discount Chrome that I bought was loaded w/ Refractors and Xfractors as well. I'm tempted to buy another, but I have most of what I want from it already. That and I'm running out of encyclopedias to flatten the cards!

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  2. Chris Olds says the Chrome curling issue came from the adhesive process that was used, which differed from past years.

    I'm not saying that is correct or incorrect, but we all know that Beckett is NEVER WRONG.

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  3. My Chrome blaster also had a 3 card pack. I would be happy to give that Young card a home.

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  4. For some reason when you mentioned the refractor to me, I thought you meant the regular and not the the heritage. Oddly enough I have this one already - I think I bought it on ebay a while back. Canadian Cardboard may want it, however. Oh, and I think we still need to finalize the details in our trade, too.
    --Jon

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