Box Break: Gargoyles: Series One (SkyBox, 1995)

Gargoyles was one of those shows that came out when I was a teenager who avoided cartoons at all costs if for no other reason than they simply weren't cool. At least that's the attitude I gave off. In reality, I'd watch cartoons somewhat regularly, albeit I didn't have the TV schedule memorized like I did when I was six. I caught this more mature-minded show that brought those creepy gothic cement figures to life a few times but not enough that it left a huge impression on me. Oddly, though, I ended up having half of a set of cards in my collection and an option to buy a retail box quite cheaply. The results were a mixed bag, although I suspect that if I'd opened this box back when they were first released in 1995, my opinion would be much higher.

This particular had 12 packs of seven cards plus a gorgeous over-sized box topper that features the main Gargoyle Goliath swooping down from a rooftop on the front and an overview of the show on the back. The base set has 90 cards so I knew going in I wasn't going to have a full set but I was hoping to plug some holes in my partial set that had been collecting dust for several years prior.

The checklist breaks down as follows:

1 Header
2 - 54 Story Cards
55 - 69 Character Cards
71 - 75 Good vs. Evil
76 - 79 Statistic Cards
80 - 88 Origins Puzzle
89 - 90 Checklists

Basic card fronts are simple but affective. They feature a full-bleed picture without any logos, borders or captions. As much as I love the often corny captions that come with a Topps non-sport set, the show had a lot of cool art to it and by going minimalist, Topps allows the cartoon to shine. In fact, when they get into the later subsets such as Good vs. Evil and the Statistics cards, the attempts at design take away from the overall affect. Granted, style changes but they haven't aged well.

Overall, I got 54 base set singles. Not too bad, I guess, but 14 doubles and three triples aren't excusable for a small box such as this.

Each pack also had one Pop-Up card, which were popular with SkyBox non-sport sets of this era. There were 12 in the set and I fell one short. Ironically, the one I was missing just happened to be the one that I had sitting in my monster box of singles to that set's done.

The remaining inserts are pretty sparse and none were guaranteed in the box. Double-Sided Spectra cards were inserted 1:24 packs. I didn't get any so I have no idea what they look like. There were also two possible redemptions. The first was for a 3D SkyMotion card (1:90 packs) and the second was for a Gargoyles video (1:180 packs). Wouldn't you know, I got the Skymotion redemption that is useless now but still a card with some nice artwork. Should I decide to go for the master set of everything, redeemed Skymotion cards can be found for around $20 on eBay.

Overall, a nice and simple box break for a straightforward product. I liked the base card design of the story cards a lot and I also love the lost art of the simple set composition, inserts included. However, the numerous duplicates and unredeemable redemption card did bring this box down a notch, though.

Inserts

• Pop-Ups (1:1): 12 (P1, P2, P3 (2), P4 (2), P5 (2), P6, P8, P9, P10)
• Skymotion Exchange (1:90): 1
• Oversized Box Topper: 1

For a complete breakdown and more images, please click here.

Box Break: 2009-10 O-Pee-Chee Hockey (Blaster Box)

Collecting hockey cards (or any cards for that matter) isn't as popular as it once was. Still, the name O-Pee-Chee remains a household name in Canada. It's longstanding connection with the sport resonates far beyond any hobby shop, online auction or Wal-mart checkout aisle. So is that tradition enough for me to continue buying the set year after year? What can I say? I'm a sucker for continuity, even if the set isn't my favorite this year.

The 2008-09 O-Pee-Chee Hockey set was the first new puck and stick set I'd worked in some time. I was turned on by the large set size, low price and the fact that Wal-mart carried rack packs with lots of card in them. While not the prettiest set, it was a fun way to catch up on the sport a little that I've largely lost interest in.

Little has changed for the 2009-10 O-Pee-Chee set. It still has a big checklist, a retro design and lots of basic inserts that bring a bit of shine. While heading down to the city I asked my wife to check for a couple of rack packs and she ended up bringing home a blaster box of 14 regular packs instead. Before I ripped the first pack, the box was already a winner.

Blaster boxes contain 14 packs of six cards with practically no chance of a major hit. That's fine. I just want to work on the set so a few of the 100 short prints would make me happy.

The design has a standard O-Pee-Chee design (at least for the Upper Deck era, now in its fourth year). The brand logo dominates the front. It's way too big, in my opinion as I'd like more focus on the photography. Card backs give complete stats and little else. It's easy, it's simple, it's really quite underwhelming.

The checklist consists of 600 cards, 100 of which are shortprints. Inserted 1:2 retail packs, they make building a set challenging but not impossible. I still need a few from last year but I've been able to pick them up quite cheap. The rookies continue to be a big draw. There's 50 of them. The second half of the shortprints are somewhat disappointing. It's not that I don't like the Legends concept, but many of the ones I got I recall seeing in last year's set. I would have much preferred Upper Deck dug a little deeper into the deep history hockey has.

My blaster box had 67 singles towards the set, including seven shortprints. With no duplicates, I was very happy with this.

The inserts start with two parallel sets. The first is the Retro variations, inserted 1:2 packs. I guess the lawsuit with Topps last year over stealing designs got the best of them. Here's my take: the set already has a retro feel. If an old design can't be used then don't bother. While I like the old school O-Pee-Chee logo, the rest isn't working for me. The white borders don't work with the card stock and action shots. I don't know why this is but I don't like it. My box had the expected seven Retro cards, not that I was extremely excited.

On the more shiny side are the Rainbow parallels. Tougher to find at 1:8 packs, they are the most modern thing in the set. The foil finish, something I'm pretty particular about, compliments the design well. Although I'm not going to even consider going after a set of these, they're one of the highlights from the set for me. I managed to pull two Rainbow cards from my 14 packs. Not a huge leap odds-wise, but still nothing to complain about.

From here on out, this is where the box got a little confusing. The odds on the packs list Canadian Heroes as being 1:72 packs. So when I got one I was pleased. Then I got another and another. When I was done opening the 14 packs I had two members of the Canadian Women's hockey team and a shiny Ray Bourque. A trip to the Upper Deck site revealed the ladies are part of an otherwise unannounced set named Canadian Heroes - Other Sports. What? Since when was women's hockey not hockey? Looking at the checklist it also includes some men who wore the maple leaf as well - and played hockey. It doesn't make sense but the horizontal design is nice and I like that the ladies are getting a little attention too. But "Other Sports"?

2009-10 O-Pee-Chee Hockey also has several shiny but not too significant inserts for Team Checklists, All-Stars and In Action. To me, they're really just jazzed up versions of the base cards. They're also really ugly, taking to the Retro design and adding a foil front. Not much of a fan. I pulled two checklists, one In-Action and one All-Star.

Finally, there's the usual jersey and autograph cards, but they're a major longshot. OPC Materials are all quad jerseys and fall 1:1080 packs. OPC Signatures are a little easier but still 1:432 packs (retail). Needless to say, I got none.

Overall, I'd say 2009-10 O-Pee-Chee is a step back from last year. Nothing really jumped out then but it was fun to collect and the design was acceptable. This year the set is boring and uninspiring. It mixes old and new, but not in good ways. I still like opening rack packs but blasters don't offer much more bang.

Inserts

• Retro (1:2):7 (103. Brian Rafalski, 185. Mathieu Garon, 199. Andrei Kostitsyn, 406. Adrian Aucoin, 409. Mike Modano, 492. Scott Clemmensen, 580. Dick Duff)
• Rainbow (1:8): 2 (31. Carey Price, 397. Mike Knuble)
• Canadian Heroes (1:72): 1 (CBH11. Ray Bourque)
• Canadian Heroes - Other Sports: 2 (CB-CL. Charline Labonte, CB-GF. Gillian Ferrari)
• In Action: 1 (ACT5. Bobby Ryan)
• Team Checklists: 2 (TC2. Ilya Kovalchuk, TC6. Eric Staal)
• All-Stars: 1 (AST4. Evgeni Malkin)

Click here for more pictures and a full breakdown.

Box Break: Razor Ink Vault (Part 2) or Box Break: The Seeker: The Dark is Rising

To succeed in business you need to look ahead and take risks. With the success of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, it led to a bunch of classic fantasy series getting adapted for the screen. Inkworks followed suit, licensing sets for several of these properties. My guess is it was a matter of throwing against the wall and seeing which ones stuck. Unfortunately it was too late once Twilight hit. With the likes of the under-performing The Golden Compass and The Seeker: The Dark is Rising causing Inkworks to take big hits, the non-sport manufacturer eventually went under. And while I'm sure they did the best they could given their own limitations, The Seeker is but a one-card chase for me.

I'm a big fan of the HBO series Deadwood. And on Deadwood Ian McShane is my favorite aspect. So when I saw that he was signing for The Seeker, I knew there was one card I really wanted to have. Unfortunately for Inkworks, one card doesn't make many sets popular.

The set is based on the theatrical adaptation of Susan Cooper's novel. Despite a solid cast of cable stars like McShane, Six Feet Under's matriarch Frances Conroy and Doctor Who's Christopher Eccleston, the movie was a muddled mess to watch and a bomb at the box office. Predictably, the set was a dud as well.

The base set consists of 72 cards broken down into several confusing subsets. Outside of your standard profile and storyline subsets, there's a bunch at the front of the set that lay out the film's mythology. The checklist choice makes it all somewhat confusing as the story part normally lays out the plot so that the various subsets that go a little more in depth at least have some context.

One thing the subsets do achieve is showcase many different sorts of card designs, some of which are gorgeous and others are plain ugly. My favorite cards in the set are those of the Agents of the Light profiles. They mix striking images with a light-colored background and a simple yet affective text bar at the bottom. These are in contrast to the horrible looking story cards that waste a ton of space on two sets of borders. This leaves little room for the picture itself. With these cards all my eyes see are the wasted space.

The chase aspect of the set is highlighted by one autograph and one Pieceworks costume card per box. Although this wasn't formally announced, I haven't seen any breaks that didn't follow this pattern. The autograph design is typical Inkworks: horizontal layout with plenty of room for the signature. My autograph was of Gary Entin as Paul Stanton. I haven't heard of him. His filmography thus far isn't exactly spectacular either. Among his film credits are Rest Stop, Color Me Olsen, Whore and Rest Stop: Don't Look Back.

My favorite cards in the set are the Pieceworks. Although I don't chase after too many costume cards, the ethereal design of these cards standout amongst an otherwise bland set. I pulled a swatch of a jacket worn by Frances Conroy as Miss Graythorne. 

The Seeker follows the Inkworks insert formula to a tee. Signs of Light is your nine-card foil puzzle. Eternal Enemies is the slightly tougher to pull six-card set and Hidden Symbols is the one-per-box set. While I don't mind consistency, Inkworks followed the same pattern for a decade with almost every release. Occasional exceptions existed but they're not the norm. I can't tell you how many times I've busted a box of Inkworks products and gotten a puzzle piece of someone's arm, or in this box, half of someone's hair. The puzzles look good completed but I'm rarely motivated to do so with the underwhelming assortment I generally start out with. I received the predictable amount of predictable inserts. In fact, I beat the odds slightly and got two Eternal Enemies cards instead of the expected one. 

The Seeker is one of those sets hobby history can use to illustrate the company's demise. It's a set that required a risk to even be made. But in the end it followed the same predictable pattern as many of Inkworks' other releases. While there is little Inkworks could have done to make the set a hit based on the poor performance of the film, perhaps a little shakeup in the construction of the set might have brought a few more collectors into the mix. This is a boring set that, for me, was all about chasing a single card.

Inserts

• Autographs:1 (A-GE. Gary Entin as Paul Stanton)
• Pieceworks Costume Cards: 1 (PW5. Jacket worn by Frances Conroy as Miss Greythorne)
• Eternal Enemies (1:17): 2 (E3, E4)
• Hidden Symbols (1:23): 1 (H1)
• Signs of Light (1:11): 2 (S7, S8)

 To see further breakdown stats and more images, click here.

Box Break: 2009 Razor Sports Icons: Cut Signature Edition

Let's do it.

Here's the box (which was provided by Razor):

Inside there's one card - a cut signature. It could be Babe Ruth or it could be Al Barlick. The checklist covers all the major sports, not just baseball. I still haven't figured out why Ringo Starr or Ozzy Osbourne are in a product called Sports Icons, though. This is a product where even when you don't pull a big-time player, you're still going to get something solid. As in no late-round draft picks who came up, played a game or two then disappear into the abyss of the dugout bench.

The set appears to be popular from a busting standpoint as well. eBay has little unopened product left and what's there is being listed for about $125 per box.

Here goes.

Jim Plunkett limited to two copies.

Jim Plunkett isn't a baseball player so I'm off to Google for a second. Pardon me if Plunkett is an all-time all-time great and I just commited blasphemy for not immediately knowing who he is.

From Wikipedia:

James W. "Jim" Plunkett (born December 5, 1947 in San Jose, California) is a former American football quarterback who played collegiately for Stanford University, where he won the Heisman Trophy, and professionally for three National Football League teams: the New England Patriots, San Francisco 49ers and Oakland/Los Angeles Raiders. He led the Raiders to two Super Bowl victories (XV and XVIII). He is the only retired quarterback to start, and win, two Super Bowls who is not also in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

Not a bad football player, I guess. But he's no Babe Ruth either.

From a busting perspective, there's two conflicting thoughts here. My first is, "Jim Plunkett - dang." But on the otherhand, it is limited to a pair of copies. Yes, it's manufactured rarity but I'm sure there's more than a couple of people out there who would find trade value in such a card. To that end, Razor's done a good job of ensuring value in Sports Icons. Although I could have done better with the player, it's still far better than busting a similarly priced box like SPx and getting a rookie I've never heard of and only a handful of shiny cards to go with it.

Design wise, Razor continues to do clever things without any sort of license. There's no picture of the athlete anywhere. In fact, they're name isn't anywhere on the card itself other than the signature. It's Beckett who identifies who it is and the rarity.

The design is very clean. There's a patriotic feel with the color scheme and stars. It's not too cluttered, in my opinion. It's a little disappointing to see the Sports Icons logo so large and the signature window not much bigger, especially when a couple of loops in Plunkett's names are slightly cut off.

With all the possibilites this box offered, it was a fun break. Granted it wasn't my money that was on the line here thanks to Razor providing it, but I imagine if I'd spent the money on this rather than most any new product not named Allen and Ginter I'd feel a bit better about how I'd spent my c-note and change.

Donruss Americana II Blaster Box Break (with a twist and a game)

Like most every other box I get, this retail blaster box of Donruss Americana II is not exactly a new release. The set's been out for a handful of months now. But like the blaster box of Upper Deck Masterpieces Baseball, this was another spotaneous $9.99 eBay purchase bought with combined shipping in mind.

The retail version of Americana II is meant to appeal to set collectors. They don't have the shiny finish like the hobby release, and nor do they have the price tag. A hobby pack seems to run in the $25 range. Sure, it guarantees you a hit, but I'm pretty sure my blaster box was almost guaranteed a hit as well.

Going in I knew that there'd be a lot of has-been stars and some who never were stars in the first place. I've seen a lot of the images. Yet it's hard to truly appreciate the horrendous checklist of this set until you line up all the cards together.

With that in mind, I'm going to introduce a game element to this box break. I'm going to post a picture of each card, pack by pack. Give yourself a point if you can name the "star." At the end, post your score in the comments. Don't cheat, though. No reference materials, checking of checklists and the like allowed. I was thinking of going in and Photoshopping the names out but that'd take too much time. Maybe if the set was a little nicer the effort would be worth it.

The person with the highest score by the time I wake up on Wednesday morning wins a virtual high five. There might be a little something else, there might not be.

Pack One

So the "hit" came right off the bat. No serial number like the box suggests there should be. Interesting.

At any rate, I recognize two sitcom stars and a dad from A Nightmare on Elm Street. 3 points for me.

Pack Two

1 point

Pack Three

2 points.

Pack Four

1 point.

Pack Five

3 points if you count me referring to one as "That guy from the ping pong movie." Two points if not.

Pack Six

3 more points.

Pack Seven

3 points. The Proof card is one of many parallels. This one's numbered /250.

Pack Eight

2 points.

My total score: 3 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 2= 18

So I consider myself a bit of a pop culture geek and yet I couldn't identify more than half of the faces on these cards of "pop culture icons." Yikes. So either a) I need to read more Perez Hilton and The National Enquirer or b) This set isn't what it claims to be.

While I like the idea behind the Americana line as it enables cards to exist without the limits of a particular license, there's a long way to go before I could back this brand as a whole. Sure, there's some fun cards like the Diff'rent Strokes dual autograph I picked up as a single and a handful of other autographs. But there's also way too many Dancing With the Stars candidates.

Here's a couple of suggestions on how the Americana line can be made better:

1) Make it simpler.
I like that Donruss is trying to create mass appeal by offering both hobby and retail versions. Limit the differences in cards to the base cards. As it stands all inserts are different based on their foil finish. When you get all the different levels of parallels together, it's just too much. If you want to keep the parallels, that's fine. Just spread them across both versions. Make them easier to find in hobby packs if you must. But when you have a bronze hobby version numbered out of 250 and a bronze retail parallel numbered out of 250, confusion's going to set in, especially when not everybody knows there's hobby and retail versions.

2) Use more costumes, not just street clothes.
The guarantee on the back of the memorabilia card I received reads that the swatch was cut from the star's own clothing. Unless you're an icon like John Wayne, Humphrey Boggart or Marilyn Monroe, nobody's going to care. Instead, let's see some costumes. Sure, this would make the pool of potential memorabilia cards much smaller, but who really wants to pay premium pack prices for the shirt from the guy who co-starred in A Nightmare on Elm Street?

3) Get better photos.
Most of the cards appear as though they were shot at public premieres. They're far from flattering. I mean Supergirl has the half-blink happening. But look at the publicity shots, particularly of the older stars. They're quite attractive. Give us more of those. Plus, those subjects who were in Donruss Celebruty Cuts have the same photos. Let's get some variety happening.

4) More genuine stars.
If the cards are going to be ugly, it'd be nice to at least know who you're looking at. I apprecaite the angle of having guys like Gary Coleman who never were huge stars outside of a single role, but American Idol rejects from several years ago?

5) More Mr. T.

So remember to get your scores in to the comments section. There's a virtual high five in it for the winner. But don't cheat by clicking on the cards and reading the names. Go by who you recognize off your initial impression.