Blog Bat Around

Ryan over at This Card is Cool posed the following Blog Bat Around question...

"The 2011 baseball card collecting season is finally over - other than Bowman Sterling (coming out December 21st). What set or release stands out as your favorite from the year? What set or release brings your lunch back up to your throat?"




Sticking to baseball, because I think Parkhurst Champions Hockey is my favorite card release of the year from just opening one pack I snagged in my Trade Night win.  Just awesome looking base cards.




But in baseball I think my favorite of the year was Allen and Ginter.  I just rocked A&G this year with every box I opened.  All three had goodness for me this year, plus while lots of people weren't overly impressed with the base design I kinda liked it and I really liked some of  the inserts and mini offerings this year.


My lease favorite set or sets was Bowman for the second year in a row.  I've talked with one of local LCS owners last year and he says he always takes a bath on Bowman, it never sells and the only reason last year Bowman went through the roof was because of Strasmania and this year it was Harper Mania.  And don't get me wrong I know there are plenty of people out there that like Bowman and collecting prospects, but Topps also crames Bowman Draft Picks and Prospects down our throats and it's almost the exact same product as the regular Bowman offering, just seems pointless.  And why do you include Bowman Chrome cards in your regular Bowman release and then offer up Bowman Chrome?  


But I digress, so in summary, favorite A&G. Least favorite Bowman, any of it.

Blog Bat Around: Should Redemptions count as "Hits"??

I've been following the adventures of Mike and Jeff on their respective blogs and their continuing difficulty dealing with Upper Deck and their expired resumptions from 2007 UD Masterpieces.  A great product and pricey when it was release both guys got fairly cheap cases and busted them open.  You can find there blogs here at Sports Syzygy and I am Joe Collector.  Both have similar stories with dealing with UD on their expired redemptions. I was following Mike's box breaks pretty regularly.  He would post a box by box break with scans and almost every box had a redemption in it. That sucks especially when your case hit and a quarter of your box hits turn up to be nothing but useless cardboard. I think the other main complaint was the lack of consistency with what they were told by different people in the customer service department at UD.    So at least two facts.  This product is close to 4 years old and the redemptions were in fact expired and UD hasn't had a MLB License for a couple of years, not that that's stopped them from putting out product.  So I can understand the difficulty UD might have with coming up with something to replace these hits with. 


But my question to the blog community and at bat is this and I would love any lawyers out there to weigh in as well:  Should redemptions be counted as "Hits" in a box of cards? If you sell a box of cards and boldly claim that you get, not on average, but you get, 3 or 4 hits per box and state that at least 1 or 2 are autos and you insert redemptions for some of those hits and that now 3 or 4 years down the road someone opens that box and gets those redemptions but they are expired and no good, is it false advertising to claim on the box you get x number of autos or relics?  And what is the legality of that?  Especially if you are unwilling or unable to compensate for those redemptions down the road and therefore void the validity of the advertised hit count on the box?

I don't think anyone would disagree that redemptions suck.  And it's a bummer, some of the redemptions they pulled were for some sweet cards, but I will temper with this, both guys knew or should have known there were lots of possible redemptions in these boxes and that they were expired and that's probably why the cases were so cheap. 


I predict that UD will be dead by the end of the year anyways and either completely folding or it will sell off it's name and brands to some other company, but I could be wrong.  I didn't think UD would live to see 2011 and they did and are still producing cards.  But if your waiting on current redemptions with them good luck.

Alright have at it.

cb out