2014 Gint-a-cuffs: The Epilogue

Well, it looks like I ended up winning Gint-a-cuffs again this year. I guess I should add Jose Altuve to my favorite players list since this extra hit pretty much lucked me into first place. This was my third year to participate and it's my second win. Part of me feels like I should take 2015 off but it's so much fun and, really, what are the odds I'd actually come in first again? Hopefully there will be plenty more participants and we'll all get awesome boxes so nobodies disappointed. Whenever the Commissioner opens up shop next June or so I'll be sure to make note of it here and encourage everyone to participate. I mean, look how easy it is to win! *joking, please don't hate me*

My prize box arrived in the mail Saturday, which was perfect timing. This season, my interest in football has been at its lowest since I was in elementary school. I was probably this close to watching a game or two this weekend until I had some leftover baseball to tweak out on. I unwrapped that sucker and started methodically opening each pack, thumbing through every card to eyeball any that I had yet to see this season. Knowing it would most likely be my final box of 2014 cards, I leisurely made my way through the stack.

Here's an overview of what all was inside. I actually went through and totaled up the score from this box just to see how it would've fared in the rankings. Final score: 202, which was actually less than the "winning" total. You can see the boxloader was a Roberto Clemente Oversized Reprint. I had a stack of SPs, a pretty even amount of Yankees (baseball and non-) and cards from the Favorite Players list. The scoring on the minis seems to have dipped in this box. And my pile of inserts was equal to the number of packs in the box, 24. Now onto the hits....

Here were the first two I pulled. An Allen Craig Full Size Relic with a white swatch. Definitely a step down from the relics I pulled from my first box. The Casey Kelly Auto is nice since I didn't get an autos from box one. But how many Casey Kelly collectors are out there? As for the last, you may notice something odd in the overview pic up there. That hit stack looks a bit tall for 3 hits.

I wish I would've taken a photo of this thing in the pack. I was just too excited to open it, though. It was easily twice the thickness of a regular pack. I think a packsearcher could probably pick it out blindfolded with mittens on.

This is the first booklet card I've ever pulled. And it's of a no-doubt Hall of Famer. Steve Carlton retired just before I started following baseball so I don't really have a firm grasp on where he ranks amongst other HoF pitchers. But he's definitely a worthy HoFer. And this is definitely much more exciting than Mark Trumbo or Hisashi Iwakuma or something.

It's numbered 02/10. And, for some reason, has a jumbo relic of a bat. I'm not complaining, though. This thing is freaking cool. Seeing photos online of booklet cards doesn't really do them justice. I need to restrain myself from opening it up over and over again. Hopefully I can get a case or something for it with relative ease.

I'm really surprised that even with this huge hit, this box scored less than my previous one. It just goes to show you how it isn't all about the hits. And hopefully it gives hope to anyone contemplating whether or not to participate next year. You can still have a great box even if you don't end up at the top of the leaderboard. And you can definitely have a great time, no matter how the cards fall.

Thanks again to the Commissioner, Mark, for all the time and effort he puts into Gint-a-cuffs year after year. It can't imagine the patience it takes to coordinate this thing. It seems odd to reward him with more work but the best way to show my gratitude is to encourage everybody to sign up for the 2015 contest. Unless he'd prefer some cookies or something.

Also, thanks to Topps for ponying up the prize for this thing. I feel like it helps legitimize the card blogging community when they're willing to donate.

2013 Spirit Deluxe

Directly on the heels of the low-end offering from Spirit comes the singular high-end release. It's kind of a cross between Stadium Club and something like Tribute, only with out the avalanche of randomly numbered parallels.

Like last year we have full-bleed photos on a glossy stock with silver foil accents. The team logo sits in the center, flanked by three team-color swatches. The subtle knit texture from last year makes another appearance. Beneath it all is a soft white fade leading from the bottom edge to keep things from getting too harsh.

For the back we have the player photo taking up most of the top half with a solid black background below. The team-color polygons from the front make an appearance here to tie together both sides. Underneath the name, position and team is a brief write-up of the player's 2012 season.

Being a high-end set, we also have an autograph and relic variation. The auto just has the white fade up a little further from below. For the relic, I figured it would be nice to have a nice big swatch for such a set. The semi-circle allows for a bigger patch without intruding too much into the photo.

I'm not a big fan of the idea of spending so much for a box of something like Tribute or Triple Threads to where all that matters is the autos or relics as the base cards barely register any notice. The Deluxe set would have a sizable base set with the hits coming like every few packs or something. A standard pack would have 6 base cards with and come with either a pair of inserts or a hit, with relics being about twice as common as autos. I think that would place the price somewhere around $10-$15 a pack, which is still a lot but not ridiculous. To me, that's about as high as I'd like to go on "high-end."

Diamond Market - Part 2

Yesterday I introduced Spirit's answer to Topps' annual web-code-giveaway-thing, called the Diamond Market. Basically, you pull code cards that look like credit cards and redeem the codes on the back for credits, which can be used to 'buy' exclusive cards of players you might actually collect. Fairly simple. Today, we're unveiling the actual 'buying' structure along with the kind of cards you can get your hands on.

Like I mentioned yesterday, the credit values you unlock with a code are 25, 50 and 100. There are 4 tiers of cards:

• Base cards: 100-player checklist, numbered of 249, purchased for 10 credits
• Relic cards: same 100-player checklist, numbered of 149, purchased for 40 credits
• Jumbo Relic cards: same 100-player checklist, numbered to 99, purchased for 80 credits
• Autograph cards: same 100-player checklist, numbered to 49, purchased for 150 credits

As you may have noticed, the code credit values don't correspond to the card purchase values. Here's where the Diamond Market gets fun. Say you get a 25 credit code. Do you use it up immediately buying 2 base cards of players you like? Or do you let that balance sit while you try to find another code to add in hopes of getting enough for a jumbo relic or auto? Or say you're later into the collecting season and a lot of the cards are no longer available. Do you take the last auto of guy you're not too crazy about or do you snatch up 15 different base cards?

Maybe at the end of it, if you have unused credits and you can't really find anything left of interest, you can turn those credits into packs of other Spirit products. Or maybe they could partially carry over to next year's contest.

I'm not sure if the numbers for the print runs or checklists are right. Right now they add up to just under 55,000 total cards. But those could be manipulated to fit logistically. We could add another tier with a refractor or something, number it at 149. For now, this is a good start.

So what do you think of this concept? Anywhere you could see improvements? How does it stack up to Topps' apparatus? More fun than collecting virtual rings?