Gypsy Queen Blasters: A Better Deal than the Hobby Boxes?

By now, everyone knows that Gypsy Queen hobby box prices have gone through the roof.  Right now, Dave and Adams has them at $154.95 while Blowout Cards is slightly cheaper at $143.95.  On the other hand, you can buy blasters at many big box retail stores (just not the one closest to me) for $19.99 a piece.

At this point, I have a pretty solid handle on what the hobby boxes offer after opening a pair for a recent group break.  For the money, each hobby box contains two relics, one auto, and one UPC code that will eventually turn into another autograph.  Judging the many boxes that I've seen opened, you can probably expect one in two or maybe one in three boxes to have a David DeJesus autograph (like we ended up with in the first box of the group break).  You also get a bunch of Framed Paper cards (which are admittedly quite cool) plus a bunch of minis and some insert cards.  Each hobby box contains 24 packs with 10 cards per pack.

On the retail side of things, a $19.99 blaster contains 8 packs with only six cards per pack.  Like their hobby counterpart, the retail packs have plenty of inserts (in fact, they have the same inserts (except the leather minis) as the hobby boxes plus two additional insert sets).  Relic and auto odds (as stated on the blasters) are quite long (1 in 108 packs for the most common autograph and 1 in 56 packs for the most common relic cards).  

On a per card basis, (assuming you spend $145.00 on a hobby box and $19.99 on a retail blaster) we find the following:

• Hobby price per card:  $0.604
• Retail price per card:  $0.416

As you can see, retail prices are substantially lower right now - almost twenty cents per card, that's certainly quite the price discrepancy.  Of course, part of the increased hobby price is the allure of all the hits in the box...I mean, no one ever pulls hits out of retail blasters right?

Well, not only do people pull hits out of retail blasters, it appears there are a fair number of loaded retail blasters.  The first one I saw was on the All About Cards blog (one auto, one relic).  He did happen to pull a David DeJesus auto, but even so, an auto and a relic in a blaster seemed to be rare.  The Robinson Cano he pulled as a nice framed relic!

But then, I saw this post on the Blowout forums from a different person who pulled two hits out of a single blaster (once again, a David DeJesus auto and nice Nolan Ryan relic).

Since it appears that:

1.  I'm not going to be able to afford any hobby box of Gypsy Queen anytime soon.

2.  Prices are cheaper per card for the retail.

and

3.  Retail blasters do hold good stuff.

I decided to head to Target and pick up a blaster of Gypsy Queen.  When I get there, they only had two blasters left on the shelf - and what kind of meanie would I be to leave one poor blaster sitting there all by itself?  So, I bought two blasters.

How'd I do?  Here's the highlights of the first blaster:

Base cards:  27

Base short prints:  2 (Clay Buchholz and Freddie Freeman)

Regular minis:  5

Short print minis:  1 (Hisanori Takahashi)

Regular Gypsy Queen back mini:  1 (Thurmon Munson)

Short print Gypsy Queen back mini:  1 (Chase Utley)

Framed paper:  1  (Ty Cobb #976/999)

Wall Climbers:  2 (Nick Swisher, David DeJesus)

Sticky Fingers:  2 (Derek Jeter, Hanley Ramirez)

Future Stars:  2 (Jason Heyward, Phil Hughes)

The Great Ones:  2 (Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson)

Home Run Heroes:  2 (Troy Glaus, Jimmie Foxx)

Wow!  For the first blaster of Gypsy Queen that I've purchaed, I was quite happy (even without any hits).  I ended up with two short printed minis - one regular back and one Gypsy Queen back.  That's exactly what a hobby box would hold for the record.  I also got a boat load of inserts, including my favorite designed insert set of the year:  the Sticky Fingers.  

While the previous blaster was, by all accounts, quite good.  The next blaster blew the first one out of the water!

Blaster #2:

Base cards:  27

Base short prints:  2 (Yonder Alonso, Lou Gehrig)

Regular minis:  5

Regular Gypsy Queen back mini:  2 (Delmon Young, Rollie Fingers)

Black bordered mini:  1 (Andre Ethier)

Framed paper:  1 (Ubaldo Jimenez #269/999)

Wall Climbers:  2 (Denard Span, Jason Heyward)

Sticky Fingers:  2 (Derek Jeter, David Eckstein)

Future Stars:  2 (Clay Buccholz, Mike Stanton)

The Great Ones:  2 (Babe Ruth, Jim Palmer)

Home Run Heroes:  2 (Alex Rodriguez, Johnny Mize)
Framed relic:  1 (Josh Hamilton)

Autograph:  1 (Yonder Alonso)

That's right, I landed one of those two hit blasters!  The first hit I found was the Yonder Alonso autograph - and I was stoked since I never seem to pull hits of Reds players!  Finding the Josh Hamilton relic was simply the icing on the cake.  You better believe that I'll be buying more blasters if I can ever find them again...my local Wal*Mart still doesn't have any Gypsy Queen - and the closest Target is an hour away (that's where these two blasters came from)...so I guess I'll have to be patient!