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Delivery Time! Group Break Results from the Iron Lion

Months and months ago, I joined the Iron Lion on Facebook which is a hobby shop located in Colorado that hosts a bunch of group breaks through their Facebook platform.  Back when the group was first formed, they held a bunch of relatively affordable group breaks for various sports including a couple of paid baseball breaks with randomized teams that I jumped in on (one break I wrote about previously where I ended up with the Twins and Orioles which was a bummer for my collecting purposes).

Although the first break didn't exactly work out for me in terms of team selection, it wasn't long before I decided to jump in a second break.  I decided that I'd be smarter about things though and grab four team slots rather than two with the thought that surely I'd end up with at least one desirable team.

Cue team randomization assignments:  Rays, Twins, Marlins, Mets

I'm not sure there is a worse quartet of teams to get...maybe substitute the Brewers or Mariners for the Mets to make it worse?  (Though I actually trade with some Brewers and Mariners fans so I think I hit rock bottom in team assignments.)  Even worse, the break was pretty much all Bowman sets...and looking back now a few months later, I don't even know I chose to join this break in the first place.

What's done is done though, so I might as well finally scan the cards and then get them sorted out and off of my desk.  I'm sick of staring at the package.  On the bright side (as you'll soon see), I did land an actual hit from the break which was a nice surprise I guess.

Alright, on to the cards! 

Like I said, I ended up with four teams so let's see the best of the best for each team involved.

Marlins:

In what is a shocker to absolutely no one, the worst team of the bunch was the Marlins.  I ended up with a mere 4 Marlins cards including two versions of the same Giancarlo Stanton base card (one was an unnumbered refractor and the other was a standard base card).  I do like the Ichiro card - that one has a shot at my Frankenset (and so does the Stanton I guess) but otherwise the Marlins were a big bunch of "meh."

Rays:

Getting both Florida baseball teams assigned to you in a group break shouldn't even be legal.  The Rays ended up better than the Marlins in raw card count (8 Rays showed up) and probably better in terms of the actual cards as well, but only barely.  In fact, the reason I put the Rays above the Marlins is that I ended up with a serially numbered gold parallel of Jesus Sanchez (#07/50) which isn't terrible and I "won" the randomization of this Brendan McKay / Clayton Kershaw insert.  The Rays slot also produced a pair of refractors but neither is of interest to me so I didn't scan them (and given that in my many years of running this blog I'm not sure I've met more than 1 Rays collector out there, I doubt any of you care as well).

Mets:

If there was any team that I thought could possibly redeem my poor team assignments, it was the New York Mets.  Unfortunately, that didn't come to pass but at least the Mets ended up ahead of the two pitiful Florida teams.  The Mets produced a rather robust 12 cards in the break which was the largest individual team total of the four teams I ended up with.  The highlights included a couple of inserts (yawn)...

...and a single regular refractor of Yoenis Cespedes. 

At least the Cespedes is super colorful, I kind of like that (and that card has a shot at my Frankenset as well).  The two best cards for the Mets though were a pair of serially numbered parallels.

The Syndergaard is actually quite nice - the purple is stunning and the card is numbered 215/250.  I don't know anything about Justin Dunn but that's a blue parallel numbered 147/150 so it could be worse.

Twins:

Finally, we get to the best team of the break for me.  You know it's bad news when the Twins are the best of four teams.  Ouch indeed.

The Twins yielded a mere six cards including three base cards and a refractor of Jose Berrios.

There was a single Twins insert (not shown because no one cares) and then the hit of the break for me:

Yeah.  I don't know who Griffin Jax is either.  It looks more like his signs his last name as "poo" which is pretty much how this entire break went for me, especially for the cost of entry.

Oh well.  That's the nature of group breaks.  Sometimes you luck out and get something good...other times you get the Rays and Marlins and question your own choices in life. C'est la vie!

Comments

  1. That Sanchez could be a really nice piece of trade bait in like a year or two, dude's done very well in the minors.

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  2. These are some sharp looking cards-even if the teams are less than desirable. I just got the cards from the first group break I joined: picked the Red Sox, randomly assigned the Brewers. Milwaukee cards were weak, but the Marlins guy got an Ichiro manu-patch..so you never know.

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