Box Review: 2004 Playoff Honors (blaster)

I am in the middle of hosting another big Breaker's Club group break over on my Discord channel.  One of the boxes that we broke last week as part of the group break was a retail box of 2004 Playoff Honors.  I had been looking forward to this particular box because I usually enjoy the Playoff sets from the early 2000s, especially for group breaks!  

Each blaster contains eight packs with five cards per pack.  Interestingly, our blaster had one pack with an extra card giving us a total of 41 cards in the box.

Base cards:

We pulled a total of 39 different base cards out of the 200-card base set (there are also 50 short-printed, serially numbered cards, that are numbered 201-250 in the set but we did not find any of those in our blaster).  Some of the short prints have autographs which makes for a strange full base set!  However, since we didn't get any of the short prints I won't get into some of the odd choices that Playoff made for that portion of the set.  

As for the base cards we did get, I think we did quite well.  My favorite card (other than the Barry Larkin) is probably the Hideki Matsui card - what an awesome image of his bat exploding!  

The card backs are also quite nice in this set.  The nameplate is color-coordinated for each team which I appreciate and you dod get a decent write-up for each player.  People who want lots of statistics will be left disappointed though as this set only features one year plus career stats.

Inserts:

Our box was light on the inserts in that we only found two cards besides base cards.  The first insert is from the Fans of the Game set:

Jeff Garlin is one of the bigger names on the checklist and this one makes for a fun addition to the Cubs pile in the group break!  There are also autographed versions of the Fans of the Game set which are what make this set so expensive to buy in box form today!

Our final insert comes from the horribly-named Prime Signatures set:

That's a Vladimir Guerrero card that is serially numbered out of 2500 on the back of the card.  The Vlad looks like it ought to have a signature on it but alas it does not.  There is an autographed version (parallel?) of this set that exists but I think having a set called "Prime Signatures" and having a spot where I signature should go and then not having it signed is a dumb design choice.  

Overall, I give the 2004 Playoff Honors blaster box the following rating:

Set Design:  B

Collation:  A

Opening Thrill:  B

Overall:  B

There are several design decisions that hold this set back from earning a proper "A" grade.  For starters, I don't like the base set including several autographed cards.  I also don't care for the Prime Signatures set existing in a form without any signatures, even if the card design itself is solid.  On the other hand, we didn't get any duplicates AND the base card photography is quite good throughout the set.  It's a solid offering, though nothing Earth-shattering when all is said and done.