Monday, December 30, 2013

Sochi anyone?

My son, collector of USA related cards, received two blasters of 2014 Topps US Olympic and Paralympic Team and Hopefuls for Christmas.

The blasters are billed as containing 7 packs + 1 autograph, relic or commemorative relic card.  Upon opening the blasters, we realized that the auto or relic is inside one of the 7 packs, not a separate pack that is in a different type of wrapper as is so often the case.

My son's two blasters contained the following:

1 complete base set (one card was damaged--#83 if anyone has an extra).
24 doubles
15 bronze parallels
8 silver parallels
3 gold parallels
2 Games of the Olympiad inserts
1 Venues insert
1 Olympic Heritage insert

He doesn't care about the blog value of the blasters, but I pulled a few of my favorite cards to post.





Based on the cards themselves, Hilary Knight gets my vote as the "Olympic Athlete I most want to meet". Cute and tough.  Nice combo.




It's unfortunate that Katie Eberling participates in a sport that requires a helmet.  It's equally fortunate she participates in a sport that requires a skin tight body suit.




Lindsey Van gets my vote for the best Olympic card ever.  At least in this set.  That card is going to look great with her signature on it.




Lindsey Vonn, not to be mistaken with the aforementioned Lindsey Van, also looks pretty darn good in a skin tight suit.  Go Tiger.  




The biggest travesty in the whole set is Lolo Jones with her helmet on.  Bad call Topps.  Bad call.




My son got this nice Heather Richardson bronze relic #43/75.  The bronze relics fall 1:70 packs.  Heather finished 6th in the 500 Meter race in Vancouver in 2010.




The other blaster gave up a nice auto of Alana Nichols.  Alana was paralyzed from the waist down in a 2000 snowboarding accident, but didn't let that keep her down.  She won four medals, including two golds, at the Vancouver Paralympic Games.

My son wants another complete base set so he can mail some off for TTMs.  I don't know if we could get lucky enough to get another set with two blasters, but he wants to try.  I'll check Ebay for set prices.  That has to be a cheaper route.

If anyone has any of these they don't want, I'll trade baseball for them to support his USA habit.

18 comments:

  1. I might have to pay closer attention to the US women's ice hockey team...

    Good Knight!!!

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  2. Yeah, after the troubles Miss Von has had, followed this week by Schumaker's accident, I'd be very hard pressed to ever attempt skiing!! Nice cards though, I am always impressed by Olympic athletes and the fetes they are talented enough to pull off...

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  3. Funny how all your favorites are women strange how that works out! lol

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  4. those are cool damn cards. I wish they did something like that for Canada.
    HA! As if...

    heck, I'd even like to do the ttm thing with the American ones.

    nice haul PATP Jr!

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    1. They should. Someone should. Canada has some hot athletes I'm sure.

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  5. This is a beautiful set. I didn't realize that blasters contained a guaranteed hit. I have a Target gift card from Christmas... might have to pick up one of these blasters... or maybe two (so I can complete a set to go with the 2010 Topps Summer Olympics set). If I get an extra 83... it's yours.

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  6. Haven't gotten any of this yet. I'll wait till it goes cheap, but I know there were a few guys really going at getting the whole set TTM'ed check out TTM section to Sport Card Forum. I really do like the look of these sets. I think that the 2012 set was my favorite Topps release that year.

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    1. I'll check it out. I'm ashamed to say I've never been on that site before.

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  7. I have an entire blaster box full of base cards. My friend bought it, sold the hit, and gave me the rest. If you wanna work something out just email me. chavezravining@hotmail.com

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  8. If Hilary Knight is going with me, then yes, Sochi.

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  9. These are cool looking cards. Non-baseball isn't really my style, but I like the design of these.

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  10. I wish the baseball blasters were guaranteed a auto or relic and not the usual manupatch crap

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  11. I just googled Hilary Knight, wow she is a hottie

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  12. I NEED A VONN CARD!!!!!!

    (I have a pseudo connection to her, but nobody's ever going to hear it unless I finally pull her card -- I have one coming to me at some point, hopefully soon cuz Winter Olympics).

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