Affordable Mini/Free Break Recap

 

What better way to wrap up a great year of Affordable Group Breaks by busting some retail I found + offering not one, but two different old school boxes for Free? 

While 2020 may have sucked overall, it did help usher me back into hosting cheap breaks. Looking back it seems the year flew by as here we are in December, just days away from Christmas. Here is a quick recap of the last boxes we busted.

I was most excited about opening these two blasters of 2020 Topps Stadium Club Chrome. I missed out on building this year's TSC set so outside of opening a few blasters as a part of one my breaks, my exposure to this great brand was limited this year. Give the awesome photography on the cards the patented Chrome treatment and well, you've got another product nigh impossible to find (in large quantities) at your local retail establishments. I had the opportunity to buy more than these two blasters and in retrospect, I probably should have!

Topps did a terrific job w/ the photography with this year's Stadium Club set, although it would have been nice if this Chrome set featured new photographs. This Frank Thomas is sick...I'm going to have to track down my own copy of the base and refractor version.

We pulled 5 Refractors from the two blasters, not too bad...decent names too.

The blaster exclusive X-Fractors look much better in hand than here in my photo. Again, some good names.

I really should have photographed these cards without sleeves on, especially the Beam Team cards.

Up next was the blaster and hanger box of 2020 Panini Rookie & Stars. Last time I opened some 2020 product we were shut out from the highly sought after QB RCs. What type of luck would we have this time around?

Pulled a few good "base" RCs if you will and a few good Rookie Rush cards. I'm not sure however if all of them feature red foil or if these are parallels.

Well, the owner of the Bengals I imagine was happy to see this Joe Burrow Ticket Masters RC pulled.

Perhaps the hottest QB rookie this season was none other than Justin Herbert. Not only did we pull his base RC, but the retail exclusive Red Foil parallel too. I believe these two were going to a big Oregon Ducks fan who I imagine considered his $2 for his slot to be well spent.

Each box also yield one chrome Optic card...Dak Prescott and Brett Favre. I particularly liked the Crusade card of Favre as that insert has a nice legacy of its own.

The blaster guaranteed one hit and it ended up being this jersey card of the Saints' Michael Thomas.

I liked this Rookie & Stars product. Like with the TSC Chrome, I should have grabbed another hanger box or blaster while I had the chance.

If this box of 1997 Pinnacle X-Press looks familiar, its because I first featured it back in June. I had one last box sitting off to the side so I thought I'd toss this one in as a freebie. 

The parallel set for this product was called Men of Summer and featured a foilboard front. Griffey, Sheffield, Klesko, Wetteland...not too shabby if I do say so myself.

The only insert we pulled was this Far & Away Frank Thomas. I believe the last box we opened yielded two of these cards so I kind of expected to see another...but no dice. Still a nice card of a great player.

The last of the free boxes was 1992 Studio. I've been sitting on this box for well over a year so it was time to let the cards "breathe". Going in I wasn't too big on this set's design, but after opening 48 packs it started to grow on me. I didn't think to share some of the set's better images before sorting the teams, but so a Google image search for th Randy Johnson card.

In 1992 inserts was still a fairly new concept. These Heritage Series inserts feature sepia photos of players sporting their team's throwback uniforms. This insert fits in well with the overall theme of Studio.

In case you want to view (or fast forward through) the video, here you go. One of the longer breaks I've done...and after sorting all the cards it'll probably be one of the last long breaks I host!

It's been a great year and I wanted to take a moment to publically thank each and every one of you that have supported me...even if it was buy getting in one of the free breaks I held throughout the year. I say this in just about every video...my purpose of hosting these breaks is to have fun. I'm not in this hobby for the money so my goal is to help fellow collectors acquire new cards for their favorite team/player. Without your support this would not be possible.

I do have some ideas for what the next break will be. I hope to be back breaking in our regular Friday night, 10 PM time slot on 01/08/21. I'm going to try to post the next sign ups on Monday, 01/04/21 so keep your eyes on the blog/Facebook group/Twitter for the next announcement. If all goes well, I hope to start off the new year with a bang!

Until then, have a safe and very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!