[pyweed]

Sorry there was no Yu or a super, but 100x better than last year!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you again for entertaining us!!!

Totally agree -- what a great experience this product was compared to last year. I'm a little afraid that this will mean higher prices and worse product next year, but we'll see. On to 2012 Bowman Chrome!

---

While I have a couple minutes on my lunch break, let me congratulate CHASESCARDCAVE, who is the winner of contest #2, being the only one out of 40 contestants to correctly predict the last box containing a printing plate. Well done!

I will PM you this evening with info about your prize.

---

I take it most of this will be hitting the bay if it hasnt already?

Only sets and lots. I have almost completely switched over to COMC. Even for high dollar cards. I just can't handle the aggravation on eBay anymore. It will be about 5 weeks before the singles show up over there, but I use the same ID on all sites.

---

Really stinks that you didnt get a Darvish, but at least you got a couple more Trouts which you can basically just sell and buy the Darvish.

Yeah, I underperformed on Darvish, but way overperformed on Harper and Trout, so it's all good.

---

I take it most of this will be hitting the bay if it hasnt already?

Just to clarify: I don't rip to flip. I do not make money from collecting cards. I'm principally a collector, and for a number of reasons I prefer collecting cards that I have myself obtained from packs. So actually, most of these cards will go into my PC. The extras and types of cards I don't collect (plates, hexagraph) I'll sell. So I'll probably move one of the Harpers (still can't decide which), and a couple of the Trouts.

[HeyFitzy]

Pm me your selling price on the hex.

[pyweed]

Box #5 Summary

Grade: A
Comments: Two Trouts, a Lawrie, and a Bubba Redemption makes this a C+ case at current prices, but a steal at presell prices. This was a middle of the road case for me – not the best, and not the worst, but still pretty awesome.

---

Five Case Break Summary

Grade: A+
Comments: Most of my incredible value this break was merely a function of getting in early, before anyone understood how potent this product was going to be (thanks to last year’s disaster). As this product approached release, message boards were lighting up with scorn for the Platinum product based on past history, and predictions that the product would stink. As always, speculators are sometimes right, sometimes wrong, and always geniuses in hindsight. In that a case cost $1000 a couple weeks ago and now costs $1500, the naysayers were indisputably wrong, though some are still twisting themselves in pretzels trying to sound smart.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m definitely not saying I knew in advance the product would be so successful. My point is this: don’t listen to speculators. Choose a product you like and let the chips fall. Sometimes you’ll feel like a genius, sometimes you’ll feel like you waster money, but either way you’ll have something you enjoy.

That said, I *still* think this product is worth buying, even at market-inflated prices. If I hadn’t bought presell, I would still go in at $1500, and if I had unlimited funds I would buy some more right now. But I need to save my pennies for Bowman Chrome, which may be a success, or may be a total bust. That’s part of the fun.

Contest winners, I've sent you messages, and look forward to sending you your goodies. See you all in a couple of months!

Nathan

[vesperscards]

May sounds kinda stupid but what is COMC? Also... great looking cards and I'm sure it was a blast to open all of that! Would love some day to able to afford a case... gotta get the 3 kids under 5 years old into college first! lol Good times!
~Vesper

[pyweed]

May sounds kinda stupid but what is COMC? Also... great looking cards and I'm sure it was a blast to open all of that! Would love some day to able to afford a case... gotta get the 3 kids under 5 years old into college first! lol Good times!
~Vesper

Exactly. I wasn't able to invest significant money into my hobby until about 20 years into my career. Family & retirement savings come first.

I don't think I'm allowed to link to COMC but you can find it on a search engine. It stands for Check Out My Cards and it's a buy/sell site.

---

Collation notes:

The prospects set is exactly one per case, plus a handful of extras. If you are going to buy this product in quantity, buying a complete case will guarantee a prospect set.

The base set (rookies & veterans) doesn't not seem as rigorously collated. I have a feeling there will be tons of extras of these.

[magneto2]

Thanks again for another cool break! Really like those Harpers and Hexagraph!

[pyweed]

A couple other collation notes:

The Top Prospects insert set is apparently intended to be one full set per case, as I was extremely close to five complete sets with few extras. I was short a couple cards, though.

The Die Cut insert set is a much tougher collation. I only had one complete set in my five cases, and the distribution was all over the place.

Regarding the colored base parallels, I was able to put together a set of emerald/ruby, but I didn't have enough to assemble a complete ruby or a complete emerald all by themselves. I did have enough for a complete gold set. In case anyone was wondering, almost all boxes were 4 gold, 2 emerald, and 1 ruby.