The Last Of My Christmas Money, A Trade and A Free Package!

So I stopped by my awesome local card shop, Big Hits Sports Cards and picked up a box of cards with what I had left of my Christmas money. I settled on Bowman Sterling. Mainly because it was a product I had never opened and probably never would again and I thought, what the heck?!?! My goal for next year is to stop extraneous spending, but it's not 2012 yet so I threw caution to the wind! I'm glad I did. I really liked what I ended up pulling from the box (even if I did get shorted a hit, but the LCS owner has already filed a claim for me and the replacement is on the way.) It's 6 mini boxes, each contains two autos and a jersey relic. You are promised a dual relic and a dual auto per box. Well, let's see what I got:

Base Cards:

That's two Noesi's... yay.... :| But the Altuve is a refractor numbered /199 which is GREAT by me!!! I really like the design. It is a very cool looking set and if I had extremely deep pockets I might try to chase down the complete set, but I think I'll stick with what I've purchased and be happy with it.

Inserts:

These are the prospect inserts. No refractors or parallels here. And again another duplicate. Hopefully one of these guys makes it big and I have a very valuable card in my hands!!!

Alright, that brings me to the hits.... first up the base autos:

Not a bad selection, although I did end up with two Jed Bradley cards. There's 9 here, thus there are 3 I'm hiding from you... those will come here in a bit... patience, as they get better and better as this post goes along!

Here we have the jersey relics... including my dual relic and a nice one to boot!

I can't argue with a X-Fractor Ackley at all! It's numbered out of /199. I shrug my shoulders a bit at the Team USA guy, but hopefully he's a major prospect a few years from now and I can cash in! I think I may put the Ackley on eBay and see what it fetches.

Alright, and finally I've come to the major hits from the box, the ones that I think will help me make my money back a bit!

Yep, that's a Cyan Printing plate of Eric Thames! SWEEEEEET!!! Next up is a gold parallel auto /50 of Joe Panik. The guy at the shop says he's the next big thing for the Giants, I'm hoping these two cards plus the Ackley will more than recover my box costs! The Harrison is a refractor /199 and hopefully will catch me some extra dough as well!

Overall, I was pretty happy with my box. Got some very interesting cards, and I'm curious what I'll end up with as my dual auto that Topps is going to send since I didn't get the one promised in the box. It'll be a great bonus to anything I already have gotten!

I give this box 9 out of 10 E's on the Dimwit SWEEEEEEEEET meter. The only area of improvement I could see, is giving a little more info on Draft details on the back of the card. Not knowing most of these guys, it'd be nice to know if I have an auto of a first rounder, or a 32nd rounder. Other than that, the design and execution is great.

Alright, I did make a trade with Andrew, a guy at the shop. He pulled a printing plate I wanted, and I had an auto he wanted... he threw in an Astros auto for me to get it about even...

Vincent spent all last year recovering from Tommy John surgery, so I'm hoping he'll produce big this coming year and down the road. The plate is a yellow plate (obviously) of Brett Myers from 2011 Topps Chrome. Myers may not be in Houston for long, but I am a fan of printing plates and was happy to trade for another one! This brings my Astros printing plate collection to 2... Berkman from 2010 Allen & Ginter and this one. Thanks Andrew.

Finally some free cards from Dan over at The Other World. He sent over a few Gyspy Queen cards and I'll be sure to look through his want list and return the favor.

Thanks Dan!

As always, any cards on this post are up for trade unless otherwise noted... let me know if you're interested and what you may have to offer!