Blaster Disaster?

I'm still in my Topps Update phase, thus I recently purchased a blaster box.  So far, aside from the hobby box, I've purchased only rack packs.  But, I was feeling a bit daffy and wanted to see which "Blockbusters" patch card I would luck into.

I always open the patch card first.  I feel like it sets the tone for the rest of the box.  However, my vanilla luck regarding hits has been well documented [Ed. Note: No it hasn't, but just trust him on this one], so I wasn't expecting to get my absolute top choice -- Gary Carter.  

But, given that there were loads of great possibilities, I was semi-confident that I couldn't go wrong.  I mean, Tom Seaver, A-Rod, Fisk, Darvish and Ichiro were among those on a pretty robust checklist.

So, who did I wind up with?

#BP-22

Josh Beckett.

Whoop-dee-do.

Not saying Beckett's acquisition by the Sox wasn't a big deal.  Because it definitely was.  And, I'm not even saying that I'm not a Beckett fan.  I mean, I've got a nice little cache of his cards. 

But, of all the possibilities, this was certainly in the "Meh" category.  

Kind of a downer.

Luckily, the rest of the blaster was decent.  I netted 17 cards towards my base checklist, including this cool Adrian Beltre All-Star card:

#US220

Topps photogs captured a nice little moment between teammates at the Midsummer Classic.  I was initially excited because I thought maybe this was one of those short-print do-dads.  But, um, no.

My gold parallel cards were pretty good, also.  I've had some eerie consistency with Update when it comes to these two guys:

I have the SP Update cards of both of these hefty All-Stars.  And I also have the gold parallel of Ortiz's regular All-Star card.  That works for me, since I collect each of these players.

Finally, one of the two gold sparkle cards that came in my blaster is truly a keeper:

#US208

I just really like this card, and I'm pretty high on Tyler Moore's potential.  He was a monster in the minors, and he had some pretty big moments for the Nats after his call-up early in the season.  Just another good, young bat for a team that is primed to be atop the NL East for quite some time.

All in all, this blaster averted disaster status.  Despite the initial bad omen of the Beckett card, the yield was pretty decent thereafter.  

I don't think I'll be buying any more blaster boxes, as I'm within single digits of wrapping up the base set.  I really do like the manu-patch cards, though.  So, I'm not ruling out the possibility of an impulse buy somewhere down the line...

MK