March Madness Final Four: 2010-11 UNC Basketball Blaster Break

Ok so the Tar Heels are NOT in the Final Four, and Neither is Villanova so I am barely paying attention. Regardless I do enjoy the 3 week tournament for several reasons and College Hoop is probably my second favorite sport outside of baseball.

A few years back after North Carolina won the 2009 NCAA Championship, Upper Deck jumped on the bandwagon and put out a small set honoring the schools basketball program.

Here are the highlights from a single blaster

First Pack

2010 UD North Carolina Basketball #53 Jeff Lebo

Jeff Lebo gets the cover for today's posting. He played High School basketball in my area during the same era I was in school and is at least part of the reason why I root for the Tar Heels despite them being one of the evil empires of college hoop. 

Once you get past the fact that over half of the card is used for logo and design elements, it is a decent looking card. Trouble is looking at 50 of these and you realize that the pix look like slightly oversized windows icons.

2010 UD North Carolina Basketball
#32 Phil Ford
#29 John Kuester
#42 Sam Perkins
#22 Bill Chamberlain

2010 UD North Carolina Basketball
#82 Roy Williams
Carolina Basketball Musuem
#10 Lennie Rosenbluth 

As noted above there are coaches included in the set, pack #1 included Roy Williams. Lennie Rosenbluth was drafted 6th overall in 1957 by the Philadelphia Warriors, back when they represented the city prior to the 76ers coming over from Syracuse. The first pick of that draft was Former Laker player and Utah Jazz Play by Play announcer Hot Rod Hundley how died recently - Frank Deford had a great portrait of Hundley on NPR.

Each packs is 8 cards one of which is an insert. The center card above is from the 20 card Carolina Basketball Museum Insert. 

The base set consists of 83 cards of UNC players and coaches presented in roughly chronological order.

The Blaster

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2010 UD UNC basketball Wrapper 

The Wrapper features Michael Jordan, who also appears on card just a few times. Part of the draw for the Hobby Boxes is the possibility of getting a Jordan Auto. There is no guarantee of an auto in the blaster.

#39 Jennifer Alley

UD recognized the Carolina Women's program as well, Jennifer Alley was the Lady Tar Heels first full time head coach. 

the Jordan Years

In addition to a his Base card (#43) Michael Jordan gets his own 20 card insert. Each card in the Jordan set has a 1/1 autograph parallel.

Rivalries Clemson vs North Carolina

There are 14 cards in the Rivalries subber. James Worthy is featured here with Clemson's Larry Nance.

 #121 NCAA All Americans Vince Carter

There are 20 All-Americans honored in the set which functions as a template for a limited number of autographs. 

#DT-5 Walter Davis

Dream Team is a 25 card insert set with each card having a slight 3D effect. 

#151 Timelines Lennie Rosenbluth

Here we have Lennie Rosenbluth again. Timelines is a 20 card subset and is another Auto Template set.

Flip

The b-side contain a short bio on each player, which is nice except....

Every single card has the same blurb about North Carolina Basketball

 Manupatch

1982 UNC NCAA Championship Manupatch Banner

Rather than contain a 1/1 Michael Jordan Auto, each blaster contains one of five Manupatch Banners that represent the each of the Tar Heels National Championships. On the plus side, 1982 Was the Jordan Championship.
 
By The Numbers 
I think this box was less than $5 or possibly was my free gift on a Dave and Adams purchase. They are currently running at $10 for a blaster of Ten 8-Card packs.

In my 80 cards, I cam nowhere near a complete set, getting only 60 of the 83 base cards.

60/83 Base Cards (72%)
7 Duplicates (although one of the dupes was the Jordan Base Card)
2 Timelines
2 All Americans
2 Jordan Years
2 Rivalries
2 Carolina Basketball Museum
1 Dream Team (Davis)
1 Championship Banner (1982)

Want List
2, 3, 4, 8, 12, 13, 16
20, 25, 27, 33, 35
45, 47, 51, 52, 55
62, 66, 67, 68, 80, 81 


Sources
Sports-Ref
Sports Card Radio
NPR - Frank Deford

2009 UD Goodwin Champions Bargain Blaster

On a recent trip to Target I found a bargain blaster of 2009 UD Goodwin Champions. The blaster was half price ($10.59 w/ tax). I hadn't opened many if any packs of Goodwin last year so I figured I'd give it a shot.

This blaster contains 12 packs of 4 cards each. The Base Set consists 150 cards followed by 40 short prints and then 20 super short prints - and then another set of mini-exclusive cards - I don't know you figure that one out. There are a number of parallels including a set of minis that fall about 1/pack.

The Goodwin set was probably developed to compete w/ Topps Allen & Ginter - and it shows. Lets take a look -

Phillies



Howard - Roberts - Lefty - Nice Selection there - 2 World Champions. 2 Hall of Famers. Good Lookin Cards. All of the Current Phils cards have the World Series Banner which is a nice touch. Some of the cards have a "special" team logo - note the Liberty Bell on the Robin Roberts mini.


HOFs & Minis
The Minis are Tex, CC, Junior, Phil Niekro, and Stinkin Jonathan Toews of the stupid Stanley Cup Champion Chicago Blackhawks.

The HOFs Gwynn, Ripken, Ozzie, Teddy Ballgame, and Paul Molitor.

The Niekro photo is a familiar shot that we have seen in UDs other retro product, Goudey - That image was already borrowed from Fleer I think. UD was already mailing it in a year ago.

Griffey is card #1, which is only fitting as he returned to Seattle - the team for which Griffey was on the original UD #1 card back in 1989. As it turned out Goodwin Champions was one of UDs last Baseball products.
One More Mini


A Nice Black Bordered Mini of Yogi Berra. I am assuming that the special back minis have the black borders. This is a pretty sharp looking card of an Iconic player.


Plebians
MJ, Bobby Orr, Peggy Fleming, Dave Scott

Like Allen & Ginter GWChamps contains other Notables who were not blessed with the abilities to play the great game of baseball.

Dave Scott is the original Triathlete or something like that - this card is a Short Print, the picture is different then all the rest of the cards. The cards all have a criss-cross pattern to their Backgrounds. For whatever reason the Scott card is all the painting - or photoshop of the painting anyway. Peggy Fleming looks really evil in this picture.

Base Cards

I decided to show off the base cards by constructing an All-Star team from the blaster.

Battery

McCann, Liriano, Lincecum, Thome

Two of these guys are already in the playoffs, and the other two could also get in. Notice that the McCann card is one of the ones carrying a special logo. I stuck Thome in with the Pitchers and Catchers because it was where I had space to put a DH.

Infield

Pedroia, Jeter, Bill Hall, Morneau

Ok Bill Hall is not an All-Star, but he is a short print so he got the nod as the Blaster 3rd baseman. Both Morneau and Pedroia have won MVP awards, Jeter has not.


Outfield


Manny, Josh Hamilton, Johnny Damon, Ichiro

The Manny Card is pretty cool looking - You can see the storm clouds coming in on the edge of ending his Sunny LA Days. The Ichiro card is also a winner. I am pretty sure that the Hamilton card is straight out of Goudey.

Etc
Card back of Steve Carlton - one issue with GWChamps is the font on the back. It is plain goofy looking. the lower case T's are particularly odd. I do like that UD did go to the trouble of creating a back for these cards. Every other UD product has identical backs - this reduces the personality of a set. The Phils logo here is from the 70s era Phils teams for which Carlton played.

I paired the B-Side here with a 20th anniversary card - if you pick up an UD blaster from 2009 you are bound to find a few of these. This card the Red Wings winning the 2007-08 Stanley Cup. The photo'd player is Henrik Zetterberg I think.

Mojo


Chipper Relic- mojo. Not sure what the M stands for my guess is Memorabilia or Mojo.

Overall I enjoyed the blaster. The half price is key. 4 card packs always seem weak to me. but opening 12 of them with a good mix of oddballs and minis added to the fun. Unfortunately the box was marred by the fact that maybe half of the cards had a dinged upper left corner. Regardless it was still fun to open.

I picked up 36 cards from the 150 card base set (24%). The 7 minis were all unique vs the base cards giving me 43 of 150 (27% of a whacky FrankenSet). So I could consider building a set relatively cheaply.

The 5 cards of 48 from the 12 packs of 4 are - 1&2) the 2 short prints, 3) the Chipper Relic, 4) the 20th aniv card, and 5) 1 card forfeited from the Chipper pack.

I doubt I will go to the trouble of building the set. I will more likely keep about half for various collecting projects - Phils collection, Hall of Famers, Player Collections (Thome n Damon), minis, My WBC collection (Ichiro), and My Plebes Collection.