Every once in a while I like to hold a few blasters or packs back and open them later. This year one of the blasters I saved was from Stadium Club. I had really like the Stadium Club I’d opened thus far, although it wasn’t much. It doesn’t take long to figure out that the pictures are great. There are some real gems… even for posed shots like Tim Raines, Ian Desmond and Jeff Bagwell. Then you have some different shots like Anthony Rizzo doing what seems like he must have patented at this point of picking a foul ball out of the stands. The photography is different for the most part and the photos are high quality.
But this time was disappointing.
The Kid is Always Alright
Even when it’s not a gold parallel you are always going to get me with a Gary Carter card. OK, I’ll be honest, a Gary Carter in a Mets uniform card to be specific.
But setting aside my bias, I wish they didn’t include cards like this, at least not in the main part of the set. If it’s in the main part of the set it would have been so much better in color. I really don’t mind the sepia parallels. In fact I like them. But I wish this was just the sepia version. I don’t need a black and white card unless it’s a parallel or that’s the object of the set.
A Hint of the Problem
One of the first packs I opened had this Kris Bryant Beam Team Orange in there. Great pull as it’s numbered to 50. I just hope the other 49 are a lot better than this.
On the regular silver versions of this insert the metallic part comes out really clean. I don’t know if you can tell from this picture, but a lot of the top parts of the orange “web” in the background (as well as other parts) have bled over the normal “picture” part of the card. Almost none of the Orange laid on the top of the card is done well. It looks like when my kids were learning to color inside the lines and not really getting it.
So what should be a good card seems ruined.
And Then There Was This
As I opened more packs, just about every pack had the problem above. Some pack had one card like this and some pack had two. Overall there were eight cards out of the 40 (20%) that had this problem. It’s very frustrating when a set you expect quality out of is so shoddy. I hadn’t seen this in any Stadium Club that I’d opened this year.
This was a production problem. The silver wasn’t chipping off and it didn’t do anything to the card or pack (it was usually the card on the face of the pace and the by the seam at the back of the pack). This is like the machine didn’t complete the silver embossing (or whatever it is).
Have you run across this? I don’t remember seeing this come up on Twitter or anything like that. Maybe it happened later in the printing as I picked these up later in the summer.
Well, if you don’t want the orange KB, I’ll be happy to take him off your hands. 😉
That is a possibility. But I think I might have someplace for it to go already.