Hobby Box results - 08 UD Masterpieces Football

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG

That was the summation of my internal dialogue during my box break of 08 Masterpieces Football.  The box promised 1 auto (which was on card) and promised 2 relics - along with framed variation goodness to boot.  One of my favorite sets of all time was the 04 or 05 Diamond Kings baseball set - again an art set with framed cards.  But that art set was just of head portraits.  This....this was something better.  Much better.

THE BASE:

Well, as an example, you can look to the soon-to-be 3X Super Bowl winning QB.  Just a great canvassy, artsy feel to it.  And there's no stats on the back of the card, which isn't necessary for an art set.  The backs just give a blurb about the player or a game the player played in. 

In total, I got 62 base cards with only 2 of those being duplicates (30 Ed Podolak, 79 Scott Norwood).  So given 60 base cards out of a 110 card set I sit right at 54% complete.  And thankfully, I finally get to collect an art/retro set that doesn't have mini cards.  I'm not even going to list the cards I need yet because I still want to bust another box or two of this before I really start to scour the secondary market or actively look for trades.  Really, it was just THAT FUN to bust for me.  Maybe it was the drought in box busting or something.  But I really had a good time with this box.  I actually look forward to busting the next box.

THE PARALLELS:

So, instead of minis, there's a whole slew of variation cards of the base set with varying colors of frames around the card.  In my opinion, they look sharp.  Now the most common variation (I assume) is the black frame, because it's not numbered in any way.  Of the black framed variations, I pulled 4.

#67 Paul Hornung
#62 Marvin Harrison
#43 Jim Brown
#82 Terry Bradshaw

Now, the Jim Brown is just me doing a poor job of centeing in the scanner - it does have a full frame and isn't cut off in any way.  I don't know all of the color variations yet of framed cards, but I also managed to pull 3 of the blue framed cards that are numbered /150.

But there was a problem.  They were all the same card.

 Here we can see all 3 blue framed cards that I got.

Card number 23, Don Shula.  Now I got card 120/150, 121/150 and 123/150.  Quite frankly, I'm a bit miffed that they didn't throw in card 122/150.  I mean really, who the hell pulled card 122/150?

In all, this was the only part of the box that wasn't perfect.  But it was humorous more than anything else.  After all, I only got 2 dupes on the base set, so getting 3 of the same blue framed cards isn't the end of the world.

If anybody is a big Shula fan out there, I may have a couple of blue framed cards for you.  I'll still keep one just in case I get a wild hair and decide to collect framed cards.






THE HITS:

Ok, the hits were mild.  But even being ok, they were still fun to pull.  And I think the auto and relic sets are deep.  I'm talking something like 77 autos and 57 relics.  It could be the other way around.  But it makes my Murad set look small in comparison.  But I like a challenge.  And this would be one of the auto sets that I'd love to build.  Anything on-card just is ten times better.

Really, not the cream of the crop as far as WR's are concerned.  But the cards really work.  Even though these cards are green bordered, these aren't numbered.  But everything about these cards works for me.

And finally, the auto of Kenny Phillips.  I mean, with an auto set as deep as this one, you can't hit a home run every time.  But with the on-card stuff, it's hard to be mad at it.

Now, I know that going forward I may run into a redemption or two, but for what I can see, in most cases the cards have already been redeemed by and large and are on the secondary market.  I can only hope that UD will give me something in return for a redemption.  But again, this is going to be MY football product.  I'm going to own it.  It's a great transition going from a nearly complete Murad project into something like this.