Breaking Boxes of 2018 Elite Extra Edition
Recently, my maildays have been grand slams or strikeouts. I've had a 10-package mailday and a 6-package mailday in the past two weeks. The past few days have been strikeouts with zero packages.
There has been a $100 Visa gift card burning a hole in my wallet since Christmas. Since I pulled it from my stocking on Christmas morning it was earmarked for a trip to Target for baseball cards. I had actually forgot about it when Topps series one was released.
Saturday meant a Target trip or two in search of some boxes of 2018 Elite Extra Edition. The product has not been restocked at my nearest store, and I had checked Friday after work. There are two other stores within 15 minutes, so after a trip to the post office I hit Target number one. It looked like the vendor had not stocked this week as it was pretty bare. Target number three is typically the weakest of the three stores in terms of baseball cards. However, it was the exact opposite on this day.
I found five blasters of Elite Extra Edition. The card section was also fully stocked with 2019 Topps, as well as several boxes and packs of the red hot Prizm basketball.
Elite Extra Edition is such a fun rip. In my opinion, it's not worth the hobby price tag, but the product has been reformulated for 2018 and retail is a great value. All cards are essentially hits. It's not a long rip, because now that they're all hits you only get one pack that includes six cards. Each $20 blaster box includes one autograph and one relic. The rest of the box includes "base" cards that are numbered to /999 as well as silver prizm and other parallels.
Before I show off my hits...I gotta show off the Cubs. Unfortunately in five boxes I didn't pull any Cubs autographs or relics. I did pull a Cole Roederer numbered 278/999.
The other Cubs card was Miguel Amaya numbered 63/999.
Of the five autographs, four are international players. I will stash these away and hope they climb prospect rankings in the next few years.
The relics are pretty sweet. Single swatch relics, a triple, a quad, and a really sweet multi-color swatch that appears to be part of a name or number.
Only two single color plain relics, though each of them are numbered. The Heliot Ramos is numbered 103/199. Austin Riley is numbered 70/149. The Yanio Perez quad relic is nice, but it's all single color white. It's numbered 37/149. Carter Kieboom has a triple swatch with red and blue. It's numbered 226/399.The Samir Duenez multi-color swatch is numbered 20/49.
All in all a fun break. If I see any more boxes out there I may pull the trigger, and with the Cubs having a deep checklist in this set I'll probably monitor Blowout's prices to see if it drops at all.