2014 Upper Deck Football Blaster Box Break #1

I picked up a blaster box of 2014 Upper Deck Football.  I haven't opened a blaster before.  I have opened up a hobby box of this product and liked it a lot so I figured I'd give the blasters a try too.

The blasters are a little expensive.  They're $19.99 plus tax, for 35 cards and a bonus pack of Johnny Manziel career highlight cards (5 cards).  That's basically $20 for 40 cards, or about 50 cents per card.  That is pretty steep for a low end retail product.  But on the plus side, the blaster box does guarantee you over 35 rookie cards in the blaster.  In other words, you're not going to get a ton of worthless veteran base cards. 

The only notable cards I got were a Blake Bortles rookie card, and a Jordan Lynch rookie card.  I don't have either of those yet, so I was glad to get those rookie QBs. 

I was pretty lucky and also got one SSP card and one SP card.  The SSP card was a Aaron Colvin rookie card, and the SP card was a Martavis Bryant rookie card.  I actually got a SP Martavis Bryant rookie card in my hobby box, so now I have two.

The Johnny Manziel cards were unremarkable.  I don't think they're really true rookie cards so I'll probably sell them. 

Overall, not a bad break.  I got lots of rookie cards, one top QB draft draft pick, a SP rookie card, and a SSP rookie card.  There are worse ways to spend $20.  I can live with the outcome of this blaster. 

2014 Upper Deck Football Box Break #1

I bought myself a hobby box of 2014 Upper Deck Football.  I bought this box off of Blowout Cards for about $90.  The price is a little on the high side for what I think it should be, but I wanted to bust some 2014 product.  Anyways, here's the damage.    

Notable Base Rookie Cards:

Johnny Manziel

Sammy Watkins SP (not pictured)

Jimmy Garoppolo

Tom Savage

Martavis Bryant SP

1994 UD Tribute Star Rookie Inserts:

Marion Grice 

Stephen Morris

Taylor Lewan

College Tribute:

Penn State's White Out

UD Authentics:

Blake Bortles

Bruce Ellington

Jeff Mathews (not pictured)

Upper Deck Letterman:

James White (New England Patriots, 4th Round, 130th Overall)

Stephen Morris (Undrafted)

Rookie Autographs:

Devin Street (Dallas Cowboys, 5th Round, 146th overall)

Post-Break Thoughts: 

Overall, I think this was an "okay" box.  My hits weren't great.  Stephen Morris went undrafted in the 2014 NFL Draft.  It always sucks when one of your hits is an undrafted free agent.  Devin Street isn't a big name, nor is James White.  I wasn't expecting, but I sure was hoping to get at least one big name hit in the box. 

On the other hand, the inserts weren't bad at all.  I did well on the UD Authentics, getting three of them in this box.  I think most boxes only have one or two.  Even better, two out of three were big name players.  Obviously, Bortles is a good guy to get, and Bruce Ellington is supposedly to be a baller. 

The College Tribute cards are cool, and I'm lucky to get one in my box, but I'll probably sell the White Out. 

Would I buy another box of this?  Yes, but only at the right price.  I definitely wouldn't pay more than $100 for a box of this.  A fairer price point is probably around $80.00.

BGS Grading Tip: Ink on Edge Will Result in Low Grade

I was watching a BGS mailday video by UltimateBoxBreaks.com and came across something really interesting. 

One of the cards that was sent in was a Denarius Moore 2011 Panini Prime Signatures 1/1.  Unfortunately, that card came back with a final BGS grade of 5.0!

What in the world caused it to get such a low grade?!   Well, BGS was nice enough to include a note with the card stating why its final grade was so low.  It was because there was ink on one of the edges.

Here's a screen-grab one the ink on the edge.  I've circled it in red.  It's actually a very small ink mark.  It looks like the player (or maybe the owner of the card) accidentally nicked one of the edges of the card with either a sharpie or a ball point pen.  Either way, the results is a really really, and I mean really, bad edges subgrade.

I even looked up the BGS grade online.  Here it is.

The edges got a 4!  This just goes to show how careful you have to be handling your cards, and inspecting them for flaws before you send them in.

(And as a side note, it is worth noting that the card's final grade was a whole 1.0 higher than its lowest subgrade, which is a rare exception to the general rule that you can only get 0.5 higher than your lowest subgrade.  Check out this Beckett BGS Grading blog post for more information on that.)

Now, I've already blogged about the ink stain problems on 2013 Topps Five Star Football cards.  Imagine if you sent one of those cards in for BGS grading.  You'd probably get just as low of a grade, or perhaps even a lower grade.  I've seen some 2013 Topps Five Star Football cards with big time ink stains on the corner edges -- much bigger than that little ink mark on this Denarius Moore card.  It would be such a shame if you hit a really nice card in your box of 2013 Topps Five Star Football only to find out that it had ink stains on one of the corners.  Since you would only expect that card to get a final BGS grad of about 5.0, then its value would be incredibly diminished.

UPDATE:  Since I wrote this blog post, UltimateBoxBreaks.com did another Beckett BGS Grading mailday video, and two 2013 Topps Five Star Football cards came back upgraded because of ink stained corners.   Apparently the ink stained corners were so bad that BGS didn't want to grade them.  I'm assuming that the grades the cards would have received would be even less than a 4.0.