Monday, July 4, 2011

2006 BBM Giants Box Break



I don't usually go out of my way to collect the BBM team sets, but every so often I get a good deal on an unopened box and I can't resist. I recently picked up a box of the 2006 Giants set, so I thought I'd do a box break on it:

The box contained 20 packs of six cards each for a total of 120 cards. I got six insert cards (and no memorabilia cards), so I got 114 "regular" cards. The set only contains 108 cards so I was expecting quite a lot of doubles. However, I ended up getting only 22 doubles, so I actually got 92 unique cards (about 85% of the set). (Of course, like the 2000 BBM set, I had already opened a box of this set, so I ended up with only 16 cards I didn't already have - one short of completing my set.)

The insert cards that I got were all from the "Giant Step" (Engel calls it "Great Numbers") set - each card shows a Giants player and their career total (as of 2005 obviously) in some category. For example, Kimiyasu Kudoh's card shows he has 215 wins, Hiroki Kokubo's card shows 313 home runs, etc. It includes retired players as well, such as Tatsunori Hara (382 home runs), although none of the more major retired Giants - Oh, Nagashima, Harimoto, Kaneda, etc. One of the six insert cards I got was actually from a parallel issue to the "Giants Steps" set - for each of the inserts there is a parallel issue that is serially numbered up to the number on the card. So there's 215 Kudoh parallel cards numbered 1 to 215. This is kind of like those stupid Topps Home Run inserts for (I think) Mantle and Bonds where they just re-used the same picture for each card and changed the number.

The parallel issue I got was #144 for Masaaki Saitoh's 180 wins. I also got the normal Saitoh card (#GN02) so I can show both of them here:



I mentioned earlier that I had opened another box for this set previously. The breakdown of insert cards to regular cards was the same - 5 "Giant Step" cards and 1 parallel issue "Giant Step" card.

No comments: