Grade the Break - 2018 Stadium Club
Stadium Club is finally here! Since I was a kid, this was always my favorite set. The quality of photo and card has made this a hard set to top for me. Since they brought it back again in 2014 they have stuck to the same formula,. and added a nice checklist of old-timers. This set features a little bit of everything parallels, inserts, variations, autos, and good rookies. Stadium never features relics but that would be a cool to see down the road. I am quite disappointed that I didn't see the checklist of the set sooner, but I will be better prepared for the next Stadium Club breaks. There are a lot more of PROS than CONS to this product, and though our break was the best with what we got, I would open this product all day!
PROS
* Photography and types of images used are unlike any other card out there
* Top Rookies - Ohtani, Albies, Mejia, Hays, Verdugo, Robles, Hoskins, and Rosario
* Nice Inserts: Beam Team, Never Compromise, Power Zone, and Special Forces
* 2 Autos Promised - on-card autos, lots of rookies
* Lot's of Old-Timers
* Variations are tougher to get
* Good Value for the price point
* Stadium Club Chrome Parallels
CONS
* Variations are tougher to get (yes, this is a pro and a con)
* Lack of #'d cards (could be exclusive to our break)
* Too many teams that didn't have autos in the set
* Player and Team Names can be tough to read
Stadium Club was extremely fun to open and I can't wait to rip into more. Hoping we have a little better luck but we hit some cards that weren't autos. We received our 6 autos as promised :-). 5 of those were rookies and we got one veteran auto. The rookies were a little disappointing over all but it's hard to complain getting 5 rookie autos. Would have been nice to hit something a little higher profile. We didn't get an Ohtani base which was extremely weird to me. I loved the addition of the "Special Forces" inserts this year, however the "Never Compromise" insert didn't excite me much. Would have been nice to get an Instavision insert but we have some more cracks at it coming up. We got some good Stadium Chrome parallels, which I think was a idea to introduce last year. I found it weird/disappointing there were no numbered cards in these three boxes. Was definitely expecting more. Here are some highlights!
Our Best Card
Rhys Hoskins Stadium Club Chrome RC - I couldn't select one of the six autos because they were all about equal so I selected this beautiful Hoskins Stadium Chrome RC as our best card of this break.
Our Autos
Dillon Maples RC Auto - NN
Tony Scribner RC Auto - NN
Tommy Pham Auto - NN
Other Autos Included: Cam Gallagher, Brenvic Valera, and Thomas Nido - All RC Autos
Some Rookie Highlights
The Red Sox did well with a couple of nice Devers RC's included red roil. We also received Robles base rookie and 3 Hoskin base rookies
A Couple of Cool Inserts
Stadium inserts are as nice as ever. Beam Team looks really sharp this year. I remember getting Beam Team inserts in the early 90's! Always nice to get some Aaron Judge!
GRADE THE BREAK!
C+
This was a tough one to grade because of bias to how great the set is versus the quality of hits and special stuff we got/didn't get. I was hoping for an A+ break, so I probably jinxes us! I went with a C+ grade simply because without numbered items or a decent auto it's hard to go higher. Any of the following would have bumped this grade up easily: Variation, Instavision, High Profile auto, or some Ohtani.
Thanks to everyone that joined the break! Hope everyone enjoyed it, despite not pulling some fire in a really hot set. Everything is sorted and some orders will go out today, and others will be added to future breaks.
I have posted 3 new breaks if you are interested in jumping in an upcoming break. You can see what's available at on the Upcoming Breaks Page
Thanks for reading, more breaks coming, can't wait to see what we get! - Aaron B