I used to enter a few box breaks.
By "a few" I mean maybe two a year. Now, I almost never enter a box break. I'm not entirely sure why. Commitment issues probably.
No, actually I know the main reason is money. I never have it. I must carve out specific moments in time, scheduled waaaaay in advance, in which I may spend money on cards. I can't let a box break announced out of nowhere upset my precarious financial situation.
But what about free? A free box break? Oh, yes, I have time in my schedule for that.
Colbey of Cardboard Collections recently decided to give away two boxes of 2016 Donruss Optic out of the goodness of his heart. Well, well! Twenty-four packs of Optic! That's an eyeful!
Optic is key because all the shiny detracts from the absence of logos. I don't notice quite as much that the players are wearing sanitation jumpers when everything is so bright and lustrous. And even though I had completed the Dodgers base set from that year of Optic already, I wanted to enter because there's always the chance of pulling pretty color parallels in Optic.
So, I ignored that the vast majority of the cards I received, I owned already.
All of these.
And these.
Even this Illusion insert was a double.
OK, no matter, I knew that would happen. BRING ON THE PRETTY COLORS!!!
Excellent. A purple parallel of Clayton Kershaw. No letters on the cap? I didn't even notice. Look at that pretty purply frame.
It turned out that the boxes that Colbey opened were Joc Pederson hot boxes because that's the rest of the colored parallels I have to show.
Purple parallels of both Pederson's base card and his Diamond Kings card.
And a blue parallel, numbered to /149, of Joc, too. That is definitely an eyeful!!
So that was four cards that were new to my collection, but four pretty ones and all four were free.
I know many folks think Chrome and Optic are just glorified doubles. But I think the Optic brand has done quite a bit to improve what's mostly been a sad Donruss set for Panini. If the shininess gets someone like me, a proud logo snob, to look past the unlicensed-ness, then it's making an impact.
And, you just can't turn down free.
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