What Was I Thinking?

The last day of school before the holiday break, the average elementary school classroom teacher is bombarded with cards and gifts. Many of them these days are simply gift cards. Living in a double teacher household, there is a drawer in a kitchen that has a huge stack of them. My wife organizes them with some going towards specific days or events and others are just free to use whenever.

Earlier this week, I decided to use a Target gift card to buy a box of cards. The card aisle was completely stocked. I took a few minutes to soak in all of my choices, but decided to roll the dice on a box of Panini Capstone. It looked different and after all, I was not really paying for these cards.  

Not my actual box, but it stood out from the others. 

During that time, I could have easily taken out my phone and researched the product, but the fact that it was not one of the same five or six Topps products that have been lingering on the shelves for the past few months played a large role in my decision.  

Here is the base card.  

The scan does not show the card stock, but it's nice. That is what Capstone has going for it.  Card stock. The pictures are boring and the design is really lackluster. Is that Arial font?  

This card back is nothing special, but it might be better than the front of the card.  

So, here is the good news. I pulled an autograph and the design of that card is far superior than the rest of the cards in this product. Feels like a little throwback to the Pacific baseball cards with the crown theme in the background.  

Plus, Hoy Park is having an interesting off-season. He was on the Pirates at the end of last season. At some point he was traded to the Red Sox, who traded him to the Braves, who released him. Where will Hoy Park play next year?  Thinking I might need to see someone make a Red Sox and Braves cards of him.  

These are the "base cards" that I pulled out of my blaster.  What is the best card here?  

Personally, I like the Vidal Brujan card, because he was on the Durham Bulls the last two years. The answer is actually probably Bobby Witt.  The rest of these cards are going to get taped to the door of my classroom at school. Not even kidding. Might keep that Shane McClanahan card too. 

Blue parallels.  

No serial numbers, but the little Capstone logo is in the corner is blue. I like the Arenado, but just because it's an Arenado card. Not many other reasons to like the card.  

These are two other rarer parallels.  

The Trea Turner card has a gold Capstone logo, but again no serial number.  The Josiah Gray card is some sort of textured parallel.  You can see the raised squares in the scan.  This is actually a really nice card, not even being sarcastic. Seriously.  

I also pulled three insert cards.  

These two were decent.  Nice Wander Franco card to add to the collection.  

The last insert card is bizarre.  Here is the front.  

Let's talk. Card companies need to stop putting young, twenty-somethings on cards with Hall of Famers. These types of cards just rarely age well.  So, the front of the card is not that bad, considering Panini put Rickey Henderson on the same card as some random White Sox player. Which bring me to the back, which is a slippery slope of terrible.  

So, Rickey Henderson stole bases, but Luis Robert steals runs as a defender?

Did I read that correctly?  

Seems like a huge stretch.  

This whole box of cards was a huge stretch. I don't know what I was thinking.