Friday, May 20, 2022

Antique Mall Pack War (Canadian Rules Edition) #1

Last week, I wrote about my trip to the Factory Antique Mall, where I picked up some unopened packs of 1992 O-Pee-Chee. I thought it would be fun to open two of those packs and have a good old fashioned pack war to see which pack was better.

It's all about star power, so I'll award 1 point for every All-Star Game nod a player gets, plus additional points for the major awards (MVP, CY, ROY) and for a Hall of Fame player. Add a point for every Red Sox card, and subtract a point for every Yankee that makes an appearance!

Since these are OPC packs, I thought it'd be fun to add some extra "Canadian" points! One point will be awarded to a card for every:
  • Blue Jay or Expos player
  • Card with transactional text on it ("Now with...")
  • Cards that appear in the O-Pee-Chee set but don't appear in the Topps base set
Easy enough, right? Which pack will reign supreme?

Pack #1


Mike Moore - 1 point (All-Star)
Tim Belcher - 1 point (Now With)
Brett Butler - 1 point (All-Star)
Delino DeShields - 1 point (Expos)
Jesse Barfield - 0 points (All-Star, but on the Yankees)
Ken Griffey - 3 points (3x All-Star)
 
Dave Haas, Joe Orsulak, Milt Thompson, and Bill Gullickson - 0 points

Technically, 6 out of the 10 cards in this pack scored points, for a total of 7 points. Ken Griffey Sr. is the star card here, as the only player to make multiple All-Star teams. Ironically, Jesse Barfield is best remembered for his time with the Blue Jays, but suffers for ending his career as a Yankee.

7 points seems like a fairly easy point total to surpass. Can our second pack do it?
 

Pack #2


Mike Jackson - 1 point (Now With)
Ozzie Guillen - 3 points (3x All-Star)
Mike Boddicker - 1 point (All-Star)
Mike Flanagan - 2 points (All-Star, Cy Young Award winner)
Frank Tanana - 3 points (3x All-Star)
 
Al Shirley, Kirk Dressendorfer, Jim Olander, Tracy Jones, Bobby Rose - 0 points
 
Despite having basically the same number of cards scoring points, our second pack is led by multiple All-Stars Ozzie Guillen and Frank Tanana as well as former Cy Young winner Mike Flanagan. (I forgot he won the award - thank goodness for Baseball-Reference.com!)  
 
Pack #2 scores 10 points, and wins the day!

In all honesty, these two packs were pretty "meh". I'm hoping the other two packs have a little more thunder in them. We shall see!

8 comments:

  1. I thought you had gotten OPC Premier. Base OPC is more fun. Are there cards in the '92 OPC set that are not in the Topps set?

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    Replies
    1. The 92 OPC base set has 4 cards in a Gary Carter tribute. I have a factory set.

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    2. For some reason, OPC didn't include the 22 All-Star cards from the Topps set. In addition to the Carter tribute subset, they filed those numbers with other players.

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  2. Ahh Mike Flanagan.. The Bird Sandwich. Oriole bread with Blue Jay meat..

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  3. The Orioles had a good run of Cy Young Awards. Six in a twelve-year span.

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  4. Creative pack war. I like the "Now With" and Canadian team bonuses.

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  5. Will any of these be appearing in the Time Travel trade posts?

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  6. I wasn't planning on it, but if there's something you want I'd be open to trading it. Make me an offer!

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