Do you like Buzz Breaks? Today’s your day then as we launch 12 in 12 — a series of a dozen breaks of past wax boxes and wax packs in a dozen hours. We’ll post one every hour on the hour all day long today … this is Hour 10.
The box: 2014 Topps U.S. Winter Olympic & Paralympic Team and Hopefuls (blaster)
The cost: BlowoutCards.com
What’s inside this one? Keep reading …
Packs per box: 8
Cards per pack: 10
Cards in this box: 80
Base set completion:
64 of 100 (64 percent)
Duplicates: 0
Notables on base cards – Lindsey Vonn, Lolo Jones, Gretchen Bleiler, Bode Miller, Meryl Davis, Noelle Pikus-Pace, Julia Mancuso, Gracie Gold, Caydee Denney, Travis Ganong, Ted Ligety, Steven Holcomb, Max Aaron, Louie Vito, Alex Shibutani, Alana Nichols, Dylan Ferguson, Lindsey Jacobellis, Hilary Knight
Inserts: 15 (all in gallery below with notable base)
Gold parallel (1) – Jessica Schultz
Silver parallel (4) – Heather McPhie, Maia Shibutani, Curt Tomasevicz, Bobby Brown
Bronze parallel (8) – Bode Miller, Max Aaron, Justin Reiter, Monique Lamoureux, Keri Herman, Jazmine Fenlator, John Daly, Lindsey Van
Games of the XXII Olympiad (1) – Luge (Erin Hamlin)
Olympic Heritage (1) – 1992 Opening Ceremony (Albertville, France)
Autographs/Memorabilia: 1
Autographs (1) – Amy Purdy
What’s Buzz-worthy: With a hit in every box — a hit of some type between autographs, Relics and manufactured Relics — there’s potential for a good return in these boxes if you pull a rarer card or a big name. And this box shows that those autos are definitely possible. The ink here comes from Amy Purdy, who has a remarkable story of how she nearly died at age 19 but then became won a Bronze at the 2014 games as a double-leg amputee competing in snowboarding. She’s since appeared in a Super Bowl commercial and on Dancing With the Stars among other credits. These boxes had been plentiful around the time of release but have since dried up quite a bit. The only copy of her auto card on eBay has an asking price of $25, while you can expect to pay plenty more for ink of stars such as Lindsey Vonn, Gracie Gold, Meryl Davis and plenty more found in these boxes. There are a lot of non-household names in the base set, but it’s well-crafted with a simple and effective type of parallels. It seems you get a lot of stuff in blasters with ink starting one in every 38 packs. Relics start at one in 22. With the new Winter Olympics set arriving this month with a new crop of names and past legends in tow, this one might be an affordable alternative if you didn’t dig in in the past or want to dabble a bit more cheaply. Memorable TV moments during the Olympics can lead to huge autograph demand seemingly out of nowhere so during the Games and leading up to them is the time to rip — and the newest Winter Olympics competition is less than a month away.
Product Grade: A
Box Grade: A
Fun Grade: A-
What’s next? Be back in an hour …
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