2004 Topps Finest Box Break - The Hits

It's time to wrap this box break up, and there's really only one thing left to be shown.... the "hits". Nothing too impressive came out of this box, but I did walk away with 9 cards worthy of penny sleeves, 4 of which are top loader worthy as well. Really, that's not too bad for a $45 box, and this, coupled with the amount of fun I had ripping these packs, left me feeling like I got my money's worth. My only gripe is that each mini box only contained 1 refractor, leaving me with a total of 3. As a comparison, '09 Finest provides at least 1 refractor per pack, or pretty darn close to it.

Here are the 3 that I was able to pull:

Scott Posednik

Jose Vidro

Adam Dunn

Each mini box also contained 1 game used relic. While I was hoping to pull one of the Star relics, which is an entirely different subset, what I ended up pulling were 3 regular ol' relic cards, 2 of which leave much to be desired.

Kaz Ishii

I had to look this guy up on Baseball Reference. It almost wasn't worth it.

Rafael Palmeiro

I was a bit giddy over pulling an Orioles hit, and in '04 would have been pretty jazzed to see the Italian Stallion in all his mustachioed glory. That was before the Congressional hearing, and before the lies. None of that however, is going to change the fact that this card is staying in my team collection.

Delmon Young

This is the second Delmon hit I've pulled in 2009. Leave me alone Mr. Young!

Onward to the autographs! The box odds state that I should have pulled 2, and that's exactly what transpired. After looking over the rookie autograph checklist, there's only a few players listed who actually panned out, and are still in the Majors. By a few, I mean like 3 or 4 out of 15 or so, meaning that odds are, unless I luck out and pull a Finest Moments auto, that I'll be stuck with 2 worthless rookies. Well, I did sort of luck out, because even though I pulled 2 rookie autos, only one of them is worthless.

Travis Blackley

Uhhhhh..... who?

Dioner Navarro refractor

Never have I ever been so excited to receive the signature of a marginal Major League player. Navarro didn't have a very good season last year, which was a shame considering the tear he was on in 2008. It was a bit of a shock to see him in pinstripes, and I am going to go out on a limb here and guess that the Yankees traded him before he was given a chance, in order to acquire an aging ex-star who they will overpay. Ha! I just looked it up, and he was traded to the Dodgers in the deal that brought Randy Johnson to the Big Apple. Go figure!

Along with the 3 mini boxes, each master box also comes with an individually packaged, and already encased gold x-fractor. A box topper of sorts I guess, although technically it's on the side, and not on top. Some of them are autographed, some are not, and after opening the rest of this box first, I almost felt like fate owed me a decent pull here. It had potential to be epic, instead it turned out to be....

Bill Mueller

Mr. Flash In The Pan himself! This was probably a sweet pull in 2004, but in 2009 it's but a bittersweet memory of an incredible season, which is what Mueller had in 2004.

So there you have it, one master box of 2004 Finest, busted, scanned & reviewed half-assedly just for you. All cards are for trade if anyone is interested, but I must warn you, if you're interested in the Blackley auto, it'll cost ya!

2004 Topps Finest Break - The Doubles

Out of 1 master box, which contains 3 individually wrapped mini boxes, each one containing 6 packs of 5 "super premium" cards I pulled this many doubles:



And ZERO Orioles base cards. 14 sets of doubles? That's nearly 3 whole packs worth of doubles. If I were good at math, I would tell you that out of 90 cards, 14 of them were doubles, which gives you some ridiculously high percentage rate of worthlessness for my dollar. I'm not good at math, so you'll have to figure it out for yourself. You don't need to be a mathmagician to know that this is too many doubles from 1 master box. At least I have 2 Griffeys.

2004 Topps Finest Box Break - The Stars

Specifically base cards of the stars. It's like one of those Hollywood tour maps. '04 Finest Base Cards of The Stars. I'm going to give you this one for free, but next time it'll cost you. These are fancy base cards, and I really dig the design. This is only the second Finest product I've ever opened, the first being this year's release. I've checked plenty of Finest breaks on the ol' innernets, and honestly, I was a little disappointed when I posted my first box break ever (which just happened to be '09 Finest). It's not that this year's release isn't very nice, because it certainly is, and I loved it at the time, but something about it just didn't live up to what I had imagined Finest would feel like. This is what I thought Finest would feel like, and my friends, it is a beautiful thing.

That having been said, there were some things about this box that I definitely didn't like. None of them have to do with aesthetics.

I've already used the word Finest way too many times in this post. A concerted effort will be made to not use it again, but I make no promises.

On with the show!

Does it get much FINER than Junior Griffey?

Can't believe this guy is only 26. It feels like he's been around forever already.

Can you believe a guy that little has an arm that strong? This is a nice card, and one of the few Ichiros in my collection. Like the others that came before it, I'm sure this one will be traded away shortly as well.

That is one mighty FINE Pujols card right there. Like Ichiro, Albert has a way of coming and going as well. I shall cherish this one while I've still got it.

One of the things I enjoyed most about opening this box was seeing lots of familiar faces. Even though I recognized the player, something wasn't quite right about the whole situation. I didn't follow baseball from 1997-postseason 2007 (yeah, I rooted for the Sox, and it was the best postseason I've ever witnessed. Traitorous indeed), so there was either limited or no recollection of the following:

Manny with short hair.........

Vlad with no facial hair (too bad he's not an Expo)......

Does the font used for the player names remind anyone else of Topps Unique?

There were NO Orioles base cards to be had in this entire box. Not one! There's only like 3 or so on the checklist to begin with, so the odds stacked against me from the start.

There's more to come from this box break, so stay tuned. It might be tonight, it might be tomorrow. Depends on how much sleep I want to get before work tomorrow morning. Think I just made it through the rest of this post without using the word Finest again.

Dammit. Totally schruted that one, didn't I?

2004 Topps Finest Box Break

Will most likely be posted tomorrow.

I will tell you this much right now. My box didn't contain anything otherworldly (or even this worldly) awesome, but it was still really exciting to open, mainly because I knew almost nothing about this particular vintage of Finest. Five years ago probably isn't old to some of you, but I wasn't even following baseball in 2004, let alone collecting cards. It was cool to bust a box from my "lost years" and a lot of names in this box look familiar, from past & present.

Oh, and I will tell you this too. Scans of Finest base cards never do them justice. Tis a pity, really. Read that last sentence over with a snooty British accent please. You don't have to do it out loud, but at least do it once or twice in your head.... Fine, but you just ruined the joke.

Is anyone else missing the commentary audio for the game on NFL Network?