McCovey Monday #28 - 2012 Panini Cooperstown Box Break

My favorite player of all time is Hall of Famer Willie McCovey.  I have amassed a collection of over 1100 different  McCovey cards since I started collecting him in the late 1980s.  I will show off one of my favorite cards every Monday.  Stretch was one of the most feared hitters of all time and I am excited to show off my collection.

This week I am going to merge a box break post with a McCovey Monday post and you will see why by the end of the post!  With work demands trying to get caught up for my almost 6 week work vacation and the arrival of our new baby girl, it has been a few weeks since I have done a McCovey Monday post.  This recent McCovey get inspired me to get back on track.

So lets start with the box break.  I am not going to post or comment much on the base cards.  I already shared my thoughts in a pack break review found here.  I pulled 86 of the 150 base cards and 2 of the 20 colorized SPs.  Here are the 2 colorized ones:

There are a ton of different insert sets in this product.  I will share all the different ones I pulled from this box break along with my thoughts:

The top 3 cards are prints of the bronze plaques that are featured at the Baseball HOF. They are serial numbered to 599.  There are 100 in the set and I think they are very cool with a nice simple design. Getting 3 of these per box and knowing the serial numbers allows me to do some quick math to figure out how many boxes were produced (100 cards X 599 of each card = 59900 total cards / 3 cards/box = 19,967 boxes which probably would round to 20,000 boxes as a print run) These are reminiscent of the postcards they sell at the HOF gift shop.  The middle 3 are titled Credentials and highlight the induction year and some of the player's career and season accomplishments.  There are 19 cards in this insert set.  The bottom 3 are Famous Moments inserts and showcase a photo of a piece of HOF memorabilia that was used in a famous moment in baseball history.  There are 20 cards in this insert set.

Scan 2 starts with 2 High Praise inserts that have a quote about a HOFer.  I really like these quotes and the design of the cards.  I now have doubles of the Yogi if anyone is interested in trading for one.  There are also 20 in this set.  Line 2 is Field Generals and show some of baseball's best catchers.  This insert set features 10 of the 13 HOF catchers. Nice design here as well with an photo in full gear along with a head shot.  Next up is the Hall History insert set.  This is a 10 card set that shows scenes at the HOF throughout its history. Having visited it and read a couple books about the HOF history, I really like this set as well.  This scan finished with 2 Voices of Summer inserts that showcase 10 different Hall of Fame announcers. 

This scan starts with 2 The Village inserts.  These cards display many of the scenic areas in Cooperstown Village.  It is a beautiful place and these cards show some nice photography.  Again, another 10 card insert set.  The two baseballs are from the Museum Pieces insert set.  This one is a 20 card insert set. Not sure if they are all baseballs but these two show Ernie Banks and Mel Ott's 500th baseballs - very cool!  The final 3 shown here showcase old time Ballparks.  This is a 10 card set and very nice looking.

The Mike Schmidt and Brooks Robinson cards are 2 of the 25 Induction inserts.  The backs have a short quote from their induction speech and show a picture of the player on their induction day.  The Ted Williams is from the final insert set With Honors. It is a 10 card set with some of the baseball HOFers who served in the military.  Finally I showed my 3 Crystal Collection parallels, this is a 170 card parallel set to the base set and are serial numbered to 299.

I am fairly certain I am going after the 150 card base set and may extend it to the 170 card set with the colorized cards.  I am strongly considering chasing many, if not all the insert sets.  If I can find a reasonably priced lot of the Crystal Collection parallels, I may even go after my first ever parallel set.  If you can't tell by now, I am fallen pretty hard for this set.

One set I will not be going for from this is HOF Classes Induction Year.  These were supposed to be manufactured patches and were a late replacement. They look wood-like and are about the same width of a regular card. I found it funny that some of the packs had white decoys when none of the cards were different widths.  I pulled one of the better ones of Joe Dimaggio but I am not impressed.

And finally the "hit" of the box and the reason this post is going up on a Monday:

I am still in shock as I have never pulled an Auto of my favorite player from a pack.  This is a great looking card with an on card auto.  His auto has deteriorated over the years as he has aged but this one looks pretty nice.  This is also one of the shorted printed autos and is serial numbered to only 99 copies. I bought this box the day after my baby girl was born as kind of a present to myself and it ended up being a very nice gift. 

One of my best pulls ever and perfect to inspire me to get back in the McCovey Monday groove.