Redeemed from Retail Purgatory: 2011 Topps Lineage Blaster

So, the $11.99 Blaster corner and Wal-Mart proved too strong to resist, and I came home with another Retail Redemption. This came in the form of a 2011 Topps Lineage box.

 7 Packs per blaster box, 8 cards per pack. One Bonus Pack. Everybody knows the drill.

Pack 1:
#2, Deh-ruk Jeet-ah, Numba 2.
19 Larry Walker
26 Grady Sizemore
148 Aroldis Chapman Diamond Parallel
14 Tsuyoshi Nishioka Topps Rookies (I still cannot resist repeating this name over and over. Su-YO-shi Nish-i-OKA, Su-YO-shi Nish-i-OKA...)
174 Adam Jones
183 Brian McCann (First Brave! Nice!)

 192 Willie McCovey Gold Rookie Cup

Pack 2:
37 Justin Upton
45 Ryan Howard (I cannot pity the Phillies one mite as they continue to morph into baseball's version of the Celtics)
57 Willie McCovey (2 McCoveys? Huh. Okay...)
168 Delmon Young '75 Mini
81 Andruw Jones (Not [yet] sorry the Braves passed on Jones in 2009 or whenever he was a FA last...Jason Heyward, don't prove me wrong!)
155 Bob Gibson
150 Robinson Cano
136 Starlin Castro

Pack the Third:
71 Kurt Suzuki
82 Ike Davis
91 Brent Morel RC
99 Honus Wagner (So now anyone who collects Lineage can say they have a Honus Wagner baseball card, I guess.)

 190 Bert Blyleven Platinum Diamond Parallel (Actually a pretty sharp card. Why couldn't this have been in the base set instead of Cognac?)

This scanned really poorly-sorry about that.

 127 Orlando Hudson
119 Matt Cain
110 Thurmon Munson
Checklist 3/4 (Yawn.)

4th Pack:
52 Andre Dawson

48 Carlton Fisk
34 Kyle Drabek RC
NNO Jason Heyward 3-D (NNO doesn't mean it's rare in this case, it means I have no earthly idea how this card is catalogued in the parallel set)

 144 Roy Campanella
159 Yonder Alonso RC
170 Tom Seaver
176 Miguel Tejada

Pack Quinque:
59 Duke Snider
70 Carlos Santana
83 Adam Wainwright
93 Roy Oswalt (No MLB team cares that Roy is currently a free agent. They're clearly trying to see how long he'll go before he cracks, while Jim Thome, Jamie Moyer, and Dontrelle Willis play on. This sick game is almost certainly known by team executives as "Beg for a minor league contract or Dye.")
165 Jose Reyes '75 Mini
149 Kevin Youkilis (I love his batting stance)
140 Albert Belle
126 Shin-soo Choo (Another name that is fun to pronounce! Hours of fun that proclaim to the world, "I have no life!")

Pack -3(-9+7)
58 Gordon Beckham
50 Lou Gherig
47 Lance Berkman
22 Johan Santana Platinum Parallel
NNO Stand-Up Brooks Robinson (I am really tempted to try to pop the card up. If it was a Met, I definitely would.)
115 CHIPPA! Yessss!!!!!!

105 Ty Cobb (If Ty Cobb played today, would we really like him less than LeBron James? I have my doubts.)

122 Paul O'Neill (I get emails from this guy's foundation for stuff. They come so rarely that it's not TOO annoying, but just enough to nag. I guess I'm waiting for the promo where his organization gives away free jerseys, or cards, or game-used shoelaces, or game-used chewing gum. Okay, I'm definitely kidding myself...except maybe for the chewing gum part.)

Pack 7:

38 Chris Carpenter
24 Tsuyoshi Nishioka RC (...Su-YO-shi Nish-i-OKA...)
12 Elvis Andrus (No way Rangers teammates ever ask him to sing for stuff he leaves behind in the locker room. Never.)
TC515 Mike Schmidt Cloth Card
128 Vernon Wells 128
139 Michael Pineda RC
147 Ryan Braun
160 Stephen Strasburg (Niiicce.)

Overall, a nice batch of cards. It's not quite 50-50 retired vs active, but that's not too much of a problem. The design is sharp, even if it is just a variation of every base card Topps has had in the last 4 years. I like the set.

Last, but not least, a bonus pack:

75R-OS Ozzie Smith game-used bat card

This is pretty cool, even if it's not from any game, season, or afternoon tea party. Will Topps ever number these one-per-box relics? I would be really interested in how many shards of wood are floating around from this bat. Huh.