Fave Five: Birthday Hobby Box

After a long 12-hour day at work, it sure was nice to get home to find that my 2006 Bowman Chrome hobby box had arrived days earlier than I expected it to.  Since it arrived so quickly, I thought I'd send out a big thank you to California Sports Cards.  They had the cheapest boxes on Amazon (I bought from here because I had a gift card to here from my sister for my birthday) and they got the box to me almost three days before I was expecting it to arrive.  All around great service.

The reason I bought this box was because Luke Hochevar is the cover boy (even though his cards aren't in this release, which is a gripe for another time).

I had to have this box and wrapper for my Hochevar collection.  I'd also like to eventually add the HTA box to my collection since it's a bit of a different design.

While I couldn't look forward to pulling a Hochevar card, there were plenty of other cards to make this break very fun.

There were base cards:

There were gold cards:

And plenty of prospect cards:

But my Fave Five cards are the following:

FIVE -- Coloradoan Sean Thompson

Born and raised just 30-miles east of my hometown, Sean was a year younger than me in high school.  Pulling this card has renewed my interest in my Colorado Collection, where I collect an auto of players born and/or raised in Colorado.  It looks like Sean has a handful of autographs on the market, so I may have to start another player collection for him.

FOUR:  Colorado Refractor

Serial numbered 242/500.  If I'm going to pull a refractor, might as well be a Rockies player, no?

THREE:  Blue Bordered Beauty

Serial numbered 114/500.

TWO:  Orange You Glad You Bought This Box?

Serial numbered 076/250.

ONE:  Guaranteed Auto

A third parallel that should be easily traded away?  Can't beat that with a 10-foot pole or a bag of cats.  It's not serial numbered, but it is hard signed, which is always great. 

Also of note, this auto was pulled out of the first pack my wife opened, thereby continuing her streak of pulling all the guaranteed autos from my hobby boxes. 

Everything pictured above, except for the box and wrapper and Thompson card, are available for trade, as are the rest of the cards pulled.  I'll probably be using them as filler for any team collectors I trade with in the future.

All in all, it was a great box to open and thanks to my sister for the gift card that helped buy this box.  I should be getting the rest of my birthday gift card loot in the mail throughout the week and will be posting them as they trickle in.