Pardon My Chrome

If you were to make a list of the recent product that deserve to be on the chopping block it would be 2010 Topps Chrome. As anyone who has opened it knows, the quality of the cards is one of the worst ever as the cards are warped and each card requires a top loader if you want to add it to your collection.

The only way a person could possibly pardon 2010 Chrome from execution is at a steep discount. And that's exactly what I found at Walmart during my late night Thanksgiving day visit: a 2010 Chrome blaster for $11.98. This bring the blaster to $1.50 per badly-warped-pack.

I''ll spare you the base cards and just get into the inserts. There were no autographs in the blaster and in total I pulled seven inserts breaking down into one purple refractor, three regular refractors, and three x-fractors. My purple refractor is of Jon Link who spent the 2011 pitching in AAA as a middle reliever. Last year he was considered the 30th best prospect in the Dodgers system.

#173 John Link RC Purple Refreactor 587/599

And my three refractors are of Joe Saunders, Tim Lincecum, and a rare Cliff Lee as a Mariner refractor. Since going 17-7 and 16-7 in 2008 and 2009 Joe has had two rough seasons with Angels and Diamondbacks.

And now we come to my personal favorite, the X-Fractors. It turned out all three cards were of players with health problems. Kendry Morales missed nearly all of the 2010 season with a broken leg and he missed all of 2011 due to problems with his rehabilitation of the 2010 injury.

#56 Kendry Morales X-Fractor

After missing the 2010 season with a torn medial collateral ligament Daniel Murphy had a great start to 2011. He was batting .320 over 109 games until he again injured his MCL and was out for the rest of the season.

#33 Daniel Murphy X-Fractor

Brennan finished fifth in the Rookie of the Year voting last year and was off to a great start to 2011 until he needed surgery on this thumb and had to miss the rest of the season.