Turkey Red Prospectus

I've spent valuable time that I just don't have breaking down the Turk Off in an effort to bore everybody to tears. What follows is the result of that resounding success. Here are the Turk Off stats.

Sure, I won the Turk Off. But did I really win? Or did I just get lucky with some timely ripping? Let's be honest, if I'm Turking Off against anyone but Beardy I lose because their favorite player isn't Markakis. So who's box was really better? Let's see if we can find out.

Quick scoring adjustment: I screwed up. In pack #1 I didn't count Chase Wright against myself. He's a Yankee. That's -1 point. It does not affect the outcome. Sorry about that.

Base Set: 186 Cards (or 185, depending on how you look at it. I will explain)

Beardy: 155/186 = 83.3%
doubles: 19

MS: 139/186 = 74.7%
doubles: 35

total: 158/186 = 84.9%
doubles: 87
triples: 46
quadruples: 3

conclusions: Beardy pulled a much higher percentage of the total set. If you are a set collector then his is the box to bust. In fact my box would have only yielded an extra 3 base cards toward the set. There is very little value in busting more than one box of this if you are interested only in the base set.

One thing that is interesting is that I pulled 1 more card than Beardy. This is because one of my packs with the Relic had 8 cards instead of 7. I didn't realize this at the time. Normal packs have 8 cards but relic packs only have 7. This took a little over 28 hours for me to figure out. It was driving me absolutely bonkers. I was ready to stick my finger in a socket to restart my brain. You have no idea how frustrating it is to have the numbers off by 1 and not know why. (And to know that it doesn't matter, not even a little bit, to anyone but yourself.) But you Just. Can't. Let. It. Go.

Missing:

Beardy: 31 cards - all of them SPs

MS: 47 cards - 16 regular base cards 31 SPs

Total: 27 missing - all of them SPs

Conclusions: Beardy pulled every card possible that wasn't an SP. Here is another thing that hung me up for a while. At first I thought that there was 1 regular card that we both missed...#112 Ramon Hernandez. But, I thought I remembered seeing on Beardys break. Sure enough, Beardy has Ramon Hernandez listed as #67. #67 is actually Chase Wright (Yankee Puke). I concluded that Beardy mistakenly wrote the wrong number on his post and in fact does have every regular card.

The other card that caused me trouble was #56 Chase Utley. This is not listed as a short print. It is an Ad Back. However, unlike every other Ad Back card, this does not have an analogous regular base card. This card ONLY exists as an Ad Back. You cannot pull the #56 Chase Utley Card without it being an Ad Back. Strange. I have no idea why Topps did this. What it accomplished is throwing me for a loop for a significant amount of time that could be used NOT giving my wife MORE grounds for divorce than she already has.

Obviously Beardy's box has the edge in this aspect.

SPs:

Beardy: 5/35 - Kurt Suzuki, Carlos Lee, Chase Utley, Dallas Braden, Todd Helton

MS: 5/35 - Mickey Mantle, Kurt Suzuki, Carlos Zambrano, Mark Buehrle, Eric Byrnes

Total 9/35 - Only double is Kurt Suzuki which, as Beardy pointed out, is a great looking card

If you are busting boxes to get to the SPs then it would be beneficial to bust more than one. I don't know how many boxes it would take for the law of diminishing returns to kick in, but I know it's more than 2.

I have to call this one a tie. I just don't know how to judge who go the better of the SPs. My first inclination would be to give it to myself because of the Mantle. But, Utley, Helton, and maybe even Lee are all better than anything else I got. So I'm calling it a draw.

Ad Backs:

Beardy: Miguel Cabrera

MS: Johan Santana

Conclusions: The only conclusion I have here is that we got screwed on Ad Backs. The players we pulled are both good so I'm calling it a draw.

I'm not going to complain too much, though, because if they took out Ad Backs and put in Silks and Black Refractors then we definitely came out ahead.

Yankees:

Beardy: 18 cards

MS: 25 cards

Conclusions: This includes all Yankees...Mantle, Jeter, and A-Rod too. Unless you are Drew, Sooz, or any of the other nameless rabble of brainwashed fans, Beardy has a decided edge in this category. It's not even close. I knew I was pulling a lot of Yankees.

Mantles:

Beardy: 6

MS: 7

Conclusions: This is closer than I thought. I thought I was going to kill Beardy in this category but it's rather close.

The question becomes whether it's better to get more Mantles...or is it better to get less? I refuse to let a baseball card company ruin the thrill of pulling one of the greatest players of all time. If you would be pumped to pull a vintage Mantle then this should be no different. So I get the edge due to having more cards and one of them being the SP, which unlike Beardy, I think looks rather nice.

Major Stars:

Beardy: 20

MS: 20

Conclusions: Dead even, just like the Turk Off. This is probably the reason it came down to the wire. Nobody pulled more cards of the stars. I know that we need to put more thought into the list next time, but it is what it is.

Negative player pulls:

Beardy: 5

MS: 5

Conclusions: This is the list of 5 players that were negative points for no reason whatsoever. We both pulled them all once. Even Steven (or Stephen I suppose).

Home Teams:

Beardy: 5 Orioles 2 Indians

MS: 2 Orioles 2 Indians

Conclusions: Another category that Beardy has a decided edge in. Actually 5 Orioles is probably a pretty good haul.

Silks:

Beardy: Cole Hamels

MS: Josh Beckett

Conclusions: The odds that I found are that these are 1:85 to pull so we both did very well. To tell the truth, I would call it a tie in any other situation. But, I had to go and put up that pole and Hamels got the slight edge with 5 votes to 3 and another 3 votes calling it a tie. Of course those 5 Hamels votes were probably Beardy at home, at work, at his parents, at his neighbors, and at the strip club...but I can't prove it. Another advantage Beardy.

I'm still pumped as hell that I pulled that silk, though.

President Cards:

Beardy: James Polk and George Washington

MS: Benjamin Harrison and Abe Lincoln

Conclusions: Another draw. I tried to think of a reason to give this to myself but I just can't. We both got an all star and a solid #7 hitter. As even as it could be.

ARod Road to 500:

Beardy: #325

MS: #321

Conclusions: I'm giving myself the win here because 321 is divisible by 3 and 325 is not. Also Beardy made a huge stink about this. Actually, he was just trying to get as many points as he could...just like any good Turker Offer would. Commish Dayf wasn't having it and soon sanity was restored. Nobody wins with these cards. But, I need SOMETHING about my box to be better.

Chrome:

Beardy: 6 - Jeff Kent, Fransisco Rodriguez, Carlos Beltran, Mark Teahen, Johan Santana, Andy Pettite

MS: 6 - Jeff Kent, Chipper Jones, Johan Santana, Carlos Beltran, JD Drew, Alex Rios

Conclusions: It comes down to Rodriguez, Teahen, and Pettite vs Jones, Drew, and Rios. It's a tough call but I'm giving it to myself. Drew and Petitte are about a wash. I personally like Rios over Teahen, and Chipper over Fransisco Rod is a no-brainer. Close, But my box is better here.

Chrome Refractor:

Beardy: 3 Vlad Guerrero, Yovanni Gallardo, Roger Clemens

MS: 3 Jason Schmidt, David Ortiz, David Eckstein

Conclusions: Man this is close. If anyone can come up with a reason that one is better I'm all ears. Until then this is a push.

Chrome Black Refractor:

Beardy: Hideki Okajima

MS: Nick Markakis

Conclusions: MS in a landslide here. Not even close. This card is the sole reason that I won the Turk Off.

Cabinet:

Beardy: Michael Young

MS: Johan Santana

Conclusions: I win this little battle. Santana smears Young. The only problem is now I have this Ginormous card that I have no idea what to do with. Of course, I have that problem with Santana. Beardy has the same problem but with Michael Young, so I still win.


Overall Thoughts:

Beardy's box was better. Hands down. Our pulls were very similar, but it wasn't even close as far as base set and doubles. Plus, I had to put up with a significant amount of Yankees over what Beardy dealt with.

There you go. There's the numbers.

If anyone has bothered to read or at least skim this whole damn thing please leave a comment so I know that I didn't spend 197 hours of my life compiling this only to have nobody read it. If you don't think it would take very long, look at the posts and try to think of how you would go about figuring out who had doubles of what and how many base cards were pulled yada yada yada. Then think about how many little compiling mistakes you would make and have to go back to figure out why the numbers don't work and are off by 1 or 2.

I have no idea why I did this.