Welcome to another edition of Bustin' Wax. After a week at the Hawaii Trade Conference (in Phoenix?), I'm a little behind with this blog and I apologize.

Some initial feedback received thus far requests per pack and per box pricing, along with some scans of best pulls. The pricing will be taken care of no problem. As for the scans, I'll usually add them later because I like to post the findings quickly, and sometimes scanning takes a little bit to get finished. With that, let's roll.

Today's feature: Upper Deck 2008 Baseball Spectrum
-  5 cards per pack (about $7.50 at hobby outlets)
- 20 packs per box (about $135 per box)

My initial thoughts on opening this product is that the set definitely lives up to its name. Flashy colors dazzle in the light, so kids will like it. The parallels really stand out. Backside stats cover the last eight years, which is something I like (entire career listings are even better).

Here's what we found:

• 2 autographed cards: Rookie sigs of Bill White (Rangers) and Lance Broadway (White Sox). This lives up to the two autographs per box average.
• 7 Spectrum Swatches: Way more than the two memorabilia cards per box average. Pulls include:
• Jorge Posada (numbered to 20)
• Joba Chamberlain (numbered to 35)
• Jose Reyes (numbered to 50)
• Jerad Weaver (numbered to 75)
• Adrian Beltre  (numbered to 75)
• Chris Carpenter  (numbered to 75)
• Andruw Jones (numbered to 99)
• 6 Derek Jeter Retrospectrum cards (including a parallel numbered to 99)
• 5 orange parallels numbered to 399: Ken Griffey Jr., Barry Zito, Aramis Ramirez, David Wright and Victor Martinez.
• 5 Yankee Stadium Legacy cards
• 2 Spectrum of Stars (better than the one-per-box average): Autos of musicians Steven Sweet of Warrant and Miljenko Matijevic of Steelheart.

Wow, this was an action-packed box. I'm guessing not all boxes are like this, but it was fun opening. I don't know about anyone else, but I get a little excited seeing swatches with such low runs.

As for the musicians, well, I wasn't expecting that, and I'm not sure those two in particular added much to the box for me. but it's something different I guess.

Here are some pix:

Welcome to the latest Bustin' Wax feature. We're going to try and update more on this site, as suggested by some of you. There is a lot of product coming out, so we'll get it posted so you can share your thoughts on the product, too.

Today's Feature: 2008 Topps Finest Baseball
- 5 cards per pack
- 3 six-pack mini boxes per box (18 packs total)

First off, and this might be just me, but all of the cards are already curved straight out of the packaging. What happened to flat cards?


Here's what we found in this box:

• 3 autographed cards; Mark Ellis, Josh Anderson and Chris Seddon (living up to the one auto card per mini box promise). The Anderson auto is also a blue refractor numbered to 399.
• 4 Blue Refractors (numbered to 299): Vladimir Guerrero (Finest Moments), J.J. Hardy, Seth Smith and Chris Young.
• 2 Green Refrractors (numbered to 199): Tom Glavine and Noah Lowry.
• 1 Black Refractor (numbered to 99): Joba Chamberlain.
• 1 Gold Refractor (numbered to 50): Brian Bannister (Finest Moments).
• 1 Rookie Redemption Card (#5 of 10). Topps just announced the first one in the Redemption Set - Johnny Cueto. These will be mailed out after Aug. 30.

We also received nine other Finest Moments cards and six Topps Team Favorites cards. I don't mind the Team Favorites cards with the color team logos in the background. Younger audiences will really like that.

Overall this is a decent product. Nice, thick cards with good photography. The backs have a Finest Moment for the player from 2007, with the rookies having their "moment" in the minors.

These cards have a nice sheen, too, but don't look for patches and such. Now if we can get some of these cards without the curved features, all the better.

As a side note, I'll work on getting some photos up on here, too. But for the first batch, I just wanted to get the ball rolling.