2018 Contenders Football Fanatics Exclusive Blaster Box

2018 Contenders Football:  The Blowoutbuzz Blog alerted me to these Fanatics.com exclusive blaster boxes.  As a fan of Contenders I jumped on one.  This blaster has 88 total cards but a relic or auto is not guaranteed like the standard blasters which have only 40 cards in them.  Autographs are still a possibility at one in five of these blasters.  So there is a trade off and you'll have to decide if this works for you.

With the small set size (100) these exclusive blasters can get you well on the way to a complete set.

That also means there are plenty of stars to be had in each pack.

  The defense gets some love as well.

Plenty of great great hands in these three cards.

Plenty of inserts to be had.  That Sony Michel is a ruby parallel.

The Lamar Jackson is a ruby parallel as well and that Legendary Contenders is my first time pulling one of those inserts.  I like them and might chase the set.

  This was a fun box.  I thought my pull was good and with plenty of stars and some nice inserts.  Really glad I picked one of these up.

BREAKDOWN:

88 – Total Cards
4 – Round Numbers
4 – Rookie of the Year Contenders
3 – MVP Contenders
2 – Ruby Parallel
1 – Team Quads

2018 Contenders Football Blaster Box

I always look forward to the Contenders brands so I was excited to see the 2018 Contenders football at my local Wal-Mart yesterday.  I picked up a blaster box which is a high price for 40 cards but you will pull a relic or autograph.  Mine was a Nick Chubb Rookie Ticket green parallel relic which you can see below. While not my favorite Contenders design I do like these cards.  The hobby boxes are expensive but boast five autographs and from what I've seen there are some pretty nice looking autographs to include some past greats of the game.  While that would be fun I just don't see myself picking one of those up anytime soon as they currently sit at just over $200.  Last year's hobby boxes are already near $400.  I'm sure the draw of Patrick Mahomes rookie ink is the huge draw there.  This was a fun box with plenty of stars and few inserts were good as well.  There will be more of these in my future.       

I had a great pull.  I haven't been able to track down a checklist for the set but my pull was very star heavy for 40 cards.  Last year's base set was 100 cards and I'd bet this years isn't much different.

There were was one insert per each eight card pack (not including the relic).  I like the Rookie of the Year and MVP Contenders cards.  Nice designs and I pulled a Tom Brady MVP Contender to throw into the personal collection.

  The backs aren't anything special but colorful.  While they take the easy way out using the same photo from the front, they do add the photo background here which makes it different enough to say good job.

The numbers stand for the following: 

Section - Weight

Row - Height (first number is feet/next #(s) are inches )  i.e. 511 is 5 feet 11 inches

Seat - Uniform Number

So I will definitely pick up more of these though I may look at the fat packs which have 22 cards in each.  Buying four packs would give you 88 cards for the same price of a blaster though no promise of a relic or auto.

Nick Chubb, the Georgia Bulldog alum and Cleveland Brown 2nd round pick, is having a good year.  He's averaging 5.3 yards per carry for a total of 760 yards.  He didn't make his first start until week 5 and has already had a career high of 176 rushing yards.  Unfortunately that was in a win against my Falcons.

BREAKDOWN:

40 - Total Cards

2 - MVP Contenders

2 - Rookie of the Year Contenders

1 - Round Numbers

1 - Rookie Ticket Green Parallel Relic