August Card Show Pickups : 2007 Masterpieces Break

I'll highlight one of the two boxes I picked up from the show here. I picked up this box for $40 but they usually go for $60, and as most of you know, these are probably the most beautiful base cards you'll ever see. Each card is printed on a canvas stock and is an artist's representation. Instead of a set based on players, each card is based on a moment in baseball history (even though the card names on the back are often players). The most beautiful and important cards in the set are the historical ones of players like Ripken, Lou Gehrig, Jackie Robinson, Yogi Berra, and many others. Even though I'm a newer collector and have always preferred football, each card draws me in and makes me want to research the event on the card.

First of all, here is the box topper:

Simply unbelievable. The card is ridiculously beautiful. If you're an Indians fan, even though Victor Martinez now plays for the Tigers, please contact me about a trade because you have to have this card in your collection.

My two numbered inserts were the Walter Johnson (#15/50) and Lou Gehrig Day (#37/75) cards. The Ichiro is an example of the non-numbered framed cards.

Here's some horizontal goodness. I was extremely excited to pull the amazing Lincecum rookie.

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Here are some other rookies and framed cards.

These are types of base cards this set is really about though. These paintings really tell stories. I shamefully stole these scans below by the way...

This image is from Shoebox Legends.

In what seems like an afterthought, the box contains three memorabilia cards and one autograph. The memorabilia cards are pretty terrible with boring designs and small swatches. The autographs are on-card but look kind of strange on the canvas. They don't really retain any value either.

This Glavine is already in the mail.

For Trade.

Now this is a nice jersey card! I always like pulling an old game-used!

This Cliff Lee auto is of a great player, but I wish the design could have been better. While the rest of the set requires few words, the masterpieces logo and the stroke of genius letters distract from the card. I really don't get why they would use pictures for the hits when the whole point of the set is the paintings. These Stroke of Genius autos have pretty low value for on-card autos, and if you pull one you don't want to keep, you won't get much money back for selling the card.

All in all, this is an unbelievably beautiful product and one of my favorites. I'm not really sure if it meets the Best Boxes criteria for this blog because the usual price is pretty high for a product with such terrible hits. I'd recommend trading for the base cards or buying some blasters online instead. In terms of "value," I don't think that buying a box is the best way to experience this product. Just go for base cards instead.