1998 E-X2001 Baseball Review

Last year, I took a trip back to my old state of New Jersey and visited a card shop that I had frequented for years. I found out that the store was under new ownership. I met the new owner, a man named Spencer, and saw that he had much better prices than the previous man in charge, especially on wax…..especially on older wax. One shelf in the store had several unopened boxes from 2003 and before, dating all the way back to 1998. I decided to take a chance on the oldest box he had there: 1998 E-X2001. I was able to pick it up for about $35, so I decided it was worth a shot. A box of this product consists of 24 2-card packs. Yes, that’s right, only 2 cards per pack. Here’s what I got:

Base cards: The base set is comprised of cards 1-100, and then there’s an extra card of Kerry Wood, which is listed as card 101. Apparently, the Kerry Wood base card was available only through a redemption, seeded 1 in 50 packs. I’m not sure about the story behind this card, but apparently the complete set includes either the Wood base card or its redemption. I pulled one of these redemption cards in my box. I also pulled 44 other regular base cards with NO dupes (which is always a plus). Unfortunately, I didn’t get much else in this box.

Star Date 2001: Seeded 2 per box, these futuristic space-themed cards may remind some of the 1994 Ultra Rising Star set. I got cards of Jaret Wright and Richard HIdalgo. No cards in this set book for over $3 though, with Magglio Ordonez being the biggest name in it.

Cheap Seat Treats: Here’s yet another cool insert from Fleer. They were a die-cut insert made to look like a stadium seat. The “seat” actually folds out to reveal the player’s body. This set featured guys who could balls into those seats, such as Frank Thomas, Andruw Jones, Albert Belle, and so on. I pulled a Vladimir Guerrero, but traded it to one of the finest traders on The Bench, robwes207. Below is a link to what these inserts look like: Cheap Seat Insert.

That was all for this box. No autograph (1:2.5 boxes) or Essential Credentials parallels (varied numbering based on where they fell in the set) made it kind of a bummer. However, the base cards are still very attractive and it did leave me with a pretty nice starter set if I decide to go that route. I do take solace in the fact that I got this box for such a discounted price. I think if I had opened this particular box when the packs went for $5-6 a piece, I’d be pretty ticked. 🙂

As always, thanks for the read and thanks for supporting this blog!
-John