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Friday, March 26, 2021

Even repacks are turning into duds

Before cards disappeared from shelves, one constant to scratch the pack ripping itch were the Fairfield repacks that can be found at Walgreen's stores around the country.

Prior to the pandemic, they were plentiful. Always stacked five or six deep in the toy row. They had a clear window on the front, where you could choose your destiny. Alex Rodriguez 2012 Gypsy Queen or Topps Update Eric Hosmer rainbow foil?

Like everything else retail, the fun of these repacks has been sucked dry.

The windows that have you that glimpse are gone. Hits have gone from 1:4 to 1:8. Now, I never bought these for the no-name player hits, but I still enjoyed an autograph or jersey that could serve as trade bait...you know, before everyone defected to TCDB to trade. 
The other day I was at a Walgreen's in a neighboring town, and stopped in. Just like the one in my town, the card area was picked dry except for one lonely repack. So I did what any cardboard addict would do.

I bought it.

And let's just say, it was probably the worst repack I have ever bought. The oddballs were not existent. The "four guaranteed HOFers" didn't exist as they had in the past. It was literally a brick of church thrift store junk wax, without nearly anything interesting or of note.

Maybe I got a crappy one, or maybe these just are going this direction.

The best card of the bunch was probably this.
Maybe these will net me something on TCDB.
At least I got three cards older than me?
I'm not exaggerating, unfortunately. I know the eye can be in the beholder, but even the most creative of card minds couldn't find much to say about this turd sandwich of a repack.

I'm still glad I rescued it, and I hope that this was just an exception, as these are usually pretty fun.

10 comments:

  1. I'm hoping you just got a bad box. The price on them have gone up too, so there needs to be at least a little bang for the buck!

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  2. The last repack I saw at my local Walgreens was one of those repacks where they were nothing but packs inside, and you couldn't see the packs inside at all. Didn't buy it but it was gone by the next time I visited the store so someone must be buying this stuff.

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  3. The Parker is cool... but still a dime box card. I'd throw the Sasaki and Upton inserts into that category too. That being said... at least there's the entertainment value of getting to flip through a stack of cards. Right?

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  4. It might just be a lock-down issue. If it's tougher to find cards to put in the boxes, due to less card shows and such.

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  5. I saw some results from a few of these on Twitter not too long ago, and am thinking that yours isn't an anomaly. Welcome to the new normal!

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  6. I got one of these out of the sheer hope that I would get a randomly inserted "card". I actually shook it before buying it to see if I was a lucky recipient of one. I didn't know times were so tough that you could get something like a baseball themed stuffed animal in a box.

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  7. Yikes. I guess it's just as well I haven't seen cards at Walgreen's in a year.

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  8. Ugh that's a bummer. I just saw a blog post from someone who'd bought two repacks and pulled at least a dozen of the same cards in each. That put me off of repacks for good.

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