Monday, September 6, 2021

Fairfield Repacks change with the times

I've always like Fairfield repacks, more for their entertainment value than anything else. I would pick one up here and there from Walgreen's for $4.99. Would I get $5 worth of cards? Sometimes. Would I enjoy the way I spent my $5? Almost always.

You're never going to strike gold with these things. Once in a while someone on Twitter will claim they got a Bryce Harper RC or something, but I don't believe most of that. Those types of posts are fake and just for likes.

Still, I never really considered myself to be a sucker when I bought these. I knew what I was getting. A year or two ago, you'd get 100 cards, an unopened pack, a few hall of famers, and maybe a little bit of trade bait. 

Now? Not so much.

For the first time in months, I came across one of these on Saturday at Walgreen's. There were three total, but I bought just one. Very non-flipper of me, eh? The packaging has undergone a few changes over the last few years. The preview window of the hero card is gone. I always liked that. It would help me choose which to buy.
You know what else is gone? It doesn't say how many cards are in the box. It used to advertise 100 cards. Then sometime last year it dropped to 80. Now? No mention.

Hits have gone from 1:4 to 1:8 over the last few years. The hits were never very good anyhow, but still fun to snag a random auto or relic at those odds.

For years these were $4.99, but when I rang them up at the counter, they were $5.49. The $.49 isn't a big deal, but still, there's price increase of 10% off the bat.

When I opened the box, the first thing I noticed? A lot of free space! The boxes are still big enough for 100 cards, but nooope. Guess how many?
80? Nope. 75? No.

51 cards!

That is a drastic decrease. Over the past year or two, these have gone from 100 cards to 51. Something tells me it's supposed to be 50 and I ended up with a bonus card by accident.

That's an enormous drop, if you ask me.
When you get 51 cards, do you know what else you get? More junk. I know, I know. These have always had junk. But I would say, what, maybe 50% was junk wax, and the rest were maybe cards from the last few years, or some oddballs?

I only got two cards that I would call recent:
Now to be fair, I was surprised to see a card from 1957 pop out. That is different. Usually the oldest card would be something from the late 70s. That was a welcome surprise. No creases, either!
Outside of the three above, the other 48 cards were all junk wax. And there were ZERO oddballs.
The pack was 2021 Opening Day, which shows that this was packed very recently. While I'd rather have this than a pack of 1990 Donruss, it still doesn't really make up for the emptiness that the box provided.
So that's that. Again, I know these repacks are often fairly lackluster, but now this feels like it's on a completely new level of rip-off. If that's how all these are from now on, I won't be rolling the dice anymore with Fairfield repacks. I'll keep my $5, happily.

These are a lot more 2021 than they are 2019, and that's sad.

9 comments:

  1. 50 cent increase, 49 less cards and 94% of it was junk wax? Ouch. Those aren't good numbers. Nice score on a random '57 though!

    ReplyDelete
  2. A 1957 card and a 2021 pack? I think Fairfield repacks might be better than ever! (Also fewer cards means fewer junk wax cards).

    ReplyDelete
  3. Congratulations on pulling that McMillan. Never pulled a card that old out of a Fairfield box. Never pulled a Harper rookie either, but I did pull a Jeff Bagwell autograph and a Derek Jeter memorabilia card. But I've gotta admit, they weren't the stand $5 Fairfield boxes. They were out of the Cache boxes which were 3x that price.

    https://sanjosefuji.blogspot.com/2013/04/following-leader.html

    ReplyDelete
  4. Being down to 51 cards is lame, but, man, a 1957 Roy McMillan! I mean, he's no Hall of Famer, but he was a very good player with about 25 career WAR, and then was a coach for many years. Nice.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Looks like the McMillan saved the box. Two-time AS, three Gold Gloves, and from 1957.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I saw a couple at my Walgreens a couple weeks ago and didn't pull the trigger. Seeing the drop in the number of cards is disappointing.

    ReplyDelete
  7. The loss of the window into the first card is kinda what made me lose interest in these. I've seen these from time to time at my own Walgreens and I've passed on them, the spontaneity is fun but knowing at least one card was enticing was always what put these over the top for me.

    ReplyDelete
  8. And here I thought that the 1969 Dick Dietz that I pulled out of one of these a few years ago was something special...

    ReplyDelete
  9. Oof. 51 cards is weird. 50 seems better. Praise our educational system! I started shivering with flashback fear when I saw the 1988 Donruss Parrish card. I a trillion of them as a boy. I guess I know where one of 'em turned up.

    ReplyDelete