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.