A positive Series One experience

This past week was the least excited I've ever been for the start of the baseball card season.

I'm not quite sure what it was. Maybe it's the heaps of unsorted cards in my card space. Maybe it's the   uninspiring checklist. Maybe it's the boring inserts. It just felt very ho hum to me, for whatever reason. I wasn't going to boycott or anything. No loud statement. That would be silly. I just wasn't going to go above and beyond to pick some up like I did the past few years.

Two years ago, I got home from work at 8pm or so, got in my car, got to Target only to realize I forgot the gift cards I had set aside. I went back and got them once I confirmed the store had the new supply of cards in. It was a two hour affair. This year, there was zero chance I was going to make that sort of effort.

On Saturday, my son wanted to go to this new comic book store we hadn't tried to look for Pokemon cards (because kids like those more than sports cards). It happened to be on the way to my usual Target. I decided that we'd hit up his store first, then continue on to Target. I even toyed with the possibility of driving to a Target that is further away because they usually have a better stock of cards. But I took the chance on the local one.

Aside from the usual cart of discarded shit in the aisle, I was happy to see a bunch of 2020 blasters, hangers, and loose packs. I won't touch the loose packs at Target. We all know they've been molested by some beast. But the blasters and hangers were well-stocked. Even better, the distributor took away all the unsold ones from 2019, so it wasn't mass chaos.

My son grabbed a box of Pokemon Sword and Shield, and I grabbed one blaster and one hanger, and we were off!

I got home and busted the hanger first. I usually split it down the middle because that's where the goodies are lumped together.

The first card was this guy. Never heard of him. But I do like how his right elbow overlaps the design. That's a fun touch and I like when cards do that.

The second card was this, which is probably my favorite Series One card so far. What a great card of a great player in a great uniform, even if the baby blues are starting to be a bit overdone.

As for the design, I don't mind it. I never do, even when it stinks. I can see why some think it looks like Bowman. But I like Bowman. It shares some characteristics, for sure. I think it's clean, easy to read, and overall looks pretty sharp. Whether or not it's true, it feels like it was done by the same single designer who has done each design since 2016. It definitely shares some very similar elements to 2016, 2018, and 2019. But I'm cool with it. Just another year.

Actually, one complaint. The gloss! Holy moly are these things slippery. I kept thinking that even if I do get one of the Yanks to sign one of these for me, there's no way an autograph would stick. I need to remove a ton of gloss before sending these out for signatures.

Back to the cards. Within the aforementioned middle of the stack, I did indeed get some goodies...and they were Yankees goodies! First, this was facing backwards!

I still like pulling relics, even though this is probably a $3 card if I were to sell it. But I never pull relics of my team, and it's the first time I pulled one from a hanger. Ever. I didn't end up counting the cards, but I assume I got a few less because of it, although it's not super thick.

The Sanchez was followed by even more Yankee goodies - a Gleyber Torres Gold, which I was most excited about, and an Aaron Judge Turkey Red.

Side note - Gleyber's card is from a game against Baltimore, which means he was hitting a homer in the photo. But remember, his stats against Baltimore don't count.

As for the Turkey Reds, I like them! I've always liked Turkeys. I like Turkey Red cards more than actual turkey (Thanksgiving meal is overrated). I feel like this isn't the strongest Turkey Red effort, as the mid 2000s versions used a fun texture, while these are flat. So I can't get as totally on board here as I'd like, but the cards look really good and the photos against the background are great.

They've been a TTM favorite of mine for a long time.

The Chrome Turkeys are pretty nice, but they are a bit bendy. I bet the colored refractors are very pretty.

I don't know what to think about the "Best Of" cards. I like the 1950s and 1990s designs, I suppose. At the least the lower third of the card. But I think the concept for the set stinks. I'm very sick of these huge insert sets and just wedging all the legends into them. Same thing year after year. Give me a 10 card RBI Machine or Slick Gloves or something. What happened to the Fleer Ultra 10-card insert sets where they didn't look just like a modified base cards? I guess it's because I grew up in a time where inserts were special and were different and you looked forward to them, but it's very apparent Topps just doesn't care about them. The designers who make digital Bunt cards use some sweet designs. Let's call in those guys for a few insert sets.

And it wouldn't be Series One without old designs!

The Trout was a blue SP (these aren't serially numbered). Great guy to pull, although the card was damaged with a peeling corner and some weird smudge on it? Maybe Topps will replace it?

The Vlad Jr Highlight cards aren't too bad compared to recent player highlight series. I like the nod to 1953 in there. Much happier he was the Target guy versus Hoskins.

Glad to see these back. I've never won one, but I like them. It's gambling, you know. It's a prop bet on if a guy will hit a homer. Gambling on sports is fun. Tell your state to get with it and legalize online gambling (not applicable to those of you who live in NJ, PA, WV, IN, NH, and soon CO).

I did score two SP photo variations as well. The first I didn't notice until going back through after. This came from the hanger as well:

Nice! Very open to trading this for a Gleyber of similar stature.

The second was the very first card in one of my blaster packs. I didn't know it existed until Friday night, so I thought it was funny that I snagged it. Gerrit Cole is a Yankee!

And my Manu-thingie was a good one too! I thought these were kind of dumb when I saw them on Twitter, but I don't dislike them. The medallion isn't too obnoxious. And Ichiro is pretty awesome. I'll be hanging onto this one until his Cooperstown induction.

So there it is. Pretty good for one blaster and a hanger! It's about what you expect from Topps Series One. I had a good experience with it. It helped that I had some good luck with Yankees, had some decent pulls, and found the product on my first try. I won't be buying any more of it, but everything has been loaded into the TCDB and hopefully I can snag some of the Yanks I'm missing.

Let the card season begin!

Ending 2018 with a very 2018 repack

I have so many fun things to show off on my blog - great blogger mailings, my awesome online marketplace find, and a gift from one of my favorite pro players. And I'll get to those soon!

Instead, I bought one last Walgreen's Fairfield repack yesterday. As noted, we had been traveling for a week. So I stepped out to Walgreen's for milk, and decided to treat myself to a repack. When I checked out the toy aisle, there were four baseball repacks, but one stood out:

New packaging! To most of us, usually these are a dark green, like this one:

Figuring these have new packaging and thus, possibly more recent cards, I took a chance. I was right. This was full of some interesting 2018 cards.

Most of the 2018s were from Bowman, including a Mike Trout and Clayton Kershaw. The Harper is 2016 Topps, of course.

There was also some 2018 Finest.

I was most pleased with the amount of 2018 rookie cards, including a sweet Miguel Andujar I didn't have, and a few other decent prospects.

There were also a lot of prospect cards from 2017, including Mickey Moniak and Tanner Houck.

The Young and Lee are from 2018.

There were even some 2018 Topps team set cards!

Of course, what is a repack without Barry Bonds?

Some of my more recent repacks had some newer Topps packs, but we're back to junk wax here with a pack of 1992 Donruss. No, I didn't pull a Ripken auto.

While I didn't get a 1:4 hit, hard to complain about this repack. The new Andujar RC almost makes it worth it on it's own, plus it had a lot of star power with Harper, Trout, Kershaw, and some top tier prospects.

Not a bad way to end 2018! Happy New Year to you all. If you're going out, have a fun and safe evening!

Dipping back into buying some 2018 cards

It was a very slow summer for me for buying 2018 cards for a few reasons. First and foremost, my Target just never restocked 2018 cards. After flagship, I found a blaster of GQ and then never found anything new after that.

But that wasn't the only reason. I just wasn't inspired by very many 2018 releases. I'm not sure why. Maybe I got Aaron Judge'd last year and was tired of trying to keep up with all of the releases. Also I just feel like each set is the same year after year, and that gets a little tiring. I end up just accumulating without being overly excited about the cards.

Anyhow, two weeks ago I went to a different Target with my son. We were out running errands so tried a different location. They did have a much better selection of cards, and I found one lonely Chrome Update Mega Box, as well as a hanger of 2018 Update.

Side note, the term Mega Box does not make sense to me. 28 cards (7 packs of 4 cards) do not need to be in such a giant box. I'm not a conscious save-the-environment type of person, but the size of this box, and all blasters really, are so over the top for the contents inside.

Despite the usual buyer's remorse after buying retail, I still managed to pull some great cards. 28 cards of Chrome for $20 is pretty dumb, but at least there's a strong rookie class this year. Here are some of the highlights:

I was very happy to get the Gleyber RC from Chrome, as it's my first pack-pulled Torres. I didn't get Ohtani, but did well with Soto and Acuna for sure. Those guys are studs.

Also, it feels like Hoskins has been around forever, so weird to still be getting his RCs still.

This Bryce Harper card is very awesome. It must look event better as a Refractor. I really wish the Yankees would open up their large checkbook and sign Harper. I prefer him to Machado. I would also really relish all the whiny "Harper and the Yankees are made for each other" or "now I can hate the Yankees even more" freezing cold takes and tweets. It would be awesome. But it's not going to happen.

Lastly, these International Affair cards fall 1:2 and are very nice. I don't understand the premise of the set at all, but the cards look great and I was very happy to get a Judge. Probably the second nicest insert set after the 1983 Chrome Refractors.

As for the hanger box, nothing specular, but a solid break for $10. I prefer these to blasters since you get about the same amount of cards, but the 72-card brick is less fun to open. Basically you have about 35 cards on top, the inserts all stuck together in the middle, then all of the horizontal cards pack together as well. Kind of weird and unexciting.

I managed two Torres cards this time, which is great. I guess neither is his true flagship RC because of the 2018 Series 2 SP (which I don't have....GRRR). The debut card of him coming out of the dugout is great. And the AS card isn't a shot of him from the game, as he didn't play due to injury.

Stanton was the card on top of the bricks, and I love cards of trade deadline acquisitions.

I got a nice Ohtani!

And a great looking Bo Jackson.

The Bruce Harper cards come 2 per hanger at Target. The design is a little too political for me, but I get it. Washington DC.

That's it. Overall, I did ok with the break given the players I got, but I still think I should have spent the $30 on something else. But I always feel like that after buying retail.

July 4th pack busting

On Tuesday, July 4th, I was able to make an early morning run to Target.

I was hoping for a blaster of Archives, but all I found were a few 18-card jumbo packs. There were a TON of blasters of Series 2, Opening Day, and Bowman, but it was Archives I was after. I settled on two of the jumbo packs. Sigh.

I can't say I pulled anything too interesting, although did snag a few Yankees. As others have noted, the card stock is way better this year, so that's a huge plus. I was hoping for one of those neat-looking Peach parallels, but came up empty-handed.

Here are a few of the highlights, led off by Jeter and Gary Sanchez. I wanted the Jeter as soon as I saw it, so was glad to pull it. It's a cool-looking card.

I love seeing Aaron Boone's inclusion as a Yankee. The Mattingly looks nice too. Great headshot of him from his younger days, as well as his iconic batting stance.

These Retro inserts are kind of neat. I'm on a mini Bryce Harper streak lately.

I also got two of those Bazooka cards...both of this guy.

It was definitely fun to bust a few packs in Independence Day. I was just a bit letdown since there no blasters. Oh well, maybe next year!

The repack domination is over

The repack domination streak has come to an end. If you remember, I recently shared two pretty solid 100-card repacks from Walgreen's. While they both contained autographs, it's not solely a hit that determines the success of a repack, but the level of enjoyment and the fun cards they often contain.

I'll also say that I long for the day when Triple Play packs will no longer be included. Sheesh, I'm sick of those. I don't even open them most of the time, or just hand them to my kids to play with.

With the Walgreen's $3.99 sale set to expire on April 29, I wanted to grab one more. The cards in the windows weren't very appealing, and settled on this for no other reason than it was shiny. Bad start.

I'll come right out and say that there was no hit in this repack. I expected my luck to run out in that department, and I was right.

Like the last re-pack, there were still a few 2015 Topps team issue cards, which I don't mind. There was also a Bryce Harper from the All-Star set of that year. That was the best card I found, in my opinion.

I only counted two Hall of Famers, but this particular one didn't have the "5 Hall of Famers" sticker on the front. The Boggs mini is ok. I'm surprised Topps hasn't re-used this design yet for Archives minis. Maybe we'll see them in Heritage in 25 years.

This is a cool oddball that will go to Bob Walk The Plank.

Steve Garvey on an old Diamond King is cool. He signs TTM for $5, so maybe I'll send this off to him.

The junk wax was more plentiful than ever in this, with a major lack of mid-90s cards. The oldest card was a Derrell Thomas from 1982 Topps, while the best of the '90s was a Paul Konerko Donruss rookie.

There really isn't much else notable. I still enjoyed opening, but it was definitely a clunker compared to some other recent repacks. The sale ends in three days...do I test my luck one final time?