A New Type of Repack

Until recently, I'd never set foot in the store Five Below. I'd heard of it before and was told they had some cool things but until recently never went in there. What I saw though was fantastic! If you've never been, it's pretty much a hip discount store with toys, games, snacks, candy, trinkets, etc all for five dollars or under (hence the name). I went in with very low expectations but found that I probably could've bought a number of things. I contained myself and walked out of there with two of these repack cubes for me and a bag full of orange Airheads for my wife.

I kid you not when I say that literally every single repack cube on the shelf (and there were about 18 or so) had a Mike Piazza card visible. Half of them had this exact card showing as well. Since this is an O-Pee-Chee card, I just had to grab this cube. I forget which one the other cube had. 

The front proclaimed several things, including cards from "each of the past five decades". That would mean cards from the 70s, right? Nope. The 1980 Indians card was the oldest card I could find in the lot. I'll take it though. Plus early 80s Topps like the Vukovich and the Parker are always fun finds as well.

Here's an interesting card. I've never heard of Brigham's but apparently it was a regional ice cream chain and also a brand of ice cream found in the New England area. In conjunction with Coca-Cola, they issued a 23-card Red Sox set that shared the 1982 Topps design. I'm not sure if these cards were available at the ice cream shops or at the store in the carton. Maybe someone out that way can enlighten me? Regardless, pretty interesting to find a regional oddball all these years later in a repack in southwest Ohio.

Some miscellaneous 80s cards including John Tudor and Walt Weiss, both of whom look very unimpressed.

Early 90s stuff. Meh.

Another promise of the repack was that it featured one "hall of fame card". Well, together with the Mike Piazza card I showed to start with, there's Alan Trammell and Craig Biggio. That brings the Hall of Fame total to five.

1991 Score. Not a bad selection of players here. Rickey brings the Hall of Fame total to six. 

More modern cards from the 2000s. The Luis Aparicio card has to be one of my favorites from the box.

Here's a few cool horizontal cards that I found. I was genuinely happy when I saw the Randy Johnson card from 2002 Upper Deck Vintage. I'm always on the lookout for cards from that set but I'm not to the point yet where I'd consider officially putting the set together. Also, the Johnson card puts me at nine "Hall of Fame cards" for the lot.

The repack box/cube/whatever also said there were two packs included. The 2018 Topps pack was the one shown and the other was a pack of 1991 O-Pee-Chee Premier.

Here's the contents of the O-Pee-Chee pack. Nothing too terribly exciting here. My keepers will probably be Orel Hershier, Mo Vaughn, Jeff Reardon, and Ivan Calderon. Dave Parker I already have somewhere.

And the contents of the Topps pack. I'll probably keep Amed Rosario, Cody Bellinger, Randal Grichuk, and the "Boston B-Boys" card. I'm honestly more happy with the O-Pee-Chee pack than I am this.

There's the contents of a repack from Five Below. I've got another one of these to bust into soon but maybe I'll hold that off until next month. 

Retail Repack Adventures #19: The Return

I've been lacking for inspiration lately. So in order to get my creative juices flowing again, I went back and looked through some old posts for inspiration ... and I found it.

Long time readers of this blog will know that I had an ongoing series where I was reviewing repacks from Walgreens and Target. The series went dormant a while back but it was something everyone seemed to enjoy reading about, so I've decided to bring back the "Retail Repack Adventures" series.

The family and I stopped at the local Target today as they had a good sale on printers. I found some Heritage (of which I got three loose packs and a blaster) along with said printer. Once we got home and I got the printer set up, I thought the best way to test out the scanning function would be to dive into the repack.

This is one of those 50-card, 4-pack deals for $7.99. Let's see what's inside ...

Here's the "bonus prize", a blind bag of MLB TeenyMates that contains two figures and puzzle pieces of some sort. I didn't open it as I decided to save it for my six-year-old's Easter basket.

The 50-card mini box was about what I expected, lots of junk wax commons. However, I did manage to find a nice batch of keepers for my collection. First, here's some cards from the 90s. I like the black text on the green background of 1992 Fleer. The Mark McGwire Stadium Club card is a member's choice parallel card which is pretty neat. I don't mind 1990 Donruss all that much as there are far worse Donruss sets out there (1988 and 1989 for example). 

Some stuff from the 80s contingent that was contained within. Pretty decent selection here with some 87 Donruss, 86 Topps, a Roger Clemens All-Star card (on which he is named as a "right hand pitcher") and a pretty cool Wille Upshaw night card from 1989 Upper Deck.

Some mid-2000s cards. Nice action shot on the Chase Utley card.

More modern stuff here with three straight 2017 Topps Chrome cards of three really good players. I've said numerous times I'm not a buyer of Topps Chrome but should I find them in a bargain bin or a repack box, I won't complain.

Cool! A Freddie Freeman rookie card!

Another mix of some newer stuff, including P-Town Tom's favorite player, Dan Vogelbach. The Roberto Osuna card is my first Topps Finest card in who knows how long.

The hell? This isn't a basketball repack. This is one of three random basketball cards I found in the box and the only one I'll keep, probably. Basketball isn't really my thing but for now, I'll hang onto it.

Now, time for the four packs and I was actually pleasantly surprised by what they included. Three packs from 2018 and the requisite junk wax pack.

My favorites from the 2018 Topps Series 1 pack. Even though these card are a year old, they're still great. Probably my favorite Topps flagship design since 2012.

The Opening Day pack was only seven cards so I decided to scan them all.

Three highlights from the 1990 Upper Deck pack. I know I've already got the Barry Larkin card (probably three times over) but my favorite here is the Randy Bush card. It's him in the batting cage obviously before a game. I love how great the background is as well.

Finally, four cards from the Topps Big League pack. The John Smoltz card I know is one I don't have. Same with Victor Robles. The other two I think are dupes but I'll have to double check.

So, that's a 50-card, 4-pack repack from Target. Some decent stuff here to be honest and I liked that the packs were mostly 2018. I'm going to be getting back into the swing of things now that I feel re-inspired. Never thought inspiration would come from a repack.

My Favorite First Card of 2018

I'm going to kill two birds with one stone here.

I had planned on doing an end of year post about my favorite "first card" I pulled from various 2018 packs. Then, P-Town Tom announced his annual "favorite card" post. I figure why not wrap them together into one post?

I opened packs from seven different baseball products in 2018 ... Flagship (including Series 1 and 2), Heritage, Opening Day, Donruss, Gypsy Queen, Big League, and Archives. As I mentioned earlier, each card you see here is the first card I pulled out of the first pack of each product and I'll have a brief summary of my thoughts of each product as well.

2018 Topps Flagship (Series 1 and 2)

I went crazy back in February when Series 1 was released and bought a ton of packs and hanger boxes. I have a feeling I'll probably do the same thing this coming February when 2019 Topps hits the shelves. I really liked this years design with the "waterslide" design. The photos on some of the cards were definitely inspired too and a few even had a Stadium Club feel to them with the photography. It's definitely a lot better than when they started the borderless base cards in 2016.

2018 Heritage

Heritage this year played host to one of my favorite vintage designs, the 1969 Topps set. While it was hard to find at first, once I did find it, I really enjoyed it. Plus the initial two hanger boxes I bought produced a Giancarlo Stanton relic card. I ended up going back for more ... well, lots more ... when Target ran a big Easter sale. 

2018 Opening Day

Sure, this is pretty much the same thing as Flagship but it being Opening Day, it had a number of fun inserts and was decidedly cheaper. I imagine I was looking for something cheap to rip into so that's why I bought a blaster of it. Of course, Aaron Judge had to be the first card I pulled from the first pack but the main thing I like about this particular card is the return of the Topps Rookie Cup!

2018 Panini Donruss

I've been a big supporter of Donruss since Panini revived the line about four years ago. I really, really liked the base card throwback design of 2017 but this year, I felt the base cards left a lot to be desired. The design was very busy, the photography was not good, and the airbrushed out logos and team nicknames were patently obvious. However, when I opened my first pack of Donruss this Nolan Ryan card was the card on top. I like it because Donruss did a really good job of throwing back to the 1984 design, the airbrushing is barely noticeable (except for the cap), and I can tell it's from a game at old Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati because of the blue seats in the background. I'm hoping Donruss can step up their game next year.

2018 Gypsy Queen

I've been a Gypsy Queen fan since the 2015 design. I've yet to see a GQ design that can top that one, I really did like this years effort. I was only able to get my hands on some retail packs as part of the aforementioned Target Easter sale but from what I was able to sample, I really enjoyed it. The only thing I wasn't a big fan of were the variations and parallels (because who really needs a parallel of a card where the back plate is missing) but other than that I really liked it.

2018 Big League

My aunt treated me to a box of this back in the summer when she came to visit from Tulsa. I'll admit, I wasn't sure what to expect with these cards. I'd heard they were more of the set builders variety and were low on inserts and hits but were more on the "fun" side of collecting. I really liked the design on them and honestly, that design could've probably worked as a flagship design too. A few complaints I had about it though is that there was one gold parallel card per pack, which I felt was a bit too much, and there weren't all that many "inserts" as well, the main one I even remember are those obtuse and goofy looking caricature cards. 

2018 Archives

I was so excited for Archives to come out that when I finally found a Target that had some, I stopped in at 10:45 at night to stock up. What I found was a bit of a let down. The cards themselves I felt were a bit thin and the designs weren't all that great this year. It was nice to see 1977 and 1981 in the set but I think maybe the 1961 or 1962 designs could've been used or maybe even 1993 to continue the theme of 1991 and 1992 in the previous two Archives releases. The inserts weren't even that great. Sure there were the Sandlot cards (which I promptly mailed to Dimebox Nick) but there were also the Rookie Reprints cards which I personally didn't care much for.

So that's the seven baseball products I opened in 2018. As for my favorite "first" card?

The winner is ....

Nolan Ryan from 2018 Donruss!

As I mentioned, I thought the 1984 throwback design cards were the best part of Donruss this year. That coupled with it being Nolan Ryan throwing in Riverfront Stadium, just makes it stand out for me.

I appreciate Tom running the contest for another year in a row and if all else fails and I don't win a prize, at least I got a blog post out of the deal. That should count for something I hope.

A Sampling of Series 2

Well, I did it. I bit the bullet and bought a few packs of Series 2. Was it what I wanted to buy? Not really. I went to the card shop over Father's Day weekend since I needed some more storage supplies and while I was there I took a look at the pack selection. Most everything I was interested in (Gypsy Queen, Heritage, etc.) was about eight bucks a pack. I asked why and got back a one word answer ... Ohtani. I settled for a handful of packs of Series 2 then and a couple WWE packs (which were a complete bust), and a Pokemon pack for my five-year-old. When I got the chance to finally tear into these, I had pretty low expectations.

A few random base cards, picked mainly for the photography and the colorful aspect of the cards. I still really do like the 2018 design.

Some really cool horizontal cards. One thing I've always liked about Nationals cards are they way the pictures really stand out with their home uniforms.

A gold parallel of Taijuan Walker. If you look at this long enough then you'll notice that he kind of pops out of the background a little bit.

Four more cards ... two Reds I needed, an Andrew Benintendi Future Stars card, and Yonder Alonso who's having a pretty decent year for the upstate Indians. 

Now the inserts, got these three 1983 style All-Star cards. Not bad and I don't mind the little tribute to the 1983 set.

And a few other inserts. I really like the Throwback Jerseys insert and was even happier when it was an Adam Duvall card that I got. Also, still not a big fan of Ryan Braun but I'll be hanging onto this card for now at least.

As for Series 2 as a whole, it's pretty much everything you expect, basic card that won't break the bank, good photography, decent inserts. My one major issue this year with the flagship line is that they stopped the buybacks and the First Pitch inserts dead in their tracks. Those were some of my favorites from the past few years, especially the buybacks once I came to appreciate them. Anyway, will I be buying more Series 2? Maybe if I'm at the card shop and have the itch to get some more packs but I won't be going the retail route. I'll save that for my Hertiage, GQ, and all the other cards that get marked up at the shop.

A Blaster of Opening Day on Opening Day

I bought this when I picked up the two hanger boxes of Heritage a week or so back. I probably should've used better judgement and gotten a third box of Heritage for the same price but oh well. Since today is Opening Day, and the Reds Opening Day game got postponed until tomorrow for the first time since 1966 due to rain what better time that now to rip into this.

Keeping with my tradition this year, here's the first card from the first pack I opened. Not a bad start and I noticed the "future stars" heading is gone from the card.

Here's some cards of a few players I don't remember pulling cards for when I binged on Series 1. I really like the Alex Bregman card with the daylight and the orange uniform. It makes me long for nice spring and summer days where I can leave the snow and the cold behind.

A couple cool horizontal cards. Love the Green Monster in the background of the David Price card.

I got exactly one blue parallel, that being of Whit Merrifield. 

The Opening Day set is more based around inserts than anything else. Out of the eleven packs, four held these "Team Traditions and Celebrations" cards. I got the vaunted "The Freeze" card

I really like these team Opening Day inserts and the pictures are just amazing.

I guess these are supposed to be what players are up to in Spring Training? 

But here's my favorite thing of the Opening Day cards ... mascots!!! And I got three good ones, the Phillie Phanatic, the Rally Monkey, and our hometown mascot Mr. Redlegs.

As I mentioned though at the beginning, I think this ten dollar could've been better spent elsewhere, for example another hanger box of Heritage or a couple Gypsy Queen hanger packs. Oh well, lesson learned I suppose. Now, back to watching baseball that matters!