System Update Required

I finally found some cards out in the wild! 

While I was at the local Walmart a week or so ago, I decided to take a look at the card section. I'd set myself up for disappointment as every single time I've looked at a card aisle be it at Walmart, Target, or even Meijer, the shelves are completely bare (or there's loads of hockey cards which no one can be bothered with). This time though, I was surprised! There was exactly one blaster of Topps Update and one blaster of Topps WWE Finest. I was tempted to get the WWE cards but settled on the blaster of Update.

I didn't care if the box was awesome or if was a bust, I was just so excited to finally find cards in the wild again and open some packs!

I won't go pack by pack but I'll show some of my favorites and just some general neat cards. Starting off, here's the obligatory Reds lot. The Eric Davis card you'll see in an upcoming post about my most recent Card Barrel order from the holidays. The most curious card in the here is Matt Davidson, who became a footnote in Reds history on Opening Day to be the first-ever Reds DH on Opening Day.

Rangers cards that have the "Inaugural Season" logo. I heard about a a whole kerfuffle about there only being one Rangers card or something like that in Series 1 last year. Not sure if it had anything to do with the "Inaugural Season" logo or uniform change or something

One of my absolute favorite things about both Flagship/Update are the stats on the back. I especially love it when I get cards from players like these two who have been around forever. I mean, look how small the stat lines are on Rich Hill's card. You'd need a magnifying glass to see it.

Nothing special about these cards. I just thought they were neat, especially Bartolo Colon. It's not often that you see a player noted as a "free agent" on a card.

These guys look weird in these uniforms. 

With there being no All-Star Game and no Home Run Derby this year, Topps included images from ASGs and Derbys past. I actually kind of like these. The Mike Trout is from the 2015 game in Cincinnati and I wonder if there are others. I'm still also working on putting together all the All-Star Game and Derby cards from 2015 Update.

Here are some parallels. I think the blue ones are Wal-Mart exclusives.

Each pack had a Turkey Red card. The action ones are nice but I just find the posed shot ones boring.

Inserts were prevalent. I've been meaning to get some of those "Decades Best" cards.

I was really excited that this Turkey Red Chrome Derek Jeter card came out of the box. Getting cool inserts like this is honestly pretty rare for me when I get blaster boxes.

The same pack that held the Turkey Red Chrome card also held this nice foil parallel as well. If you're keeping track, that's two nice Derek Jeter cards in the same pack. Those were definitely worth the price of admission here.

Lastly, as is the usual case with blasters there's some sort of manu-relic. This time is a collectible coin card of some sort. The honestly looks better in person that it does here. The problem is that these things are about the size of a brick in thickness (ok, maybe not but they are super thick) so finding something to put this in will be a bit of an issue.

Overall though, I enjoyed this blaster a lot. I got a lot of fun cards, had a blast opening a few packs, and was pretty happy overall. I'm looking forward to the 2021 cards coming out soon and if I find a blaster or some retail packs in the wild, I'll grab those.

Three Packs of 2017 Topps Update

By the time you read this 2018 Topps will probably already be on the shelves everywhere. I'll give it a chance much like I give most everything else but I just haven't had time yet to get to the card shop and get some packs. I had these Update packs around from my annual Target baseball card birthday binge to myself in December so I figured I might as well go through these pack by pack before I move on to getting some 2018 cards. After reading other blogs back in the fall about how Update didn't really update anything, I'm not really expecting much. There's 12 cards per pack, let's see what lies within.

Pack #1

One pack in and I already pulled one of the most wanted cards from the set, the vaunted Cody Bellinger rookie card. I might as well just call it here and not even bother with the other two packs! I also got a really neat Bill Mazeroski "Postseason Celebrations" insert card celebrating his series winning homer in 1960. Some other cards I dig in this pack are the Travis Wood card (who I had no clue was with the Royals) and the Seth Smith card. I always like the way the Oriole orange just pops on cards like this. Not bad for the first pack. 

Pack #2

There's honestly not much here to really talk about. The Jeff Bagwell card is one of those goofy reprints that Topps likes to do, this time it's of the Rookie Cup variety. Seeing that reminds me I've got a 1992 Topps factory set in the garage I need to do something with. The highlights for me here are the Yonder Alonso All-Star card and the Sal Romano card (although I've already got thanks to some recent trades).

Pack #3

Well, that's interesting. I wound up with 13 cards in the pack instead of the advertised 12. Either the buyback of Seth Greisenger doesn't count as a card or I wound up with a bonus card for no reason. I'm not complaining though. This was probably the second best pack of the three as there was the Ian Happ card, the aforementioned buyback, a 1987 style Dallas Keuchel insert, and the "History Makers" card of Bryant and Rizzo. Upon doing some research, apparently the blue stamp is the second most rare stamp of the buybacks, I just wish it wasn't stamped over top of the players' name.

Overall, this wasn't too terrible. I enjoyed opening the packs and got some fun cards to show for it. I didn't get any of the Heroes of Autumn inserts that were advertised on the packs but I did get one really cool insert, that being the "Postseason Celebrations" card. Onwards to the 2018 cards!

You've Got Mail #68: Night Owl Cards

Photo: Wikipedia

As anyone who followed this blog last fall knows, I'm a big fan of Halloween. As such, today is the official "halfway to Halloween" point on the calendar. The official name for this is Walpurgis Night, which is a celebration observed in Germany, Sweden, The Netherlands, Czech Republic and other countries in that region to usher in the start of summer. This night is said to be the final time witches and other evildoers to cause havoc before spring woke up the land. To ward off evil spirits, citizens would burn bonfires, sprinkle holy water, and put blessed palm leaf in their homes. 

While the card blogging world does not have and evil spirits (at least none that I know of), there is a resident nocturnal creature we all know and love as Night Owl. Last Monday a nice little package showed up on my doorstep from the Owl and as usual, it was stuffed with some pretty neat cards.

As I mentioned, Walpurgis Night is a time to celebrate the start of summer. However, in these parts, the start of summer the beginning of baseball season. When I saw that this card was in Opening Day, I knew I had to have it. Luckily, Night Owl was nice enough to throw it in. 

Speaking of evil things, I used to think minis were evil and I would immediately throw them into the discard pile. However, my stance has definitely changed on them and I'm building up as many of them as I can. These definitely helped bulk up my stockpile.

Of course, any trading package coming my way includes Reds cards and these are definitely ones I didn't have. These are from the 2006 Topps release, of which I opened a pack recently for my ongoing "Back Packs" series, a look at which will be coming up shortly.

There was also a good amount of miscellaneous stuff thrown in from another Eckersley card for my collection, to some Bengals cards, and even a completey random Jake "The Snake" Roberts card, of which I will not complain.

The majority of the package though was loaded up with these 2015 All-Star Update cards. I still need to add my want list for these to the blog but there were about 14 cards included in the package that I needed. I'm getting close to halfway on completing the run of these in 2015 Update and these additions were much appreciated. 

A big thanks to Night Owl for sending over these cards and helping ward off any evil spirits that will hopefully stay away all through baseball season.

You've Got Mail #14: 2x3 Heroes

The 2016 baseball card season may be upon us but 2015 still lingers, especially with the contest winnings I got from proprietor of the 2x3 Heroes blog and noted White Sox enthusiast, Jeff. I entered and much to my surprise won a nice bubble mailer full of 2015 Topps.

Since Jeff is such a fan of the White Sox, let's start there. The Konerko card is a great send-off card and I really like Abreu in the throwback Sox jersey.

The north siders are primed for a huge 2016 after making it all the way to the NLCS this year and Rizzo is one of the guys I'm looking forward to seeing on a regular basis, since the Reds and Cubs are in the same division. It was awesome to see the Correa rookie in the batch! Even though I'm not much of a rookie collector/prospector, it was a card I was secretly hoping I would pull. 

Here are a few more main set highlights. That catch that Moustakas is making looks painful. Russell is another of the great batch of youngsters that the Cubs have.

These were the only inserts in the batch. The more I see of them, the more I like the tape measure blast cards. Can't say I've come across the rarities insert in the packs of 2015 flagship I opened but its a pretty cool card.

Finally, as is no secret, I'm putting together the set of all the All-Star Game and Home Run Derby cards. Besides the ones shown above, there were probably 5-7 others that I didn't scan in. 

Big thanks to Jeff for the great envelope of 2015 Topps. I haven't opened any 2016 Topps yet but I will eventually, although I'm sort of leaning towards Heritage being the first 2016 packs I buy. It's going to be hard to beat 2015 though, especially since there is so much cool stuff from then yet to discover.

2015 Topps Update Holiday Box #2

Just a quick post today as I'm heading over to a friend's house in a bit for some deep dish pizza, salad, icebox cake (which is quite possibly the most amazing dessert on the planet), and perhaps some white russians that The Dude would approve of.

Here we have the second of two of the Topps Update retail boxes. I'm hoping this is a little better than the first box. You should know the drill by now ... 5 update packs and 2 update chrome packs. Let's dig in.

Let's start off with the best of the Chrome packs. All four of these are super nice and I'll be hanging on to these. I was surprised to pull the Fisk insert as a Chrome card as I thought going into this that the only cards that were chromed were the base cards.

The insert cards from the regular Update packs. Pulling out the Josh Gibson card was really cool as I had no clue that stars from that era were even featured on this set. I just realized something ... both the Gibson and the Dunn cards have the same date, September 27th.

Finally, the all-star insert cards I got from the main set. The DeGrom retail insert I think I've already found a good home for, the rest of these will be going into my all-star game set. I really should start a checklist of some kind for these so I know what I have and what I need.

As for the regular base cards, I didn't really get any cards that "wow"-ed me. Would I get another box like this? Maybe if it was on sale or on clearance somewhere. This was certainly better than the first box I opened but it's not something I'll go out of my way to get.