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. 

The Yard Sale Cards: Oddballs

I swear, this yard sale collection is the gift that keeps on giving. I've shown the vintage cards and the junk wax but now, since that stuff is out of the way, I'll move on to the fun stuff ... oddballs! And let me tell you, there were some odd things that showed up.

First off, we have two interesting specimens ... Andre Dawson from the 1988 Topps Revco League Leaders set. Revco was a discount drug store chain throughout the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, and Southeast but, like all drug store chains from that time, was eventually taken over by a bigger chain (Rite-Aid). This was the only set produced by Topps for Revco and was sold in complete 33-card sets throughout the chain. As for the other card pictured, a 1984 Topps Cereal Dale Murphy, I've never head of "Topps Cereal" but I'm guessing maybe they were distributed in cereal boxes? Not sure. The banner claims its the "1st Annual Collectors Edition" but there was never a second set.

The last time I walked into a K-Mart it was like going straight back in time. The outdated yellowing floor tiles, signage that hasn't been updated since the mid-90s, merchandise shelves with things scattered everywhere, walking up and down aisles of things that just feel "old" You know, everything you could imagine. I'd say the closest thing these days to a K-Mart would be a Big Lots or a Wal-Mart that isn't a super center (if those even still exist). Anyway, the 20th Anniversary cards I've always found pretty neat since they have the card from the players MVP year incorporated into the card itself. K-Mart came back with cards in 1987 and produced cards through 1990, pretty much the boom of the junk wax era. They did come back in 2008 as Topps made a 30-card set of gold cards, but they looked to be just a different version of cards from the base set.

This Rafael Landestoy card is from a regional set issued by Coca-Cola in 1982. The Reds and Red Sox were the only team to receive this treatment. The sets were 23 cards (including a no numbered title card) and the Reds set is notable for featuring the only card of Clint Hurdle in a Reds uniform, at least to my knowledge. Von Hayes is from the 1990 Post Cereal set, which was included in packs of three in Post branded cereal. Admittedly, I don't know much about Von Hayes but I would have to venture a guess he was probably included in this set because he made the 1989 All-Star team.

I remember having a subscription to SI for Kids in the 90s and eagerly anticipating the time of the month where I would get a new issue in the mail (is that even still a thing anymore?). Anyway, one of the highlights for me were the tear out cards that featured tons of different players and sports. It was probably the only way I would ever get a snowboarding or skiing card, not that I was really looking for them. Anyway, I'd kind of forgotten about these cards for a long time but when I found this Cal Ripken card in one of the boxes, I was like "wow, cool!" It's honestly not every day that you come across these at a flea market, yard sale, or even a card show for that matter.

These Swell Baseball Greats cards are from the 1991 issue, which was the final issue of Swell cards. For a set that is called "Baseball Greats" it's pretty interesting to see some of the people like Davey Johnson, Mudcat Grant, and Julio Cruz included with Enos Slaughter, Robin Roberts and the like.

There were a whole bunch of these Pacific Legends cards and most of them were from the 1989 issue.  The cool thing about these is that I got cards of players in unrecognizable uniforms such as Enos Slaughter and Johnny Mize with the Yankees. Also, there are cards of the old school, turn of the century players like Honus Wagner and Rogers Hornsby. The only problem with those cards, at least in my opinion, are that the drawings look a little creepy in person. I probably would've been better off with just maybe a black and white photo from their playing days but I can see why they did the colorized illustrations.

Now I'm going to start getting into some more obscure stuff, such as these. Upon first glance, these appear to be just a standard issue card from some second tier manufacturer. However, these are actually card from Long John Silvers of all places. I'm not sure how one would have acquired these cards back in 1990, maybe they came with the purchase of a value meal? Not sure. Regardless, these are the first fast food issues I have. 

The majority of the oddballs in the box were of the TCMA variety and when I say variety, I mean variety. So much variety that I'll just briefly hit on each bit. First there were these Play Ball reprints, which I think are pretty neat.

Then these, which are part of the TCMA "1960s" series from 1978 and 1981. I really thought it was cool to dig out two Hall of Famers in Al Kaline and Billy Williams.

I've never seen these cards before but apparently they also belong to TCMA and were part of the 1986 All-Time sets. I'm guessing that these were done in sets by team instead of an overall combined set. My favorite of these has to be the Rollie Fingers Padres card as I really don't have any cards of Fingers in a Padres uniform.

And the final batch of TCMA cards, on which I couldn't find much information on. Gathering what info I could from the back of the cards it looks like these are part of a set on each players career. 

There were a ton more oddball cards that I did take pictures of but didn't end up making the final cut here. As I mentioned earlier, there was definitely variety from Revco and K-Mart to random TCMA stuff. It just goes to show you never know what you'll find in a yard sale lot.

Card Shop Chronicles: Lebanon Candy and Sports Cards

It's not often that a new card shop pops up these days so when I heard about Lebanon Candy and Sports Cards at the most recent Nutter Center card show, I knew I had to stop in and check them out. 

Situated right off the main drag through downtown, the place reeks of nostalgia, right up to the signage on the windows. If they were going for a rustic feel, then they definitely nailed it. There are actually two doors as you walk in, the one on the right goes to the card shop, the other to the candy shop.

Here's the view of the main counter. Suffice to say it's absolutely loaded with packs, boxes, blasters, and all kinds of stuff. The shop itself it very small but they've made really good use of the space. According to the guy behind the counter, the place used to be an antique shop and judging by the old display cabinets and the polished hardwood floors, I can see how that would be. 

Besides sports cards, they have tons and tons of gaming cards like Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, etc. They even carry the big Pokemon boxes that Wal-Mart and Target carry.

Here's more boxes and packs. This is more recent stuff including loads of Series 1.

But wait, there's more! You want board games? They got 'em!

Here's a really cool thing right in the middle of the shop. It's an old fire call box that was used to alert the local fire departments. Seeing that Lebanon is an old historic city, it makes sense. As you can see, hidden behind the box is part of their Funko shelf.

Here's just a portion of the Funko's that they carry. They've got everything from Street Fighter to Dr. Seuss to Walking Dead figures. 

I nearly missed these old school motorcycles when I walked in. They definitely add a touch of character to the place, as if it didn't have enough already.

Next door is the candy portion loaded with anything and everything you could think of candy wise. There's a complete wall full of Jelly Belly dispensers, the counter is loaded with chocolate candies of all sorts and there's even a section full of pop culture candies.

Of course, it can't be a candy shop without having pop (or soda if you will) by the bottle. There's craft sodas such as Avery's and Jones Soda along with other brands such as Ale-8-1, IBC Root Beer, and Virgils. The other refrigerator has your standard Coke products but they're in glass bottles!!

Speaking of Coke, look at this awesome old school vending machine. I'm not sure if it's operational but the price on it says 25 cents. Too bad I didn't have a quarter on me to try it out.

As for my purchases, I grabbed three more packs of Donruss racing, two packs of Opening Day, and two packs of the new Pokemon for my son. 

Here's what I got out of the racing packs. I did manage to get two of the nickname variations including a Bill Elliott gold. The best of the packs was the Chase Elliott press proof numbered 23/99.

These were the first packs of Opening Day I think I've ever opened. These Reds cards came out of the first pack. I really, really like the picture on the Billy Hamilton card.

The inserts from each pack, a Brewers Opening Day card and a Jayson Werth Superstar Celebrations card.

This card will go towards my throwback uniforms collection. The 1970s style Pirates uniforms are always a hit with me.

I know this is a parallel but I'm not quite sure what sort of parallel this is as it's not numbered on the back. Regardless, I'll set it aside for my "shiny card" collection.

This is a shop I'll definitely be back to, despite the fact that the card shop portion felt a little bit cramped. The pack prices are more than fair and I love the nostalgia factor and the uniqueness of a card shop and candy shop all in one.