Seven is usually a lucky number and also represents many, many things in society and in life ... there's 7-Eleven, the seven days of the week, James Bond is agent 007, and there was a really awesome old PC game called The 7th Guest that was out when I was a kid. A lot of people consider 7 to be their lucky number, so since this is the seventh repack I've opened from the local Walgreens, let's hope this brings a bit of luck.
Our cover card, a card from the Jackie Robinson story retail insert set. I don't remember which store this was an exclusive to but I think it may have been Walmart as Target had a similar Babe Ruth set. It's entirely possible though that I could have that reversed. This particular card commemorates his Hall of Fame induction in 1962, thus becoming the first black player elected to the Hall of Fame. This wasn't the most enticing cover card and I probably should have seen this as an omen that it wouldn't be a great repack.
Upon first glance when I was sifting through the cards in box, I though this was just any old 2006 Topps base card of A-Rod. However, upon a closer examination, it turns out this was from National Baseball Card day in 2006. I was happy to participate in it this past summer and I hope Topps brings it back for another go around this summer. I like the fact this is just a simple posed shot at what looks like the Yankees spring training facility. It's definitely a card that you don't come across every day.
It looks like 2016 cards are already showing up in these things. Houston had a down year this past season after their surprising playoff run in 2015. With the additions of Carlos Beltran, Josh Reddick, Norichika Aoki, Charlie Morton, and Brian McCann among others this offseason that were added to the young core that features Correa, George Springer, Jose Altuve, and Alex Bregman and the Astros appear to be a very interesting team on paper going into 2017.
No repack will be complete without scads of base cards from recent years. Every one of these that I've opened recently has produced at least a page and a half of 2014 Topps cards and another handful or at least a page full of 2012 Topps. My favorite card of this group has to be the Dan Straily card from the 2014 cards. Straily was pretty much the ace of the Reds rotation last year with 14-8 record and recording just shy of 200 innings. Pretty impressive for a guy that was a waiver claim days before the season started and began the year as the long man in the bullpen and has since been traded to Miami for three prospects.
On the surface, the top card may look like it has nothing in common with the bottom two cards. However, look a bit closer. The top card is from the 2000 Topps Opening Day set with the bottom two from the 2004 Upper Deck First Pitch set. Both sets celebrate Opening Day is appears so they do have something in common after all, aside from the obvious fact that they are all really cool horizontal cards.
I'll wrap up this rather uninspiring repack with some card from the 80s and the 2000s. The Sosa card is my second card of him as an Oriole as I picked up a relic card of his at the card shop last spring from the discount bin. Speaking of the Orioles, although I'm sure the Eddie Murray card is a duplicate, I really dig the way the orange uniform top meshes with the wood grain border of '87 Topps.
All in all, this was a pretty dull repack. Between this and the last Walgreens repack that I opened that was marred with duplicates and a severely damaged Dan Plesac card, I think I'm done with these for a while, at least the ones from Walgreens. Not to worry though, I've found more retail repacks to continue on with that I can hopefully hit the bullseye on (that's a hint as to where they're from).
