The Repack Well Went Dry

There's an old saying "going back to the well once too often" or something like that. Well, I picked up a repack at Walgreens a few months back as a reward to myself for going there and getting my flu shot. Of course, like most stores, the toys and card section had been completely pilfered and picked through. All I saw were some basic WWE figures that no one wanted, a few Star Wars funkos, and three repacks, two of which were the 75-card football bricks. There was only one of the 100-card baseball bricks there so I nabbed it.

I've been burned on repacks in the past and I've had some really good ones. It's been a while so let's see what this repack reveals.

Included with the 100-card brick was an unopened pack. Typically these are of the early 90s variety like Upper Deck or Donruss but surprisingly, this one had an unopened pack of 2019 Topps Opening Day. The seven cards you see above are the extent of the pack. Nothing groundbreaking but a few neat cards, most of which I'll keep. Full disclosure, this was the only pack of cards I opened in 2020.

With the actual contents of the repack, first up was this trio of 1988 Fleer. I'd say there was probably about a dozen card from this set in the actual stack, these were my three keepers. Danny Jackson finished second in the 1988 NL Cy Young voting in his first year with the Reds, going 23-8 with 15 complete games in just over 260 innings pitched. Yes, I said the Reds even though he's shown with the Royals.

A trio of random cards 80s cards. I'd say a good 90% of the repack was junk wax cards from the late 80s and early 90s, a lot of stuff that I didn't necessarily want or need in my collection. Not trying to sound picky but I'm just trying to keep the excess stuff at minimum. The Yankees team card I'll try to put towards a series about team cards I'm considering doing. 

Some 1990 Score cards featuring another Dave Stewart card. Stan Belinda was always a favorite of mine when I was a kid because of his funky sidearm delivery. 

These three cards have nothing in common aside from the fact I had nowhere else to put them in this post. I've always liked 1992 Upper Deck (maybe I'll put that monster of a set together at some point?) because of the fun team logos they had on the cards and the pictures were pretty cool too. 

As is the typical deal with these repacks, it's stated that one in four of these will include a hit. Well I was a little surprised when this showed up. Not that it's a big name or anything but it's an autograph card of former Reds prospect Jonathan Reynoso. He never cracked the bigs despite several years in the Reds system and the highest he got was 27 games with Double-A Pensacola in 2017.

So that's the content of a impulse buy of a repack as a present to myself for getting a flu shot last fall. Nothing ground breaking or super impressive. It does feel a bit like the well has run dry on these so it'll be a while before I go down the re-pack path again, at least from Walgreens.

 

Retail Repack Adventures #16

As I was putting some cards away the other day, I took inventory of just exactly how many of these 100-card bricks I have sitting around. Not including this particular one, I've got two baseball oness and two hockey ones left. I guess this is a good a time as any to tear into this.

As usual, the cover card. This time is a 2017 Donruss Optic of Freddie Freeman. I bought a box of Optic back in 2016 and wasn't impressed with it. I don't mind getting Optic (or Chrome) singles here and there but I'm not going to be buying any packs of it.

The one thing I like about these repacks is that you find little random cards like this. How this card of factory set limited edition card of Albert Pujols would up in this re-pack at a Walgreens in the middle of the country, I'll never know.

Here's something I never really knew I was searching for until I found it, that being this 1986 Topps Tom Seaver. His official "sunset card" would come the following year in the 1987 Topps set but 1986 was his last active year of pitching. For a White Sox squad that was on their way to finishing 4th in the AL West that year, he appeared in 12 games, going 2-6 with a 4.38 ERA. In June of that year, he was swapped to Boston for Steve Lyons where he appeared in 16 more games. Overall, in his sunset season he went 7-13 with a 4.03 ERA in 28 games.

2000 Topps I always think is a bit of an under appreciated set for a few reasons. First, the design was pretty clean both front and back. Second, there was a plethora of nice action shots (see the Barry Larkin card) and finally, it's the first set of the new millennium for gosh sakes! Now, all that being said, the Craig Biggio card certainly didn't Chrome up very well since it's a basic posed shot. And yes, that's my reflection you see at the bottom of the card. 

Man, this repack is rife with Hall of Famers. Here's a few from the middle of the junk wax era. Yeah, the 1990 Donruss set may be bowling shoe ugly, but the Diamond Kings card, well at least this particular one, are pretty nice looking. It almost makes me want to get a box of it on the cheap and tear into it.

Random minor league cards are always fun to find in these repacks and boy are these random. On the left, we have Bob Davidson of the Albany-Colonie Yankees, someone who literally was one and done in the majors. Not one season and done, but one inning done. He pitched one whole inning in his major league career, presumably at the end of the Yankees season in 1989, at left with an 18.00 ERA. As for the 1989 Albany-Colonie Yankees? They finished 92-48 in the Eastern League that season.

The other card of this duo was a mystery until I started doing research for this article. It turns out that it's a 1980 team issue card from the Nashville Sounds, which oddly enough, was a Yankees affiliate in the 1980. Anyway, Ted Wilborn played in 121 games for the Sounds that year, hitting .270 with 6 HRS and 63 RBIs. He also had a very brief career in the majors, appearing in only 30 games with the Blue Jays and Yankees over parts of the 1979 and 1980 seasons.

Here's something I found rather curious on the back of the Ted Wilborn card, it looks more like business card instead of a baseball card. Sure, it's got the vital info of the player but look at the bottom right, there is the photographer's name, address, and phone number. Also, there is no date or stats or anything. I don't think I've ever really seen a card like this before. For curiosity sake, I plugged the address into Google Maps just to see what came up ...

And wouldn't you know it, looks like the photographer is still in business after all these years.

There was plenty of 2016 Topps included as well, these are the best from the mix of standard base cards and team issues. Ben Revere was briefly with the Reds during Spring Training this year but obviously didn't thrill anyone as he was cut towards the end of camp.

2016 Heritage ... still meh.

Some gems from 1990 Fleer that were included. Being a card blogger has afforded me the opportunity to gain a nice appreciation for cards from this time as previously I had just overlooked most of them and kept only the notable stars. Kevin Appier was a fresh faced rookie for the Royals during 1990 and finished third in the ROY voting that season. The photo on the card looks like it was taken during spring training that year as why else would there be a scoreboard in the background. Pedro Guerrero was still going strong in 1990, finishing in the top 25 of MVP voting. He'd hang around with the Cardinals for a few more years after this and finally hung up his spikes in 1992.

Speaking of 1992, I've always had a bit of a soft spot for 1992 Upper Deck. While I'm not trying to complete the set or anything, the design was a favorite of mine as a kid, mainly because of the "alternate logos" (for lack of a better term) and the photography that Upper Deck used on the cards.

I'll close out this repack by showing off a smattering of random cards to finish this up. 1994 was the first year I really liked Stadium Club during its original run as the design was very MTV-ish and Topps tried to be hip and cool. The designs of the previous years I always get mixed up because they all look nearly the same. Also, there's a Carlos Delgado rookie card from Triple Play (did anyone else forget he was a catcher?) and a 1983 Fleer Carney Lansford, which I though was the oldest card in the box until I discovered what year the Ted Wilborn card was from.

I'd say this was one of the better repacks I've torn into in recent memory. Was there some junk? Yes. But for five bucks and a few minutes of enjoyment thumbing through cards that are new to me, I'll take it.

Retail Repack Adventures #11

It's that time kids! Time for another entry in the ongoing chronicles of the wonderful world of Walgreens repacks. This is the second of two that I picked up during the $3.99 sale last month. No time to waste, let's dive in!

Here's the cover card, a simple Derek Jeter base card from 2013 Bowman. I've never really collected Bowman since it's really heavy on the prospects and I'm not one for prospecting, plus sometimes the design can be kind of bland, like this. While it's not the most exciting card, it does appear that Jeets is sporting a throwback jersey of some sort, so it gets a pass for that.

I considered not showing any of the 2012 Topps cards that came in the pack but I couldn't resist with these. These are all neat cards for various reasons, so I'll start at the top left and work clockwise. Brandon Morrow is has a Blue Jays jersey that definitely isn't blue. I'm guessing it's some sort of Canada Day special jersey. I also like the angle the picture is taken at, where you can see just over the unknown batter's shoulder at the ball coming in. Speaking of cool photos, Carlos Quentin doing a simple pose with the bat across his shoulders and the stadium lights in the background is just plain cool. Travis Snider shows that there just aren't many mustachioed players anymore. Finally, there's Ramon Hernandez. Hernandez has a pretty good stint with the Reds as the backup catcher from 2009-2011 and signed with the Rockies as a free agent in November of 2011. I saw this card and my first thought was "he played for the Rockies?". Regardless, his 2012 season saw him appear in only 52 games while hitting a paltry .217/.247/.353. After the season was over he was shipped off to the Dodgers where he finished in 2013. 

A pair of Hall of Fame outfielders here in Raines and Dawson. 

Hey look! More minor league cards! Much like I did with the previous repack, I'll explore the careers of these guys. The Ken Greer card is a repeat from the last pack, but the others are all new.

Mark Young - This card appears to be from the 1990 Star Dunedin Blue Jays set. That season was the next to last for ol' Mr. Young as he hit .237/.337/.337. No, that's not a typo. His OBP and SLG were the exact same. After the 1990 season, he advanced to Double A Knoxville and after that, he was out of the game, having never appeared in the majors and never advancing above AA ball.

Brian Johnson - Probably the person with the most successful career out of any of these guys. He played 8 years in the bigs, mainly as a backup catcher, with the Padres, Giants, Royals, Dodgers, Reds, and Tigers. While his stats weren't impressive, he did make it to the NLCS two straight times and was a member of the 1999 Reds who nearly won the wild card that year.

Julio Perez - Another career minor leaguer, he spent six years in the Pirates system, never advancing past AA. This particular card from 1990 I guess could be considered his sunset card as that was his final season. He appeared in 63 games hitting .232/.256/.289 and only muscling one home run the whole season.

Here's one definite future Hall of Fame in Ortiz and maybe a borderline candidate in Ryan Howard who is currently trying to resurrect his career with the Braves.

While these may just look like any other junk wax card, I found these interesting. On the Ernest Riles card, the green and gold of the jersey just pops and makes you take a moment and look at it. It looks like he's tossing a ball back to someone after signing it during spring training. I think this has quickly become one of my favorite cards from the 91 Upper Deck set. The other card with Derek Lilliquist has a background of old Riverfront Stadium. I can tell by as the seats in the background are green on the lower lever and at the very top of the frame are the red seats. One of these days, it might be fun to start a mini-collection of cards with pictures taken at Riverfront Stadium.

A few nice horizontal cards that were included. Both of these guys I'd forgotten about completely.

The composition of this repack was very similar to the other as a lot of the same types of cards were involved. For example, here's a Sportflics Alan Trammell card. It fell in just about the same spot the Sportflics Eric Davis card did in the previous pack.

And here's another card from the 1988 Donruss Baseball's Best set. This time of Tony Gwynn. This one I'm definitely keeping.

One in four of these packs claims that it will have a hit in it. Well, it must've been my lucky day because this autograph of Trent Mummey was placed right in the middle. Who's Trent Mummey you ask? Beats me. According to the wonderful Baseball Reference site, he played in the Orioles system through 2014 and never made it above High A ball.

There you have it, another repack in the books. It'll probably a while before I dive into one of these again but I did see a hockey version of these at a local Target. While I'm not in any rush to go dropping five bucks on a giant brick of hockey cards at the moment, it's definitely something I'll consider once I'm back in the mood to rip open one of these.

Retail Repack Adventures #10: Return to Walgreens

I told myself that I wasn't going to buy anymore of these. 

After the last two packs being less than stellar plus loaded with duplicates, I had sworn off of these for an undetermined length of time. However, thanks to a heads up from AJ over at The Lost Collector, the card blogging world was notified of a sale on these for $3.99 each. Never have I wanted to go to Walgreens so bad. When I stopped by there were three of these on the rack, I grabbed two, mainly because the cover card on the other pack did nothing for me. Curiously, they were the regular price. I asked someone who appeared to be managerial about it. Turns out there was an error and the price was wrong but was promised the right price would show at checkout. It did and I brought the packs home ready to tear into them.

Here's the cover card, a 2002 Fleer Focus Jersey Edition Alex Rodriguez. I've never understood the point of calling cards "jersey edition" or the like if they don't actually have a piece of a jersey in them. Regardless, this will go with my 2000-2009 cards for now. I'm not sure I like the way my cards are sorted though, but that's another story for another day.

As with any repack, it's rife with 2012 Topps. These are the best of the lot. A few things to check out here, first there's James Shields in a Rays uniform, a team I'd forgotten he played for. Second, look at the celebration on the Neftali Feliz card. I'm not sure what game it's from but it's definitely a keeper.

There were a ton of 1988 Score cards, nearly 20 to be exact. Again, these are the best of the batch. My favorite here is the Steve Bedrosian, simply because of the way everything just seems to fit perfectly. Plus, it's a night card so that works in its favor too.

1989 Topps ... yay. Interesting little side note, how strange was it that the Twins had a player in the late 80s named Greg Gagne and the AWA, which was based out of Minneapolis, had a wrestler during the same time named Greg Gagne. I wonder if they ever got confused for each other?

As with any repack, it was loaded with junk wax and commons. These four are the best of the junk wax pile that was in the middle of the pack. I'm still baffled as to why Lee Smith isn't in the Hall of Fame. He ranks third all time in saves (478), was a 7-time All-Star, holds a career ERA of 3.03 and appeared in over 1000 games in 18 seasons. Perhaps the fact he was a career reliever might be a strike against him but then again, so was Bruce Sutter and he's in. So why not Lee Smith?

Ah yes, minor league cards. For the longest time, I didn't think twice about these and either added them to my trade box or my discard box (for donations and misc stuff). For some unknown reason, these just spoke to me and I think I'll have to start adding them to my binders. For a fun exercise, I though I would explore the careers of three of the four pictured, the exception being Jon Woodworth because he's listed as a trainer.

Ken Greer - Spent 10 seasons in the minors with various teams. He did make it to the majors though. He only appeared in 9 games combined over the 1993 (Yankees) and 1995 (Giants) seasons. On this particular card, he's featured with the Ft. Lauderdale Yankees, which was the High A affiliate for the Yankees in 1990. During this particular season, he was 4-9 with a 6.45 ERA in 38 games.

Keith Schmidt - Played 6 seasons in the minors from 1989-1994, never advancing above single A ball. Here he's pictured with the Bluefield Orioles, the Rookie League affiliate of Baltimore. That particular season he had a .278/.356/.462 slash line in 55 games.

Larry Walker - No, not that Larry Walker, the other one. I didn't know there was more than two. This particular Larry Walker got into 79 games with the Greensboro Hornets of the South Atlantic League in 1990 hitting .230 with one homer and 15 RBIs. Two years later, he was out of the game, only playing six games at any level above high A.

Two more cards to show off here. First this Sportflics Eric Davis card. I think this might be the first Reds Sportflics card in my collection. I was pretty thrilled when this came out.

Dave LaPoint isn't normally someone I would think about showing cards of, mainly because I'm not familiar with him but this isn't any ordinary 1988 Donruss card. It's from the 1988 Donruss Baseball's Best set. I'm not sure what the distribution method of this set was but I really dig the orange borders. 

The back is nice too as it presents the career stats in an easy to read format with a lighter color and a different orientation that the regular 1988 Donruss cards. 

Had this repack not been on sale, I wouldn't have purchased it as I prefer the 4-pack, 50-card repacks found at Target. However, this wasn't a complete waste as I got a few fun cards and some trade fodder.

What's In Your Easter Basket?

Easter has never really been a big holiday for me. When I was a kid, I got Easter baskets loaded with chocolate, candy, and small presents and it became sort of like a mini-Christmas. Over the years, I grew out of Easter baskets as I started working and becoming more independent. This year, the family and I were up at my mom's house with my aunt and uncle visiting as well. We felt the need to get out and about since it was such as nice day (as in 80 degrees outside and not a cloud in the sky). 

While we were out and about, we found our way to Kettering which just happened to be where Maverick's card shop is. I stopped in briefly and grabbed two Heritage packs, three Gypsy Queen packs, and a Pokemon pack for my son. Heritage has been hard to find in my neck of the woods so I definitely had to grab some since I've only been able to open what I found at Walmart while on vacation last month. The awesomeness of Gypsy Queen this year has been espoused on every blog out there and I've yet to open some so that was a given.

My mom surprised us all with a combined Easter basket for the family. I was pretty surprised when I saw this included in the basket. I have yet to dive into the 2017 offerings from WWE so this will pretty fun to dive into.

On the way home, we had to make a stop at Walgreens and thanks to a little birdie (aka AJ from Lost Collector), I heard that the repacks were only $3.99 each. I found a few but they still had the normal price tag on them. A little disconcerting, but I asked the manager about it and he checked on it. It turns out that there should have been a discount tag on them but there wasn't and as long as I had my rewards card, they would be $3.99 each. Score! 

I'm really looking forward to tearing into all these soon and believe me, I'll be writing about them as I crack into them. After getting all these, I'd say it's definitely been a happy Easter.

Retail Repack Adventures #7

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).