National Baseball Card Day Recap

Apparently last Saturday there was this thing called National Baseball Card Day. My wife, son, and I had already made plans to go up to Dayton to have lunch and go shopping with some friends for the afternoon. Luckily for me, one of our friends wanted to go to Mavericks to get some comic books. I wasn't sure if they were a participating shop or not as they weren't listed on the official Topps list of participating shops but sure enough, I walked in and right on the front display case was a sign stating they were a participating shop.

I knew a free pack was involved and I also knew I had to spend at least ten dollars to get the coveted Kris Bryant card. I asked if the ten dollars had to be spent on Topps products and the owner, a nice old fellow, said technically yes but since I'm a regular customer any purchase of ten dollars or more would do. So I scanned the display cases with the baseball packs but nothing really caught my eye. However I did manage to grab a few things while I was there.

First up, these five packs of 2016-17 Upper Deck MVP hockey. I was completely unaware that this was out so I was pretty excited to see the first hockey release of the year already in stores. The last few years the design of MVP hasn't really done much for me but I needed to get above the $10 quota for the Kris Bryant card so I asked for five packs. Normally, the shop owner doesn't let people behind the counter to pick out their own packs as a way to keep people from pack searching, but he let me grab the packs I wanted since there were only a few left. I'll show off the results of the packs down the road as I've got the remainder of this month already scheduled and September and October are already set aside for Project Halloween content.

I also spotted a good selection of Starting Lineup figures with more than fair prices in another display case. I was surprised there were some hockey ones, mostly of Wayne Gretzky, along with a few others. I purchased the Gretzky figure above to go with my hockey packs simply because it was the only one that stood out to me. It doesn't hurt that it's also a Starting Lineup convention exclusive from 1999 and has him in an unfamiliar New York Rangers uniform.

So, I got free baseball cards, bought hockey packs and a Wayne Gretzky Starting Lineup figure to get over the $10 for another exclusive card. I'm not sure Topps would have been pleased with my purchases somehow. As for the National Baseball Card Day pack, here's what I got ...

As I opened the pack, my wife asked me if there were any autographs or jersey cards that you could get. I told her yes, but they were extremely hard to pull. Funny thing though, the moment I said that, I pulled this out of the pack ...

I'd say it was a pretty successful day.