Retail Repack Adventures #9

When it comes to buying retail, I've definitely been better than I was last year. I've bought zero blasters, hanger boxes, and the like so far but these little repacks though are addicting. As I mentioned in the first repack, for eight bucks (well, $7.99 to be exact) you get four packs, a 50-card mini box, and a bonus prize. Not a bad deal if you ask me, especially considering I've been sitting on this since Christmas.

Here's the bonus prize of this package, four Topps poker chips. I don't play poker but these are neat little oddballs if you will.

Unfortunately, most of the cards in the mini-box were a dud. These were the best that I could scrounge up. Good to see a Jorge Soler Rated Rookie card but the winner of this batch is the Edwin Jackson Devil Rays card. Its a tad creepy looking with the fog coming in from behind and he seems completely unaware.

Here are the four packs contained within. 2015 Series 1 (yawn), Leaf Babe Ruth Collection, Panini Prizm Draft Picks, and 2015 Gypsy Queen.

The contents of the Gypsy Queen pack. My favorite design of Gypsy Queen the past few years is definitely 2015. I love the brown borders, how the picture has a little bump in the top left, and the pictures themselves are really, really good. Case in point, the Ernie Banks card with him leaning on a bat in a somewhat empty stadium. I'm also starting to have more appreciation for the tobacco cards. Normally, I'd scoff at them and just put them in the trade box but I think these might become a little off and on side project now that I've gained a bit more appreciation for them.

These were the only thing worth salvaging from the Series 1 pack. 

Finally here are the four cards from the Prizm Draft Picks pack. I might save one or two of these (more than likely the Grant Holmes Draft Class card) and set them aside for when I start my "shiny cards" mini collection. The rest will end up in trade packs.

You may have noticed that I didn't show any of the Babe Ruth cards, that's because I opened the pack and truthfully found nothing worth sharing. Not to worry though, I know a good home for them and they're already packed up.

This repack definitely wasn't as good as the last one but there's no way honestly the first one could have been topped. Even though it wasn't that great, I'm still going to grab some more of these when I feel like having something to tear into.

Retail Repack Adventures #8

Since it's a new year, it's time to dive into some new kinds of repacks. Yes, they're made by the same people who make the Walgreens repacks I've been diving into over the past year or so but these seem like you get a bit more variety for the price. For $7.99, you get four packs, 50 cards, and a "bonus" item. Let's see what's inside ...

First up, the bonus item and I'm not sure what they are. I took to calling them "baseball buddies" since I didn't know what they were when I opened them. If I had to guess, I'd say they're from the little knock-off Lego sets that MLB puts out.

Moving on to the 50 card box that was contained within, it's about everything you would expect from a repack. It seems like its mandatory that a repack have at least four 2014 Topps cards in it. 

A few cards from the 80s. Cecil Fielder looks like he's ready to mash some long balls into the stands during BP while Tony Phillips looks less that pleased at the umpire's call.

The 90s were well represented with junk wax commons among these cards. I only scanned the John Wasdin card simply because it's a Reserve Collection parallel.

And I'll round out the mini-box with some more recent cards. The Jeter is definitely nice and I'll add it to my 2000s binder but the Votto is a duplicate and will either go in my donation bag to Goodwill or in my trade box, I haven't decided yet.

Here are the four packs that were included. Getting two packs from 2016 is nice, even though I wasn't the biggest Heritage fan this year. I was completely unexcited about the two 2015 Series 1 packs so I ripped into those first.

Here are the best nine cards I could conger up from the two Series 1 packs. Nothing spectacular aside from the Brooks Robinson insert.

Here's the pack of Heritage. I'm still not the biggest fan of this but the Sonny Gray insert card is pretty nice.

Finally, the Gypsy Queen pack. Only five cards in the pack, with one of those being a mini. I'll take a Kris Bryant card as the top card. Yes, please!

Here's the mini, Todd Duffey of the Twins. I'll add it to the bag of minis I have right now that I need to find pages for.

Oh, wait ... that was only four cards wasn't it? Well, here's the fifth ...

My crazy luck with pulling hits out of 2016 packs continues. To say this was unexpected would be an understatement, especially out of a retail pack. While I'm not the biggest Mets fan in the world, I'm still planning on holding on to this just because it's a nice looking card.

I definitely feel like I got my money's worth from this. Granted I got a lot of junk commons from the 50-card mini box but the packs were fun to rip and the bonus prize was neat. All in all, I'll definitely be getting these again and for only two more dollars than the Walgreens 100-card packs, there's some really nice variety to be had.

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 Allen & Ginter X

This was the last of the Christmas goodies I had to open, which is convenient since we finally just took our Christmas tree down this past weekend. Allen & Ginter is a hit or miss product for me, while I like the base cards and the inclusion of some celebrities, most of the non-baseball content drives me insane. If this was a regular hobby box, I would have asked for something else instead. However, this is the online-only 10th Anniversary special edition with two bonus packs. Two guaranteed hits per box. I haven't busted a hobby box since the summer time so this should be fun.

First, the actual baseball base cards. I really like these because of the silver and black around the side and the uniforms compliment everything pretty well. We have our obligatory Reds on top, Billy Hamilton and Zack Mozart. I love how Cozart's card looks like a painting. Pulling a Kris Bryant rookie out of this, along with Anthony Rizzo and a Tanaka short print (at least in the normal A&G it is) was pretty cool.

The highlights of the non-baseball selection of base cards. Roenick and Kilmer I'm ok with, mainly since they are well known. Roenick was a great player and is currently a good analyst and I've enjoyed the heck to of some Val Kilmer movies in the past. I got three of the four Rocky cards in the base set, now I just need a Thunderlips to find to join them. Hey Sly, care to train me like you did Creed for this quest?

Mini cards! As you can see, there are two different mini-designs. First the A&G design on the left and the standard design on the right. Is one supposed to be better than the other? I know there are non-numbered minis out there too. Is there really a need for three different types of minis in one product?

None of the insert cards got the black border treatment but this Alex Rodriguez starting points is pretty cool. One neat thing that was included in this product was buybacks and the Max Scherzer is an example of that. You get two per box and the other one I got was some professional gamer who I've never heard of. 

Here are the hits! A Prince Fielder (I nearly almost typed Cecil Fielder) memorabilia card and an autographed Bernie Williams framed mini. I'll be hanging on to these and they'll go in my box of good stuff, which I should really profile on here someday.

Finally, the die-cuts. These are really nice and makes me wish they were included as an insert set, instead of two separate packs. Doesn't really matter but these were the best of the bonus packs. I'm going to miss Todd Frazier in a Reds uniform, hope he does well on the South Side!

This was a fun little break, much more fun that the regular A&G blaster. However, it's still the same stuff with A&G, either you like it or you don't. I think I would probably like this product more if the celebrities and non-baseball content (come on, really, who needs a card of a mythological cyclops in their baseball cards).