The Incidental Set Build

A few days ago I took a trip to my favorite semi-local card shop, B&D Sports Cards in Danville, VA. It had been a little while since I had visited and I was hoping to find some great cardboard to bring home. As it turns out, none of the packs/boxes on the shelf were calling my name. So, I decided to dig through the large bin of homemade repacks. I've written about these before, but here's a brief refresher. They are team bags filled with 10 cards each and they usually stick to a certain product throughout. Oh yeah, they're priced to move at 5 for a dollar or a quarter a piece. For that price I'd binge on them even if all I ever found was plain old base cards, but that's not the case. I've pulled refractors, colored parallels, and serial numbered cards from these in the past. Okay, back to the other day...

I may have gone a bit overboard. That's twenty-five packs(250 cards) which set me back all of $5 plus tax. For this post, I focus on the top row. A while back when I ripped my only pack of 2016 Spring Fever, I wasn't blown away by the design and I certainly had no intention of trying to complete the set. However, as I was digging through the repack bin, I kept seeing pack after pack of these floating around in there. Hen all was said and done, I couldn't resist the temptation to pick them up at that price. So I walked out of the shop with 9 packs filled with Spring Fever cards. When I got home I broke them down first. I now had 90 cards in front of me which I figured might give a decent shot at a complete 50 card set. Unfortunately, these packs were hiding some of those MLB Wacky Packages promo cards that came in the real Spring Fever packs. All told, I found 15 of those. That left me with 75 cards to piece together the set. Once I finished sorting, I fell 6 cards shy of going 50/50. To be honest, that was a touch disappointing, but the silver lining is that Kris Bryant is the only huge hobby name that I didn't find. The other five I need are: Sal Perez, Johnny Cueto, Dustin Pedroia, Joe Mauer, and Jose Bautista.

I only pulled one of the Seager RCs, but I pulled three of the Correa, four Schwarber RCs, and four Piscotty RCs among other dupes. I've officially this set to my needs list. If anyone has any of these that I need sitting around collecting dust, I'd be happy to trade for them.

I'll recap the rest of my purchase in the coming days and I'm putting the finishing touches on my plan to help my cardboard collecting acquaintance in need. Thanks for reading.