Last Series 1 Packs

Note: before I officially begin this post, let me start by saying that I have Nacho Grande's group break of series one to partially thank for jump starting my decision to complete the set this year. Chris has announced his next group break which will involve 2015 Topps Heritage and a bonus box of hit-laden product. There are still a bunch of great teams left to be claimed. Do yourself a favor and go here to check out the details. It's a LOT of fun to be involved in one of his breaks! C'mon, you know you want to...

Okay, public service announcement complete.

I've been out of the 'Hobby' aspect of collecting for a while since I do t really have a local card shop that I can frequent. I was searching for some info about series one last week and I came upon the following promo poster:

I quickly searched the attached list of shops that were participating in the promotion. I found one that's about a two hour drive from my house and called them hoping that I'd be able to get my hands on a pack. Fortunately, they still had a few redemption cards, so I hopped in the car and made the drive. 

Once I arrived, they didn't have much product left in stock. I grabbed their last jumbo pack and four out of eight of the hobby packs they had left. Once I made the purchase, they handed me the redemption card with my receipt.

It's been really difficult, but I've saved the packs because I wanted to open everything together once I was able to pick up the Spring Fever pack. This week I made the drive back out to pick it up. As an aside, there happened to be a Toys R Us close to the shop, so I stopped in to see if they had any of the blisters that had the purple parallels and picked up their last two. Here is what I plan to be the last pack purchases of series one this year(if I can control my impulses).

My intent was to make these packs last for a few days, but that idea went out the window as I was opening the first pack. It seems I have gained the control that I can have packs sitting in the house unopened, but once I start, all restraint goes out the window. Here is the haul.

I could have done much worse on the purple parallels from Toys R Us. The corners are even in pretty good condition. I like these much better than in past seasons, but they still need to be distributed differently. A separate pack(preferably with more than 3 cards) would be a good start because just putting them in the blister pack isn't cutting it. I'll be holding on to the Mitchell and Kiermaier, but I think the Corcino and the Chapman will be heading to a new home very soon.

Two pretty decent parallels. I certainly could have done much worse in this area. The LL card is a keeper for sure.

I think I'm going to try to put together the Robbed insert set, so pulling this Gomez was a good thing. Unfortunately, no autograph in my Spring Fever promo pack. However, the five regular cards I pulled from it couldn't have been much better. I really like these and if the checklist wasn't 50 cards, I might actually try to build it, but for now I think that's unlikely. Maybe I'll just hunt down a few other singles and leave it at that. I also did really well in pulling base cards still needed for my set. I got my needed cards number down to 39 from 80. I'm almost there. 

So, there you have the highlights of what I plan to be my last series one packs of 2015. I hope I can manage to control those impulses.