Ripping Packs - My First Impulse Buy of the Year

Yesterday was a crazy day at the office which actually capped a really insane week for me. I arrived at the office at 9am and had to stop by the local Target to pick up a few things before driving home sometime around 9:30pm. I made the mistake of browsing the card aisle while I was there instead of just getting in and out. Two weeks into the new year and I had been doing really well with the goal to control my impulse spending. Since there hasn't really been any new products I'm interested in, it has been fairly easy. However, after such a long and difficult day, my willpower was MIA. The pickings were slim. I considered a hanger or blaster of The Force Awakens or maybe one of those retail three packs of Topps Chrome football. I wrestled for a minute or two which should have been my cue to just walk away. Then I saw a freshly opened box of Topps Platinum football. I shouldn't have cared for so many reasons: I don't buy a lot of football packs, I'm not a huge fan of the Platinum brand, and there are only four cards per pack to list a few. I guess the lure of the fresh box was too much to overcome because I grabbed the top two packs and headed to checkout. At least the box boasted that there would be a guaranteed rookie auto or rookie auto/relic in each box.

Here are the packs as they were sitting in the box. I waited until I got home, checked on my two oldest girls who were asleep, and fed/put my one month old to sleep. Finally, I had a few moments for myself. I opened the Gordon/Gurley pack first.

Hmmm, only three cards in the pack. I guess the disclaimer about 'packs with a special insert may contain 1-3 cards' applied here due to that blue parallel? It's not numbered, but I'm gonna think of it that way instead of feeling like I got shorted a card. It was a disappointing first pack for sure but I tried to stay positive about the possibilities in pack two. I ripped into the Winston/Mariota pack and hoped for the best.

The first card provided a significant upgrade over the contents of pack number one. Then, I flipped to this:

Wow is all I could think of! I don't collect the Browns, but it was very cool to pull a rookie auto/patch(if you look closely, there's two colors there) #/125 of a guy who played fairly well this season. Ripping those packs served the purpose of being a fun mental break after making it through the tough day/week and it was well worth the $6 price tag. I've even got a few of these set to travel to new homes already.

Ultimately, I'm not sure whether the results of those packs was positive or negative. My first impulse buy of the year and I was rewarded with an auto/patch card. It's a double edge sword. Nice trade bait, but the positive reinforcement of the behavior I'm trying to limit probably doesn't bode well for the rest of the year. Oh well, the goal was to 'limit', not eliminate impulse spending. I've still got 50 more weeks to keep working on that. Thanks for reading!