Anyone Still Out There?

WOW! I feel like I've blinked and it's been a bit over 5 months since I've posted here. I'm pretty sure I can already hear the crickets... I've got no excuses for my absence. Yeah, life and work and all are a touch crazy, but the truth is I simply haven't made the time needed for scanning and writing. I've certainly still been actively acquiring new cardboard over these months and more often than not, I've been reading the blogs I follow regularly(even if comments have been few and far between). After being  inactive for a certain amount of time, it just becomes difficult to find something worthy of breaking the silence. Well, today's retail find seemed worthy enough and it gave me a great excuse to return to this great community. I happened to be out running some errands with my two younger daughters and what should I happen to find but this sitting on a shelf staring back at me:

About a week ago, I read that this product was returning and that the package format would be different than in years past and I was looking forward to finding some on a Target shelf eventually. I was happily surprised that eventually came sooner rather than later. There were two of these on the shelf so I scooped them both up and carried on with our errands. Once I got home, I commenced ripping right away.

First up, the inserts:

I found one refractor in each box and they're #/250. The only true insert set is a chrome version of the Rookie Cup set. These four were the highlights best of the 6 I pulled. I was especially thrilled to pull the Jeter.

Rookies and Rookie Debuts are the primary focus of the set and here were some of the better pulls. My inability to pull Aaron Judge from packs continued, but at least I found another Bellinger. Interestingly, I found both of the Moncada cards in the same pack. These highlights made for a solid, if unspectacular first experience with this product and I would have been content if that was the best of what was found, but good fortune happened to be shining on an otherwise rainy/overcast day.

I'm not a Rockies fan by any stretch, but pulling an auto was pretty awesome. Pulling a gold parallel auto #/50 was even better! Assuming these boxes don't dry up like every other retail-exclusive product has, I'll likely build the set. Finding seven chrome packs per box versus two packaged along with five base Update packs will certainly make that an easier task, even taking into consideration the larger set size(100 instead of 50 in years past).

I hope this post finds some of my former audience and that you'be all been well. Thanks for reading.