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.

A Feverish Spring Promo from Topps

I was really chomping at the bit to participate in the Spring Fever promo this season. Just when I thought I was going to miss out on the fun, I was able to wrangle a single pack from one of the fairly local card shops that were participating. The base checklist is solid, but the real draw for me is the possibility of pulling two of the autos, both players that don't show up in the base checklist. Greg Bird and Richie Shaffer are two of my favorite young players and I was hoping to pull one of them from this non-descript pack. 

It contained five cards plus a Wacky Packages sticker. Let's rip the plain silver mylar and see what's inside.

Three cards into the pack and I'm not thrilled. If only I was a Giants fan, I'd be pretty happy...

Things began to look up a bit with the Piscotty. He's a pretty decent young player with a lot of upside. It doesn't hurt that I was fortunate enough to meet him at the Triple A All-Star festivities in Durham a few seasons back.

Last card, no auto but at least I ended the pack with the NL MVP. I like this season's design quite a bit better than the last few. I refuse to scan the sticker, sorry. There is one more thing to share though...

Since I didn't pull this auto, I had to go out and bring one home from eBay. One down, one to go. Unfortunately, tracking down the Greg Bird is going to be a bit tougher, it's limited to only 50 copies and he's a Yankee, so demand is high. Won't stop me from trying though! Thanks for reading. 

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.