HOFer Replacement Saga - part 1 The Journey Begins

I am a procrastinator at my core. When you team that up with juggling three kids 6 and under, you get a blog that falls silent for almost an entire month. The guilt that I am feeling for once again being so far behind in scanning, writing up, and posting trade packages coupled with an additional dose of guilt at being behind in sending out trade packages to fellow Supertraders or any of my other great trade partners led to my temporary(and unplanned) leave from our community. I stayed as active in reading and commenting as I always do, but every time I had a few moments to sit and write, I just couldn't seem to wrap my head around a single topic and I ultimately focused my energies elsewhere in the hobby. Fortunately, some of that energy has been spent packaging stacks to send to trade partners. Slowly but surely through the last few months of the year, trade packages will roll out to everyone that I currently owe and to others 'just because'. To everyone that has sent packages and have yet to receive a return, thank you for your patience. I feel extremely fortunate to be a part of our incredibly generous community and hope that I have not damaged any of he relationships I've formed to this point. Cardboard will be on the way, I promise. I can only hope that it will be viewed as worth the wait.

Okay, now that I have said all of that, let's get to a topic I've been meaning to write about since the beginning of the year. See how the procrastination theme rears its ugly head once again? Late last year, I purchased a blaster of 2015 Topps Update. In the 'bonus' pack I was lucky enough to shatter the odds and pull an auto/relic combo #/5 instead of the standard manu-relic, First Home Run medallion.

As you may or may not recall from my original write up about this, my excitement immediately turned to frustration as I examined the card a little closer.

There was a large crease on the front surface...

...and there was significant damage to two of the edges. At the time, I was on the fence about what I would do. In the mean time, I have spoken to Topps Customer Support on two separate occasions regarding the return/replacement process. I completely understand that I will have no chance of getting this card back. There are only 5 and I'm sure that none of those were marked as replacements. My big concern has been that this card is so rare that there hasn't been any comparable card sales to allow them to determine an 'equal value' for the replacement card they send. Neither of the conversations put my mind at ease so I continued to procrastinate sending the card in. Well, here we are in mid-September. Heritage High Numbers just released and this year's version of Update will be following in about a month. With the deadline for submitting for replacements quickly approaching, I decided to just jump through all of the hoops and just send it in.

The box with proof of purchase...

...the pack wrapper, receipt and the card...but wait that's not all they require. I also had to complete a missing hit/damaged card request form and write a letter that described the situation.

There it is all packaged up and ready for the PO. I have no idea what to expect from this venture. How long will it take? How happy/disappointed will I be in the replacement card they send? What type of communication should I expect from Topps? I have no clue. I intend to post at least one more update on this situation, but that is subject to change depend ending on how the process goes. 

Have any of you gone through this process before? Was it relatively painless or was it a nightmare? What was the final resolution - were you happy with the replacement you received? I would love to hear any stories you have to share. Thanks for reading.

Holiday Mega Box = Chrome Update Packs

The other day, while once again perusing the card aisle at the local Target, I stumbled upon one of the Holiday Mega Boxes of Topps Update.

The big draw of these things are the two exclusive Update Chrome packs that mingle among five regular update packs.

I'll get to the contents of these in a few. Once again, I had my two year old with me and I asked her to pick between the two boxes. Let's see how she did this time.

I'm trying to build the base set and I came away with a good number to help me with that goal. In case it doesn't come across in the scan, that Bryant is of the rainbow foil variety. I also happened to pull a former Durham Bull that got to play in the All-Star game this season in that Boxberger. I thought I'd tack the Joey Butler I pulled from one of the Chrome packs since he too spent a good bit of time with the Bulls. I was blown away when I saw the printing on those Chromes. For a split second, I thought it was just a parallel, but the entire set is done in that 'bubble refractor' finish.

Bouncing back to the regular packs, the Syndergaard is the only base card I scanned. Those last two inserts are some pretty popular guys too. I did way better than I thought in the base packs. It's a good thing that I did too, I didn't pull anything Earth shattering in the Chrome packs. The Posey is up,for grabs if anyone needs it. It's really nice that the insert set is done in the same refractor pattern(though it's hard to tell in the scan), but I'm going to focus on just chasing down Jeter. That being said, the base cards are really nice. I'm going to have to do my best to chase the 50 card set. I'm happy my daughter picked a great box, but if I had known that the set was going to have been so nice, I would have grabbed both boxes while I had the chance.

While on the same errand running outing, I had to make a stop at Walmart as well. I took that chance to look for another blaster to bust(since I'm also chasing the Walmart exclusive throwback variations). They had a bunch on the shelf and it had my daughter point out which one we should get. She picked and we were on our way home. I opened the blaster after the mega box from above, so I knew my little girl was 2 for 2 in picking great boxes for us. I was hoping that once I cracked the blaster, she'd still be batting 1.000!

Once again, I pulled a good number that were set needs, but I didn't scan any base cards from the blaster. I was pretty happy with the two gold parallels, Ramirez was pretty decent for the Rays and King Felix continues to be pretty great for the M's. The Tazawa was a needed throwback. I've decided to put together that retail only All-Star set too and both Gray and Donaldson helped put me a total of three cards closer to that goal on the day. If I wasn't going to pull the Jeter Rookie Sensations, Jackie Robinson is a pretty darn good alternative to pull. At this point, the blaster was already pretty decent. As stated previously, I always leave the medallion pack for last.

Another Trout insert, another good pull. I'm digging the Springer throwback card. It's one of the better photos from the set that I've seen in person thus far. The Donaldson was the first card of the blaster to beat the odds. The snow camo parallels fall one in every 86 packs. I thought that was the icing on the box...until I picked up the pack that I thought would have the medallion card. For the second blaster in a row,the pack was way too light to contain one of the manu-relics. I opened it, flipped it over, and was amazed by that incredible Mr. Cub relic with that nice stripe running through it. It's #/99 and really beat the odds. The standard 1st Home Run relics fall one in every 28 blasters. A quick glance at the checklist and I can definitely say that I was fortunate enough to pull one of the top five players available. So there you have it. My daughter will be picking all of my retail box and pack purchases for e foreseeable future. She's made the choices that have led to some of the best retail pulls of my entire collecting career.

Thanks for reading!