My National Baseball Card Day Experience

I know I'm late to the party, but I'm finally getting around to writing about my NBCD haul from this past Saturday. I've been excited to see so many fellow bloggers that were able to participate and have enjoyed reading about everyone's experience. I truly hope that this becomes an annual event from Topps. In the days leading up to the big day, I did my homework about the rules and had a plan to maximize my returns. I convinced my wife to come out to the shop with me along with my daughters. I figured this would net me four packs since I was certain that hey wouldn't give one out for my 8 month old. I also planned to snag a few jumbo packs of Topps Chrome to get me over the $20 mark. Somewhere I thought I had read that there would be a limit of 2 Bryant cards per purchase. We arrived at the shop about 15 minutes after they opened and I was surprised to find we were the only customers in the store. I joked with the sole employee a out the lack of a rush and he curtly replied to me that they had just opened. When I tried to explain I figured there might be a bunch of people out for NBCD, he shrugged his shoulders and said 'yeah, well...' and he kept sorting whatever he was sorting. I inquired about the shop's rules for the day instead of assuming that my plan would go the way I thought it would. Boy, am I glad I did that... He laid a single pack on the counter(telling me it was one free pack per person) and told me that the Bryant and the one-touch case were available with a $10 purchase. I asked if there was a limit and if there were particular products that qualified. He snapped at me that it was one Bryant per person and it must be brand new Topps Baseball. I grabbed a single jumbo Chrome pack and walked around the counter to pay. He told me the total and I paid. At this point, my two oldest daughters were standing next to me at he register and my wife was a few feet away pushing the 8minth old in her stroller. He bagged the Chrome pack and handed me a copy of the Bryant and reached back for the one-touch. I opened it and put the Bryant in it to protect it while in transit. At that point, he was done with us. So, I began asking my daughters(loudly) if they were going to ask the man for their pack of cards. They were being shy and my comment did nothing to move the guy to hand them a few additional packs. I ended up having to explicitly ask him if they could get packs too. He said 'yeah...'with a deep sigh and said one per child. He placed two more packs on the counter as my wife walked up behind us pushing the stroller. He guy just went about his business and I decided to just walk out instead of pushing for a pack for my wife as well. I mean, after all, I didn't want to seem greedy. Honestly, I was a bit perturbed by he whole experience, but I appreciated that we were able to participate in the day's festivities. It wasn't until I had read so many others' experiences that were so much more positive that I really got frustrated by the whole thing. So, I'm sorry that you've read my rant because had I been able to write this post on Saturday as I intended, it would have read completely different. Well, let's get to the purpose of the day shall we? Free cardboard!!! I had  shrewdly set aside some non-sports packs that I knew my daughters would like to rip so hat I could trade for their NBCD packs since neither of them are into sports cards(yet).

Pack one:

This was the first one he put on the counter, so I guess it was technically 'my' pack. Nothing Earth shattering for me in here, but I really like the design and there are some seriously heavy hitters(and pitchers) in there.

Pack two:

For me, a little less wow overall, but at least there's former Durham Bull Evan Longoria and an Arenado in here.

Pack three:

It was probably my favorite of the three packs. Lindor is solid, I kinda collect Sale, it's always nice to pull an Arrieta these days, and I was thrilled that Ichiro was in the middle of the pack. So, no disappointment at not pulling an auto and I was happy there were no dupes.

There's my purchase necessary card which I'll definitely need since I'm going to try to complete the set. Btw, if anyone out there has any that don't fit into your collection, I'd love the chance to make a trade for them. Send me a message and help me finish this set if you're interested.

The jumbo pack of Chrome was just frosting on the 'free pack' cake.

A Maeda RC and that Mazara insert were nice ways to start things off. I honestly would have been happy if they were the best pulls to come out of the pack.

That's a Hamels refractor, an Escobar prism-y refractor, and the refractor parallel of the Eickhoff rookie auto(#/499). That some pretty decent frosting! Here's looking forward to NBCD 2017!!! Thanks for weathering the early post rant and thanks for reading.

National Baseball Card Day Details

It seems like forever since the announcement of Topps' reincarnated National Baseball Card Day back in February. At the time no further details were available. It's even been weeks since the official date was announced with no further details provided. Here we are less than a week removed from the NSCC and finally some real details are trickling out. This Saturday, August 13 is the big day. According to what I can find, collectors can pick up free, 6 card packs from participating hobby shops. The set consists of 49 cards which can be found in packs with a 50th card available with a qualifying purchase. Here is a look at that 'purchase required' card of none other than Kris Bryant.

I like the design well enough though it seems a bit reminiscent of mid to late 2000's Upper Deck. I'll definitely be trying to make it out to my not-so-local card shop to grab a few packs. For a much more detailed account of what to expect, check out this post from Blowout Buzz or this article directly from Topps. To everyone who  has a participating shop remotely close to them, let's get out there to show support for this event. Thanks for reading.

Wrapping Up the Card Shop Visit

Once again, my best laid plans didn't work out. I intended to write and publish this yesterday and to move on to a more serious topic today, but it didn't quite work out that way. So, I will finish up the recent trip to the card shop today and hope that by the time I get to my other planned post that I may have a little bit of the readership numbers back closer to my pre-absence numbers. Let's take a peek at a reminder of what is still left to highlight.

Here was the pic of the homemade repacks I picked up the other day. Let's start with the goods from the varied Bowman products in the middle row.

Leading off strong with some awesomely shiny inserts. Heck, in this neck of the woods, the Teams of Tomorrow featuring Dansby Swanson was worth the price I paid for all 25 repacks($5 plus tax) alone.

Next up, we have a few Draft/Dividends, a Brendan Rogers(perhaps destined for some ink if I can make it to Asheville once he's healthy), and a card that would have been pretty decent a few weeks back. That's a blue parallel of Raul Mondesi #/150. Aphid I pulled that and tried to move it prior to his suspension for PEDs, I probably could have gotten a decent return.

Shiny is a good way to start and end any bunch of highlights. I was pleasantly surprised to pull refractors of two of Tampa's better prospects at the moment. I may even get to warpath them both play in Durham someday. Pulling the Urias refractor and a base chrome of Benintendi wasn't too shabby either.

The remaining repacks were filled with various Base cards and inserts from this year's Donruss.

Team USA starts things off with a cameo from Mr. AL MVP. I'm totally digging the Power Alley reboots.

When I first saw the 1982 Donruss subset, I toyed with the idea of chasing the 50-card set. I quickly came to my senses and decided to pick up only a few of my favorite players instead. The Kershaw and Posey were two of the better ones that fell out of these packs. If anyone is trying to complete the set, let me know, I can probably help. Though I'm not a huge Daimond King fan like most, these were still standouts from the repacks.

Here is the real cream of the crop. I love the Grier parallel! It's just a bonus that it's #/299. The pink Arenado is probably the only Donruss card here that is going into my collection. Beyond that, the Swanson and the two Rays prospect refractors are the only other keepers. If anyone is interested in any of the other cards from this post, I'd be up for trading them. Just let me know. Thanks for reading.

More From the Semi-Local Card Shop

My recent trip to B&D Sports Cards yielded me more than just a bag full of homemade repacks and a new set to collect. I also decided to flip through the various quarter and 'priced as marked' boxes that share shelf space with unopened product. Each time I've looked in these boxes, the stock seems to be almost entirely different from the time before. It gives me the 'I could find anything' feeling that I get when I'm at a card show. When I was ready to call it a day, I had picked out 15 singles to bring home for my collection and a few that will make their way into trade packages.

Let's start things off with a few of my favorite Broncos from their first two championship teams. I especially love the Certified Elway since the photo was from Super Bowl XXXII. Oh, and I love Shannon Sharpe sporting the older school jersey and helmet.

From key players in the first two championship teams to Mr. Super Bowl MVP, Von Miller. I couldn't pass up that cool die-cut Cody Latimer RC. I'm hoping for big things from him this coming season.

I was really disappointed that Osweiler wasn't re-signed, but he was a big part of the championship season, so I decided to add this awesomely shiny RC. Speaking of awesomely shiny, there is a prismatic RC of the aforementioned Cody Latimer. Wrapping up this scan is the RC of Shane Ray from Topps' Take it to the House promo set. Each of these new Broncos set me back a shiny quarter which I considered quite the deal!

Here are more quarter box finds. Hey, wait a minute. Isn't his blog written by a Yankee fan? Yes, it is. Your eyes aren't playing tricks on you, I picked up this trio of BoSox for my own collection. Why? The Napoli card is one of the reare pieces of cardboard where the World Series trophy shares the spotlight. I really like Mookie Betts, so I had to take the opportunity to add an new-to-me RC. That Boggs...it's a horrible picture from a product with no logos but it has two things going for it. First, it's shiny and I love shiny cardboard. Second, and most importantly, it's a Christmas card. If you look closely, you can see the 12/25 serial number. I just couldn't leave that in the quarter box.

These are the last three I snagged for my own collection. The Soler is a bronze framed parallel and is #/499. Again, I couldn't pass hat up for a quarter. I've said it before and I'm sure I'll have a chance to say it again, but Kiermaier is one of my favorite former Durham Bulls. I needed this base Classics RC. The last single I picked up nearly broke the bank. Whereas all of e others were snagged from the quarter boxes, that Arenado RC refractor set me back a whole dollar. He had a great season last year and he has picked up where he left off. The more I get to see him play, the more I like him and it doesn't hurt that he was my first round draft pick for my fantasy team this season. This is the first rookie year Arenado I have thus far. That wraps up the singles I picked up on my recent visit. Tomorrow I'll plan to show the contents of the remaining repacks. Thanks for reading.

New Blogging Year = New Local Card Shop

As I was doing my research and reflection before writing my one year anniversary post the other day, I really wanted year two to be a little more 'adventurous'. I'm not really sure what I mean by that just yet, but as New Year's Day approaches, I'll probably sit and write a blog goals list for the year to better define it. I decided that an easy way to be 'more adventurous' in the short term was to finally explore a card shop that I hadn't visited yet. This particular shop is in Danville, VA and though I live in NC it only took me about a 30 minute drive to get there. It is actually the most local shop that I am aware of. I knew it existed because they participate in most of the card company promos like Topps' Spring Fever and Panini's multiple holiday promos. I made the drive yesterday just to see what I've been missing. Overall, I'm glad I did!

I forgot to snap a photo of the store front, but I found this image online. It is a really small shop and is primarily focused on comics, but the trip was certainly worth it and I'll definitely be returning on a semi-regular basis. As I walked in the front door, there was a small table that had a rather large plastic storage bin, not unlike this:

It was filled with store made repacks! For a collector like me, it was heaven. Team bag after team bag was lined up in there. All four major sports were represented as were golf, soccer, MMA, and there were even a few non-sport. I loved that there are two 'face' cards to help me pick which ones I want and that there was so much variety, but the best part was the price. There was a small sign next to it stating that they were a quarter a piece or 5 for a dollar. I didn't pay attention to how many cards were in each, but I started searching and quickly began pulling ones that I needed to take home. When all was said and done, this is the pile I had.

That's 16. All but one were baseball(there was one football for good measure). I also picked up four MMA packs that I'm not going to show off here. I picked all of the ones in the box that had Chrome showing in an effort to help fill in my remaining set needs and found a few others that had face cards that were too good to pass up.

As I searched the rest of the shop, there was a decent selection of open packs and boxes available in baseball, football, basketball, WWE, and some non-sport. The prices were in line with what you probably see at most shops these days. They also had a decent selection of supplies. Unlike most shops, they didn't have multiple display cases lined with singles, but they did have a few boxes to flip through that were sorted by team and somewhat alphabetical. I picked a few cards from these boxes to round out the day's purchase. Here are the highlights of the repacks.

These two made the Chrome packs worth it all on their own. The Bautista is the green refractor which is #/99 and the Konerko is the regular refractor of his farewell card. Beyond these, I found a few cards that are already set aside for trade partners and a prism refractor of MadBum too. Additionally, I found 15 cards to cross off my set checklist.

This Kiermaier 'Cracked Ice' card was on the face of one of the packs and I could not pass it by. I've said it before, but he was one of the most exciting players that I had the fortune to watch in Durham!

I picked up a prospect pack because the Adames and Garcia were the face cards and I thought they'd be good additions. Perhaps, if things work out, they'll one day look good with in person autos on them.

That wasn't all the prospect pack had to offer though. This trio was sandwiched in the middle. There were another two guys that I might potentially see come through Durham with the BoSox and Yankees Triple A teams and Kolek played in Greensboro(which is not too far a drive from me either) this past season. The design of these just seems to scream 'sign here"!

The best pack of the trip contained these two oddly sized and shaped cards from A&G. I am not exactly sure what these are(and haven't done the research to find out) but it's cool to add another Josh Hamilton even if I don't actively pursue that collection anymore. These were surrounded by the following cards which blew me away.

The Sano and the Vargas were the cards showing on this particular pack. How it was still sitting in the bin is beyond me. Honestly, it could have been almost anyone from Bowman Sterling and I would have picked it up just to add some more singles from that brand. As if the pack wasn't good enough, I found that sparkly, Bowman throwback insert of Kyle Schwarber tucked in there as well! All for the low, low price of twenty cents!

Here's the final lowdown on these repacks: they are AWESOME, and worth the drive alone. Each pack ended up containing 10 cards which essentially made this bin somewhat of a dime box! Heck, after all was said and done, I ended up adding 20 team bags to my supply reserves that will eventually make their way to many of your mailboxes. Add to that, I love the unknown/surprise aspect of the repack format and it made for a great new adventure!

A Second Visit to My Not-So-Local Card Shop

A few months ago, my family and I were spending a week in Myrtle Beach and I found a pretty decent card shop on a rainy day. I didn't have much time to browse it, so I knew it would be on my agenda when we went back recently for another week. During my last trip to Baseball 17, I spent my limited time flipping through dollar boxes and glancing at the cards in the showcases. This time around, I knew that I wanted to spend a good bit of time checking out the quarter boxes.

I'll start off with vintage minis and some Hostess goodness. I only had a few of these 1975 Topps minis before flipping through those boxes so I figured for a combined fifty cents, I couldn't leave these behind. The Hostess Reuschel has some white spots and is pretty badly miscut, but it is a vintage Hostess card for only a quarter, so into the stack it went.

You know if I was gonna pick up the Reuschel in that condition that I was thrilled to see this Garvey looking as good as it does. It still has most of the dotted line and is pretty clean otherwise. From The snacks of Hostess, I'll go back to breakfast. How could I possibly leave this Kellogg's card of Cookie Rojas in a quarter box? Not only is the guy's name 'Cookie', but check out those specs! To top all, this one is crack free.

I was pleasantly surprised to find some singles from a set I've been actively working on and one that will soon be added to my needs list. In some ways, I've been working on the 2002 Topps Post set since it was available in cereal boxes 13 years ago. I vividly remember going up and down the cereal aisle trying to find boxes that had the baseball card promotion on them. I would eat one box as quick as I could so that I could go back to the store and grab another box or two. All told, I was able to cross off five more cards(though I only scanned 4) from my Wantlist on this set. I was happy to find a couple of the 1992 Fleer Performer series from Citgo/7-11. I was unaware of this set before unearthing a few lots of them on Listia. These two additions put me at set-half-done. Therefore, I'll be updating my set needs list by adding this one in the near future.

I had to pick up this 1992 UD Denny's hologram, if for not her reason than nostalgia. I remember when holograms were the peak of cardboard technology. I've wanted that Mattingly Studio Heritage Series for a while now, so I was thrilled to dig this copy out and put it in my stack. Yes, that is a football card. It's the only one I rescued from those boxes. Why? Well, that shows none other than Deion Sanders playing baseball for Florida State.

I love this El Duque 'aces' card. This Pineda 'Rated Rookie' was a total surprise to me. The posed shot does a good job hiding that would have been a lack of logos. That A&G Johnny Damon card was an awesome find. It's only the second card I have that highlights his incredible two stolen base on one pitch play in he 2009 World Sereis against the Phillies. Good stuff.

I've had really good luck finding great deals on some of the top Japanese baseball players in this shop. That streak continued during this second trip. That is an E-motion insert from Nomo's rookie year. I remember that card being incredibly hard to find in the midst of Nomo-mania. The Playball is one of the few Matsui RC's that I own. I am slowly building my collection of National Trading Card Day issues and was quite happy to see this Matsui from 2004.

I'm going to end with three really interesting oddball issue that I really had no idea existed. This Cal Ripken Movie Gallery coupon-card is great. Like the remaining two cards, there was absolutely no way that I was going to leave something like this behind. I like the 'Cal Ripken' logo on the back.

Next up is this incredible 'What If' card. Best was one of the top Minor League Baseball card companies in the late '90's/early 2000's. I didn't realize this promo existed. It's pretty awesome to see one of the most talented pitchers of that time frame in an 'alternate reality' card. It's even better that the team he is shown on is the Orlando Rays. Kerry Wood certainly had the potential to be one of the best pitcher's of all time if injuries hadn't derailed his promising career.

Last up is another promo card. This time, it's from a company that I had never heard of and it shows a great pic of Juan Marichal signing some autographs for the fans. For both this card and the Wood, they are numbered out of 5. I think I'm going to have to see if I can track down a few of the other promo cards from these respective sets because these have got me curious.

This was definitely a fun and productive trip to the card shop. I'm glad that I found this place to help me make the most of another rainy day at the beach. Man, I need to find a local shop that's this good. Thanks for reading.

A Trip to My Not-So-Local Card Shop

Last week, my family and I were on vacation on Myrtle Beach. It happened to be raining one of the days and we were driving around exploring(read: keeping the kids from going crazy in the hotel room). Just as we were headed back to the room to get lunch and let the girls nap, we passed by a card shop. Once we finished lunch and the girls were sound asleep, I drove back out to the shop. I mean, what better way to spend a rainy day at the beach?

Since it was raining and I had limited time to search the store, I didn't take any pics of my own, but here are a few that give a feel for the shop.

The storefront

The wall behind the main showcases

The boxes on the shelves differed a bit, but this is a pretty decent representation of the shop atmosphere. Given my time constraints, I did a quick lap around the shop to see where my time would be best spent. It turns out that this is one of the rare shops that has dollar and quarter boxes on display. I decided to focus on them for this first visit.

I hit the quarter boxes second and didn't spend much time there, but I'll start with a few I pulled from there.

3-D! A Yankee World Series hero and a former Durham Bull, both decked out in all of their lenticular glory. I'm such a sucker for these kind of cards.

This gem features two great Yankees and makes me aware of another great oddball set to chase after. I had no clue there were cards from Sunoco. Mattingly will make another appearance or two in my purchase stack.

This one bummed out the shop owner while I was paying. He told me he completely forgot that he had put Pineda on the quarter boxes last year. He had two of this one that I found, so I snagged them both. There were a few others that I won't show here, but a few of you out there will be seeing them pop up in your mailboxes in the near future.

Back in my past show going days, the dollar boxes were my thing as much as the dime boxes are Nick's thing so I was interested in checking out what I might find. These dollar boxes were sorted fairly well by sport and into star player sections. I dug right in and picked out a few hidden treasures.

I grabbed this five card sealed pack of Starline/Coca-Cola cards that had Donnie Baseball on the front. I'm certain that I'll open it soon.

I couldn't pass up the chance to pick up one of Nomo's best RC's for just a buck. I don't collect him, but owning this card takes me back to the time of Nomo-Mania.

The action shot

The posed, head shot

I was thrilled to find this 1985 Slurpee Disc from 7-11.

Here's the back

I LOVE these things! I'm sure the actual 'value' isn't much more than a dollar(or even a dollar), but I happily forked that over to be able to take this one home. I thought this would be the best item I found for my collection, but I was wrong.

A few stacks after finding Mattingly, I found this. It's  a bit mis-cut and has some rounded edges, but it's a 1976 Hostess Thurman Munson! Surely, this would be the best find of the day, right? Wrong again!

My jaw nearly dropped when I saw this, a BBM Ichiro from 1995! I don't know anything about these types of cards, so I'm not even sure if it's authentic. Truthfully, I don't care. Check out that young Ichiro!

Here's the back. I don't have many cards with other languages. I've got a handful of O-Pee-Chee, a slightly larger stack of Pacific, and one or two from Topps that have Japanese writing on the back. This one is by far my favorite. If anyone out there is more knowledgeable about BBM cards and can let me know if this is legit, that would be great.

Just as was the case with the quarter boxes, there are some dollar box finds that will shortly be making their way into mailboxes near you.

I didn't have high hopes for this shop away from home, but I was pleasantly surprised. We've already got another trip planned for Myrtle later this summer, so I'll be making at least one more stop into Baseball 17 for some more goodies! Thanks for reading.