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.

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.