Batting 1.000 On Hockey Repacks

A week or two ago, just before I found a discounted UD series one hockey blaster, I picked up my second 100 card, 1:4 has a hit hockey repacks from a not-so-local Target.

I'll admit, I cheated a little bit on this one. You'll see why in a bit. I picked it up because I kinda liked the face card and was interested to get a better look at it. When I did, I caught a glimpse of the side of the package and saw something unique. The combo of interesting face card and unique looking card buried in the stack made me take it with me to the register when I was ready to check-out.

I was lucky to find a trio of Devils that were on the roster around the time I became a fan of the team. I have an especially fond memory of Stephane Richer. I recall renting an NHL game for the NES(I think) and I chose to play with the Devils. His likeness within the game was on par with Gretzky and Lemieux. They instantly became my team(fortified by all of my friends telling me I should like the Rangers) and Richer became one of my favorite players on the team. Using him in the game kinda reminded me of playing Tecmo Bowl with Bo Jackson.

The bottom row boasts two other great players from the late '80's, early '90's. I had to include the Stevenson RC in the scan simply because you just don't see rollerblades on many pieces of cardboard.

Great photos, especially the Lemieux/Bush meeting on that UD card.

There it is, right there in the center, the face card of the repack. I love that also hiding in the stack was a similarly designed Ovechkin. I dig that old photo of Joe Malone too. Get a load of that old school equipment and sweater!

I was pretty happy to pull this silver signature parallel out of there as well. So, what exactly was that unique looking card I saw from the side of the box? Well, I could tell that it was a thick acetate card of some sort, but I had no idea what kind it was.

This is prett awesome! The signature is on-card. Though I wasn't familiar with Drew Stafford, it's still a cool card. This makes me 2:2 pulling 'hits' from these repacks. This was a ton of fun to bust. My local Target(s) don't stock these for hockey so it won't become a habit to pick them up. When I happen to see a few of these on the shelves, I'll be sure to take a peek though. If the face card is worth it, I'll definitely crack a few more of these. Maybe I'll be able to keep,the streak alive. Thanks for reading.

e-Pack and Repack

Thursdays are my long day at the office. I'm typically there from around 8am-8:30pm. I know there are plenty of people that only work 12 hour shifts, so I'm not complaining, but I usually find a lot of my impulse buys are on these days simply because it helps me get through the day. Whether I open whatever I get during my break or save it until the end of my shift as an incentive, grabbing a little something to open definitely helps me get through the long day. Yesterday, right as I was going to leave the office, I noticed an email that detailed Upper Deck's new digital card app. When I heard about it, I sat in my car and created an account and immediately opened my daily free pack.

I know a lot of you out there don't consider these 'cards' and won't waste time with apps like this, but I really dig flipping through a new 'pack', especially when I'm not depending any money. I'm also intrigued by the concept that Upper Deck has come up with. This is like a hybrid of other digital trading card apps and the eTopps concept. Apparently, you can opt to have actual cards from your collection within the app sent to you. Here's pack number one.

I'm definitely going to add it to my daily digital trading card routine. After checking out the app, I felt the need to open some real packs. I needed to run an errand that would bring me near another Target that is not my normal local Target. When I stopped in, I found the first 100 card hockey repacks that I've seen in my area. I've seen the unopened pack varieties before, but never wanted to spend the 12 or 20 bucks to pick one up. When I saw this face card, I figured it was worth the 5 dollar gamble.

I cracked it open and ripped the pack open first.

I haven't collected hockey cards in a really long time, so I'll just dive in. Feel free to drop some knowledge on any of these.

I recognize Getzlaf only because I know some of you out there collect him.

Cammaleri is a current Devil, so therefore a favorite. Also pulled a rookie, but it have no idea if it's a 'true RC' or if that is even a real concept in the world of collecting hockey cards.

The final card of the pack at least sports the Devils logo. Based upon the wrapper, I think this may be a gold rush parallel? Not sure. Now on to the highlights of the 100 card block. It was heavy on 1990 Bowman and one of the '90's Parkhurst sets and overall, I found it to be a really enjoyable stack.

I'll start with two of the three Devils in the pack along with an awesome net minders card. I remember Ed Jovanovski when he was the first draft pick in the early '90's. When I see a Tie Domi, the first work that comes to mind is 'goon'. My only memories of seeing him on the ice involve him throwing fists. Lastly, a really cool award winners hologram of Dirk Graham.

Don't know any of these guys, but they're all pretty cool. I mean until I checked out the back of the upper right card, I thought the guy's name was Moose Jaw! Turns out it is a team checklist. At least I got a laugh out of it.

Now here's the star portion of the program. All told, two Hull, two Roy, a Messier, a Modano, and a Lemieux is a pretty strong showing.

These are two of my favorites of the whole pack. The Smirnov may have a boring pic, but I love the retro design. The LaBarbera is, by far, my favorite photo of the whole pack. That was a pretty good pack, but it turns out that I had the one out of four that included a hit.

I've got no idea who either of these guys is and I don't have particularly like the Blues, but a dual relic is still awesome! I'm not sure how many more hockey repacks I'll ever go for, but it sure was an entertaining repack. Thanks for reading!

A Repack of a Different Kind

Over the weekend I was able to spend a lot of time with my family, but not much time on the hobby. I'm not complaining at all though it is interesting to note that the family time did lead directly to a new hobby adventure. While running errands with my wife and daughters, some never ending shopping led me to a Five Below. I don't go in there very often. In fact, I can probably count on one hand how many times I've been in one before. However, recently I read a post on one of the great blogs out there that detailed a pretty decent repack purchased at a Five Below. I knew that while the girls were looking for nail polish and other accessories that my time would be spent searching for one of these repacks even though I only recalled seeing a few packs here and there during previous visits. After only a few minutes...

I found my objective! At first glance, these appeared to be a pretty decent deal. I mean, I'm used to picking up a Walgreens-style, 100 card repack box for $4.99 every once in a while. Here, for that same price, I get the 100 cards with one guaranteed HOFer and rookie card plus two packs. I'll consider the figure to just take up extra space.

Heck, with these, you can even see two out of the 100 cards and both packs that are included. I assumed that the two 'face cards' would be my HOF and RC's respectively. None of the cubes had any cards showing that I couldn't love without, so I focused on picking the packs I wanted instead.

I decided to go with a 2014 Topps Update and a Heritage pack from the same year. I figured that the packs alone could almost justify me spending the five bucks.

Let's start with the 100 card portion. Nothing against Ryno, but I'd rather count any one of this trio as my official HOF card. The fact that they're oddball issues only makes it better for me!

Overall, the 100 cards was about on par with what I'm used to getting out of repacks, but I must say that I'd also rather count the Maddux as my HOFer, and I'd certainly rather count this Bonds as my RC! I was a bit shocked. Not that these are high dollar cards, but still I felt like I was playing with 'house money' once I flipped to the Bonds. Heck, I even pulled a Griffey Jr! Not bad for one of those 100 card repacks and I still had the packs to openin this one.

Nothing Earth shattering came out of the Heritage, but it was solid. The Hamilton/Castellanos RC was one I hadn't pulled from the few packs I've opened of this previously. The Robertson was a nice reminder of his time in Pinstripes. The Miggy was the highlight of the pack since it's one of the high number SPs of the set. Moving right along to the Update pack.

I already had the Kershaw, but it's nice to pull a player like him. The sparkly, red parallel was of Leury Garcia and will likely end up in a trade package soon. Those first two continued to add 'frosting' to the repack. It might not be frosting exactly, but it looks like Nick Hundley was having his own 'sweet' problems... Sorry for that terrible pun.

Closing out, I pulled another copy of that Tanaka debut card(which for me is a good problem to have) and then I saw that last card. When I opened the pack and took the cards out, I saw a thick card in the middle so I arranged it to be the last one I looked at. Seeing Robbie Cano's red, All-Star jersey really was the cherry on top of this repack cube.

Raleigh Card Show Post 2 of 3 - More Quarter Finds, Home-Made Repacks,and Two For a Buck Boxes

Welcome back for the second of three card show recap posts. I'll pick up where I left off. Once I left the quarter boxes, I came upon another regular vendor. This guy typically focuses on supplies, unopened product(some new and some cheap junk wax), and home-made repacks. I usually stop by to see what his repacks look like and pick a few up, but I usually don't buy much else from him. This show was different. He had a few miscellaneous binders set out, so I decided to at least flip through them. As I flipped the pages, it became pretty clear that these binders were similar to the boxes I'd been digging through already. The contents were very random and mostly priced at a quarter a piece.

Though Sosa's rep took a pretty hard hit, I couldn't pass over a Museum Collection card of a great slugger(tarnished career or no). I couldn't believe that I found that McDonald's gold Cal Ripken for a quarter. Since the season was winding down for most teams, I figured that the Rickey and the Griffey Jr cards would help tide me over until it was Spring Fever time again.

The Chicken! That's my second early Donruss card of that awesome mascot. I'm pretty sure that there is one more year that I don't have yet. I am slowly whittling away at the checklist for that 1992 Fleer The Performers 7-11/Citgo set. These three bring me a little bit closer.

Now these, I hadn't seen before! At first I didn't think much of them, figuring they were just random, early Score All-Star cards...until I noticed the P&G logo in the upper corner. When I flipped the page and looked at the back, I saw that this was a new to me oddball set that has 18 cards in it. All told I picked up six different ones. No Yankees, so it's likely that I'll eventually try to piece this set together as well. That wraps up my binder finds.

As I mentioned, this guy always has some home-made repacks sitting in a large box on his table. I've never actually counted how many cards he puts in them, but he fills team bags to capacity and he's got them priced at 3 for $1. He's always got some good quality in them too. I've never opened one and had the thought that what I just looked through was a waste of my money. As I was looking through them, he asked if I was interested in baseball or football. I told him I was looking at whatever he had from either and I told him that I've always appreciated his repacks. I commented that the box was a little empty and he told me that some guy had come by on Saturday and bought all 60 baseball repacks he had made for the show. He told me he had to scramble to put more together so he'd have some for Sunday. As per usual, I picked out three of these to round out my purchase. I sure am glad that he scrambled to make more. Here are some favorites:

Hey, another of those Fleer 7-11/Citgo cards! Alas, I already had the Ryan. I'm sure it will end up in a trade package soon though. That shiny blue thing in the middle is my first 2013 Topps blue sparkle card. True, it is Blake Beavan but still...it's a cool looking card. I think Topps should do something like these again! I only have a few of the Classics singles from last year and I like the design pretty well. It was cool to find Tommy Henrich hanging out in one of the stacks.

Next up, I found a trio of 1991 Donruss The Rookies. The highlight was definitely the Luis Gonzalez, but the Whiten was nice too.

I was really happy that the Guzman was lurking in one of the repacks I chose. Yeah, he's mostly remembered(if at all) for his time on the Blue Jays, but I remember him for the time I got to see him play with my beloved, Durham Bulls! It's always nice to get a relatively early career card of Big Unit! What is that over there in the right? That must be a reprint. Nope! It is an actual 1968 Topps card. I don't know who Stan Williams is, but it was really awesome and unexpected to pull some vintage out of one of these team bags!

These three threw me as well. At first glance I figured they were base 1991 UD and didn't give them a second look. Upon closer inspection, I thought it was odd that I didn't even vaguely remember having seen these photos before. Best I have figured(I haven't attempted to really research them yet), they are a special All-Star set that Upper a Deck did that year. I was especially happy with the Rickey and the dual award photo with Junior and Ryno.

These would have to be my three favorites out of the repacks. I love that old Fleer Pete Rose w/ the cameo by his son. Deion in a Yankee uniform is always a welcome sight. That Chris Sale RC was one that I didn't have yet. If only all retail repacks could be as good as these!

Next, I found a guy that had about a dozen 5000ct boxes labeled 'Two for a Buck'. I dug right in, starting with some football(just to mix it up a bit).

Emmanuel Sanders has become a real superstar since joining the Broncos last season. This represents the first RC of his in my collection. Mario Wiliams is a PC guy for a few reasons. First, he went to NC State(my Alma Mater) and second, I've had the good fortune to meet him a few times and he's a really great guy! All of these were released during a time when I wasn't collecting football cards at all so it great to find these to fill in some holes. Plus, I dig that Player Timeline card that shows him in his NC State uni!

Broncos, Broncos, Broncos! I'm really happy that they've found a way to win each week and are currently 4-0. I hope hey can keep it going! I recently received my first Virgil Green RC in a trade, but I was thrilled to add the refractor and the orange refractor of his RC. Have I mentioned my love of the old Pinnacle Museum Collection yet? Actually, I think the football version was called Trophy Collection. At any rate, Pinnacle's Dufex technology on a parallel or insert is a thing of beauty. Match that up with a team or individual player I collect and my appreciation for that card grows exponentially. These guys were two of my favorite players back in their day to boot!

I always love finding cards of some of the defensive players that don't rate being on every checklist when new sets are released. Omar Bolden fits that description, plus I like the Crown Royale die cut. 

Oooh, shiny and historic!? I'm not 100% positive that this pic was taken from Fisk's well known World Series Home Run, but it looks like it might have been snapped right before he started using his body english to wave that ball fair. Even if it wasn't, this is a great piece of cardboard!

I didn't pull too much from he baseball, but the ones I did buy packed some serious punch. I've mentioned my love of Collector's Choice before. Well, that Bonds checklist is actually a gold signature parallel. It's not terribly valuable these days, but those gold sigs were really difficult pulls back then and are still pretty tough to come by. I already had the Pettitte Bowman RC, but for a half dollar, I couldn't bring myself to leave it behind. I picked the purple refractor Karns up because he has played with the Bulls over the past few seasons and was solid, if unremarkable, in Tampa this season. A green refractor RC of one of the best pitchers in the AL this season? Yes please! Oh yeah, Archer is also a former Bull. I snagged the Bowman Nomo because I've picked up a bunch of his RCs over the past few months and I still needed that one. I save the best for last! That Deion Sanders has it all:

Oddball?  Check!

One of my favorite players?  Check!

Unfamiliar sport?  Check!

Man, wasn't it enough that Prime Time played Baseball and Football? I never would have imagined that a card existed of him playing basketball. Who does he think he is, Bo Jackson?

To any of you that actually read all the way until,the end of this post, thanks and I'm sorry that it was so much longer than my normal posts. The good news is that only one show recap post remains. In it I will explore cheap auto/relic boxes and delve into some 'pricier' bins.

A Sunday Repack

This is NOT the post I had hoped to be writing today. My plan was to be writing 'More Adventures at the Card Show'. I learned late in the week that there was another show at the NC State Fairgrounds in Raleigh and I immediately started making plans to go(in my head). Yesterday went by without any opportunity, but I knew that my wife was taking one of my daughters out today and I'd be watching my youngest. I planned on getting packed up and in the car to make the hour long drive so that we'd arrive as they were opening the doors. As is often the case when you have kids, those plans just didn't work out. By the time I had things packed and ready to go, it became a question of how much time we would have to walk around before having to turn around and drive the hour back home. Then, I realized it was a toy and baseball card show. I've been to a few of these and they typically consist of about one sports card table for every seven or eight toy tables. I decided the trip wouldn't be worth it this time around. 

So, we loaded up to go run some household errands instead. I decided we'd make a stop at one of our local Targets since I really wanted to look through some cards that were new to me. I'm not usually the biggest fan of those repacks you can find at Target and/or Walgreens, but I always look to see what's there and I've broken down and paid the retail cost just because I wanted one of the cards on the front on a few occasions. Today just happened to be one of those times. I was flipping through the repacks which were mostly football and hockey today. Then I came upon this baseball pack.

I considered it for a moment and figured I'd probably spend the $4 on this to get the Ichiro and to satisfy my need to look through some cards that weren't already at my house. Once I turned it over, I knew that I would be making this purchase.

There's a Trevor Hoffman in a Brewers uni, but for those that don't recognize the one on the right, it's a 1985 Topps Kirby Puckett. That would be his RC! At least I knew that if the remaining 96 cards I couldn't see were '88 Donruss and Topps commons, I'd still have the enjoyment of flipping through some cards and the satisfaction of getting a good deal. Here's the highlights from the Puckett RC side.

Leading off with the Puckett RC is a good start even with the small white print spot on the front of the card just under the Twins banner. I'm on the brink of beginning a Nationals collection since I'm already compiling Ian Desmond and Anthony Rendon cards, so another copy of this Tanner Roark RC was certainly welcome. Maybe it's a sign that i should expand the Nats collection(or maybe not). I've always been a sucker for those glossy All-Star cards that Topps did back in the '80's. At some point I'm going to put together the Archives version of those released in this year's product. The first pic of side one is rounded out by some OPC, a cool Pat Burrell celebration card, and a Phil Hughes(included because it's a Yankee).

I'm not a fan of David Wright or the Mets, but it is kinda a cool insert and I liked Fleer Ultra more often than not. I really like the Tigers card because Miggy and Brennan Boesch look like they're bringing back the 'ol Bash Brothers celebration from the late '80's. I used to love those A's teams. Ahhh, ignorance was bliss!

We start the last pic of side one with a great Jorge Posada from a Yankees team set. We end with two cards that I had no idea existed. First, I love the Antoine Lavoisier card from Allen & Ginter. The more of the non-sports subjects that I see out of that product, the more I like it. Finally, I'm not as big a fan of O-Pee-Chee as some of you(this is slowly changing), but this 1988 World Series card is really awesome. I am drawn to these 'highlight' type cards anyway and the '88 World Series is the first one I really remember watching when I was a kid. As I mentioned above, I was a fan of the A's teams back then because I liked watching Canseco, McGwire, and Eckersley. I was bummed they didn't win that year, but the performance from Kirk Gibson helped solidify my appreciation of sports heroics/theatrics which started to develop in January 1987 while watching John Elway lead the Broncos on The Drive.

Now we move to the Ichiro side. The Suzuki is a special factory set only card from 2010. The Hoffman is of note because it notes that he was the first to record 600 career saves. I included the Mark Ellis simply because I like the photo. A close play on an afternoon that looks perfect for baseball, topped off by the American flag on the outfield wall in the background. I hadn't seen that design of the Topps Town inserts, and it'll likely be in my collection for a short time only. Unless my fellow blogging buddy Nick from the Dime Boxes blog already has this Vlad, I'll probably send it his way. I'm drawn to the mid-late '80's Topps glossy sets almost as much as those old Glossy All-Stars. So, this Goose Gossage was a welcome sight. Hmmm, another Phil Hughes(again included only because it's a Yankee).

I'm not a Cabrera fan, but just like the other side, it's a nice design for an insert(and one that I didn't already have). This Tim Hudson will probably be on its way over to Nick as well. If he's already got it, maybe I can stretch and include it in with my other celebration cards.

We end side two the same way we ended side one, with three cards I didn't know existed. The Velez is from some sort of non-base 'rookie' set. I've never seen these before and don't know much about what set it comes from, but in all fairness, I haven't tried researching it yet. The Dwight Evans apparently comes from one of those Topps retail store sets that were so abundant in the '80's. I'm pretty sure this one was a Woolworth's exclusive. Wow, I might be from the last generation that knows what Woolworth's was...man I'm getting old! Finally, that Machado is in the 2001 Bowman style. Apparently it was released in 2011. Bowman Chrome Throwbacks? I didn't even know that was a thing.

All told, it was a pretty darn good repack. It certainly was a lot of fun to open, it was a good 'deal', and it allowed me to discover a few cards that I never even knew o look for. It wasn't as good as a day at a card show, but at least on this day it was a reasonable substitute.