A Pretty Great Repack Box

After I returned my bike, I planned to just get something cheap to break the fiddy dollar bill I got in return so I could re-deposit half of it.  My first four packs of 2015 Topps weren’t very good though, and the dupes were already starting to pile up.  So I bit the bullet and grabbed pretty much the only other thing of interest to me that Target had: a $20, 20-pack (plus bonus) repack box that was almost completely devoid of junkwax.

Here’s the breakdown:

One 1991 Score

Three 2012 Panini Triple Play

One 2013 Bowman Platinum

Three 2014 Topps Series One 8-card blaster packs

Two 2014 Topps Series One 12-card retail packs

Four 2014 Topps Heritage

One 2014 Topps Heritage Jumbo rack pack (20 cards)

One 2014 Gypsy Queen

Three 2014 Topps Series Two 12-card retail packs

One 2014 Allen & Ginter

Bonus Item- Three loose 2014 Topps MLB Chipz

It sounds like a pretty lame bonus, but it turned out to be significantly better than expected.  Take a looksie, won’t you?

Poker chips are a somehow apt metaphor for pack-bustin’..

Turns out that gold-bordered glow-in-the-dark Tulo is actually pretty rare and reasonably valuable.  A run through the very few sold listings had them going for $5-20 a pop (with Jeters in $50 range), depending on the player.  The only two gold borders up for the bidding at the time were a Travis d’Arnaud Gold/Glow-in-the-Dark and Jose Reyes Gold/Blue, which sold for $13.01 and the opening bid of $9.99, respectively.  So this seemingly silly, innocuous bonus item was probably the hit of the box.  But this little repack had more going for it than just the bonus.  Much more, as you will see below.

Every once in a while, the gamble pays off..

Hit #1!  Yeah, there’s more on the way.

Flagship inserts..

Seein’ red..

Great name, one of only three Cubs, Bonifacio is #’ed 1282/2014, and Keppinger is 228/2014..

Topps Series One proved much more interesting than Series Two even without the sweet Zack Wheeler relic.  Better inserts, and the Target Red parallels aren’t something I see much of, even if there weren’t any huge stars.  Cosart, JD, and the series dos Hoz aren’t too bad though, and everyone is at least pictured (Cosart became a Marlin at the trade deadline) on teams that should trade easy enough.

Princert, Altuve base mini, Cuddyer SP, Choice RC..

GQ was meh, as it usually is.  But I never buy it anymore, so it was nice to find a pack in there.  It’s a meh that tastes a whole lot better when it costs $1 than when it costs $3.

Alen Hanson Top Prospects, Gary Brown base, Richie Shaffer chrome..

Bowman Platinum is the shiny version flipside to GQ’s old-timey style pointlessness, but it has been fairly forthcoming with the marginal prospect autographs & such for me, especially in 2012.  I don’t buy at full price anymore either, but it also makes for decent repack filler.

Mercifully, the only junkwax..

 

1991 Score wasn’t terrible, as junkwax goes.  A RC of a solid player who had nice, lengthy career that included a couple monster seasons and a stint with the Cubs & a couple late career Hall-of-Famers is the best you can really hope for in a pack like this.

Heritage base..

My resemblance to Holmberg is kinda uncanny..

The repack was heavily weighted towards Heritage, which is another product I’d never normally buy on its own, but am quite happy to get in numbers in a repack.  Despite my snarking to liven up the uneventful rack pack in my first post in ages over at APtbNL, that’s probably what ultimately made me decide to keep the repack while I was wandering around Target desperately trying to find something cheaper.  The McCutchen is fantastic.

Heritage inserts/SPs/parallels..

Outside of the red Yadi (my only complaint about this box is all the damn Cardinals inserts!), there wasn’t really anything all that special in there.  Just low level inserts & a trio of highly trade-able SPs.  I’d already pulled my hits before I got to them though, so it’s cool.

From the rack pack..

Quite possibly my only keeper from the entire box came out of the rack pack, so that helped too.

Captain Marvel Jr. insert and Giancarlo base mini..

Finally, main event time.  Allen & Ginter is consistently the best, most fun product Topps puts out every year (though 2014 had some legit competition for once, in the form of Finest and Stadium Club).  I’ve pulled a few hits & some rarer minis & other such nonsense (sea monkey card, flower card, World’s Biggest Mini SP) over the years, but the following, while not all that extraordinary, might still be my best pull to date.  Easily top-3.  Feast your eyes…

Kipnis Everdeen..

This Jason Kipnis is the first auto I’ve pulled out of retail in seven years of buying Allen & Ginter packs & blasters, and it is a beaut.  The funny thing about this outstanding repack box is that I had just started carrying that Prosperity Bean TJ sent in my Nerd Week prize pack that very morning.  Maybe it’s legit, maybe I’m just a superstitious and cowardly lot, I dunno.  I’m mostly just happy to have pulled some nice stuff out of a repack after the disaster that was January’s Greatest Chase repack/turd.

Anyway, that pretty much wraps up this post.  Let me know if anything strikes your fancy, and thanks for stopping by.

Cards From Walmart

Sunday night I bought a pack of 2008 Upper Deck Timeline, 2008-09 Topps Treasury, and an 8 for $10 repack box that boasts an $18 value, at Walmart.  Uhh, hell NO!  A box with packs of cards from 1989 not named Upper Deck (Donruss and Topps specifically), 1994 Fleer Ultra, a 99 cent 6 card pack of 2007 Topps, three $1.99 packs (the dinky 5-6 card packs ’07 Upper Deck and Fleer Ultra, and regular-sized Topps), and only one $2.99 pack (Bowman Chrome) do not an $18 value make.

Well… maybe if your math works like Scott Steiner’s.

The sad thing is, even though you could hear the steam shooting out of my ears when I saw the old packs, I got better cards from those three than the five new ones.  First though, a break of Timeline and Treasury packs…

2008 Upper Deck Timeline (6 cards per pack; look for two inserts in each pack, on average!)

46 Torii Hunter

10 Chase Utley

36 Jim Thome- The Pride of Peoria, dontcha know.

9 Mark Teixiera

123 Max Scherzer Rookie- On a forgettable old school UD design…

301 Rick Ankiel- I guess this would be a subset of some kind.  Zero on the insert count though, unless they are trying to pass off the subsets as such.  If they are a bit harder to get, that would mean shortprint, not insert, so WTF Upper Deck?  There better be a 4 insert pack out there somewhere…

I mentioned in the shoutouts from my most recent post, these cards are FUGLY.  What an incredibly boring design.  At least Upper Deck X’s design fit it’s theme.  This is just so… blah.  As for the backs, they only have career stats and a little blurb, because of a second, different picture taking up half the back.  This giant picture on the back may be a dig at the 2008 Topps base set design, as this picture is nearly as large as the ones on their fronts.

That was observational comedy, my friends.  Onward to Topps Treasury!

2008-09 Topps Treasury (5 cards per pack; why isn’t Larry Bird on money?)

27 Zach Randolph- A big scoring presence that gets rebounds, but is still fairly soft nonetheless.  Still, a fair few teams are lacking the good things he brings.

60 Rip Hamilton

59 Jeff Green- My first Thunder card!  w00t!

83 Brandon Roy

120 Kosta Koufos Rookie Refractor #’ed to /2008- I assume this is a bronze.  This guy is a rookie Center for the Jazz it doth seem.  Here’s hoping for something better than Ostertagian for the ginormously tall youngin’.

The base design is simplistic, but it FITS THE THEME.  Lack of easily fingerprinted up gloss is nice too.  And the refractor version, much like what 2008 Topps Chrome baseball to the regular set, just makes it POP.

Now then, back to the recrap box.  We’ve established that the packs in it are even more garbage than usual.  Now for the contents of said packs.  I stated earlier that I got better cards from the 1989 Donruss and Topps, and 1994 Fleer Ultra, than the five packs from 2007 (6 and 12 card packs of Topps series 2, 5 card packs of Upper Deck series two and Fleer Ultra, and a 3 card pack of Bowman Chrome.

So here are the best of what I got from each.  You can judge for yourself.

Old Junk-

1989 Topps- Barry Bonds, Fred McGriff, Dwight Evans

1989 Donruss- Ken Griffey Jr. “Rated Rookie”, Lee Smith

1994 Fleer Ultra- Mike Piazza Award Winners insert, Roger Clemens, Kevin Roberson (<3) Rookie

New Junk-

2007 Topps- Joe DiMaggio “The Streak” 26 and 48, David Ortiz, Dan Haren Gold #’ed /2007, Brandon Morrow Rookie

2007 Upper Deck- Mark DeRosa?  The rest of the pack consisted of David DeJesus, Carlos Silva, Alex Rios, and Olmedo Saenz, so… there are no winners here.

2007 Fleer Ultra- Hideki Okajima Rookie

2007 Bowman Chrome- Either Chien-Ming Wang or 29 year old “Prospect” Jonathan Van Every.  Hmm… prospects are grim, methinks.

So whatcha think?

Griffey RC, Bonds, Pizza insert, Clemens, Lee Smith, the Crime Dog, and Dwight Evans

vs.

Two Joe D inserts that are cool but worthless, Okajima RC, Papi, Gold #’ed Haren, Chien-Ming Wang, and a pushing-30 prospect…

I didn’t even get any other good base cards in the 2007 packs.  They were remarkably similar to the old school packs in that regard.  A couple couple nice players, and then a whole lotta nothin’.  Only difference being there are a whole lot less cards in the new packs.

Overall, the Griffey rookie makes it worthwhile, but it still won’t make me tilt my thumb upward.  The Griffey is wonderful, but it’s the principle.  The packs in this thing were garbage enough that I actually mean it when I say “never again” to Walmart repacks, and maybe ALL repacks in general.  It’s just horrid to charge more than $6 for this CRAP.

Peace.