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.

A Late Trade and a Call for Assistance

Hey everyone, I finally got a halfway decent night of sleep, so I’m feeling fairly sane & coherent at the moment.  Also my Fantastic Four Archives box arrived, though I won’t be letting myself open it before Sunday night, as my reward for the cleaning I have to do.  Right now I have yet another overdue trade to post, this one coming from Ryan’s Memorabilia Blog.  Here’s what I got:

WBC cards! I'm one of the proud few who actively collects them, so you're looking to get rid of yours, look no further.

That is the back of the Masterpieces framed parallel I received that was numbered.  Now let’s see the front!

Glorious Masterpieces Framed Parallels!

Three Griffeys!  I can do without many parallels, because often they don’t add anything worthwhile, or waste everyone’s time.  But these parallels… these parallels I lurrrrrrrrve.  I’ve said before that the slightly raised frames are the closest parallel that artsy/retro-type sets have to the refractor (of which that Yadier Molina is).  And they come in as just as many colors!

But seriously, while the base cards themselves look very nice, they aren’t that exciting.  Throw a variously pretentiously named colored border on there, and bam!… Whole ‘nother level.  Bruce Sutter deserves a frame.  And I didn’t even get to the Vlad Guerrero jersey, my first Masterpieces hit.  They are as nice as advertised, if anyone hasn’t gotten one yet.  Is there actually anyone that hasn’t gotten one yet?  If not, I highly recommend.

Now then, I have a request.  I’m beginning work on a post, a guide of sorts, to help beginner collectors.  It’s a sort of complicated hobby, and we can all use a little help sometimes.  And there doesn’t seem to be a lot of help coming from official channels.  I can say what I have to say, but I’d also like to get the opinions of other card bloggers, as well as any other collectors, people who do or have worked at the card companies if possible, anyone who might be able to give some perspective on the Hobby to as it is today.

I will use as much as I can that’s applicable.  Your experiences, collecting mindset, how you got into it, what you like, what you think of the current state of things, and your advice to new and/or long-absent collectors.  And hopefully I can make sense of everything and turn it into something useful to new collectors.

So spread the news please, because I want as much feedback from as many different perspectives as possible.  You can leave your thoughts in the comments, email me, or respond via twitter, whatever works for you.  Thanks.

Over and out!