A Tale of Two Repacks, AKA: $20 wasted, $20 extremely well spent

It was the best of repacks, it was the worst of repacks...

Apologies to Charles Dickens.

The other day when I bought that Bowman rack pack I was tempted into buying another, yes..another, repack at Wally's. I haven't had great luck with them previously but for some reason I keep buying them.

Well they had two in stock and this time they advertised 10 packs and two random relics or autos. Hmm...guaranteed hits. I always like the sound of that. Well the windows on both boxes showed the exact same stuff. Recent Topps flagship, a pack of '13 Panini Prizm Draft Picks, and a pack of Leaf's Pete Rose trash that I still firmly believe is the worst baseball card set ever created. Well one box prominently featured the Rose crap and another I could just see the side of the pack. I decided on the box that did not have the gambling king's mug front and center.

It turned out pretty bad....very bad. The box contained absolutely nothing of consequence. It was awful. Nothing but common base cards, cheap parallels and inserts.

Oh but the two guaranteed hits, you say, those could certainly redeem the box.

Two manu-patches from 2010 Topps....

MANU-PATCHES ARE NOT HITS, DAMMIT!!

Well that totally sucked a huge gorilla nut.

If I was a logical card collector I would have cut my losses and forgotten about it while looking forward to the hobby boxes I should get tomorrow. But something was nagging at me. I don't know what it was. But something..told me that I needed to go back and buy that other repack box. I was confident that it would still be there because I think I'm the only person that buys them. So today after I got off work I made a quick jaunt across the road and bought it. 

Upon opening the box it was immediately clear that this one was better. The inner packs included 2010 Bowman Platinum, 2010 Topps Chrome (severely curved of course), and 2009 Upper Deck X.

I'd never opened any UDX before so that was cool.

I do love die-cuts.

But it get's better.

But it get's even better.

=O

A non-guaranteed hit from a pack repack!

Oh man...

HOLY SNOT BUCKETS

*Side note: This is the first redemption I've ever pulled. I guess I'm gonna find out what the Panini redemption process is like!

Yes. That's right. THREE non-guaranteed hits from one friggin $20 Wal-mart repack. Unbelieveable.

Oh yeah about those two guaranteed hits.

Ok that's cool. A former AL RoY and All-Star. A lot better than a maupatch.

Holy snot buckets indeed.

I have no words left.

Bowman rack pack

Today after work I stopped in the Walton's General Store across the street for a gander at the card aisle. I've been very disappointed with them recently as they STILL don't have Gypsy Queen in stock. Surprisingly they did have Bowman rack packs and blasters. That makes no sense to me, but whatever. I actually have a Bowman hobby box on the way to me set to arrive in a couple days and I didn't want to spend too much money on retail so I settled on a rack pack just to get a taste. Here are the highlights.

Purple parallels

I'm not sure I like the photo editing to make the player stand out from the background. Seems unnecessary to me.

And the prospect border design, as seen on this State & Hometown parallel, I'm not sure about either. With the way it curves in at the bottom I feel like there's just too much empty space around the edges. Maybe I'll like it more after I bust the box.

The future

Joe Wendle is henceforth known as "Bird Man" (see photo above).

One thing that is different about Bowman this year is that the prospect chromes have a silver border rather than white which makes it look like it's supposed to be a parallel. I wonder if Bowman Chrome will be the same way. Also I just realized there aren't any gold parallels that previously were one per pack. They''re now a #'d parallel that looks to be a tough pull.

I wasn't expecting to pull any autos but I certainly don't mind! And a Braves prospect at that! Seeded 1:38 packs, or about 1:13 rack packs, this wasn't a bad pull for my first retail Bowman purchase of the year. Also, good job there Topps in putting the sticker on slightly slanted...

Despite my uncertainties about the design I think I will like this set, as I usually do like Bowman, and I am looking forward to busting the box when it arrives.

Card show bounty pt. 4, final

As I mentioned the afternoon of the show, my big purchase of the show was a box of 2013 Topps Finest.

One thing I found odd was that out of the five cards in each pack, most packs had three refractors and two non refractor base cards. Maybe I hit a refractor hot box or something. But if this is normal then it seems that the refractor parallels, which aren't shown in the pack odds, are actually more plentiful than the regular base cards. That seems very odd for a set but since this is my first experience with modern Finest I wouldn't know. Anybody out there have an explanation?

Anyways, heres a sampling of the cards I got. If you're putting the set together let me know what you need and I'll see if I have it.

Regular base cards

Refractors

X-fractors

Color refractors

170/199

35/50

Every master box promises one on-card auto rookie refractor and one auto/jumbo relic rookie card.

45/99

Not bad  guess. Far from the worst name on the checklist but also far from the best.

While I didn't get the rookie refractor auto I'm not complaining since I landed the aforementioned Matt Williams 1993 Finest buyback auto, of which there are only five in existence.

The card doesn't have an actual #/5 stamp but does have that Topps authentication sticker on the back. The #/5 number I got from Cardboard Connection and I tend to believe what they say. Unless I ever manage to pull a superfractor auto this card may be the best card I will ever pull in my card collecting life.

Finis

Card show bounty pt. 3

The dealer I mentioned last time that had the repacks 3/$1 also always has a box full of packs from the late 80s/early 90s. I always love digging through the box to see what gems I can find. He sells them at 4 packs for $1. This guy always gets a small amount of money from me in exchange for a sizable quantity of cards.

Here are some cards I pulled from the packs I bought this time.

A card of a pitcher who's wearing a catcher's mitt. I don't think I've seen that one before.

UD seriously couldn't find a better photo to use?

The top half of this Dave Parker card is pretty interesting. Using a sledgehammer to get loose in the on deck circle. The bottom half was rather PG-13 so I cropped it.

Finally got my hands on one of these 3-D holograms of the Braves.

I have this card already but getting it again gives me the opportunity to talk about it. Pat Borders, he of 1992 World Series MVP and 2000 Olympic gold medalist fame, and I are 5th cousins. We share the same great-great-great-great grandfather. Or something like that.

I also picked up a couple inserts from another dealer.

#019/500

Pretty cool die-cut insert of Stan The Man.

Card show bounty pt. 2

There is one dealer who was at the show and who I have bought from before. He always has some outstanding deals on repacks as well as packs from the late 80s/early 90s. First up I'll show a few of the cards I got in the repacks I bought from him. The repacks contain around 50 cards and he sells them 3/$1. They do contain some junk wax but they also have some great cards as well.

Julio was already old as dirt when this set was released.

From Chrome Update

271/399

I was quite surprised to find a numbered card in one of the repacks.

What a goofy smile.

Off center but still a Chipper card I didn't have.

I always love picking up a few of these repacks he sells. They're such a great deal and always have some good cards in them.