My Top 12 Retail Hits of All Time!!!
As the card budget shrank over the past decade, I am down to picking up a blaster or rack pack at Target or WalMart, here and there as I can afford them... That is the reality of life these days, and why I've turned my attention to focusing on what I really want to collect. Days of building sets from packs are over...
But every once in a while, there's an itch that only something like this can scratch...
However, the drawbacks of buying your cards from retail are many...
1. You have to support giant corporate conglomerates that don't care about cards.
2. You usually don't get value despite the packaging telling you that are indeed, getting value.
3. Retail packs can be searched on the shelves by the scummier portion of our collector base. Ever wonder where all those "guaranteed hit!" loose wax packs that show up on ebay come from? Some douche nozzle spending hours in the card aisle, feeling up every pack, thus robbing the casual retail card purchaser from the thrill of pulling an awesome card where it would be least expected...
4. Big chain store employees allow the card section of the store to be trashed. Not understanding that cards are condition sensitive, and should not be bounced off the floor. Or Kicked back onto the shelf they came from.
But most importantly...
5. In an effort to bring collectors into card shops, hobby stores get far better inserts than retail outlets. Many sets are exclusive to hobby shops only, so you can't get everything from retail. I have zero problem with this development, people should buy cards from card stores. That prevents stuff like this happening...
My favorite card shop closed in June 2013. Mike at Mike's Sports Cards was my go to Brick & Mortar for baseball card mass money dumps, from 1996 until 2013. I can't even begin to remember all of the great stuff I got from Mike's over the years.
When Mike called to tell me he was closing his shop that had been open since 1991, I apologized for not spending enough money there lately. He laughed and it probably wouldn't have made a difference.
When Mike closed his card shop, a few months later it became a Boost Mobile store that had more break-Ins than customers. Boost quickly closed and Dominos Pizza took over, knocked down the wall between and converted my favorite card store into a new seating area for barely acceptable pizza... However, the Mike's Sports Cards sign is STILL on the marquee for the "Way Cool Shops On South Broadway."
There are other card shops around Denver. One that is close that I'm not a fan of and don't go there, and another that I've only been to once, but really impressed me.
He deserves a plug... Go to Mike's Stadium Sportscards. Buy stuff... He's a great guy...
(No affiliation with the former Mike's Sports Cards.)
Now onto my retail story...
I'm going to present this as a countdown because I haven't done that before. So he are my top 12 hits, pulled from retail packs over the years...
12.
Okay, I'll admit it. I still watch wrasslin sometimes. I enjoy the stupid theatrics of it, because It's simple... I can turn my brain off for some choreographed violence on the TV for a while, and I don't have to think while watching it... Also, I will on a rare occasion buy a pack of wrasslin cards (at retail), to see what they're about. The pack of 2009 Tristar TNA that I purchased from the Kmart a few blocks away, had an autograph of 1990's legend Kevin Nash. I remembered him as Diesel and the nWo invasion that was captivating wrasslin TV some 20 years ago, so I was pleased to acquire this card for next to nothing...
Oh, and wrasslin's not fake...
11.
I picked up a few packs of 2006 Topps Chrome at the WalMarts while they stayed on shelves. In Colorado, they used to be open 24/7. (Now it's 6am-midnight, which is nowhere near as convenient for a graveyard shifter....) If I left work at 5 in the morning, I could hit the Marts for what I needed, and be out before any other customers showed up. I'm not waiting until 6am, with the other people standing outside the doors...
Oh yeah, I pulled Wainwright from a pack. Along with 2 Ryan Garko autographs. They didn't make the list...
10.
If I was putting this list together in 2004, it would be a much shorter list... Prior would also be ranked a lot higher. For Christmas 2004, I was given a couple of retail boxes of random packs. If you go into opening those with no expectations, they can be quite fun. You get a grab bag of packs, some you know, some you've never seen before... Inside this particular box was a pack of 2004 Upper Deck Diamond Collection. A set I'd never heard of, let alone purchased over the years. That pack offered something that was really cool. Beckett even called it a $100 card! A few years later, Prior was out of baseball due to injuries... While I still really like the card... Beckett now says it's worth $10!
9.
Mark Grace came out of the Archives blaster I used as the header image above. I like Achives as a set every year. I really liked Grace as a player. So this made me very happy. I have yet to see any 2017 Archives in my area retail stores, which is fine, I have more responsible things to spend money on. But it's fun to pick up a current day product and get an autograph of someone you collected 25 years ago...
8.
While I didn't really pull a 1952 Topps common out of a retail pack, I kinda did...
In 2010, Topps ran their Million Card Giveaway and I was in love with it. I spent far too much on 2010 Topps baseball in pursuit of these redemption code cards. You enter the code on the website, it would give you a random Topps card. You could keep it and have it sent to you for a small charge, or you could trade the card for another that someone else has unlocked. Of course the cards involved in the buyback were overwhelming junk wax commons, but I managed to unlock a bunch of 1970's and 1980's commons (and a few from the 1960's), which were then traded for Twins and Expos commons that I needed for team sets.
Just before the promotion ended (in December 2010). I cashed in some Target gift cards I'd recieved for Christmas on whatever unopened packs were left. I ended up picking up three rack packs, and got two more codes inside. The first code unlocked a 2001 Ivan Rodriguez (a future Hall of Famer, but I had a couple already). The second -and last- code I entered came up as a 1952 Topps Paul Minner.
I spent whatever it cost to have my bank of saved cards shipped to me a couple of days after some last minute trading. A box arrived about 2 months later. I paid extra to require my signature for the box at delivery. After all, I spent nearly a year trading for a bunch of awesomeness and didn't want a greedy neighbor sniping it from the community boxes.
When my cards arrived, I was very pleased at the packaging. Even though a majority of these were commons, each card was secured in it's own top loader. A lengthy packing sheet/shipping order was enclosed, with hand written check marks to document that each card ordered was included.
Color me impressed Topps...
7.
And now I'm unimpressed...
I feel like this card should be ranked higher... A jersey chunk of arguably the greatest pitcher of all time? That's cool... However, I'm highly suspicious that jersey chunk is not from a 1967-1971 New York Mets jersey. I'm no expert, but I'd place my money on that being an early 1990's Texas Rangers jersey... (And you know how I feel about Texas...) Ryan came to me by way of Target, in the summer of 2012, during a "I'm buying all the Gypsy Queen!" moment.
6.
As I'd mentioned, I bought a lot of 2010 Topps... Inevitably, you will get jersey chunks from retail packs today. What used to be rare and interesting has become rather blase... I'll place this as an exception to my apathy. A dual-relic of two of the best closers in baseball history, numbered 2/50. This is a nice card.
5.
The 1963 Topps set is considered one of the stronger of the 1960's, but I only bought a few packs and one blaster of 2012 Heritage. I picked up the blaster that housed this Andrew McCutchen autograph at a Target in a part of town I never go to. So I'm looking at it as a pseudo-vacation souvenir! McCutchen wasn't on my favorite players list, but has been added since pulling the autograph. Great center fielder, and when I've seen him on TV, he seems like a really cool dude...
4.
This triple-jersey card featuring three of the Yankees 4 starting infielders in 2008 stunned me when I pulled it. It's a beautiful card featuring three of the best in baseball, with a low serial number. I was glad I picked that stray blaster of Upper Deck Heroes of Baseball from the WalMart that morning. But a couple packs later, I couldn't believe what else was in that same 8 pack box...
Now there's a cliffhanger!
3.
When 2015 Topps came out, I picked up two rack packs from the Marts after work one morning. That would serve as my first look at 2015 Topps, other than internet pictures. I liked the color coding by team a great deal. It was fresh and different, after all the consecutive years of plain white borders. The color scheme complimented the pictures and makes for a highly visually appealing set when placed in binder pages.
The second pack I bought that day gave me the Cabrera autograph. Numbered 13/25, and commemorating his Triple Crown winning season of 2012. For years I wondered if I'd see a Triple Crown winner in my lifetime. (Carl Yastrzemski last accomplished a Triple Crown in 1967.) It was one of those records that seem realistically possible, and starts getting predicted for players every year around the All Star Break, but in 2012, it happened.
Been a fan of Cabrera since the 2003 World Series, when he helped dismantle the heavily favored Yankees. Even if it meant giving Jeff Loria a World Series Championship, I wanted the Florida Marlins to win. While I listened to the game and final win happen in my car, sitting in Dr. John's driveway, waiting for him to get home that night...
2.
Getting back to that 2008 Upper Deck Heroes of Baseball blaster... This beauty was also inside... I'm no Yankees fan, but if I were to pick a loaded blaster of a team, you couldn't do much better than what I got from my 8 packs for $19.99. The card doesn't appear in Beckett because it's too good for Beckett, so I have no clue how much they think it's worth. As far as what I think it's worth personally? Almost as much as #1 on my list...
1.
In the Winter of 2006, I was visiting a couple friends that were still living at the house in Littleton I moved out of in May. We needed to make a late night supply run, so we ended up on a 2am mission to the super-mega-massive-WalMart-Uber-center on the southwest corner of the Denver Metro. Their card aisle was among the best in Colorado retail, until they gave up on it around 2011. Amongst the things I picked up that night was a blaster of -then new- 2006 Bowman Draft Picks.
Kershaw was in the third pack of the box. It's always great to pull a draft pick autograph out of Bowman. They set the standard for each player's most-desired rookie card, for the past 25 or so years. And not only was this a certified autograph, but it was the rarer X-Fractor parallel! Flipping it over to see a serial number of 111/225. Only 225 of these exist, and I got mine out of a retail pack!
Bear in mind Kershaw was only a top prospect and recent draft pick in December 2006, not yet the best pitcher on the planet... There were no guarantees that his career would pan out. After all, my collection is full of rookie cards of players that I thought would be awesome... There was a decent chance this card would be worth only slightly more than the Bowman Chrome Nik Turley autograph I pulled a couple years ago...
So hopefully this Kershaw guy can reach his potential...
Time will tell...
Hmmmm.... According to the December 2016 Beckett, this card has a "Book Value" of $2100.
Yeah, I think I did okay in keeping the Kershaw...
But every once in a while, there's an itch that only something like this can scratch...
However, the drawbacks of buying your cards from retail are many...
1. You have to support giant corporate conglomerates that don't care about cards.
2. You usually don't get value despite the packaging telling you that are indeed, getting value.
3. Retail packs can be searched on the shelves by the scummier portion of our collector base. Ever wonder where all those "guaranteed hit!" loose wax packs that show up on ebay come from? Some douche nozzle spending hours in the card aisle, feeling up every pack, thus robbing the casual retail card purchaser from the thrill of pulling an awesome card where it would be least expected...
4. Big chain store employees allow the card section of the store to be trashed. Not understanding that cards are condition sensitive, and should not be bounced off the floor. Or Kicked back onto the shelf they came from.
But most importantly...
5. In an effort to bring collectors into card shops, hobby stores get far better inserts than retail outlets. Many sets are exclusive to hobby shops only, so you can't get everything from retail. I have zero problem with this development, people should buy cards from card stores. That prevents stuff like this happening...
My favorite card shop closed in June 2013. Mike at Mike's Sports Cards was my go to Brick & Mortar for baseball card mass money dumps, from 1996 until 2013. I can't even begin to remember all of the great stuff I got from Mike's over the years.
When Mike called to tell me he was closing his shop that had been open since 1991, I apologized for not spending enough money there lately. He laughed and it probably wouldn't have made a difference.
When Mike closed his card shop, a few months later it became a Boost Mobile store that had more break-Ins than customers. Boost quickly closed and Dominos Pizza took over, knocked down the wall between and converted my favorite card store into a new seating area for barely acceptable pizza... However, the Mike's Sports Cards sign is STILL on the marquee for the "Way Cool Shops On South Broadway."
Such a tease...
He deserves a plug... Go to Mike's Stadium Sportscards. Buy stuff... He's a great guy...
(No affiliation with the former Mike's Sports Cards.)
Now onto my retail story...
I'm going to present this as a countdown because I haven't done that before. So he are my top 12 hits, pulled from retail packs over the years...
*****
2009 Tristar Kevin Nash autograph.
Oh, and wrasslin's not fake...
11.
2006 Topps Chrome Adam Wainwright autograph
Oh yeah, I pulled Wainwright from a pack. Along with 2 Ryan Garko autographs. They didn't make the list...
10.
2004 Upper Deck Diamond Collection Mark Prior autograph
9.
2015 Topps Archives Mark Grace autograph
8.
1952 Topps Paul Minner
In 2010, Topps ran their Million Card Giveaway and I was in love with it. I spent far too much on 2010 Topps baseball in pursuit of these redemption code cards. You enter the code on the website, it would give you a random Topps card. You could keep it and have it sent to you for a small charge, or you could trade the card for another that someone else has unlocked. Of course the cards involved in the buyback were overwhelming junk wax commons, but I managed to unlock a bunch of 1970's and 1980's commons (and a few from the 1960's), which were then traded for Twins and Expos commons that I needed for team sets.
Just before the promotion ended (in December 2010). I cashed in some Target gift cards I'd recieved for Christmas on whatever unopened packs were left. I ended up picking up three rack packs, and got two more codes inside. The first code unlocked a 2001 Ivan Rodriguez (a future Hall of Famer, but I had a couple already). The second -and last- code I entered came up as a 1952 Topps Paul Minner.
Winner!
I spent whatever it cost to have my bank of saved cards shipped to me a couple of days after some last minute trading. A box arrived about 2 months later. I paid extra to require my signature for the box at delivery. After all, I spent nearly a year trading for a bunch of awesomeness and didn't want a greedy neighbor sniping it from the community boxes.
When my cards arrived, I was very pleased at the packaging. Even though a majority of these were commons, each card was secured in it's own top loader. A lengthy packing sheet/shipping order was enclosed, with hand written check marks to document that each card ordered was included.
Color me impressed Topps...
7.
2012 Gypsy Queen Nolan Ryan relic card
I feel like this card should be ranked higher... A jersey chunk of arguably the greatest pitcher of all time? That's cool... However, I'm highly suspicious that jersey chunk is not from a 1967-1971 New York Mets jersey. I'm no expert, but I'd place my money on that being an early 1990's Texas Rangers jersey... (And you know how I feel about Texas...) Ryan came to me by way of Target, in the summer of 2012, during a "I'm buying all the Gypsy Queen!" moment.
6.
2010 Topps Dennis Eckersley/Mariano Rivera dual relic card
5.
2012 Topps Heritage Andrew McCutchen autograph
4.
2008 Upper Deck Heroes of Baseball A-Rod/Jeter/Cano triple relic card
This triple-jersey card featuring three of the Yankees 4 starting infielders in 2008 stunned me when I pulled it. It's a beautiful card featuring three of the best in baseball, with a low serial number. I was glad I picked that stray blaster of Upper Deck Heroes of Baseball from the WalMart that morning. But a couple packs later, I couldn't believe what else was in that same 8 pack box...
Now there's a cliffhanger!
3.
2015 Topps Highlights Miguel Cabrera autograph
The second pack I bought that day gave me the Cabrera autograph. Numbered 13/25, and commemorating his Triple Crown winning season of 2012. For years I wondered if I'd see a Triple Crown winner in my lifetime. (Carl Yastrzemski last accomplished a Triple Crown in 1967.) It was one of those records that seem realistically possible, and starts getting predicted for players every year around the All Star Break, but in 2012, it happened.
Been a fan of Cabrera since the 2003 World Series, when he helped dismantle the heavily favored Yankees. Even if it meant giving Jeff Loria a World Series Championship, I wanted the Florida Marlins to win. While I listened to the game and final win happen in my car, sitting in Dr. John's driveway, waiting for him to get home that night...
2.
2008 Upper Deck Heroes of Baseball Joe DiMaggio relic card
Getting back to that 2008 Upper Deck Heroes of Baseball blaster... This beauty was also inside... I'm no Yankees fan, but if I were to pick a loaded blaster of a team, you couldn't do much better than what I got from my 8 packs for $19.99. The card doesn't appear in Beckett because it's too good for Beckett, so I have no clue how much they think it's worth. As far as what I think it's worth personally? Almost as much as #1 on my list...
1.
2006 Bowman Chrome X-Fractor Clayton Kershaw autograph
Kershaw was in the third pack of the box. It's always great to pull a draft pick autograph out of Bowman. They set the standard for each player's most-desired rookie card, for the past 25 or so years. And not only was this a certified autograph, but it was the rarer X-Fractor parallel! Flipping it over to see a serial number of 111/225. Only 225 of these exist, and I got mine out of a retail pack!
Well that rules!
So hopefully this Kershaw guy can reach his potential...
Time will tell...
Hmmmm.... According to the December 2016 Beckett, this card has a "Book Value" of $2100.
Yeah, I think I did okay in keeping the Kershaw...
Scuse me, wiping off the drool after seeing that Kershaw.
ReplyDeleteYou must buy a lot of retail because there's no way I've pulled stuff as great as that from my retail visits (although I should do a top 10 list).
Other than trying to complete a Topps set each year via packs (which I've given up on), I usually try to just pick up a sampling of other products. I used to be very Bowman heavy in what I collected, but not so much anymore...
DeleteI can't explain it, but had better than average luck on busting wax. I've had my failures (upcoming story about 2006 Bowman Originals...), but stuff like my top three are rarer than hobby case hits.
I look at it as reassuring that card companies are still slipping the awesome hits in retail...
As a Rockies fan, I can't like the Dodgers. Especially this year... But Kershaw rules!