Sunday, August 13, 2017

Repack Wars: it's been a while

It has been a while since my last repack wars post. Almost 2 years!!! REALLY????

Man..... I suck at this blogging thing. (shut up GCRL, P-Town Tom, Dime Box Nick, Night Owl, Fuji...er.....everyone).

I have been buying repacks, but long breaking them down before thinking "hey - post fodder". And as repacks go, this is not too shabby. Let's us peer closer into a 10 pack repack from Target. $12. You get to see the front packs, and I selected one showing a fat pack of 2016 A&G and a pack of Panini Contenders. It was more the fact that I could see a pack of 2015 Topps Update when I shuffled the box side to side that I grabbed it, hoping for one of the throwback inserts from that pack. Let's go through the packs from oldest to newest.



First up - 1988 Topps Big Baseball. This pack was loaded with some big names - Jim Abbot, Dave Winfield, Doc Gooden and Mike Scioscia. But I like the fact that Rex here is obviously on some high school field waiting on a grounder. Let's hope Mrs. Wilson over the left field fence brought over Kool-Aid and popsicles to cool down the boys.


Next is a pack of 1992 Stadium Club series 3. I had no idea that set was 900 cards strong. Wow. Again, a couple decent names in the pack with the Kid Gary Carter and a White Sox Bo Jackson. But love this card of Vince Horsman. Be honest - you are all reading his name as "horse-man". Plus, dig the Jagr mullet he is sporting.


Big leap from 1992 to 2013 Panini Pinnacle. Baes of Jeets and Harper, but how are you going to not give the top position to a Museum-ish card of recent 3k hit club member Beltre?


My pack of 2015 Topps Update had no throwback variations. It was a total snooze. Here's a gold card of Byron Buxton. Zzzzz...


Boom. The pack of 2015 Panini Contenders gives up a hit of Jalen Miller. He is toiling in A ball and barring a miracle change in his play, will probably never get a cup of coffee at the big league level.


All 2016 flagship cards just hurt to look at. This is from series 2, and I almost went with either the Bunt code card or that card they put in to set off the door sensors, cuz this pack was dreadful. I went with this Tejeda for one reason: how bad it looks. Or, if you are missing Topps Gallery, how amazing it looks. The over the top enhancements done to the image makes it look like a painting, or just over exposed. Topps - knock it off. License an image from AP or Getty, frame it and click "Print". Moving on...


Another pack from 2016. This is Update, and technically the first of the ten I opened. I cannot say I know all the set layouts to everything released, but the moment I saw this card, I knew there was something special about it. And I was right. Image variation SP of Almora. Don't think this will pay for a mortgage, though. Ebay shows a few sold. One was listed with a BIN of $99.99, but the seller accepted an offer. One week later, another copy sold in an auction format for less than 6 quarters. I do hope that BIN buyer made a REALLY low offer that was accepted.


A second pack of 2016 Update. I passed on giving the best in the pack to a card of Chris Sale. Not from any animosity, but simply to show that Topps can make really nice cards. It just sucks when the card design completely ruins the image selected. While the wide space is nice. I think they could have gone horizontal with this, showing a full body of Coghlan and would still have enough greenery to give this card a high score with me.


2016 Bowman. And if you are scoring at home, this is hit #3 from the box (I count the SP as a hit). Brady has made it to AAA, though got demoted back to AA. Still, he is promising. While the Jalen will head to a blogger out west. this card is destined to leave the US.


Final pack is the 2016 Allen and Ginter. I need three base cards, but non fell out. I am not 100% sure if I need this card, but I select it because of the weird look of the image. What's with Donny Baseball's hat logo? I'm not the only one that thinks it's quite off center, am I? I thought he had the cap on crooked, but if you look at the top of the cap, you can see a notch that looks lie the dip in the cap seam. The interlocking NY is nowhere neat centered on that notch. Even if you just eyeball the edges of the ca bill, that logo is too far to the left.

I obsess over card images. Hope A&G never releases cards of Antony and Cleopatra. Wait - they did release Cleopatra. TWICE!

7 comments:

  1. Welcome back! The 1988 Topps Bigs made me uncomfortable ... like maybe the card companies were pushing things a little too far and *starting* to get gimmicky. Little did I know what was to come.

    I don't recall ever even hearing of Vince Horsman, but that shot is bad enough to have been right at home on the sets issued 10 years earlier. Sweet (and terrible)!

    Thanks for the fun post!

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  2. i never cared for the Numbers Mattingly. It always seemed off. Thanks for pointing out the crooked logo. You did well with this repack.

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  3. A couple of autos... not bad. I dig that Almora SP!

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  4. Note that that Tejada is also photoshopped. The same card appeared in Opening Day showing him as a Met.

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  5. Nice! I bought one of those $12 repacks once and it wasn't even a fraction of a fraction as good as the one you picked out.

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  6. That's a nice repack there! Two autos, a photo variation, and some solid inserts. Plus that Coghlan card is very cool (at least it would be without Topps "smoke" all over it!

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