Greetings...
Hope everyone is doing well. Apologies for the lack of posts from me recently. I'd love to say that life got in the way or I've been real busy, yada, yada, yada, but in actuality I've just been lazy. Which makes it ironic that I'm posting this now, since this this past week has been the most eventful in a while.
[Scroll down if you're just here for the pretty pictures.]
Last Saturday, besides it being the 20th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, my family found out my uncle (who is also my godfather) was being put into hospice care after recently being diagnosed with Stage 4 gall bladder cancer. My brother, whose wife could have gone into labor at any moment, was the only one available to drive my parents out to Iowa to see him (dad is dealing with cataracts). Fortunately, the baby decided to wait until they came back, and made her appearance on the 13th. My parents now have 4 granddaughters and 2 grandsons (my contribution).
Anyway, I was free this week to bring my parents back to Iowa whenever they wanted, but they opted for this weekend, and unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) my godfather didn't make it to the weekend, declaring "a draw" to his battle with cancer (reference to Norm Macdonald, RIP) on the 16th. Finally, while the impromptu trip to Iowa has been delayed while funeral arrangements get straightened out, we got to celebrate my eldest son's 14th birthday earlier today. He had his last two fall ball games earlier today and also had to figure out how to avoid going 0 for 2 in his first fantasy football league (could he lose to his uncle after being humiliated by his father?). See? Eventful week.
Retail outlets are still skittish when it comes to trading cards. I've read posts from bloggers who have reported getting packs from Wal-Mart, but I haven't seen any, or any evidence that I "just missed the card guy." As far as I know, they were still selling cards at the Customer Service desk. The Meijer kinda close to me still has the sign up saying they only sell cards from their service desk but it may be letting up (foreshadowing). Target still has their ban, but Pokemon cards appear to be making a comeback. One option I started looking into was the Target website; I check the site in the morning when the overnight job is done, and recent Thursday mornings have been successful in finding new product. Here's one now!
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| Top of the box included to show the 4 guaranteed cards. |
Topps Chrome was released on August 20. The Target website had blaster boxes for $30. There were 8 packs in the box with 4 cards per pack, so it's essentially a buck a card. The boxes were available on the site for almost a week; it's still there, but now the price has gone up to $40, and are unavailable to ship. The site claims some stores have them, but it has to be an error; the individual store doesn't keep track of trading card inventory.
Here's what the packs look like. There's 220 cards in the set. I chose 2 packs to show off; here's what I got:
#105 - DJ LeMahieu
#136 - Nate Pearson (RC)
The Pandemic and the rise of the Card Bros made sure last year's Topps Chrome was virtually unavailable to the commoner so it's nice to have the option of getting this year's release. But that price hike, though...it's why I only got one box.
#215 - Ramon Laureano (Purple Refractor #190/299)
#92 - Cristian Javier (RC) (Sepia Parallel)
According to the wrapper, the Purples come one in 177 packs. The wrapper also says the Sepias come one in 4 packs, which makes sense since the box itself says there's 2 Sepias and 2 Pink Refractors in the box.
Here's the second pack:
#101 - Jesus Sanchez
#128 - Cavan Biggio
The unfortunate thing about buying from the Target website is that Target doesn't have the other options for these releases. No rack packs, no single packs, etc. to choose from. Some some reason, the Target website does have a 3 pack of 2021 Heritage Hangar boxes available for purchase but nothing else. I'm sure Topps made those different options; I wonder what happened to them.
#PP-10 - Luke Voit (Prismic Power)
#86BC-4 - Juan Soto (1986 Topps Baseball Insert)
The wrapper says the Prismic Power comes one in 14 packs, and the 1986 Tribute comes one in 4 packs. The Prismic Power looks real nice.
Here's a couple other cards from the blaster, since you all have been patient with my ramblings:
#74 - Adalberto Mondesi (Pink Refractor)
#FS-5 - Jesus Luzardo (Future Stars)
As mentioned before, the box guaranteed there would be 2 Pink Refractors, so this is one of them. The wrapper confirms they come one in every 4 packs. The very pretty Future Stars insert come one in 7 packs.
Here are some backs because son's birthday:
Anyway, those are the packs. After I open anything more than 5 or 6 bucks, I always ask myself if I had the chance would I roll the dice and risk the contents of the purchase for a completely new set. In this case, I had to say yes; I didn't get any major stars, either in the base or in the inserts. And at basically a dollar a card, almost immediate buyer's remorse set in. The things I do for APTBNL!
That's all for now...thanks for reading!
