Shopping with the window closed

One of today's goals was to buy two new tires for the truck. Instead, I bought, and if I type on long enough here, I can get the not very surprising reveal all the way off the teaser part of the blogroll, and yeah, you are already guessing what I bought … a repack.

The tire store was across the parking lot from a K-Mart. A K-Mart I hadn't previously pillaged for any possible remaining Mike Trout rookies. And the tire clerk had forgotten my truck has a diesel engine = I needed a higher load range tire than they had in the shop.

So off to K-Mart for a little Trout fishing. Early to bed / early to rise / fish all day / make up lies. I'll be honest here though - there were no 2011 Update packs to be had, which wasn't too surprising.

But the baseball card jones had to be sated. I selected this:

I have been skeptical of these. I like repacks. But a big reason I like them is I at least get to know one of the cards I am buying. Yes, I am a box searcher. I look through all of the packs to figure out which one has some goofy card I like, before you get a chance to pick one blindly, without even looking.

But I can't do that with these obviously. Here is the rest of what this pack promises, hidden behind the ugly green plastic:

Well that's good, of course I want to collect my Favorite Stars from a Championship Collection of Trading Cards. Who wouldn't?

And though I keep wanting to work on another post unrelated to repacks, well, this repack might have a card that I can use in that post, so, just to be sure, I'll open this repack first.

But first, let's inquire a little more skeptically. Where did this repack come from? As always on this blog, let's check the back:

Hmmm, I thought you could get in big, big trouble for being an MJ Holding Company. And I'm pretty sure Michael Jordan might enjoy a few recreational sports cards in his spare time, but I'm also pretty sure he's got bigger companies to run than a used sports cards repacking company. I have seen this name before somewhere, I will have to look into this mystery company sometime. This was part of my goal of buying this pack. Journalism. Serious, heavy-hitting, data-driven, well-researched Journalism. Yeah, that's the ticket. I was going to get real with these repacks, and count the cards inside. But there's 100 cheap-ass baseball cards inside, we already know that, silly!

No, I was going to help educate just what my loyal blog readers should expect for their hard-earned five spot from those 100 baseball cards. How much junk wax? How many cards from last year? Which manufacturers paid off this repacker the most? How many "hits"? Would I break even buying this pack, or could I turn a profit flipping repacks? (You'll be surprised….)

But then, this happened:

WHAT! Repackers can't do this! Sure, they can cruelly Bip you with multiple copies of the same card, but they are not supposed to just put stacks of cards all from the same junk set in there like they didn't even care about the product they so lovingly distribute to baseball card addicts like me. I mean, if I wanted cards all from the same set, I'd buy one of those repacks full of actual junk packs of baseball cards.

So much for my serious research. Ruined by bad data before I even start. There is only one solution — I'll have to buy another one of these repacks to see if MJ Holding Company has formed a habit with this practice. Darn.

OK, OK, let's look at some baseball cards already. Here is that crucial tone-setting first card:

Hey, a Manager card. I like Manager cards. In fact, that will be the title of an upcoming post. I knew this repack would help me be a good blogger. And if you love baseball cards, you have to have lots of Alou cards. We'll save this one for further consideration some day in 2017, at this rate. But 2003 Topps? There are reasons I drift away from baseball cards once in a while. I like colorful cards. I like strong primary colors. But I think this set puts me to sleep, and it's already late.

What's the next card?

Hmmm, that MJ Holding Company repacker person is more sly than I thought. The second card is the famous baseball player replaced by the first card! Maybe MJ can help you understand the game of baseball after all.

I'll have to blame these poor scans on the beer though. I ran a chainsaw a bunch today, and to try and get the taste of gasoline off the tip of my tongue, I went with a heavily hopped beverage - 2014 Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale - and forgot to check how the scanner was registering the cards before I scanned them all for you. Sorry about cutting off the tops of the cards there. Bad blogger, bad. This will be a problem for the whole post, oops.

That's sure a lot of blue on that card though. I like it though. Nicknames make for better baseball cards. I'll read the back later, let's keep flipping through these blue cards:

It's a Manger Hot Pack! Yippee! This is a very rare "In Action" Manager card, though you can't really expect a 72 year old baseball lifer to challenge the photographer to stay in focus.

But this was my first clue these cards came from an actual baseball card collection. Luckily for me, that collector who sold their collection to MJ Holdings Corporation - hmmm, I wonder what you could get back in trade for baseball cards from them? - well, they picked up the Traded set from Topps in 2003, which is where Topps put all the Manager cards that year. Which is a pretty good idea Topps could use when they have a hard time filling out all 330 cards in the Update set these days. BRING BACK THE MANAGER CARDS! please.

But I couldn't be that lucky to purchase 100 Manager cards at once. I also found this card:

Nice palm trees! I think this card might hold down the Twins shoulder patch binder page slot for a while. Me likey.

So much blue though, isn't there some other set of cards in this repack?

A blue bat! Blue empty seats! Blue alternate uniform! There is no escape from the blues, every grown-up knows that. I'm pretty sure I've never seen a blue bat on a baseball card before though. I'm also pretty sure 1989 Donruss is going to have a tough time convincing me to keep any of their other 659 cards with a design that boring. But of course, with baseball cards, there's always the next pack…

This pack was pretty loaded with those cheap flimsy cards though. That portion of it did have one other surprise:

So for you lazy types that couldn't be bothered to figure out how to put the challenging jigsaw puzzle together even though you already owned hundreds and hundreds of the baseball cards that came out of the same packs, they gave you a cheater card showing you what the puzzle looked like? I did not know that. I'll use this to my advantage. Clearly, the one cool piece of this puzzle would be the one with the Brave on it. Sorry, Warren, this puzzle just doesn't do it for me, and nether does this set of baseball cards.

But that's the beauty of a repack - there are always other sets to check out:

Back to the blues. Does this pack have a theme or what? And What IS That in Tony's uniform there? A Saturday Night Special to really put the fear in base runners thinking about stealing one? Never trust a Pirate. And those fore-arm bands? What's up with that?

Even beer can't help you escape from the blues, trust me:

Something doesn't seem right about that card. Those pesky red Empty Seats? You thought I liked these cards. I do, I do, that's not it. That Espy card is a classic. No, no, it's something else...

There, that's better. Whatever possessed the Mariners to switch to teal anyway? Teal is pretty classy, sure, but the ocean is blue, everybody knows that.

And what about collecting my Favorite Stars like I was promised?

Everybody likes an Eddie Murray card. But wasn't there some of those chippy black border cards everyone hates in here somewhere?

And wasn't I complaining just yesterday about lackadaisical baseball card editors carelessly dropping graphical elements on the cards? Yes, yes I was. But I dig that Win! Twins! logo. Looks like I'll have more Twins patch cards to be looking for.

I'm not sure what to make of 1987 Donruss. I mean, it's like every card got run over by one of those old-time bullpen buggies I discovered while wasting time on the Internet, like you are right now:

Which are pretty cool. I hope that idea has been factored into a nickname for this set. I mean, I do like black border baseball cards, they make the colors in the image just pop oh so well. I wonder what else I can find in 1987 Donruss?

Shazam! Now there is a puzzle I would like to complete! And they call this stuff junk. At least that means it will be cheap!

There was quite a stack of these cards in the pack, but sadly no puzzle pieces. Were there any more good cards?

All-right all-right, another cool Mark Langston card. His binder page will be filling up before I know it. That star sure does look pointy, Mark, good thing you usually have a great leg kick going on your cards.

I think there were a lot of famous baseball players in 1987 sets. I sure hope so, because they sure printed a lot of their cards, which is good for me, so I can find sweet Hall of Famer cards like this one:

Nice. Though again I wish I could re-assemble the card and put that old school Sox logo over in the left corner, a little more outta the way.

Yes, 1987 Donruss seems like it could be enjoyable to assemble, particularly since I won't let 1987 Topps grow into very big piles. And I'll need some 1987 cards to keep up with my baseball history:

Why there's Johnny Football of his day. Quarterback of the Michigan Wolverines but made Pro in Major League Baseball instead. I doubt you'll ever see his like again. He was pretty famous in Michigan when I was growing up, but I never knew he was also born right there in Ann Arbor - what a storybook baseball card, thanks Donruss. I'll have to keep an eye out for more of his cards and see how his total career turned out, I forget these things. Here he is in 1987 already a DH though, hmmmm…

Well, so much for my repack with a very low score on the variety index. Let's hope the repacker tried a little harder putting the second stack of cards together:

Sweet. A baseball player from the very first set of baseball cards I ever collected, still going strong on cardboard in 1991. This would be Frank's final of 3 Upper Deck cards, but is better than his 91 Topps. This pack is off to a good start!

Though this is a rather routine action in game - the runner is already safe on a pick-off attempt - I always like a card where the fielder hasn't closed his glove on the ball yet. Hey man, nice shot. Upper Deck was also known for intriguing photos on the back of course:

I think this might have been one of Bryce Harper's favorite cards when he was a little boy. 

It was nice to see a short run of 1991 Upper Deck to start the next portion of 50 cards, because that set is full of these types of cards:

Now there's a Pitcher In Action card. Repacks usually have a generous helping of early Upper Deck issues, quite probably because the print runs of those cards are pretty high I imagine. This will work out well for me, because I think I will just keep an occasional UD '91 until I have 9 really good ones. They are not all fabulous action shots though, Upper Deck also liked to have fun posing the players:

Another great Empty Seats card, naturally in this pack with blue seats. Yes, all four of those cards are keepers. That card has some potential for use in the post I try to keep working on, if I didn't keep buying new repacks lately. Once the card designer puts a team logo on the card, you can quickly get triple logo cards. Unlike this set:

Perhaps Leaf was just practicing here for their unlicensed future. With no logo or even team name, the photo selection doesn't come through to support that design decision. And I have never liked the main element here, recalling the little sticky-back thingies you would use on each corner of a photo to affix it to a page in an album, you know, when people kept their photographs without using electronics, back when we had to walk 3 miles through the snow, each way, to get to the one room school house, sonny. 1991 Leaf will be a one-and-done set in my binders - I will probably just keep one card from it, when and ever I find a really, really good one.

Perhaps someday Leaf will hook me up with a card from my oddball personal baseball card memes like this Stadium Club does:

This card could read Louisville Slugger for the name and I would be happy to accept it as a Lurking Catcher card. That bat looks like it's up to something…I'm always on the look-out for Floating Bat cards now. 

With a hit of Stadium Club, this repack is finally starting to behave like a repack. And nothing says repack like a shiny 90s insert:

I might scan that one again to see how it turns out a second time. Or, I might have a Shiny 90s scan-off contest - wait till you see a 95 or 96 Pacific Oooooh, Shiny I pulled from my extra repack the other night; just ridiculous. I'll give you a heads-up in advance so you can have shades handy that night.

Did I just type the word night here in the middle of the night? Did I find a night card? Yep.

A pitcher-at-the-plate insert night card no less, probably; you can't always tell if any Diamaondbacks card is actually from a night game. Like most inserts in the 21st century this one too, from 2002, is mostly designed for a relic version. I think bat relic cards for pitchers are about the only such cards I would enjoy owning.

Once you start pulling inserts in a repack, the cards from sets you've never seen before won't be far behind:

This is actually a 3-D card, in that you would need a 3-D scanner to capture the embossed faux-baseball stitches on the top right of the card; also the surface of the card is also a nice faux-leather, though you'll not often see leather that glossy. Still a fun go at something a little different from Upper Deck in the 2001 Ovation set. There were a couple more of these in the repack, gave it a little heft. I think I will enjoy owing some of these for the tactile experience. Much better than 1995's Topps Embossed. You missed Topps Embossed? Don't worry, they're easy to find, and real, real cheap too.

You never know what those non-Topps baseball card companies would try next:

Here Fleer tries a hand at a retro issue in 2001 for it's 20th Anniversary. I hadn't seen one of these before; I'll be keeping an eye out for more. The back of it is pretty interesting:

This is actually a nod to sets in the later 80s, rather than 1981 Fleer, which wasn't all that adventurous on the back. I like this kind of baseball data a lot better than new composite statistics I haven't had time to figure out yet. My usual radio announcer, Dan Dickerson for the Tigers, uses some of these #s occasionally. For several minutes I had to wonder how Wilson's 1st Pitch On-Base Percentage could be higher than his Batting Average — he must have been hit by a 1st Pitch in an At Bat or two.

This is another card I can use in a future post, and in future collecting, but it came near the end of the pack, which closed with another several 1991 Upper Deck. This repacker also thinks I should have a certain wonderful baseball card, that I didn't have to scan for you tonight:

…because I scanned it for you the other day; this is the third copy of this card I have pulled lately.

I thought I had probably seen another of my newly repacked 91 UD cards online before, but it turned out that had only been the back of the card. So this was another fun find in my retro repack of bewitching baseball cards:

Wanna Rip Some Packs?

Of course you do. You wouldn't have clicked the link to this if you didn't.

I wanna rip some packs. But I have come to the sad conclusion that I'm just shooting myself straight in the wallet when I do it. Baseball card depreciation is worse than new car depreciation, or electronic gadget depreciation.

And I'm not sad about the _value_ of the cards I rip. I could really care less what the cards I own are worth. Seriously. I enjoy them, or I wouldn't keep them. If a major warehouse find of cards from any set I have collected or am collecting was found which then made the cards I own now worth 10% of what they were the day before, I wouldn't care in the slightest. A lot of collectors, though, would throw up their hands in disgust and quit the hobby completely if that happened to them. And it would be Oh, The Humanity for weeks and weeks on the Internet if that were to happen. I would probably have to retreat to trout fishing, and flipping through binders full of worthless base baseball cards.

The problem with ripping cards today is that you can buy the same card, out of the pack, for 25% or possibly less of the pack price - and without any duplicates as when you rip your way through your cash.

Sadly, ripping just no longer makes any sense. I won't beat the dead horse any more, I think everyone understands all this.

That's why I'm happy I've grown to enjoy ripping re-pack products. Because I still enjoy the anticipation of not knowing what baseball card I'm going to find in that pack. I'm not sure I would have come to enjoy repacks so much, if I hadn't discovered baseball card blogs. I had never considered the idea of collecting the cards based on what's in the picture on the card. Simply collecting Turning Two cards, from any set, any manufacturer, any year? Brilliant. I am so slow sometimes…. thank y'all!

Ok, let's rip a pack:

SUNDAY! SUNDAY! This 4th of July weekend don't miss this one! Special Bar-Bee-Que Twinkie Cook-Off in the Parking lot! It's the world famous Monster Truck Rally you've been waiting for!

errr, wait, that's just what I hear in my head when when I read ULTIMATE Super JUMBO PACK. I love over the top advertising. And no, I didn't make up the part about the B-B-Q Twinkies. You can look that up on the Internet, which is where I looked it up from.

I thought to title this post Window Shopping #3, but I'll save the roll-out of the new web series for the final re-pack product I can share with you some other time.

I do like these Ultimate Super Jumbo Packs. You'll see one of these again some day too, which has one of the most iconic baseball cards of all time, really, no kidding at all - you'll see. It was so cool to see that it will lead me to a whole new collecting project.

Which this pack might as well. Because I window shopped for that sweet red, white, and blue baseball card there on the front, because I always like red, white, and blue baseball cards, perhaps a little bit extra when they feature a team that has only two of those colors on the national flag over the stadium:

Because when I see 1985 Topps cards on blog posts, I start to like them a little bit more each time. I would like to pick up a "vending box" of the things (no ripping with those however, but I was always in awe of the idea of them as a kid). By 1985 though, I was slowing way down on baseball cards, and I have perhaps just a few packs of them, somewhere. I think. Maybe. But now I have at least one more than I did before! Thanks ULTIMATE Super JUMBO PACK.

But Doug Flynn? Dunno, I'm not totally sure that isn't Ian Kinsler shipped back through some sort of 3D Printing Powder Blue Time Machine. I like that Topps went with powder blue ink on this card. The back is a sentimental one as well, wherein Topps informs us that "Doug and his wife were introduced by Pete Rose." Awww, gee, Topps, so sweet.

Let's see what's behind the window card:

And the air starts leaving the balloon quick in this pack. '89 Bowman, whoo-boy.  Maybe these days with the 6 divisions in baseball where you barely know the players in the other 5 divisions any more (one key reason why I still buy new baseball cards), it would be a little interesting to see a player's stats against a division rival. But in 1989? Zzzzzzzzzz.

Once again I like that this particular re-packer puts the cards in the pack backwards sometimes. Because, Yes, I Read the Backs, though I gotta tell ya, I'm taking one for the team sometimes doing that, particularly this year. I never do know what I'll find on the backs, but let's flip this one over:

Well whaddya know, the first 1989 Bowman I wanna keep. I like Kirk Gibson, even if most of the rest of the MLB world does not. I'm from Michigan, and so is Kirk. Kirk plants a lot of trees, and so do I. Kirk is known here in northern Michigan for having a nice hunting spread over in the north-east top corner of the lower peninsula, and he has been on Michigan hunting and fishing TV shows several times as a result. I am sure he is there right now, having a good time with old friends and trying to forget about baseball and how and whether he can somehow return to The Game; it is easy to forget your troubles out at Deer Camp.

I like that Kirk wears #23, which is my birthday. I like On-Deck cards. I like that Pine Tar is featured on this baseball card.

But I will not be collecting 1989 Bowman any time soon, or ever. No matter how many get put into my re-packs, which is usually several, from some re-packers (4 of 30 cards in this one). For the final re-packer we will visit some future evening, those won't fit in their "pack", which is a good thing.

Let's see what else ULTIMATE Super JUMBO PACK has for me:

I'm sure now you are just looking around on the blogroll for something else to click on. But I admire 1992 card backs. Clean. White. Easy to read. Design recalls the front:

And I'm starting to think a few carefully targeted pages of 1992 Topps would look good in a binder. What are these repacks doing to me? I loved 1991 Topps but for whatever reason 1992 didn't grab me when I ripped a sample pack back in that day. At least it will be cheap to indulge in them a little more some day. But this is a dangerous precedent…

GAH! 1987 Topps! Wood paneling invading my computer. What is going on? This repack was loaded with the things actually - 10 of 30 cards were 1987 Topps. And here I had to discover a new strange meme to collect on a 1987 Topps, which would be a top contender on my Least Favorite Sets of All-Time list, were I ever to publish one by being stuck on a desert island with a complete collection of baseball cards and an Internet connection to blog about them all, finally.

And what wacko new meme is that? How many baseball cards feature a baseball bat suspended in mid-air, untouched by human hands? That will be a fun collection to chase, 3.33¢ per lottery ticket in these one dollar repacks. But why did it have to kick off with a 1987 Topps? That card will sure be lonely on a binder page for a long time to come. And it will be a 1987 Topps! Yuck! This hobby really is full of crazy people, isn't it?

At least I'm not being led down the path to collecting these:

I might have started to do that when I was a kid, but my allegiance to Topps was strong, and I hadn't finished 1981 Donruss (stay tuned), and on a kid budget I had to keep my priorities straight. I think before I ever had to worry about what to do with a couple packs of 1982 Donruss, these came along:

This is commented on plenty via blogs I'm sure. But until you see the two designs adjacent to each other, you forget about just how lame this was. My kid instincts were correct, and the repack shows off baseball card history well. Goodbye, Donruss.

Vern Ruhle though? He will always give me flashbacks to a Topps set a few years previous. By this point in collecting, I earned enough spare change from odd jobs in the neighborhood to really buy up some packs of baseball cards, and knew several other almost-teens who could as well. We could complete sets! But as it was turning out that year, Vern was a tough pull, and one other card was as well (I wish I could remember which). A whole bunch of us needed the same two cards. We could all buy packs, but no one in my town could pull those two cards. Pack buying became pointless. Hmmm, kinda like the intro theme to tonight's post. Anyhow, someone figured out that if you stretched the wax on the back of the pack, you could read the name of the card on top. And then shortly, every box of baseball cards in town was "pack searched" for those two cards. 

Ahh, memories. That is a big part of collecting these worthless baseball cards. Like this one:

What a card! I loved that set. I'll make it through the pile of blog-about cards eventually and reach the pile of blog-about boxes some day.

The runner looks like he absolutely demolished himself, but he's SAFE! I'm a little tempted to use modern research sites to sort out this example of an only occasional baseball card meme shown on Cardboard Junkie, err, Card Junk, the other day - a multi-position player. Topps never does that any more.

Fortunately, Topps never does this anymore either:

Looking back at the sets of my childhood, I hate the blurry cards. And in 1980s baseball cards, there are still plenty of them. And it always seems like there are more in the 1980s than the 1970s. What's up with that? Sometimes I wonder if these tend to have lower populations of high grades from the grading company, as the grader presumes a more focused copy could, or should exist. Some day I'll poke around on that idea.

But that LaRoche card will be going in a binder page slot, because I like cards with interesting trees on them. Particularly the blurriest trees ever, probably.

That card immediately brought to mind one of my Sea Turtles:

And no, I didn't hit a father-son combo in a repack, though that is a definite possibility with these two chips off the same block, as the repackers already use Sea Turtles to bulk up their product, frequently as the marquee card in the window on the top of the pack.

I probably shop via the window card with the hope that there is more of where that came from, and in this pack, there was:

The repack comes through again, reminding why I'm not in a hurry to fiddle around with 85 Topps. Dark-blue-on-powder-blue, with a player in a blue uniform in front of a blue dug-out full of powder blued up baseball players. Not well played, Topps. It could be that the blue just overwhelmed the registration of the red colors on this card and we get a pink Brave instead, and by the time your eyes attempt to reach safety at the bottom of the card, all the blue everywhere seems to have migrated towards purple and away from the probably-supposed-to-match color of the B-R-A-V-E-S lettering. What a mess of a card; not even the red, white & blue belt can save this one. 85 Topps just moved down the To Collect list a little bit.

This repack packer certainly had a lot of Topps at hand that day, with just a few examples from the other manufacturers. Topps wasn't the only one who could punt on good color choices on baseball cards:

And few sets get it more wrong than 1990 Score. Green, Yellow, Blue, White, Phillies 'red' - am I looking at a bowl of Lucky Charms? Nice powder blue touch there on the logo though. 1990 was a bad year for colorful baseball cards. But in another repack I picked up this year, 1990 Score hit a home run with a colorful card. I'll get to that box of repacked baseball cards, some day.

But I'm always interested in the manufacturers I never even bought a pack of baseball cards from, ever:

That's a 1989 Classic, with a handy feature on the back - space for the player to autograph the card. I have to wonder how many 'graph seekers took advantage of that. What a dilemma. To look at your cool autograph that proves a famous baseball player touched this baseball card, you would have to flip it over. Should I deface this valuable baseball card and have him sign the front? But who wants to check out a signature on the back of a card? What do I do here?

Buy some other manufacturer's baseball cards, most likely. Especially when a card-back writer is so hard up for material he includes this as a trivia question: "How many umpires are used in a regular season game?" I think even six year olds would have had their intelligence insulted by that one. You aren't missing much on the front of this one, either.

Nevertheless I frequently do admire non-Topps card backs:

Yes! The obvious question you wonder about when the back of the card says the player reached his new team via trade. For Who? For crying out loud, Topps, hook me up with this already. The new printing presses and their ability to print micro-type full of useless Rookie Facts makes this a no-brainer. Who'd the other guys get for this guy? Do you want me to put down my baseball cards and just ask Baseball Reference or Wikipedia? Siri will answer the question pretty fast these days, Topps.

Donruss had it right all along. Though now I have to wonder if the new un-licensed "Donruss" cards still do this. I'm sure a repack of some sort will answer that question for me soon.

That one had a kind-of cool front, with a nice batting cage shot. I'm just not a fan of posed batting shots with no batting helmet. Details, details.

Which you usually can't see on these never-seen-these-days baseball cards:

Bleeding powder blue on this one. A pity digital zoom technology wasn't available to Topps back then to see this much powder blue in up-close glory.

That's the last card I have for you tonight; I didn't really include it for the not-quite-digging-that-one image on the front. But I was tickled to find this card in my repack, because I could see that 24 years ago, it belonged to a real baseball card collector:

Just like me.