Repacks R Us, Part II: Finishing up the Loose Packs and hitting the oldest Packs

Yesterday's post introduced you to my purchase of the Toys 'R' Us repack, so let's get through some more of that box.  There's a lot of work to be done here to make up for the Goodwin Champions pack -- I like dogs, too, but I don't like Kasey Keller's yappy dog...and that was the best card in that pack.  Ugh.  So, did the box get better?  Let's see.

2012 Panini Triple Play

I have said in the past after opening one of these packs that I am not a huge fan of these cartoon cards.  If anyone wants one of these, I’ll happily send it to you.  

30 Prince Fielder

70 Brian Wilson

Ha -- I get it.  His beard is long.

5 Chipper Jones

236 Brian McCann Focus insert

This looks more like a fat truck driver looking in his rearview mirror than it bears any resemblance to Brian McCann.

23 Troy Tulowitzki sticker

189 Buster Posey puzzle piece 9 of 9

194 Ichiro puzzle piece 5 of 9

The less said about that set, the better.

2010 Upper Deck Series 1 Jumbo Pack 1

Within the repack, MJ Holding put in several "jumbo" packs or rack packs.  Let's get all the unlicensed cards out of the way and knock out the Upper Deck Series 1 Jumbo Packs.  It's nice to see that these Upper Deck cards are still using logos, but being rebels and openly labeling itself as NOT authorized by MLB was definitely a bad idea.  But, it did provide work for some lawyers for a while.  

At any rate, this is my first look at the 2010 Upper Deck.  Let's open it up:

574 Boston Checklist

558 Flushing, New York

So wait -- Upper Deck thought it was okay to use the logos from the teams without their permission, but they didn't feel okay about calling the stadium "CitiField"?

113 Aramis Ramirez (as a Cub)

163 Trevor Crowe

427 Aaron Rowand

112 Bobby Scales

It’s a Cubs Hot Pack. Yippee.  In all seriousness, if Scales had come up in the 1970s, he may never have featured on a baseball card.  Since he came up in the parallel issuing, chrome-loving days, he has sixty-five entries on the Trading Card Database.

263 Brandon Wood

528 Adam Dunn

BH-8 Joe DiMaggio Baseball Hero

I like this card and the Baseball Heroes cards generally.  I just wish I could figure out when each of them was issued.  Like so many things Upper Deck did while it produced baseball cards, they really beat this one into the ground.

SB-9 2009 Season Biography

I am not a fan of these “season biography” cards.  Seems like just an excuse to produce far too many cards in one year.  This is a nice looking card though.

501 C. J. Wilson

197 Adam Everett

164 Asdrubal Cabrera

367 Josh Outman

44 Augie Ojeda

14 Esmil Rogers

Star Rookie!  I remember when people thought that might happen for him too.  Instead, through 2 appearances in 2014 and with 5 big league seasons behind him, he's sporting a career ERA of 5.53.

256 Torii Hunter

55 Stephen Drew

2010 Upper Deck Series 1 Jumbo Pack 2

Well, Pack 1 didn't exactly do much to move the needle one way or the other.  Let's see if Pack 2 is any better.

358 Rajai Davis

549 Denver, Colorado

Nice clock at the "Ballpark" in "Denver, Colorado."

527 Nyjer Morgan

299 Carlos Villanueva

My first Brewer of the entire repack.  And he’s wearing a red hat for "Italian Heritage Day." 

471 Jason Motte

439 Noah Lowry

124 Jake Fox

309 Matt Tolbert

SB-162 Season biography: Matt LaPorta

Was that when the Indians still had hope that LaPorta would be more than a replacement level player?  That didn't work out too well.  Let's hope that he knows how to speak Spanish already so that he can enjoy his time this season with Campeche in the Mexican League

102 Jason Veritek

286 Hiroki Kuroda

This guy was always my under-the-radar fantasy pick in my NL-only leagues.  He’d give you 175-200 great innings at a low WHIP and ERA.  Then he had to go and sign with the Yankees.

520 Brian Tallet

208 Fu-Te Ni

Strangely, Microsoft Word thinks Ni is a word, or at least that it is spelled correctly, and Monty Python agrees.  Words with Friends does not.

476 Fernando Perez

176 Ryan Spilborghs

23 Chris Johnson Star Rookie

And now the Braves third baseman.

108 Kevin Gregg

It's not that these cards are ugly.  To the contrary, it is pretty much the type of set we had come to expect from UD – quality photography with a lot of full bleed fronts, a quality finish on the cards, and not too cluttered in terms of its look.  Frustrating set inserts like the “season biography” and the neverending run of Baseball Heroes make me glad that Upper Deck did not win the exclusivity battle, but these cards are nicer than what Topps has put out.

That wraps up the unlicensed portion of the repack.  It isn't a great start in terms of my collecting interests, with exactly one Brewer in all of those packs.  But, at least it isn't another pack of the Yellow Fleer.

Now, on to the packs from Topps:

2012 Topps Allen & Ginter

I have opened a complete hobby box of 2013 A&G, bought the complete base set of 2011 A&G, and opened a hobby box of 2008 A&G.  I think I have opened one other pack of 2012 A&G in a repack, and it had a Ryan Braun base card in it, if I recall correctly.  I doubt this will have anything super interesting, but let's see.

333 Kelly Johnson

Short print! Short print!

326 Adrian Gonzalez mini

Short Print Mini!

64 Mat Latos

183 Darwin Barney

I think this repack missed its intended destination of Naperville, Illinois.  There are too many Cubs for that not to be the case.  Perhaps an MJ Holdings employee put it together for herself but it got packed into a truck for Georgia accidentally.

169 Mark Teixeira

248 Jed Lowrie

An all-baseball A&G pack.  I’m baffled.

2012 Topps Series 1 8-card pack

The next two packs are probably most certainly the least interesting packs in the entire repack box.  Just run-of-the-mill regular series 2012 Topps packs.  Perhaps they will surprise me.

195 Ben Zobrist

174 Yadier Molina

77 NL Home Run Leaders Gold Sparkle

Finally another card to add to one of my personal collections.  I cannot complain about getting this one to add to the Prince Fielder Brewer collection, even if the round mound of vegan is only 1/3 of the card.

42 Drew Pomerantz RC

255 Scott Rolen

213 Alex Avila

238 Emilio Bonifacio

60 Hanley Ramirez

I think it says it all that that pack closed with back-to-back Miami Marlins. While the liquor sparkle Fielder was not a bad card, it's all that pack had for me.

2012 Topps Series 1 12-card pack

I'm not sure why the repack did not have two packs of 8 or two packs of 12.  Let's see how this goes.

155 Matt Cain

301 Alexi Ogando

226 Ryan Hanigan

300 Josh Hamilton Gold Sparkle

Liquor in the front, sparkle in the back.  Or something like that.

GF-18 Jose Tabata Gold Futures

That hasn’t worked out too well so far, has it?  Pirates fans -- what is Tabata's deal?

253 Tim Federowicz RC

280 Ryan Howard

6 Nick Hagadone RC

28 Placido Polanco

4 Jeremy Guthrie

92 Active NL ERA Leaders

124 Active NL Avg. Leaders

I had reasonably low expectations for these 2012 Topps packs, and they really lived up to those expectations.

2012 Bowman Chrome

The last of the loose packs in the repack was this three-card Bowman Chrome pack.  I like shiny things as much as the next collector, so let's see what we get:

34 Chipper Jones Refractor

A really attractive card with all that silver shining up at you.  A must have for any Braves fan's collection.  Do any Braves fans out there want it?

BCP179 Narciso Mesa RC

His first name means daffodil in Spanish.  That’s what the card says.

191 Adam Wainwright

His first name means daffodil in Urdu.  That’s what the card says.

At the end of Day 2, we are still looking like this repack is limping along.  Two total Brewers -- one of which was only a third of a gold sparkle card -- out of all of these cards is not helping my assessment.  I guess Brewers are just too good for the repacks.  

Seriously though, this has not be a terrible group of cards, but it has been less than inspiring.  What's left to save this repack?  We have two "jumbo" packs of 2013 Topps Series 1 -- I'd call them rack packs, but I guess that did not sound fancy enough for Topps -- and we have two of the 2011 Bowman Chrome three-packs with a bonus insert pack of all Purple Refractors.  There's still hope, I suppose!