Repack Hits and Short Prints

I am an unapologetic fan of the $20 repack box full of unopened packs and one relic or autograph hit of some kind.  It's the same price as a blaster box, but instead of 40 or 50 cards -- or even 24, like those World Cup cards -- you get somewhere around 200 to 250 cards.  Also, since the 100 cards plus an unopened pack for $4 option seems to be drying up at my local Targets, I end up going the more expensive route for a good pack rip.

My luck in these packs lately has been pretty good.  Of course, the packs inside will never have a hit -- all those are searched out well beforehand, whether by Fairfield's intrepid packers or the dealers from which Fairfield is buying.  Perhaps that is why these packs seem to be filled with short prints -- those come in packs that don't have relics, after all.

Since these have relics, let's look at the four that I have gotten in the various repacks I have bought recently:

None of them are relics that I want to keep, certainly -- two Yankees, a Red Sox player, and a Cub do not tickle my fancy.  They are all available if someone wants them.  If no one wants the Byrd, I'll probably add it to the View from the Skybox's A&G Relics Exchange.

To be fair, the relics are okay.  I'm not overwhelmed by them, certainly. Yet, these packs I get seem to have a lot of short prints, as I said above.  Let's start with 2013 Heritage Short Prints:

Trout black border

I think the scanner caused the trivia question to be exposed.

Cishek Venezuelan back

Billy Butler Refractor

Not too bad.  I think the Trout is the best of the lot, for obvious reasons, but these are not bad cards to get in a repack even if just one of them came.

I also got a couple of Allen & Ginter high numbers/short prints:

Swin Cash, 2012 A&G #339

John Kruk, 2013 A&G #333

Kevin Youkilis, 2013 A&G #329

And then there was the Pele "error":

Again, it's fun to pull these cards out of repack packs, if only because it seems that they come literally every pack or every other pack.  

Another card set that shows up regularly in these repacks are the Topps 2013 Series 2 cards.  You'd think I'd be sick of them after cracking a case -- and, yes, I have a little 2013 fatigue going -- but when you get a couple of those "sunglasses" short prints, it's not bad:

That's especially true when one of them is from one of the hottest hitters in major league baseball this year in Giancarlo Stanton.

Finally, there are mascots.  Anyone want these two ragamuffins?

To be fair, I jumped all over four Jumbo Packs of Archives this morning when I found them at another area Target.  Four jumbo packs yielded 72 cards for $24 -- about 30 cents each before tax -- but it felt much more expensive than that for some reason.  And, I didn't get any autographs or relics or anything there.

But if I can't get what I want, I can always count on the repacks to give me what I need.

Who owns this photo?

I have a day job that requires me to analyze things all the time.  I don't always succeed in turning off the analytical side on weekends, either.  But I couldn't miss this one.

Left: 2004 Upper Deck Sweet Spot Warren Spahn;  Right: 2013 Topps Allen & Ginter Warren Spahn

I'm sure there are a few photos of the late, great Warren Spahn available for use by card companies and memorabilia seekers.  It appears this photo, though, has either become a stock photo or an iconic photo.
A trip to Allposters.com, for example, gives people a chance to buy this photo as a poster in sizes ranging from 8x10 to 24x20:

Go to Main Line Autographs, and for just $30 (seems low to me...), you can buy this:

It all becomes clear when you do a reverse image search using Tineye.com (a great resource, by the way, if you make cards and find a small photo you need larger...if one exists, Tineye can find it).  Everyone is raiding Getty Images archive for the photo:

I can now see why people love making their own cards.  Use Getty Images, and you have access literally to the same photos that Topps uses.

An eBay Grab and a Trade on The Cardboard Connection Forum

A couple of envelopes showed up in the past day or so here at Hiatus Central with some great additions to the Robin Yount collection from recent vintages.

First, I threw down a little bit of cash on eBay to get one of the 75 Robin Yount base set cards from the 2013 Topps Five Star set.  The card I got is numbered 65 of 75.  I like the card and I like the old-school MB logo for the Brewers.  The photo, though, looks like Yount just teed off on the golf course using a baseball bat.

The other three additions came courtesy of my first-ever trade brokered through The Cardboard Connection Forum with a nice guy from Pennsylvania with the username of weavahVBC.  The trade went as smoothly as I could have asked, and he sent me three very nice cards in return for a few of my "Cards Mom Threw Out" inserts from the 2010 Topps Set.

From the top, these are the 2013 Allen & Ginter, the 2011 60 Years of Topps 60YOT-25 Robin Yount Original Back (the 1976-looking card), and 2013 Topps Archive 114.  Of the three, I really like the 1985 redo from the Topps Archives set.  I've always liked that set's look, and the update with the cleaner printing process used these days is a nice touch.