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.

2013 Topps Heritage and a Random find in a bottom of an old box

I am now once again hooked on collecting baseball cards.  I feel like a 12-step program may be in my future.  I can tell this because I just casually bought two blaster boxes of the 2013 Topps Heritage and all I could think about was, "Okay, who can I trade these to?  How many Brewers are in this set?  What hits should I be looking for?"

One of the hits I got is a "Mini", the approximate odds of which are listed at 1 in 235 packs.  The weird thing is the hand-numbering serial numbers to 100 despite the blaster box not indicating that these minis were not sequentially numbered.  I'm pretty sure that the 1964 Topps set didn't have that.

But, I did get a mini and a sequentially numbered refractor card as well.

First, the Mini:

Wilin is not sure where exactly he is supposed to look for this photo.

Now, the Refractor, numbered 345 of 564:

I also liked the news inserts -- I got the Rolling Stones and MLK.  I didn't like the "Then and Now" having Eddie Mathews and Adam Dunn on the same card when the only thing they could highlight as "in common" with one another was that both guys liked to take walks.  Mathews was 7th in MLB in 1964 in walks, while Dunn was 1st in 2012.  That's all you got?

Anyway, the other fun thing I found was something in surprisingly good shape for having spent most of the past thirty years in a package in a box.  I looked around on Google, and I have seen this referred to as being Michael Jordan's true rookie card...okay, then.

It's the Nike Promo card set from about 1985.  It has James Lofton, John McEnroe, Doc Gooden, Lance Parrish, and a Nike front card with several anthropomorphic sports balls:

It's the iconic "Jumpman" pose that appeared on all of Jordan's Nike shoes and is more recognized as being Michael Jordan, I'd argue, than Jerry West being the NBA logo model.

That said, I'm torn about this one.  I've never "slabbed" anything in my life before, but I'm considering doing that with this Jordan card (and maybe the whole set), and if I do that I will probably sell it.  At the same time, I'm thinking, "this will increase in value -- I know it will."

So my question to you is this:  what should I do with it -- keep it as is, slab it and sell it, or slab it and keep it?