Repacks R Us Part III: Redemption or Revulsion?

The Toys R Us repack has treated me unevenly at best.  To go through the sheer pain of viewing a Christian Laettner card -- I mean, can you tell that he still bugs me?  It has been fun, though, to see cards from a few sets that I would never have otherwise seen in person because I would not buy them at full price.

This box closes with two 2013 Topps Series 1 Jumbo Packs and two of the 2011 Bowman Platinum four-packs.  Let's see how the repack closes -- will it redeem itself, or will I be so angry as to say I will never buy them again?

2013 Topps Series 1, Jumbo Pack 1

First things first: I don't have high expectations for any base-set packs from Topps.  I've opened too many in the past three months than to think that I'm going to pull a printing plate from one of these babies.  

Second, it's a bit strange to me, but these repacks contain the Wal-Mart blue parallel jumbo packs.  It really puzzled me until I saw that MJ Holding is a big supplier to Wal-Mart for its repacks.  I guess Toys 'R' Us is special and sells its cards out -- or at least holds them in their own inventory for as long as it takes to sell them.

Preliminaries out of the way, let's get to the cards.

Top Half

50 Adam Wainwright

1 Bryce Harper

313 Maicer Izturis

274 Miguel Montero

223 Yonder Alonso

282 Russell Martin

88 Jamey Carroll

10 Adam Jones

225 Will Venable

83 Darin Ruf RC

290 Tom Layne RC

84 Adeiny Hechavarria RC

CC-4 David Ortiz Calling Card

The one insert in the top half of the pack is this Big Papi Calling Card.  To me, I would have preferred it if it actually provided me with cell phone minutes.  It's not that I hate Ortiz or the Red Sox, but the whole spitting onto his batting glove being a featured card is just ridiculous.

195 Chris Heisey

291 Ryan Sweeney

139 Bobby Parnell

96 Edward Mujica

163 J.A. Happ

Well, if that's all we're going to get from these rack packs...

Bottom Half

61 Trevor Bauer

316 Josh Reddick

3 Hunter Pence

17 Shin-Soo Choo

304 Kyle Drabek

68 Colby Rasmus Emerald Reflector

The minute I saw this card, my head immediately went to the English "band" Gorillaz (created by Damon Allbarn, the lead singer of Blur, a band I really like).  Anyone else see the resemblance?  Is it just the hair?

CH-23 George Brett Chasing History

CD-1 Bryce Harper Chasing the Dream

TM-42 Willie Mays 1972 Mini

300 Daniel Murphy Wal-Mart 

322 Alex Gonzalez Wal-Mart

Finally a Brewer, even if he is a really crappy one on a short stay.  But it’s a card I can use for the Brewers collection, certainly.  And I still love those 1980s jerseys.
93 Austin Kearns Wal-Mart

CH-26 Silver Foil Chipper Jones Chasing History

CH-42 Silver Foil Alex Roidriguez Chasing History

I fully appreciate my hypocrisy in making fun of Alex Rodriguez while embracing Ryan Braun.  That's the fun of being a baseball fan and human being -- choosing which jerks and cheaters you embrace and call your own and which jerks and cheaters you hate with a passion reserved for persons who personally wronged you.  

306 Jerry Hairston

104 Jed Lowrie

273 Dexter Fowler

So THAT'S where all the inserts were.  The redeeming quality for that pack was clearly the Brewers Wal-Mart parallel, even if it was Alex Gonzalez.  On to Pack 2.

2013 Topps Series 1, Jumbo Pack 2

Top Half

257 Mike Minor

This is better already.  Not only is he with the Braves, but, more importantly to me, he is a Vanderbilt guy.

62 Tommy Hunter

25 Mark Teixeira

107 Joe Mauer

59 John Axford

A Brewer with a wicked mullet who is now closing for Cleveland.  Best of luck, Mr. Axford.

219 Josh Beckett

138 Michael Morse

67 SF World Series Game #4

294 AL Batting Avg. Leaders

311 Rajai Davis

185 Rob Scahill RC

271 Jeurys Familia RC

91 Alfredo Aceves

Camouflage Parallel 17/99.  That is a pretty good insert to catch.  Now, if I could just find a Red Sox fan who collects cards and would trade for it.

159 Felipe Paulino

221 Heath Bell

312 Scott Hairston

71 Kyle Kendrick

208 Kurt Suzuki

Bottom Half

128 Buster Posey

218 Ben Zobrist

328 Jayson Werth

153 AL HR Leaders

89 Checklist/Johan Santana

139 Bobby Parnell Emerald Parallel

The green does not look too bad with the Mets colors.  Or, rather, it does not look as bad as I thought it might.  Hope his elbow is okay -- the Mets are struggling enough this year already than to need to use Jose Valverde as a closer all year.

CH-22 Matt Kemp Chasing History

CD-18 Chris Sale Chasing the Dream

TM-41 Bryce Harper 1972 Mini

These cards are still great to look at and find.  

158 Chad Billingsley Wal-Mart parallel

Any of you Dodgers guys need either the Kemp or the Bills?

63 Justin Masterson WM blue parallel

150 John Danks WM blue parallel

CH-4 Silver Foil Cal Ripken Chasing History

CH-9 Silver Foil Mariano Rivera Chasing History

32 Craig Breslow

180 Casey Kotchman

258 Doug Fister

All in all, these two jumbo packs were decent.  The Wal-Mart parallels were new to me, since I didn't buy any cards in retail stores anywhere last year.  I had wondered where these silver foil Chasing History cards had come from, and now I know that too.  Finally, the camouflage card was a nice surprise.

So, going into the final packs, I am still ambivalent.  These last two jumbos weren't bad, but they certainly weren't $25 good either.  Let's close this out with the Bowman Platinum.

2011 Bowman Platinum

These cards come in packs of four with a cardboard insert between the first and second cards of the pack. In each jumbo pack, there are three packs of the regular product and one package of only purple refractors. Let's rip them open.

Rack 1, Pack 1:

48 Mark Teixeira

BPP76 Kyle Russell

Russell made it all the way to Albuquerque for a grand total of 18 games for the Dodgers.  He played independent league ball last year for half the season, then played half a year for the Mississippi Braves.  He was then released and, as far as I can tell, has not caught on anywhere else.

53 David Ortiz

49 Joe Mauer

Rack 1, Pack 2:

19 Carlos Gonzalez

BPA-MF: Mike Foltynewicz

An on-card completely illegible autograph is better than no autograph at all.  He’s a 22-year-old kid who made the jump to AA last year and is in the PCL this year.  He may not start, though, and he’s got some control issues that he needs to work through.  BaseballHQ’s Minor League Analyst says he has the potential to be a third starter and, “Key to success is throwing [curveball] for strikes.”  Fixing that may be the difference between being a major league player and never making it.

55 Michael Pineda

58 Clayton Kershaw

Rack 1, Pack 3

8 Hanley Ramirez

BPP83 Manny Machado

Not a bad base card to find.  

27 Jake McGee

60 CC Sabathia

Purple Refractors

BPP27 Jarred Cosart

It's like EVERYONE plays for Colorado or at least in a purple Rockie world.  The Phillies traded Cosart to the Astros in the Hunter Pence deal in 2011.  Cosart started 10 games for the Astros last year with a 1.95 ERA despite the fact that he walked two more guys than he struck out.  He'll need to improve on that to continue to develop as a pitcher.

BPP90 Gary Brown

Brown was added to the 40-man roster last winter even though he admittedly "hasn't developed as quickly as the Giants had hoped" when they drafted him.  For a guy who lived on speed, contact, and bat control, he sure struck out a lot last year (135 times). 

BPP35 Tony Wolters

Wolters is 21 and is the starting catcher at Double-A Akron for the RubberDucks.  No word on whether Ernie and Bert will make an appearance.

BPP98 Matt Moore

Moore made it to the majors in 2011, and last year in 27 starts he went 17-4 with a 3.29 ERA.  He was an all-star as well, and finished 9th in the Cy Young Award voting.  On the downside, he certainly led a charmed life last year -- he walked exactly 1 batter every two innings he pitched -- 4.5 BB/9 -- which meant that his K/BB ratio did not reach 2.0.  That 2.0 mark is where you want to be to increase the likelihood that your results will be good.

All in all, a very good group of cards.  Let’s see what Rack 2 has.

Rack 2, Pack 1

89 Shin-Soo Choo

BPA-KP Kyle Parker Autograph

Parker is a Clemson product and was a first round pick in the 2010 draft.  Being that he is a Clemson guy, I’m surprised his autograph isn’t an X.  Then again, it sure isn't that far off.  Parker isn't far off from the majors either -- he's starting the year in AAA Colorado Springs. If he keeps hitting as he has the past three years, he will be in Denver soon.

18 Adam Dunn

11 Justin Upton

Rack 2, Pack 2

99 Roy Halladay

BPP71: Johermyn Chavez X-Fractor

It’s a hit, but this is a 25-year-old going the wrong way in his third or fourth organization in three years. He was in this set on the strength of his 2010 season in the California League where he hit 32 homers at High Desert.  That's looking more and more like an aberration.  He's now in the Carolina League -- High-A again.

51 Jose Bautista

36 Johan Santana

Rack 2, Pack 3

30 Felix Hernandez

BPP31 Domingo Santana

I'm not sure why this looks so yellow -- it's just a normal BPP card.  Baseball Prospectus's rating system gives this guy a 30% chance at being an Elite player.  

36 Johan Santana Gold

It’s a Santana Hot pack!

39 Brian McCann

Purple Refractors, Pack 2

BPP51 Alex Wimmers

Numbers can speak volumes.  This guy was a first round pick out of THE Ohio State University for the Twins in 2010.  He pitched 4-1/3 innings in 2012 at AA, and that is as high as he has gotten.  That said, the usual sunny stuff in the local newspaper is still out there -- the Twins haven't given up on him after Tommy John surgery in 2012.

BPP63 Jonathan Schoop

Schoop is 22 and broke spring training camp with the Orioles big club as a second and third baseman. He spent most of 2013 in the International League, and appears to profile as a slick-fielding second baseman with a little pop.

BPP17 Kolbrin Vitek

At the end of March, Kolbren Vitek decided to retire at the age of 25 after several disappointing seasons in the minor leagues.  Vitek and 2006 Red Sox first round pick Jason Place were the two draft failures from the Theo Epstein era in Boston.  

I wish I could say I had more, but it appears that I got shorted one refractor.  Or I lost it.  Oh well.

All in all, I think the Bowman Platinum may have saved the repack to an extent.  Now, to be clear, these packs sucked in terms of having Brewers in them -- I mean, it was an Axford 2013 base, a gold sparkle league home run leaders in 2012, a Carlos Villanueva, and an Alex Gonzalez Wal-Mart 2013 parallel. That's it. But the autograph hits in the Bowman still give this repack some potential to be great.

That said, if you saw something you liked over the past few days, let me know!

Tales from the Repack, Part II

So, what else could these $4 packages of gold provide?  I mean, I got plenty of Hall of Famers, so what more could I ask for?

Well, each of these new repacks also came with Topps Chrome Orange on the front.  So, here are the 5 Orange Chrome cards I got:

A couple of Braves (though I wish Beachy didn't have to visit the Tommy-John doctor again) and some other very nice Chrome Oranges.  It's fun seeing these on the front of the repacks, because these cards still have a good audience looking for them.

Then, there was the random vintage cards.  I had a pretty decent number of 1976 Topps again.

And, for my tastes, what's better than two vintage Brewers?  I mean, I can only have dreams about having sideburns as cool as Pedro Garcia has in this photo.  Then, to get a Rico Petrocelli card?  I mean, Rico left the game early --- at age 33 -- but he was the prototype for the good hitting shortstop.  He hit 40 homers in 1969 (and only drove in 97 runs!) and was an all-star twice in his career.  He isn't a Hall of Famer, but he was a star in his day.  A great card to grab.

Finally, let's close with random fun cards that are the type that make card collecting fun.

My wife wants to frame this next to the JFK card.

A golden shower...

I have five of these.  Each repack had one.

Randomly inserted -- not in one of the packs.  Hmmm...

Yes, repacks are now carrying some of the inserts in them.  This one is humorous.
Dan Uggla would some day like to learn to hit 1/2 as well as Ryne Sandberg.

Weird.  Just weird.

Again, another repack loose card thrown in with the 1989 Topps.  

One of the worst colored cards I have ever seen.  Never, ever use purple/violet/mauve
for a card design.  It is horribly ugly.

That's the end of the repack fun for this week.  I know I will buy more. 

Repack Gold, Part 1

I envy people who catalog every pack as they open them.  Their level of organization is far beyond what I can muster.  Frankly, their level of patience is more than I can muster.  I like -- no, I need -- to open all the packs that I've bought, sort through them, see what I have, and pick out my favorites.  With this blog, I add the step of scanning in a bunch of cards from what I've opened to show off and write about.

By the time I get through step two of sorting, I've completely forgotten what cards came in which pack. And, I don't like organization so much that I have to put everything into spreadsheets.  At least not yet.  Perhaps that time will come, but I'm still sorting through all the cards (probably around 50,000 or so) that I had as a kid in the 1980s.

Anyway, that's a long introduction to the first of two posts to share what gold the $4 repacks held yesterday. There were some fantastic cards.  In fact, this entire post includes only Hall of Fame members (sorry, Mr. Clemens and Mr. Bonds! HA!).  These weren't the only HoF members I got -- just the ones I liked best.

First, two 1980 Topps cards that, while a little off center, have incredibly sharp corners (in particular for being repacks):

The Stargell is in such good shape with good, sharp corners that I actually commented out loud on it while sitting by myself in my basement/card room.  Both cards are ones I had as a kid, but these two are in much better shape than anything I had from 34 years ago myself.

Topps UK Minis are fairly common in the Fairfield repacks -- I always get some, and sometimes I even get a Mini Tiffany (like the Dion James one I passed along to the Chop Keeper in Idaho).  These five had two or three Nolan Ryans, three or four of Ryno trying to grow a mustache to look older, 5 Dale Murphys, 3 or 4 Wade Boggs, and 3 or 4 Roger Clemens, among others.

If you've read my nascent 1982 Topps Blog, you'll have heard the story about how much of a conspiracy freak Steve Carlton is these days (or at least was 15 years ago).  This is his 1987 Topps Traded set card, straight from the repack.

Cards from the late 1980s usually comprise at least 60% of the repack loose cards.  Fun oddballs like that Cap'n Crunch Robin Yount show up pretty regularly, though not with enough consistency to try to put the set together solely from the repacks.  Well, okay, you could do it, but you'll end up with a LOT of 1989 Topps commons to show for your efforts.

That said, this nice 1988 Fleer of Cal Ripken, Jr. just struck me as an attractive card of the Orioles Hall of Famer.  I have this set in a Gary Carter box, but I don't have many 1988 Fleer outside of that.

Finally, Mr. Barry Larkin.  This past week, I was talking by e-mail with a guy I met at the last card show I went to about a month ago, Von.  We have been discussing some trading, and I mentioned my lack of 1994 through 2007 Brewers (which, thanks to all of you has been filling up some lately!).  One of the things he said was, "It's strange but you don't see too many cards from that timeframe in the repacks."

Perhaps that avalanche is about to be unleashed.  This 1996 Topps Barry Larkin might have been the only 1996 Topps in the group, but there were also a few cards from a number of those 1994-2007 sets.  The tide might be turning, Von!