Repacks and Inserts that Make Me Feel Weird

My Target trip yesterday yielded a lot of good stuff.  One of the more interesting items (to me) that I found in one of my repack purchases was a 1992 Topps Gold Winners card.  Why I found it interesting was that it featured noted "winner" Dave Otto.

I don't mean any disrespect to Dave Otto by this post -- I mean, he's an excellent baseball player by the mere fact that he made it to the major leagues and, in fact, he has been inducted into the University of Missouri's Sports Hall of Fame. But, the idea of labeling every single player in a set as a winner -- which is what Topps did -- is ridiculous.  For instance, in 1991 (the season before this card), Otto went 2-8 with a 4.23 ERA (nearly league average) but with just 4.2 K/9 and allowing 9.7 H/9...and, to be clear, this was probably his best Major League Season.

Labeling Otto as a winner after that season is like giving every kid in a league a trophy for participating.

Speaking of giving kids trophies for participation, I present the following insert from the 2013 Panini Elite Extra Edition from a blaster I bought at Target.

Relic inserts for guys who played major league baseball is okay.  I'm not a huge fan -- I'd rather have the entire jersey if I'm going to collect something like that -- but they don't offend me too much.

But this relic creeps me out.

Did Panini really get the jersey from a 14-year-old kid, cut it up, insert it into cards, print them up, and think "I bet the collectors will really love these cards"?

Seriously?

I suppose it is only a matter of time before some entrepreneurial sort starts releasing releasing cards for highly recruited high school football players.

What's that you say?

UGH.

A Trip to Target

I made a run to Target and to the Goodwill store this morning in search of cards cheap, repacked, oddly located, and otherwise weird.  My trip to Goodwill was disappointing -- literally the only aisle with any potential of holding cards was blocked off by workers reorganizing the shelves.  Oh well.

Thankfully, there is a Target about 2 blocks from the Goodwill, so I had to have a fix of unopened packs, etc.  Target let me scratch my itch, and it has given me enough to talk about for probably a week here.  I bought a quite a few things -- a 2014 Topps Rack Pack, a 2014 Topps Retail Blaster Box with the patch in it, a 2013 Panini Extra Edition box (and man is that another post entirely...), one of the repacks that has "one guaranteed autograph" included (along with three or four unopened packs of cards), and three of those $4 repack things -- all of which had an opened pack of 2012 Topps included.

To start with in this post, I have never been terribly lucky in pulling short printed cards or errors in my life.  I had one good one when I was a kid -- the 1979 Topps Rangers Bump Wills version (when Topps jumped the gun and put Wills on the Blue Jays based on an anticipated trade that never happened).

Today, though, I was luckier than I had been in a while.  Not necessarily with the repacks, mind you, but definitely with the 2014 Topps.  First, the very first thing I ripped when I opened the blaster box was the patch.  I was hoping for the 1975 Topps Robin Yount patch to add to my PC, but I didn't get it.  I did get a 1975 commemorative patch, though:

Not a bad start to the festivities.  Of course, it's available in trade but I do like this patch card.

I ripped through everything, and then I went back to try to figure out if I had any of those random "sparkle" short prints.  Either they are not as rare this year, or I got reasonably lucky, because lo and behold there one was:

It took me a couple of times looking through these cards to see that sparkle, so for us older guys who might need glasses, I figured I'd post it with the sparkle circled.

Finding this was a fun way to cap my morning of tearing packs and otherwise going on a "lottery hunt" with my purchases this morning.

Of course, it's up for trade too, but I have no idea what it is really "worth"....any thoughts?

_______________________

UPDATE:

I decided to list the Scherzer sparkle on eBay.  Check it out!