Workin' at the Card Shop 5: Spring Fever

My two youngest children were behaving horribly this morning, mostly because they needed a nap but refused to take one. I really wanted to go and get some cards, and I think all of us kind of wanted to get out of the house.

My (somewhat) local card shop had posted a while back on their Facebook page that they had Heritage in stock, and a couple of days ago that they had Spring Fever packs available with the purchase of any Topps brand product. I had kind of dismissed the notion of buying any Heritage through them, as their prices tend to run 20-100% higher than what the online folks can offer. But upon looking at their post announcing the arrival of Heritage, I saw that none days later they had added their price per box and it was right in line with what the online folks are charging.

So we piled the kids in the car and went off to the card shop. The twins fell asleep and got their nap in while we were out and about, which was the real bonus to this whole operation. I was able to get my box of Heritage, and also two packs of Spring Fever. My oldest son went into the card shop with me, but he was more interested in playing with the shop owner's dog than he was in looking at cardboard. I looked long and hard at the packs of Museum Collection and Tribute, but the gamble on that stuff is too much for me. There are some awesome cards that can come out of those products, but there are also a whole lot of cards that are basically throwing your $54 + tax straight out the window. I couldn't stomach that kind of risk today.

Nothing particularly exciting came out of the Spring Fever packs I got. Each one contains 5 cards and if the packs I opened are any indication, the cards in the pack run in numerical order. My packs overlapped by three cards, so I got cards 24-30 in the set, with cards 26-28 being doubles of Pujols, Reyes, and Upton. The cards are actually pretty nice-looking, with a Refratory sheen to them and lots of bright colors. They may not be worth purchasing a bunch of packs to obtain, but if you were going to buy some cards anyway they aren't too bad as a freebie.

I did okay with my box of Heritage, but there wasn't anything that blew the roof off the van when I opened it. There was an Adam Jones relic in there, but the big hit of the box was probably the Paul Goldschmidt mini, which was numbered # 008 / 100. There were a couple of Chrome parallels, a Chrome Refractor, and an action photo variation of Chris Davis. The real important cards are the base set SPs, and I pulled 9 of them. With the couple I've already got that takes me to 11 / 75 of the short-prints, or just under 15% of the way there. What a pain in the butt.