Pack of the Day 94: Pulling Those Repack Hits

I picked up one of those 20 Packs + a Bonus Item repacks at Target the other day. It contained the usual assortment of stuff, including seven or eight packs from the last couple years of Topps Flagship and Opening Day, around five filler packs of Panini Triple Play, and then good stuff like Heritage, Bowman, Cooperstown, and Allen & Ginter. The bonus item in the box was an Albert Pujols collectible minifigure of some kind produced by Topps. My son asked me about it at dinner, and I told him, "This is a figure of Albert Pujols." He looked at me and said, "Daddy, no potty words at the table!"

There were a number of minis among the inserts in the packs. I like that die-cut Felix Hernandez the best. I really need to figure out what I'm still missing from that set and finish putting it together. I also got a couple of Royals, with a James Shields 1972 mini from another set I need to complete and a Kyle Zimmer mini Refractor from a set I will never complete.

Here are the backs of those cards because I scanned them. They are sideways because I didn't rotate the photo before I saved it. The quality of this post is rapidly deteriorating. My Google AdSense doesn't pay me enough to hire a Quality Control person.

I got this Dizzy Dean disc from the pack of Cooperstown that I got. It's pretty cool, even though it's one of those things that stinks to store. I'll probably toss it in a penny sleeve and put it with my other fifteen Cooperstown cards.

I like Billy Butler, even if he had a down year in 2014. I heard the other day that he hit a home run or something in Spring Training. But maybe I am thinking about the home run that Ryan Howard hit. I don't know. I'm glad the teams I like have just been exchanging players I like, so that even if they're in new uniforms I don't have to feel conflicted about the changes. Billy Butler to Oakland is one example. Josh Donaldson to Toronto is another.

This Butler card is from the Blue Foil parallel of Topps Opening Day. This is one of the sets I like collecting every year (since 2013), so I already had this card. I hear that the 2015 Opening Day parallel might just be foilboard without a nice blue color to it. If that rumor is true I will feel a little sad. I really like the blue cards. Yes, I just passed up the chance to make a pun about feeling blue.

Here is a Jeter insert from 2014 Topps. It's hard to believe that it's already 2015. Life is moving pretty fast. I also got a Cracked Ice or whatever they're calling these fractured Refractor-type cards on the Panini side of things. This one features Rogers Hornsby. Somewhere the Atlanta Braves are grinding their teeth about people creating sick Refractor hits of vintage dudes. Brian McCann would be worried about it too, but he is busy rolling around in the big pile of money the Yankees gave him.

Wow Astros, way to go. You passed on Jeter to get Phil Nevin, who you then traded to get 21 innings from Mike Henneman. That sick mojo hit of Rogers Hornsby is numbered # 195 / 499.

And finally, I got a mini of Ryne Sandberg out of the Allen & Ginter pack. But not just any mini. This is a flag-back mini, hand-numbered # 23 / 25. I threw out all the packs so I don't recall the exact odds on pulling one of these, but from Retail it was something in the realm of 1:You Just Used All Your Luck For The Year. I almost passed it over because the mini in the A & G packs is an annoying little card stuck between the other cards and it always wants to fall between your fingers and land on the floor. So you just kind of have to flip to where the mini is and set it aside before sorting through the pack, and it is easy to ignore it once it's set aside. But for some reason I checked the back and I was pretty excited to find the hand-numbering on there. It sells for like $6 on eBay, but I got a thrill from beating the astronomical odds on pulling one of these. From a repack box, no less, where the packs are each costing right around $1 apiece.