January 2018 Loot Locker

I ordered a Loot Locker in January, and it arrived in the mail a day or two ago. The Loot Locker is a monthly or one-shot service that sends you some Hobby packs and a few card supplies. It's a decent alternative for building up trade bait, or for getting your hands on a few Hobby packs. The basic Locker comes in two levels, a $20 and a $30 (plus shipping) box, with the difference being that the more expensive box holds a couple more packs. There are also high-end boxes, which I think are $50. They have premium brands packed into them. Each month, you can vote on that month's packs on The Loot Locker's Twitter feed. I think February voting closes tonight. The current leaders for February are 2017 Panini Optic, 2017 Topps Chrome, and 2017 Topps Archives.

I ordered the $30 option. The products inside included two packs of 2017 Topps Chrome, two packs of 2017 Panini Optic, and three packs of 2017 Topps Heritage High Numbers. There were also some top loaders and penny sleeves, as well a couple pieces of candy. The cards ship in a 400-count card storage box.

At first I kind of felt like there wasn't a lot here for the money, but instead of whining about it I went and did some research. I went out to a major card retailer's site and pulled down their box prices for these products. Then I divided them by the number of packs per box and multiplied that number by the number of packs in the Loot Locker.

For two packs of Optic, I came up with $8.80. For two packs of Topps Chrome, I got $11.91. The three packs of Heritage High Numbers would have cost $7.49. That gives me a total of about $28.20 for the packs. Throw in a couple of dollars for the card supplies and candy, a few more for shipping and Paypal fees, and a couple dollars of profit for the company, and you're right about at the $35 mark.

Not much came out of the Heritage packs. I got a couple of short prints, including a Houston and PC player, Josh Reddick. I also got a Rookie Performers insert of Hunter Renfroe.

Here are a couple of the shinier Optic cards. It was kind of hard to find any base cards among all of the Prizms, Diamond Kings, and Rated Rookies.

The Kluber and Moncada cards are both numbered parallels. The Kluber is numbered # 12 / 99 and the Moncada is # 79 / 99.

These are the highlights from the Chrome packs. I got a nice Blue Refractor of Yasiel Puig, and one of the 1987-design inserts of Addison Russell.

The Puig is # 075 / 150. I didn't pull any hits out of this Loot Locker, but I got a handful of nice parallel cards and a taste of a few products that I didn't buy a whole lot of this year. For personal reasons I don't visit my local card shop, and this is a nice alternative to making that trek.

Pack of the Day 175: A Rack Pack of 2017 Topps Heritage High Number

I showed off a pack of 2016 Topps Heritage High Number with a pretty good pull in it a few days ago, and I decided later to try out a pack of the 2017 iteration.

Here's the front of the pack. It's got 16 cards promised inside, with possible inserts including Walmart exclusive Topps Discs. I didn't get any of those in this pack, but apparently if you want to try your hand at getting one you need to get to Walmart.

This is the back-of-pack stuff, with the odds listed for all the stuff you might find inside, as well as the No Purchase Necessary address and rules.

As is my custom, I didn't scan every card in the pack, but I did scan one card front and back. Joakim Soria was a mainstay on my fantasy baseball teams several years ago (longer ago than I thought), and he's managed to stay in the game and relevant for a few teams in the ensuing seasons, eventually returning to Kansas City.

These were my favorite cards from the rest of the base set. Clippard now plies his trade for the Astros, so I had to include his card in the scan. The Astros are actually his second team since leaving the Yankees earlier this season, as he was acquired by the White Sox in between. His outings for the Astros have been pretty rough so far.

Brandon Phillips is on the Angels now, so he's another guy in this scan who is no longer with the team he's pictured with on this Heritage Update release. Addison Reed is now with the Red Sox, so this scan is 3 for 6 with players in the wrong uniforms.

The pack wasn't done with the Astros, giving me this Rookie Performers insert of Yulieski Gurriel. These are a 1:4 pack insert, and this is the only non-base, non-SP card from the pack. I like the design on this insert, although I don't think I'll bother to chase the rest of the set down.