The other day I took a trip to Target and picked up two of the Baseball Card Cube re-packs. I always find these interesting and these two delivered what’s promised and what you expect to get out of them: a few old cards, a few good names, mostly junk wax era stuff, a few oddities, and one out of two cubes have a “hit”.
This time around I noticed something I hadn’t really noticed in the past. Normally we talk about collation in new packs and we’ll see repeat collation in packs and things like that. This time I saw a themes repeated, names repeated, and then cards repeated. I’m basically imagining that they have stacks of cards and they split them up by types/years and players and give you one or a few of each. Because I got two at the same time it’s likely they were in the same case and packed at the same time.
One for Me, One for You
This is pretty standard for the “Oldest Card” award for these packs. I’m not made at that. I like a good ’81 Donruss as much as the next collector. But this is where it started. I got two good names (especially Palmer) from the same set. One in each cube.
The second example of this was from the 1991 Pacific Tom Seaver set. As a Mets fan I like this set, although Seaver isn’t my favorite Met I can appreciate him as a baseball and Mets great.
So far I’m imagining a bunch of people with card cubes and a dealer who goes by and just starts with stacks of the same set and deals one card to each card cube and then the person holding the cube loads it in. Then the next “dealer” comes by with another set.
The Player Stacks
Now we’re moving from sets to players. First up is Trammell. The Drake’s card is an example of the kind of oddballs you might find in these packs. That’s one of the things I love about these packs. I love finding cards like that.
The ’88 Score I also like. That’s one of my favorite score sets. I always thought the design was clean and the pictures were of pretty good quality. They were interesting for the most part too. I normally don’t like card designs that aren’t in the theme of the teams colors, but for ’88 Score I make an exception.
Up next is Randy Johnson, who if you weren’t aware is a Charter Member of the Stadium Club. That’s a great image of Randy in is more wild days. And I don’t mean partying, I mean not really knowing where his pitches were going. I really like the SP Authentic though. I love those Arizona uniforms so much better than the uniforms they have these days which might be the worst in the league.
Lastly we have Tom Glavine. Three great players worth of cards. Again, just one in each cube now dealers.
More From Other Favorite Sets
Like I said earlier, ’88 Score is one of my favorites. Of course I love Darryl. I certainly chanted his name enough at Shea back in the day. I might send the Mattingly out for a TTM shot since I got another one back from him recently.
The ’85 Donruss of Jim Rice is another favorite. The pictures really aren’t always the best quality in that set, but I tend to like it. It doesn’t hurt that it’s Jim Rice either.
Other Random Good Stuff
I know that Topps Gold Griffey Jr. looks a little messed up on the bottom, but that’s the angle of the picture that’s doing that. I like anything with Griffey in those 90’s Mariners uniforms. No matter where you catch it in action, that’s always a sweet swing. The Lindor card is a great example of one of my favorite recent sets in that 2016 Topps sets. Plus I love the way they did “Future Stars” on that set. It just always fit in the theme to me. The last one on the right is the “hit” of the Scott Dubrule autograph.
Seeing Double, Or Worse (Or Better)
I got all of these 2012 rookies all together. In one cube I got one Cespedes and then two of Darvish and the other it was two of Cespedes and one Darvish. I’m not sure how those dealers were doling these out in this case. But it looks like they had a glut of some 2012 rookies they just had to get rid of.
Then there’s the #661 rookie that was thrown in. In this case it’s some of the factory set variations that were thrown in. Three of one variation and one of another in both sets. I’m no Nats fan, but I gotta respect Harper and can’t deny it’s a good rookie to have no matter how plentiful the variations might be.
No matter what these re-packs are pretty fun to open. In this case though the lesson I learned is to get one at a time. If I don’t, I’m basically getting the same pack.