When Budget Collecting Sucks

While I'm still in the afterglow of the UCLA victory over Tennessee last night, currently I'm in a funk when it comes to budget collecting. Sure, there's plenty of outlets where you can buy fresh, new product for current prices, but there just aren't as many "discount" card packs lately. Or at least there don't seem to me to be very many.

This last weekend we went camping up in Ojai at Wheeler Gorge Campgrounds, a very nice place that has a cool stream running through it. (If you'd like to see pics, go to my Flikr account at www.flikr.com/wildwill). On the way up we stopped at Subway to get lunch, and as I did last month when we camped there, I ran into Blockbuster to see if they had any Fairfield repacks. They did, only this time the only Baseball they had was 2007 Upper Deck. For $4.99 I got two packs of Series 1 and two packs of Series 2 and a "bonus" pack of 2007 Topps Series 1. Here's the thing, all together, five packs of cards - 32 in total, and I pulled bupkis. Well, not really bupkis, I did get two Angels (GA and Darren Oliver), but I think I had them both.

Then today I make my weekly visit to Target and notice that they've bulked up on Excel $1.59 el-cheapos. These are great for me, since I spent most of the last two decades ignoring Baseball cards completely. I got a pack of 06 Upper Deck Update (Holy crap, they have cards numbering in the 1,000s!) and a pack of last year's Topps Chrome. In the Chrome I pulled a Schilling X-Factor, which isn't bad, but the Upper Deck pack had nothing good in it, unless you like 90's era full bleed cards with Skybox like graphics. Well, I take that back, of the 8 cards, 7 of them had the dreaded "rookie card" logo. But since they're '06 cards, and I've yet to hear of any of them, I'd say they were busts.

I did also pick up a pack of this year's Upper Deck First Update, why I have no idea. Well, it's only a buck a pack, so that must be why. So far I've bought 4 packs of that product, and I'm sure I'll buy a few more, but I'm really only looking for Angels, so most of the cards are useless to me, except for trade bait.

Here's the real rip-off though. I bought a pack of Bowman Chrome Retail - for three bucks, with a whopping THREE cards in it. Now I could have SWORN that I already bought a pack of this stuff and it had four cards in it. Now, it's still cheaper than Hobby, which is about five bucks a pack for four cards, but if they can do Topps Chrome with the SAME number of cards in both Retail and Hobby, why can't they do the same for Bowman Chrome?

I did get a prospect, Zhenwang Zhang who is the first player from China to be signed by a major league team (The Yankees of course). The other two cards: Alex Rios and Derek Lowe, oh joy. Was this pack even worth three bucks? No way, no how, and it will be the LAST pack of Bowman Chrome that I buy. I'd rather buy Topps Chrome, at least I get four cards there, and I have a chance to pull something NICE, rather than crap. Another nasty thing I just noticed, the Autographed Prospect cards are numbered as an extension of the prospects set (which began in regular Bowman if you remember). That's going to piss off a lot of set collectors.


I was going to update my team trading, but I think I'll let that sit until tomorrow or the next day.

Quick Update

I haven't really bought a whole lot lately that's worthy of writing about, mid-season slump maybe?

One thing I can comment on though are those re-packaged old wax products that you see in places like Toys R Us, Target, Blockbuster or heck I've seen them at grocery stores. You might find them in places like CVS or Rite-Aid. They're all made by one company, but I'll be darned if I can remember who they are at the moment, I want to say Fairfield or something like that - I'm sure someone else knows.

The value is definitely good for the most part. Their bread and butter product is an 8 pack of older cards for $9.99. Usually you'll get a decent mix of older product, one or two of the packs will be at least a retail mid-line product. You'll even get some old 90's Topps still in wax! One that I bought recently had an 87 Topps pack as well, and I've gotten mid-80's Donruss out of those boxes.

You know what, I like them. I really do. See, I don't have a ton of that old stuff sitting in binders or boxes, I got rid of 90% of my sports card collection about 10 years ago during a life-changing move. If I had 3200 count boxes full of old worthless commons from the 90's I probably wouldn't bother, but since I don't, these old packs are fun for me to bust. Next time I buy one I'll definitely post the break. They also have larger packages that are more expensive, and smaller ones with ore recent jumbos.

They do other pre-packs as well, 100 Baseball cards for $4, and these are usually a hoot and a hollar to buy. You'll get a couple of name stars, and then some very, very esoteric issues. Sometimes there might be regional sets, or minor league sets. There's always a couple of shiney inserts, and you'll usually score at least $4.00 worth of cards. I can certainly overdose on those blisters, but once in a while they're fun.

I've only purchased one of the combo "Guaranteed Relic Card and 2 Bonus Packs" packages, a NBA themed one that had two packs of Topps 06-07 retail packs and a 2001 Karl Malone Game Worn Jersey from UD. I sold the Malone on eBay for a couple bucks, and the packs weren't bad, but the price was too high at $10 for a cheap hit.

Being on a pretty strict card budget (the less spent the better, especially these days), I can usually get away with one of the cheaper packages whenever we need something from Rite-Aid or Target. It's not a trip to the hobby store which are becoming exceedingly rare, so I need to get my card fix somehow, and this is a viable alternative. For the moment.